Negatory

Fair enough, I see your side of it. My question is how do we ever get back to more efficient, less partisan politics when both sides are such babies? In reality, some principles that espouse fairness, voter representation, or the spirit of the constitution (such as what McConnell hypocritically suggested in 2016) are exactly what would help unite the country. Are we past things like that? Is it so clearly one team versus the other? Are the gloves fully off? I agree that the dems were blatantly unfair during the Kavanaugh confirmation, and I understand the desire to “get back” at them. It just makes me sad for the future of the country and our ability to actually unite and make meaningful progress against external threats such as China, deficits, or Global Warming. Here’s to the 2020s being another lost decade of progress, just like the 2010s.

He’s just pointing out blatant hypocritical statements that didn’t need to be said in 2016. Nothing more, nothing less.

Whoa sparky, calm down. The linked story literally had nothing in it calling out a conspiracy, even going so far as to say it was due purely to “inattention.” I think the point of posting it was that even the commander in chief’s office made one of the same mistakes that pisses off a lot of Air Force pilots. How can we hold orgs like PA to a higher standard if the CiC’s office does the same thing? Also, I’m positive this would have been linked if Biden or Clinton had done it.

Huh? Are you saying the CIA, FBI, DISA, etc are all wrong about Russian interference? Is this more disinformation? ”The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019 in which they concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed". ” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections

I’m not naive. There’s a difference between war and posturing, and to say we’re at war with Iran is laughable. I have had them tell me to leave their airspace before and intentionally ignored it, but that ain’t war. You probably also say we’re at war with Russia when it’s convenient to your argument but disregard the numerous pro Russia foreign policy moves that have been made by the administration. By your logic, you’d probably say we’re at war with China, Venezuela, Yemen, half of Africa, etc.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Qasem_Soleimani I guess this was just a continuation of our longstanding war with Iran. More blatant propaganda drivel.

You guys have any experience with this training? At my org (group level), we went around the room and, if you were white, you basically had to admit how you have been privileged and how you have internal biases. Super not awkward and fake, let me tell you. And this wasn’t optional. Literally every person had to talk. If you were black, you had to go around and tell the room about your experiences being oppressed based on your skin color. One of the TSgts didn’t know what to say and started rambling about how she’s never had a bad experience or felt scared until the last week when a rent a cop pulled her over on base for speeding. She went on to say that the cop was super nice and did nothing wrong, but that she felt like she should be scared so she was. We are creating victims and people with victim complexes. It also amplifies any sort of racial divide that existed before. The whole training takes away from the fact that there really are race bias problems out there, and that is what we should be focusing on.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay/2020/09/military-is-subject-to-trumps-upcoming-payroll-tax-deferral-too/ Looks like some folks are getting short term loans for the next 4 months.

Also, I just looked into the actual comorbidities page on the CDC website, and some of the top conditions that were present when patients died of COVID that were counted as comorbidities were pneumonia, respiratory distress syndrome, respiratory arrest, and respiratory failure... Also, they listed cardiac arrest - something that happens when you die - as a comorbidity. If you don't see how the data is being skewed here, you're being intellectually dishonest. Seems fairly obvious that the overwhelming majority of people who died of COVID - a disease that is known to cause respiratory and heart issues - should have associated respiratory and heart issues when they die. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR3-wrg3tTKK5-9tOHPGAHWFVO3DfslkJ0KsDEPQpWmPbKtp6EsoVV2Qs1Q (Table 3) We've known all along that COVID causes people to have pneumonia, a cough, trouble breathing, and respiratory distress. Don't pretend like a report that says that those conditions happen in people with COVID is some sort of proof that COVID's actual death rate is vastly overstated.

Sure, you’re right. The economic impact is real and must be considered versus health effects, and my argument oversimplified that very important fact.

I regret presenting it this way as I said at the premise, but after seeing the 6% COVID CDC statistics presented so many times incorrectly (across this forum and many different social media sites), I am frustrated. Mainly, I am frustrated that the smartest people I know seem to embrace points without doing much critical thinking because it aligns with them from an identity standpoint. And to your second point, whether you like it or not, your choices and beliefs absolutely will be assessed with 20/20 hindsight. There often IS a right side of history. You don’t see too many textbooks now spouting the merits of the San Francisco antimasker alliance that existed during the Spanish Flu.

They get counted in excess deaths, which is why I think it’s probably a better metric when it comes to total impact. And if the disease still got to you with restrictions (probably via asymptomatic transmission), how can we reasonably ask for those at risk to avoid infection? They still have to get food, go to the doctor, fix their homes, interact with those that care for them. Unfortunately, there is no such thing anymore as a self-sufficient man; everyone is very interconnected.

What would you recommend?

Okay, how about it's just a unproven theory that the government as a whole (or is it just the liberal portions, i'm not hip and read in) is conspiring to present skewed results? Does that work? Explain how in systems thinking - which asserts that one can't look at individual things like coronavirus specific death tolls and instead should look at the combination of effects in the whole system - discounts anything I said previously. I am not following your logic. COVID proves that isolation thinking - i.e. personal liberty over all else - is ineffective. https://www.thinknpc.org/blog/covid-19-means-systems-thinking-is-no-longer-optional/

You keep repeating that the death numbers are skewed with nothing to back it up. What do you think has caused the >200k excess deaths in the US since Mar 2020?

