Negatory

If I recall correctly, 5 looks isn’t official yet and there is not a date it will be as of now, although they’re targeting a couple of years from now.

Dissolve the Fed, bring back normal economic cycles.

Correcting errors I made. My data comparison on COVID vs the Flu was bad. I presented COVID case rates / 100k over a 4 week period (the UK study) compared to case rates / 100k over a 52 week period (CDC flu season data). That means, if you actually want to make an apples to apples comparison of the two, you have to multiply the infection/hospitalization/death rate of the 4 week study by 52/4 or 14. Turns out when you do that, for kids <18, yeah, COVID = the flu. But for populations older than 18, COVID actually is an order of magnitude worse. Here's a good source for cumulative hospitalization rate for COVID. Check out any 1 year timeline (I pulled from 7 Mar 20 to March 6 21): https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/covid19_3.html 0-4: ~45/100k 5-17: ~28/100k 18-49: ~275/100k 50-64: ~690/100k 65+: ~1500/100k Again, the CDC data on 17-18 flu: Still not as different as some sources have led you to believe. For hospitalizations, flu is actually worse for ages 0-4 and 5-17. But COVID is significantly worse in the 18-64 year group, ~3-5 times worse. Strangely, COVID is only about 50% worse for the 65+ age group. Also, I couldn't find a really clean source to present death rates. But rough looks show that those do seem to be significantly higher for COVID than the flu (on the order of 10 times higher for 18-65+). Don't want to present that without having a good source, so I'll just defer that discussion. With that being said, combined evidence that transmission is significantly less impacted by vaccination than originally thought, I still wouldn't push for children to get mandatory vaccinations. And I still am leaning towards not making vaccines mandatory for anyone. I stand by my belief that herd immunity is a dumb myth. Still haven't seen anything convincing me that transmission is affected enough to warrant mandates. And recent masking studies point to masks only being between 10-20% effective. We should stop wearing those now. Sorry for bad data.

Death rates are less susceptible to selection bias. If you die, there is a high chance that you will be counted in the data. If you get COVID but don't go to the hospital, it relies on you getting tested on your own (for the most part).

Have to point out a flaw in my analysis. The rates of infection between vaxxed/unvaxxed could easily be biased by "anti-vaxxers" being significantly less likely to get tested for COVID. That means that the actual rate of cases per 100k could be significantly higher than just a population analysis. Would need to see results from a random sampling of the population to get a more accurate view.

Sure, totally agree. I think a big portion is not just labeling yourself or another person simply a liberal or a conservative. It’s too constraining and causes you to prejudge everything they say. I won’t devolve this thread further, but if we cherry-pick outlier opinions out of every year we can find some pretty wild variations for every single issue that exists. Be happy to debate this somewhere else.

