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CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk


Mrs Whiggins

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On 5/6/2020 at 1:37 AM, Bama Chick said:


Ooooh, sexist and stupid!

Here’s some histrionics for you - you’re the worst kind of moron. A moron who doesn’t know they’re a moron but still feels the compulsion to contaminate everyone else with their stupidity. You’re mean, you’re clueless, you’re selfish, you’re incurious, and you’re boring. No woman worth a damn would ever willingly want to have sex with you for pleasure. They only do it out of pity, for a transaction, or to have a story to tell their friends about the dumb mean half-man they suffered through.

You’re the absolute perfect Trumpkin. You’re sure to take that as a compliment but know that, as usual, you will be wrong.

So take this message with a the histrionic effort I can muster - fuck you, eat shit, and go read a book.

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As a point of fact, GRUHorn is the richest (only exception being the Sack), most successful, and happiest poster on this entire board, at least according to him. Some might objectively view him as a complete dumbass, but he would respectfully disagree with that assertion. And he will tell you that.

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Gov. Kristi Noem sent letters Friday to both the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and Oglala Sioux Tribe demanding that their checkpoints for COVID-19 related travel be removed from state and U.S. highways.
If their checkpoints are not removed within 48 hours, the state will take legal action, according to a press release sent from the governor’s office.
The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe first implemented checkpoints April 2, the Journal previously reported. Checkpoints are at both ends of U.S. Highway 212, which runs across the reservation.


https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/update-tribes-respond-to-noems-demands-to-remove-highway-checkpoints/article_7ad8c4d3-994d-57c6-bf76-71a35a7e9689.html

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4 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Holy shit. That first tweet is insane. 

I'm in the unfamiliar position of defending Trump here. His explanation that the virus will go away (but we're making great progress toward vaccines [but it will go away]) is vexing of course, but at least he wasn't abusive with the press. Obama and Hillary weren't even mentioned. As Trump clips go, that was downright grounded. 

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10 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

The number of “acceptable deaths” sure seems to change a lot

Febuary 28 - zero deaths

"[W]hen you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done."

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7 hours ago, 4th&Five said:

the concept of tests isn't great because then we might find out who has it.  

i need a drink.

Tests are totally not needed for the commoners. However, a VP staffer and a personal valet to the president contract covid-19 and now everyone in the West Wing is going to be tested every day going forward.

I am pretty sure that is not how it will go down with the warriors at an Applebees or Chipoltle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/us/politics/white-house-coronavirus-safety.html

and then on point from the NYTimes.

Quote

All of which raised an obvious question: If it is so hard to maintain a healthy environment at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the most famous office address in the world, where staff members are tested regularly, some as often as every day, then how can businesses across the country without anywhere near as much access to the same resources establish a safe space for their workers?

 

Edited by yoladu
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58 minutes ago, Radical Larry said:

COVID everywhere but they don’t get it. Even the virus wants nothing to do with them.

Can't have it if you don't get tested for it.

The president is a fit 239 pounds and he's definitely been tested for the coronavirus.  Mmm hmm.

 

Edited by TexArcher
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10 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Two points: First the apology from Kimmel

But here’s the real take away:

 

Why until the end of June? Why would need any of this in June?

Mike Pence on 4/24 : "“I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.”

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11 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Can't have it if you don't get tested for it.

The president is a fit 239 pounds and he's definitely been tested for the coronavirus.  Mmm hmm.

 

If he gets it I’d be amazed if he didn’t have serious symptoms as a fat 70+ MF who doesn’t believe in exercise and is under constant stress.  He doesn’t have it.  
 

Only the good die young.  This POS will be around a good long while...

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23 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

If he gets it I’d be amazed if he didn’t have serious symptoms as a fat 70+ MF who doesn’t believe in exercise and is under constant stress.  He doesn’t have it.  
 

Only the good die young.  This POS will be around a good long while...

I was gonna neg this, but you’re a good dude for an okie.

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More than 70 test positive for coronavirus after attending "a large gathering"


https://www.wbay.com/content/news/More-than-70-test-positive-for-coronavirus-after-attending-a-large-gathering-570316661.html

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - More than 70 people who tested positive for the coronavirus since an April 24 rally at the Wisconsin state Capitol indicated they had attended a large gathering, but the state Department of Health Services cant' say if they were at the rally because it is not tracking specific events.