The protesting has lost its purpose. If you want people to care, maybe don’t attack politicians. There’s no apparent strategy other than to be mad and break stuff. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8672681/BLM-protesters-gather-outside-White-House-Trumps-RNC-speech.html

Dude he named a bunch of things a leader could have done to LEAD more effectively. A pandemic is exacerbated by the population and how they perceive and enact guidance. Not making a strategy or backing up those that did (e.g. the CDC) is a large contributing factor to why we are here. How’d you get so blinded by bias?

You’re right about infections, the scientific view now is COVID infections are probably on the order of magnitude 10 times higher than test results show. But deaths are probably much closer than you or a random second hand source you know give credit. You can’t dismiss deaths just because doing so fits your narrative, either. A relatively accurate way to determine COVID effect is to assume that, compared to previous years, any change in death rate is likely due to COVID. Just take the excess deaths over 2019, 2018, 2017, etc., compare it to 2020, and you have a pretty close estimate to its impact. Since March, ~200,000 more people than usual have died in the US. So that’s our best estimate at actual impact. So if we say 10 times the confirmed cases, or 60 million cases, that means 0.3% mortality for the population at large. Doesn’t sound that bad, only like 5-10 times worse than the flu based on similar analysis. Still doesn’t take into account the age based mortality, which really are where the hard questions lie. If 70+ year olds have an estimated 5-15% mortality rate that goes up the older you are, how does that change the calculus? People don’t like going down this path, because it’s easier to ignore that and focus on the fact that working age folks would probably be fine. But it should be the center of the moral question: Is the economy worth a large amount of deaths of older Americans? That’s what the reopen/herd immunity plan does. Is there a way to effectively isolate them from the rest of society (would require social assistance never before seen in the US)? How do we pay for it? Who accepts the risk? Where do you draw the line? The science is real and can accurately enough show death rates and infections to action on. Let’s stop arguing about CDC data for no reason and start arguing about the more important policy questions that must be answered.

If that’s not a good metric, what is?

Texas and Florida both had 2 months of previous research and SA to make decisions to protect themselves, thanks to the outbreaks in NY and NJ. What did they do? Declared mission accomplished and did nothing. Currently they have literally 10 times the daily cases of NY/NJ who just happened to be the first place where the outbreak started. They didn’t have the luxury of knowing what was effective against the virus, but it’s easy with hindsight to say exactly what they messed up. Unfortunately, doesn’t make you smarter. And it’s not over yet. I’ll bet you Texas + Florida will have more deaths than any other state combo when this is over. They already have significantly more cases. Willful ignorance is the only way, really, to describe the states that spiked in June-August. Edit: And just to be clear, I tie all the idiots in California in just the same.

Also, you realize your whole argument boils down to “Trump didn’t have enough power over states/localities to be effective, so it’s not his fault?“ You wanna know what type of government doesn’t have the problem of dissident government leadership? Communism.

I agree man, the Texas and Florida governors really did mess up.

I assume you also blame Trump for the slashing of the UPT syllabus and the perceived mishaps of the last year, as well. Why hasn’t Trump increased the pilot bonus? Does he want our Air Force to fail? Or maybe these decisions fall much more squarely on the SECAF/CSAF/Congress.

Just cause you want it to be a hoax doesn't make it a hoax. The "unite the right" movement, protesting the removal of Gen Lee's statues, was the entire impetus to the Charlottesville gatherings and conflicts. They organized a march down Charlottesville's streets holding torches and chanting "blood and soil," the English translation of a Nazi slogan. In the end, one of the neo-nazi white supremacists rammed his car into a group of counterprotestors, killing one and injuring 19. Your choice - just like it's the president's choice - to support them by saying that there are fine people on both sides, do what you want. But this was not just a small group of "state's rights" or "small government" protestors. And don't pretend like there were 10 different groups on either side - this was Unite the Right and counterprotestors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally Also, I'd like to point out the other hypocrisy in this example. Even on this thread, you guys say to not take Trump comments literally, and that you have to actually look for what his point is. But now you are saying to only take his comments literally, and ignore the underlying meaning. You can't have it both ways.

The majority of Trump supporters support him just because his name reads “Trump (R),” so I don’t see how that’s any different. If we point out the numerous criminal indictments, the “individual number 1” from Comeys arrest, the senate report from the last 2 weeks that says that Russia definitively colluded with a certain campaign to interfere with the 2016 election (read it), the tapes asking Ukraine to personally help the president with reelection, the president saying that the white supremacists at Charlottesville were “very fine people,” the inane policy in the Middle East (where I’m sure you all have been)... Youre right, it’s just that he says “the blacks love me,” I can “grab em by the pu$$y,” and his other idiosyncrasies that, at best, make him the same as Joe Biden. Remember, he’s very smart (but would sue his “Ivy League” colleges to stop his transcripts from getting out) and very successful in business (but has sued at every step to stop the “very damaging” tax returns from being released).