I agree with almost everything you said prior to this point in your response. But, as feedback, I think arguments like the ones I quoted above reach too far. They debase the rest of your valid points, my brain turns off, and I have a hard time getting on board with your other reasonable points. The big picture reason is that these points are not based in evidence; they are based in a comparison to the democratic party/liberals or anecdotal feelings. I know the liberals suck. But just because liberals suck doesn't mean that conservative are doing anything correctly. If your point is that both have issues, then I'm fully on board - I just didn't get that through your argument. - Data shows that global warming models have actually been very accurate. Yes, you can cherry pick one off studies that were wrong. But large aggregate studies commissioned by places such as the IPCC have done a very good job of predicting the changes that have actually occurred over the last 50 years. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming Why do conservatives argue global warming is not a threat? Because I have never seen any data that actually supports their viewpoint. It's all feelings reminiscent of the folks who said COVID would clear up in Apr 2020 when the weather got warmer. The facts are that the climate is warming, weather events are increasing, and local weather is going to shift significantly. I have absolutely no faith in the ability for national or global capitalistic society to peacefully and effectively rotate where agrarian lands are in the world, so I think that we are in for a bad time. The refusal to engage on the global warming issue from the republican party makes no sense to me. - Data shows that republicans support nuclear power ~2:1 whereas dems oppose it as a whole. This is a huge issue with the democratic party. But why then do republican controlled governments never produce meaningful legislation, infrastructure, or change? - Feeling about the president are purely anecdotal. Joe Biden may very well be senile and fragile; in fact, many liberals I know wouldn't argue with that. But it just rings really hollow when conservatives chose not to criticize Trump as a narcissistic, absolutely uncharismatic bully who had similar guffaws when he was in power. And they still don't, in many cases. I don't understand it. I think conservatives would do well to gain support if they would denounce the previous administration's flaws more resolutely. But you probably can't, as it would split party support. Catch-22, I guess, but doesn't make it better. As a bipartisan measure, I would support age limits for office. - Data shows that inflation is not a single party issue. The only reason the economy didn't collapse during the pandemic in the Trump admin was quantitative easing. $3T in 2 months. Fucking criminal, but maybe it was worth it so that his voters could say that republican policies = "good economy." A huge contributor to current inflation. Inferring that the dems are the root cause behind inflation is dishonest. Biden has put in about $1.2T in the last 9 months, so I'm not saying the democrats are not contributing to the problem. Plus, it all started with Bush with $2T right at the end of his presidency, so does blame for starting these false economies lie there? It would be helpful if we could recognize that both sides, conservative and liberal, contribute to this problem when they use things like QE. https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm I think what it really comes down to is what I've said all along: It's hard to have meaningful discourse in a two party system where you have to pledge allegiance to one side. I don't think anyone can reasonably support all the views of one of the parties without compromising some personal values or beliefs. That leads to people unfairly judging other folks based on just a few of their beliefs. This, in turn, only reinforces tribalism which leads to us resorting to emotional arguments.

I dunno. I looked at data and it didn’t align with my previous beliefs. When I looked into it more, it seemed like some of those beliefs may be incorrect. So now I’m adjusting my beliefs to fit reality. I still believe some past beliefs were justified. I think there was evidence that the vaccine was effective from a transmission standpoint against non-Delta COVID. And initial evidence of mortality/hospitalization pointed to COVID being worse than it has been recently (1-2% mortality estimates). I am aware that some of those sources could have been biased. But even looking through that lens, I think I still support vaccination in the Dec-Apr timeframe. What really did it for me, though, was when I was talking to one of my buddies. He is very pro vax, in the medical field as a nurse. We have often talked about anti-vax misinformation. I was pointing out some studies that said that herd immunity may be impossible with delta. And his response was not to actually engage with my points. It was to call me a conspiracy theorist idiot. It was absurd. It probably is similar to experiences you guys have had. Maybe even reminded you of experiences you’ve had talking to me on this forum lol. I hope not, because that attitude that you have to comply with the mainstream viewpoint or you are labeled an idiot is absolutely maddening. I don’t know. I will say the Conservative branch of politics usually does themselves a disservice. They don’t usually present reputable studies. They don’t usually present data in a coherent manner. They rely too much on anecdotal evidence. I think they would have a much better time convincing moderates if they would try to craft more intellectual and less emotionally charged arguments. But, again, that’s coming from months of bias, so I’m probably missing something. I am looking at many statistics presented from “liberal” perspectives with much more scrutiny.

I have been thinking about it and the difference is the infectivity or R0. COVID is significantly more infectious, maybe an order of magnitude higher. So from an individual risk perspective, it’s not significantly worse than the flu. But the total number of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths will be an order of magnitude higher. Still don’t think that justifies mandates necessarily.