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5 hours ago, Upgrayedd said:

Why no Sweden?  

They are one of the red ones. Interesting that of the 10 most populous countries that are included on their charts, they are all in the red group, with one exception.  Also, with the same notable exception, and maybe one borderline one, the countries in the green are small and geographically contained countries.  

Annotation-2020-05-08-133253.png

Annotation-2020-05-09-063114b.png

 

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Lebanon is including in the winning group.  

I guess this is what winning looks like.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/opinion/lebanon-protests-coronavirus.html

In Lebanon, a Pandemic of Hunger

Anger over a failing economy and unaffordable food has pushed protesters into the streets despite the coronavirus.

By Lina Mounzer

Ms. Mounzer is a Lebanese writer and translator.

merlin_172012008_11da384c-a348-41b8-af73

 

May 6, 2020

Protesting against the government’s failure to check increasing prices and falling currency, in Beirut, Lebanon, last month.Credit...Nabil Mounzer/EPA, via Shutterstock

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Two weeks ago, it seemed every conversation in Lebanon was about keeping safe from the virus. The bustling streets of Beirut were quiet; everyone wore masks and gloves and glared at anyone who coughed in public. The smell of hand sanitizers filled elevators.

Back from my grocery runs, I disinfected everything I bought and put my plastic bags on the balcony for a week before reusing them. Last week I came back from the store and nearly forgot to wash my hands as I pulled out the grocery bill and pointed out the exorbitant prices to my husband. We crossed out things we could no longer regularly afford, like cheese.

We are the lucky ones. In September, about one-third of Lebanon’s population lived below the poverty line. Today, it is closer to half the population. Lebanon has been on a lockdown to stem the coronavirus outbreak since mid-March, when the government closed borders and “nonessential” businesses.

The Lebanese government has been praised for its swift response to the pandemic, but the crisis was also a gift for the politicians.

The Lebanese had been protesting against their political elites since October and refusing to leave the protest sites. Set off by a proposed tax on WhatsApp phone calls announced on Oct. 17 — one of the many proposed austerity measures meant to offset Lebanon’s staggering $86 billion debt — the protests targeted the government for decades of corruption, sectarian power-sharing and the broken banking system.

Lebanon’s banks lent depositors’ money to the government and no longer have the dollar liquidity to match the numbers in people’s bank accounts. By November, the banks placed strict limits on withdrawals, some allowing a mere $100 a month. These withdrawal limits functioned as unofficial capital controls.

The Lebanese lira, which had long been exchanged at 1,507 lira to the dollar through a feat of “financial engineering” by Riad Salameh, the longtime governor of the Central Bank, began losing value.

Protesters, though diminished in numbers, continued rallying across the country, in weekly marches, in assemblies outside bank branches, outside the homes of politicians and government ministries.

When the country went into lockdown on March 23, there were 60 reported coronavirus cases. Forecasts predicted at least 400 deaths by the end of June with extreme social distancing. The protesters left the streets and returned home. The government swiftly took the opportunity to dismantle protesters’ tents.

The banks elected to open by appointment to business owners and refused access to small depositors, who couldn’t even withdraw their paltry dollar allowances. The absence of dollars from the market, combined with the Central Bank releasing a series of circulars, each decreeing different exchange rates, contributed to the extreme instability of the lira and a frenzied demand for dollars.

After the lockdown, the lira went into free fall. Many lost their income to the lockdown, others to the devaluation. Prices increased almost by the day. The government promised 400,000 lira of aid to needy families but it squabbled about distributing the aid for so long that by the time there was an agreement, it had been devalued to less than $100. And the aid is yet to be distributed.

On April 25, the lira hit an all-time low: about 4,000 to 4,200 lira to the dollar, a devaluation of over 60 percent. The anger that had been building up exploded once more onto the streets, with the biggest mobilizations taking place in Tripoli, Lebanon’s poorest city.