I have officially come full circle based on data. I not sure if I still support current vaccination efforts. All of this data I found - wasn’t given to me by a biased news source. 1) COVID spread is unimpeded by vaccination within months. Numerous studies show that: You’ll see that for those age 40-80+, vaccinated folks actually were MORE likely to have the virus. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1022238/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_39.pdf Source: UK health surveillance. You can look at last week or the next week as well. This is not cherry picked - the data shows the same numbers multiple weeks in a row. Check out the other weeks, you’ll see similar data. 2nd Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y 2) The rate of hospitalization and death is similar to that of the flu. No shit. And I used to make fun of everyone who said that. COVID hospitalizations: COVID Deaths Source: same as above CDC data on flu hospitalizations/mortality per 100k (couldn’t crop it well on mobile): Source: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm So for an average person age 18-49, your risk of hospitalization for COVID is somewhere in the realm of 15-20 per 100000. For 2017-18 flu, the hospitalization rate for that age group was nearly twice as high at 36 per 100000. For death of those 18-49, its maybe twice as bad for Covid, around 2 per 100k, whereas flu was only 0.8. I am starting to lose any motivation to continue vaccination efforts whatsoever for those that are not at risk. It doesn’t and won’t provide herd immunity. And people without risk factors that are normal ages don’t need it. The counterpoint will be that it’s for the old. Well, first of all, that counterpoint is already invalid because getting the COVID vaccine as a 40 year old male does literally nothing to protect the old as it has been demonstrated to have virtually no effect on transmission after a few months. So a mandate for those under 50 I think still makes 0 sense. But let’s look at it for those 50+. Hospitalization rate for COVID for those 50+ is on the order of 80-100 per 100000. For 17-18 flu for those over 50 it was on the order of 500+ per 100000. Wtf. For deaths, COVID is on the order of 80 per 100000. Flu was slightly lower, maybe 50 per 100000. But they are way closer than initially thought. BL: COVID actually has turned into nothing more than a bad flu. And a bad flu that is actually easier on children than the actual bad flu. It’s not even a hyperbole. And we’re discussing additional mandatory boosters for healthy folks age 0-30. Just wanted to say that the data has changed my mind, significantly. It’s actually almost maddening.

I agree with most of what you’re saying. I think the actual RC is we create blanket policy that shouldn’t be applied across the US. For example, I would support minimum wage in Arkansas to be closer to $8 an hour, but I would want minimum wage in LA to be $20 an hour. Your point that 10% of 10M is more than 10% of $50k doesn’t resonate with me. The $5k the family now making $45k has to pay will orders of magnitude more affect their ability to have a basic quality of like than the $1M dollars the person now making $9M dollars will have to pay. In fact, that rich dude could be taxed at 50%, make $5M dollars, and still make over 100 times what a blue collar salary is. Would you argue the economy isn’t being “fair” enough to the guy who made $5M dollars? Is it impacting them, really? Your point about distortion I don’t exactly understand where you’re going. I agree rent control and utility control are bad for everyone. Both parties are pumping money into equities to hold up the facade. The only real solution is a more tightly controlled economy that favors the worker - a la 1950-1980. My overarching position is that progressive taxes are good for society. As I’ve said, there is scant evidence trickle down economics improves the average American’s life. On a side note, extremely happy about the global tax that will disincentive American companies from basing in islands or Ireland. I do wonder what type of propaganda is being thrown right now to convince the average conservative voter that tax shelters and loopholes are good for them.

Your point is that easily acquired, skilled blue collar labor jobs exist. I disagree with your overarching point that there are an abundance of these opportunities. It’s not as easy as existing to actually just get into one of these pipelines. I used to think this myself until I had personal family try to make it happen. My brother tried for years to get into the electrician mafia in our hometown - turns out it’s more about who you know than anything else. Also, most of these jobs are at will contracting with totally unreliable hours, no insurance, no benefits, and significant stress on your body. Hopefully your friends are running their businesses differently. My additional counterpoint to this is one example that highlights a million others. You almost assuredly partake in restaurants, right? Therefore, you want those jobs to exist. Therefore, you want people working in the restaurant industry. I assume you know there is absolutely no way that the restaurant industry can staff from just high schoolers. Also, that shouldn’t be the expectation. High schoolers should be doing school if you want to compete with China. But the dissonance in your logic is that while you simultaneously believe the restaurant industry exists and therefore should employ people on an ongoing basis, you believe that almost none of these jobs should be permanent. Why? Why should someone who provides you with a service you agree on and enjoy under market conditions not be paid long term a living wage? It’s because these jobs have been relegated to second tier sorts of positions. Even though it’s something you would pay for regularly. Now, we’d all say, “well restaurant workers/retail workers/etc can work on themselves in their time off.” Throw a kid, a needy parent, a health problem, or a multitude of other unfortunate situations into the mix, and it quickly becomes a gigantic uphill battle for people’s economic lives to improve. This is the cycle of suffering. And I’ve seen it in my own siblings. My position is that the level of economic prosperity that existed in 1950s-1990s America is no longer possible for anyone but the rich. No longer can you pay for your child and better yourself. No longer can you purchase a house on a union job. No longer can you support your family on one salary. But the rich are getting richer faster than ever before. This is trickle down economics - take from the poor and give to the rich. Oh, and don’t forget to have the middle class sneer when the poor want their dark blue line to follow their light blue one.

Is this how you cop out when someone points out fallacious arguments or mistruths in almost every one of your points? I mean, this is the mentality you have to have to make O-6 in the Air Force, so let’s not say I’m surprised. And I’ll just remind you that you’re the one who created an itemized list of reasons why I shouldn’t be glad we have Biden over Trump, and then you got offended when I provided any support of that list. Projection is a cruel thing, buddy. Address the points or agree to disagree.

Inflation and "stimulus packages" were bought in the previous year before Biden took over. We went from 4 to 7T dollars of Fed Reserve spending in less than 6 months. But yes, this is the democrats fault. Yes I believe that the unemployment incentives in blue states were a mistake. At the same time, I 100% empathize with the undeniable fact that there is literally no way to live any sort of a life under a 40 hour a week $15 an hour job. But that's where we differ, likely. The republican mantra is that these people should suffer until their life is better. I do not believe that bullshit. You're biased to propaganda over the last 30 years - the specific propaganda basically boils down to "greed is good" - and I honestly know I'm not getting to you. The point is that if you make $10M-$1B a year, in most cases it's not through income - it's through capital gains and profiting off of labor. And if you think that the stock market is a "fair" system, especially with how it has gone up during the pandemic, you're delusional. People who benefit extremely from the designed inefficiencies should be reasonably expected to pay more. This is not a new thought. In fact, Republicans backed bills pre and post WWII to raise marginal income tax rates to 77-92% for the top earners. This is not a 2012 thing, this is actually a history thing. Love of the rich - from people like you - is something that is new in history. The ironic thing is that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are paying total effective tax rates closer to 0% because all of their net worth is tied up in the stock market as unrealized gains. And your facts about income inequality are pretty out of touch. Yeah, you've proven my point. The top 1% pays more tax and makes way more than everyone else. Cool. They should. Let me put it to you another way. Your big-brain example about how everyone should be paying the same taxes as it would be better and more fair (school teachers and high net worth individuals): Do you currently support raising taxes on school teachers by about double? Simple question. The flaw in the system is that you don't have to contribute to the system at all once you have a certain nest egg. You just sit and reap the benefits off the work of everyone else by throwing it in the stock market. You will say there is risk, but let's be real. The Fed will just pump $7-11T in to protect your rich ass or bail you out. As I have stated numerous times on this forum, I support vaccine mandates that stop transmission and sickness. For the alpha variant, this was likely the case, so I supported the mandate. With Delta, science is showing it is significantly less effective, so I may have a different opinion. I have never supported CRT, and there is not a single credible example of someone going to rationally discuss CRT that was placed on an FBI wish list. I am not going to address the blatant fallacies in your secondary example, but if you want to have a more rational discussion about it, I encourage you to rewrite. #1 - is months of saying you're going to leave no notice? #2 - Trump actually committed to what almost everyone calls an unconditional withdrawal in 2020. Get your facts straight #3 - Afghanistan is not our ally #4 - Yes, the Trump administration did negotiate with the Taliban to create an unconditional withdrawal. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-middle-east-taliban-doha-e6f48507848aef2ee849154604aa11be #5 - Yeah, I'm mad about this. But did we leave Americans that were trying to get out behind? Or is this political grandstanding to the extreme? And I'm not looking for a onesie-twosie example. We got the overwhelming majority of Americans out. #6 - You can't talk out of both sides of your mouth and say that you like Trumps anti-NATO isolationist policies and then get mad when we do something they don't like. Also, how did we screw NATO? I know you were just trying to make a list, but I don't think this one should have made it. #7 - Oh give me a break from your bias: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/british-parliament-condemns-trump-but-remains-split-over-banning-him/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/fascist-evil-racist-uk-parliament-unloads-on-trumps-twitter-outburst #8 - You're cherrypicking again. Like anyone in the DoD is actually mad about this. We've already argued about this. You think it was worth the Trillions of US dollars to be in Afghanistan. I think it was worth anything to get out. Afghanistan's fall is primarily on Afghani's is my opinion. And, I know deep down, that's most peoples opinion. Or maybe we can blame the effectiveness of military FAOs, Commanders, and trainers over the last 20 years, I guess. We had to leave. This is greenwashing bullshit. You want to know something? We could have gone entirely almost zero carbon emissions 30 years ago. Oh, how? Nuclear fission energy. We have the capability right now. Literally right now. You thinking that Fusion would change this dynamic is whataboutism to the extreme. Also, an overwhelming amount of Chinese emissions exist to produce American consumed goods. Look it up. Barreling towards the collapse of the world to maintain your American lifestyle just because you don't want other countries to have a slightly better standard will be a good way to reflect on the collapse of modern society in the late 2000's. Appreciate the specific responses that were based on facts and pure opinions.