Protesters in several towns, including Tripoli and Beirut, broke the nighttime curfew, blocking roads and setting fire to banks for allowing big depositors to smuggle billions out of the country while the poorest can no longer afford lentils.

The new wave of protests has an edge of desperation that wasn’t there before. The army has responded with shocking violence, using tear gas, rubber bullets and live bullets to crush the protesters.

On the night of April 27, the army killed Fawaz al-Samman, a 26-year-old man, and wounded dozens of others during protests in Tripoli. Mr. al-Samman, a motorbike mechanic, had been struggling to support his wife and infant daughter after his income took a hit from the crisis.

The next day, in an attempt to defuse popular anger, the army released a video showing soldiers distributing aid to people, intercut with scenes of angry protesters and ending with the tagline: “Is this how a favor is repaid?” The video caused immense outrage and was taken down hours later.

Protesters who have been arrested have spoken of being tortured in custody, beaten viciously and electrocuted by army intelligence units. Against these horrors and the everyday despair of no longer being able to afford the simplest things, the threat of the virus, despite 741 cases and 25 deaths in Lebanon so far, has faded into abstraction.

To worry about being struck by illness, you must have some sense of a future it might rob you of. And the future in Lebanon seems incredibly bleak.

After the usual infighting, last week the government announced its economic “rescue plan,” which consists of appealing to the International Monetary Fund for a loan. Should the I.M.F. approve the request, we will have to contend with austerity measures that will only increase poverty. But that is if the notoriously corrupt Lebanese state can even meet the minimum reforms that the I.M.F. requires.

The lockdown is set to ease on May 24, with restaurants and bars reopening gradually. How many Lebanese can afford to go?

Hanan Bazzi, my mother-in-law, who recently retired after working for decades as an accountant, lost most of her pension to the financial crisis. “At least the coronavirus has trained us to cook with whatever you happen to have,” she said. “How to stay home and save money on outings. Even after the virus disappears, we will still have to keep living the smaller lives it taught us to live.”

Lina Mounzer is a writer and translator in Beirut.

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https://reason.com/2020/05/08/we-need-epidemiologists-economists-and-civil-libertarians-in-the-covid-19-discussion/

 

We Need Economists, Civil Libertarians, and Epidemiologists in the COVID-19 Discussion

The tradeoffs among considerations of health, prosperity, and liberty are catching up with us even if we don't want to acknowledge them.

J.D. TUCCILLE | 5.8.2020 1:15 PM

 

At the supermarket last week, amidst too many empty shelves, the manager looked at me through a plexiglass sneeze barrier and groused, "they need to open things up. I'd rather get the sniffles than face an angry mob."

COVID-19 is more than the "sniffles"—so far, over a quarter-million people have died globally during the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. But it's also not the only risk human beings face, even if many policymakers seem consumed with it to the exclusion of all else. There are also the economic repercussions of harsh enforcement of lockdown measures to consider. And we should also include in there the danger to life and liberty inherent in mandated shutdown orders that are enforced by police and jails.

To focus on the virus alone to the exclusion of other threats is to court disaster. Well, not just to court it—disaster is here.

For the week ending May 2, another 3.2 million Americans filed unemployment claims, bringing the total number to over 33 million for the seven weeks since pandemic-related lockdowns began. On a similar note, the European Union predicts its economy will contract by 7.5 percent in 2020 because of the pandemic and related lockdown measures. And "the global economy likely shrank an annualized 12.6 percent in first quarter 2020 relative to fourth quarter 2019 and will weaken a further 8.6 percent in the second quarter," according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

If numbers bore you, we can just go with the International Monetary Fund's pithy description: "worst economic downturn since the Great Depression" because of the pandemic and related lockdowns. Or there's the United Nations' equally catchy forecast of "multiple famines of biblical proportions"—not entirely due to the pandemic, but certainly made much worse by the disruptions it has created.

Enforcing lockdowns inflicts a cost on our freedom, too.

"As countries around the world institute extraordinary measures to fight the pandemic, both dictatorships and democracies are curtailing civil liberties on a massive scale," Florian Bieber of Austria's University of Graz observed in Foreign Policy.