I fail to see you’re point. Democrats, like Republicans, support imperialism, military spending, and capitalism, with significantly less progressive reform than most of even the tame European countries. Hell, most democrats in Washington still virtue signal their religious affiliations for popular support in 2021.

Want to remind you guys that this is not something that has been like this. In fact, there are multiple studies showing that for the alpha variant this was not and is not the case - it more effectively prevented transmission in the original strains. Lets not pretend like this was expected or some conspiracy. Delta changed things, and now we must update our expectations and game plan. This is actually how science works.

That’s ironic because I’ve heard the exact opposite argument stating that both parties are essentially different flavors of classical conservatives.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y Nature preprint of a large study showing that transmission approaches nearly unvaccinated levels just 3 months post vax.

I guess there is still evidence that vaccines reduce the rate of hospitalization and death, so that would be the argument.

Delta made vaccines obsolete. Very disheartening.

Go with sources on false positive rates.

Maybe underreport is not the precise language I’m trying to use. They are one of the slowest to report, so their graph has looked like we are on a downtrend for weeks. Turns out is just because they are extremely delayed compared to almost every other state.

Cases are coming down naturally. But Florida in particular is such a bad example because they criminally underreport in comparison to most other places. For reference, they have only claimed 2 deaths for yesterday, which is guaranteed to be off by an order of magnitude my friend. And your examples of other countries don’t affect the data that show that, in the USA, we are pretty damn close to peak deaths in the delta surge right now.

It’s a lagging indicator that Florida has been particularly bad at. No surprise that conservative media skews this data, intentionally. I encourage you to check this yourself.

I think you’re misreading this one; I used to believe the same. That study doesn’t compare vaccinated infection rates to infection rates of those who recovered from COVID. It looks only at people who recovered from COVID: it compares people who recovered from COVID in 2020 and were unvaxed to people who recovered from COVID in 2020 and were vaxed. It showed that vaccines help even those who had the disease already. But it doesn’t show what you said. There are actual cited studies on here that show that natural immunity is potentially more effective against the virus than pure vaccination. I think somewhere it was like 5-10x as effective as vaccination, actually, for a time period. It has been posted here. Now there are other factors we can discuss, such as almost a third of Covid infections not resulting in effective antibodies, or natural immunity fading significantly faster than vaccination, but let’s be specific. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/9/21-1042_article https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6947a2.htm