That has meant opportunistic muzzling of dissent and arrests of critics, as documented by monitors including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. But it has also meant moronic enforcement of stay-at-home orders, such as protecting people from infection by beating them (the predictable go-to for many law-enforcers around the world). Less brutal but just as stupid are arrests for playing with family members in public parks, and jailings for hanging out with friends and opening businesses without government permission—heavy-handed moves that increase the danger of transmitting disease through contact with cops and incarceration in crowded cells.

Which is to say, focusing narrowly on the danger of the virus has made billions of human beings poorer than they were before, and less free than they have every right to be. And, as the phrase "multiple famines of biblical proportions" implies, there are add-on costs in terms of human life and welfare to being impoverished and under the boot.

"In some cases, people are dying because of the inappropriate application of measures that have been supposedly put in place to save them," United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet concedes.

  TOP ARTICLES5/5A Pandemic Is Not a Chance To Flog Your Bad National ServiceProposals

That's probably a little more analysis than the local supermarket manager had in mind when he talked about balancing fear of "sniffles" against that of an "angry mob," but he did a fair job of recognizing that there are tradeoffs in dealing with the pandemic. He knows that his customers are hurting because of the measures taken to battle the virus, that their paychecks are drying up, and that it's difficult to fully stock shelves because some items are in short supply.

That's not to say he and I would necessarily agree on the proper balance between the competing dangers. Like I said, I think there's more to COVID-19 than "sniffles." But if one of us enforces his judgment on the other with a nightstick, that disagreement becomes a lot more costly than if we're free to make our own assessments about the proper balance of risks—especially since we don't know each other's risk tolerances and abilities to weather one danger relative to another.

Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard, frames the ability to conceive of tradeoffs in handling the pandemic in terms of the different ways epidemiologists and economists think.

"Unlike epidemiologists, who identify a biological enemy and try to defeat it without thinking much about the costs, economists live on trade-offs," he wrote for Bloomberg. "It's an article of faith for economists that there is no such thing as an absolute value—not even the value of human life. Instead, most economists embrace the hardheaded reality that helping one person often leaves another less well-off."

If you add a civil libertarian (or perhaps just a jaded defense attorney, who knows that "law enforcement" is synonymous with busted heads) to that mix, you might get an even better-balanced discussion of the tradeoffs in various approaches to dealing with the pandemic. That would make for a much more serious discussion about the danger of a new, deadly, and highly contagious virus, balanced with the risk of poverty and despair from shutting down societies in order to battle that virus, and considering the peril inherent in turning the world into a vast prison in order to enforce a shutdown.

Maybe that's a discussion we could have soon. Because the tradeoffs among considerations of health, prosperity, and liberty are catching up with us even if we don't want to acknowledge them.

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https://reason.com/2020/05/08/we-need-epidemiologists-economists-and-civil-libertarians-in-the-covid-19-discussion/
 


We Need Economists, Civil Libertarians, and Epidemiologists in the COVID-19 Discussion
The tradeoffs among considerations of health, prosperity, and liberty are catching up with us even if we don't want to acknowledge them.
J.D. TUCCILLE | 5.8.2020 1:15 PM
 
At the supermarket last week, amidst too many empty shelves, the manager looked at me through a plexiglass sneeze barrier and groused, "they need to open things up. I'd rather get the sniffles than face an angry mob."
COVID-19 is more than the "sniffles"—so far, over a quarter-million people have died globally during the pandemic, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. But it's also not the only risk human beings face, even if many policymakers seem consumed with it to the exclusion of all else. There are also the economic repercussions of harsh enforcement of lockdown measures to consider. And we should also include in there the danger to life and liberty inherent in mandated shutdown orders that are enforced by police and jails.
To focus on the virus alone to the exclusion of other threats is to court disaster. Well, not just to court it—disaster is here.
For the week ending May 2, another 3.2 million Americans filed unemployment claims, bringing the total number to over 33 million for the seven weeks since pandemic-related lockdowns began. On a similar note, the European Union predicts its economy will contract by 7.5 percent in 2020 because of the pandemic and related lockdown measures. And "the global economy likely shrank an annualized 12.6 percent in first quarter 2020 relative to fourth quarter 2019 and will weaken a further 8.6 percent in the second quarter," according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
If numbers bore you, we can just go with the International Monetary Fund's pithy description: "worst economic downturn since the Great Depression" because of the pandemic and related lockdowns. Or there's the United Nations' equally catchy forecast of "multiple famines of biblical proportions"—not entirely due to the pandemic, but certainly made much worse by the disruptions it has created.
Enforcing lockdowns inflicts a cost on our freedom, too.
"As countries around the world institute extraordinary measures to fight the pandemic, both dictatorships and democracies are curtailing civil liberties on a massive scale," Florian Bieber of Austria's University of Graz observed in Foreign Policy.
That has meant opportunistic muzzling of dissent and arrests of critics, as documented by monitors including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. But it has also meant moronic enforcement of stay-at-home orders, such as protecting people from infection by beating them (the predictable go-to for many law-enforcers around the world). Less brutal but just as stupid are arrests for playing with family members in public parks, and jailings for hanging out with friends and opening businesses without government permission—heavy-handed moves that increase the danger of transmitting disease through contact with cops and incarceration in crowded cells.
Which is to say, focusing narrowly on the danger of the virus has made billions of human beings poorer than they were before, and less free than they have every right to be. And, as the phrase "multiple famines of biblical proportions" implies, there are add-on costs in terms of human life and welfare to being impoverished and under the boot.
"In some cases, people are dying because of the inappropriate application of measures that have been supposedly put in place to save them," United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet concedes.
  TOP ARTICLES5/5A Pandemic Is Not a Chance To Flog Your Bad National ServiceProposals
That's probably a little more analysis than the local supermarket manager had in mind when he talked about balancing fear of "sniffles" against that of an "angry mob," but he did a fair job of recognizing that there are tradeoffs in dealing with the pandemic. He knows that his customers are hurting because of the measures taken to battle the virus, that their paychecks are drying up, and that it's difficult to fully stock shelves because some items are in short supply.
That's not to say he and I would necessarily agree on the proper balance between the competing dangers. Like I said, I think there's more to COVID-19 than "sniffles." But if one of us enforces his judgment on the other with a nightstick, that disagreement becomes a lot more costly than if we're free to make our own assessments about the proper balance of risks—especially since we don't know each other's risk tolerances and abilities to weather one danger relative to another.
Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard, frames the ability to conceive of tradeoffs in handling the pandemic in terms of the different ways epidemiologists and economists think.
"Unlike epidemiologists, who identify a biological enemy and try to defeat it without thinking much about the costs, economists live on trade-offs," he wrote for Bloomberg. "It's an article of faith for economists that there is no such thing as an absolute value—not even the value of human life. Instead, most economists embrace the hardheaded reality that helping one person often leaves another less well-off."
If you add a civil libertarian (or perhaps just a jaded defense attorney, who knows that "law enforcement" is synonymous with busted heads) to that mix, you might get an even better-balanced discussion of the tradeoffs in various approaches to dealing with the pandemic. That would make for a much more serious discussion about the danger of a new, deadly, and highly contagious virus, balanced with the risk of poverty and despair from shutting down societies in order to battle that virus, and considering the peril inherent in turning the world into a vast prison in order to enforce a shutdown.
Maybe that's a discussion we could have soon. Because the tradeoffs among considerations of health, prosperity, and liberty are catching up with us even if we don't want to acknowledge them.


In a country capable of having a rational, adult conversation, that would be ideal.
Instead, it’s just a blind adversarial rage, with data (incomplete, often faulty data, with no reasonable alternate data) on one side, and PATRIOT EAGLE FREEDOM GUN! on the other.
Hell, if we had a simple conversation that started with 1) our goal is to have as few people die as possible, so 2) let’s choose the path likely to have the fewest total deaths, and went from there...that would be amazing. Have you heard that conversation anywhere? Not really. The only reason to have lockdowns is because libtard scientists hate Trump, so we need to get rid of lockdowns. And the answer to even asking people to wear masks is to say “FUCK YOU LIBERTY FLAG MURICA DIE, COMMIE!”
Rational thought is dead. Its rotten corpse stinks. Join me on the ledge.
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