Cont: The all-new "US Politics and coronavirus" thread pt. 2

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Meadmaker said:
I would like to think that this rise in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have doomed Donald Trump. Until that happened, it could be a dispute between those who say we shouldn't open up, and those that say we should.

I think even his supporters are being forced to acknowledge that no matter what they think the best course of action would have been, Trump has flopped around on it, said things that are obviously untrue, and been grossly incompetent. The best case for him is not that people will think he did a great job on the pandemic, but that people will think it's not his fault and there are more important issues. (i.e. I don't care if everyone dies, as long as they don't raise my taxes.)

As long as that holds, I don't think he can be reelected. However, the election is still a long way off in a very volatile world. A lot can happen. If there is an effective vaccine by then, will people either give him credit or decide that his bungling doesn't matter anymore?

I just find myself thinking, "Please, Joe. Don't say anything stupid!"
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It's going to be a while before Trumpers figure this out.

NME this weekend: Wisconsin’s ‘Herd Immunity’ festival** is scientific proof that there’s no cure for idiot
It’s almost impressive that with everything 2020 has thrown at us so far, it still seems to have limitless reserves of curveballs – curveballs which comprise a squashed together amalgam of idiocy and human excrement – to lob at us from various directions, all of them hitting us squarely in the face. This is, I think, a fitting description of the so-called ‘Herd Immunity’ festival, held in Ringle, Wisconsin this weekend....

One particular country that seems to have leant into the kamikaze philosophy, is outgoing world superpower the United States. Not only has their richest state (California) just been forced back into lockdown, but their President – an overfilled colostomy bag wearing a red tie – has only just started to wear a face mask, though according to the man himself (and I use the term ‘man’ loosely), he’s always worn a face mask… in fact, he invented them.
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**They had to change the name after it caused one of the bands to drop out.
 
Meadmaker said:
I read that headline yesterday and it seemed so unbelievable to me, even when one considers Trump. What possible justification could there be for this?
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Keeping the official numbers down. It's been the same story since the beginning, exemplified with the Princess. Trump's pushed the party and its propaganda in the direction of "if you don't test, the numbers will stay low; if the numbers stay low, the numbers won't hurt my popularity."
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
NME this weekend: Wisconsin’s ‘Herd Immunity’ festival is scientific proof that there’s no cure for idiot...
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So ridiculous, these people don't even know what the words mean. Below is a quote from Southeast Health Group dot org, published almost two years ago:
Herd Immunity: It’s not just for cattle!

Ranchers have known for decades that when you vaccinate one animal, you make the whole herd healthier. When 95% of the herd has been vaccinated, you reach a state of “herd immunity” where illness is unlikely to occur at all, even in animals with weaker immune systems. Practicing immunization saves the lives of the animals, reduces the veterinarian bills, and makes for a more profitable bottom line. Southeast Health link
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From Trump's interview with Fox News today:

“I called Michigan. I want to have a big rally in Michigan. Do you know we’re not allowed to have a rally in Michigan?” Trump said in the interview.


Thank you, Gretchen Whitmer. I don't know if she is the best choice as a vice presidential candidate. I'll let the political pros figure out who will best help Joe Biden get elected, but if she ended up as Vice President, I think I would be very happy.

And I hardly doubt that I have to tell anyone here this, but there's nothing special about Trump rallies here in Michigan. It's that there are restrictions on large gatherings. The truth is that he could be allowed to hold a rally in Michigan. I just read a story about a large upcoming concert in Michigan. All he would have to do is seat people far apart, and require masks from everyone in attendance. I guess that doesn't suit his purposes.

And....that assumes that things don't get worse. The governor has said that she will reimpose certain restrictions that have been lifted if the numbers continue to get worse. She already closed down indoor service at bars when it became obvious that a couple of bars were the locus of hundreds of new cases.
 
Belz... said:
If I didn't know better I'd think Trump and the GOP are deliberately trying to kill as many Americans as they can.
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The deeper the fall, the more impressive the comeback.

If your ability to comeback isn't that great, you have to make the fall deeper so it still looks impressive.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
The deeper the fall, the more impressive the comeback.

If your ability to comeback isn't that great, you have to make the fall deeper so it still looks impressive.
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Which is exactly what Mary Trump said in her book about Donald. He lied about Mary having a really bad drug habit to Melania in order to make her 'comeback' seem more impressive. Truth was, Mary never took drugs at all but he lied about if right in front of her.
 
Aridas said:
In case anyone needed further confirmation...

NYTimes investigation finds Trump administration was desperate to shift blame for a crisis it caused

Also, Birx was apparently feeding Trump a more pleasant spin throughout?
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From the link:
deliberate exercise in self-delusion
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Pretty much confirms what we know.

This reminds me of Bush sending unqualified people to Iraq to establish the new government:
The Times’ report includes several facts not previously disclosed. First, nearly the entirety of the administration’s policy was formulated by aides with no public health or scientific background whatsoever.
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But it gets a gazillion times worse:
Second, Trump’s perverse “campaign” against testing was intentional and in fact directly related to shifting wholesale responsibility to individual states so that he, Trump, would not be blamed for the catastrophe. Third, the silencing of Fauci through limiting his media appearances was deliberate as they were afraid he would “go off message” and start telling Americans the truth about skyrocketing infection rates; and fourth, California’s governor was told by administration officials that if he wanted bulk deliveries of nasal swabs to test for Covid-19 infections, he would have to call Trump personally and thank him before they would be delivered.

The article also confirms that it was Jared Kushner, as well as administration officials acting on his cues, who was largely influential at the federal level in depriving states of the number of tests necessary to adequately combat the virus.
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This is horrible.
 
Minoosh said:
They've changed the threshold for how light blue, blue etc. are picked. First map, light blue is 1-620. Second map, light blue is 1-949. The red starts at 2961 in the first map, 3769 in the second. IOW the red "hot zone" is not comparable to the red in the first map. One of these maps on its own would show you the rankings among counties, but comparing the maps is highly misleading.

Counties that were red in the first map can fall out of red in the second map, even if they have increased transmission. If the parameters were kept the same there would be more red counties in the second map.
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I think it's automatic software making decisions using some black box algorithm that's sensitive to minor details. And I think a lot of states are using that same software (or software that uses the same algorithm) for their "dashboards" and county heat maps.

Massachusetts includes a county by county map of cumulative case rate per capita (total cases all time, not current or recent cases) in every daily dashboard. My county has consistently had the third highest rate for months, with clear separation from the better and worse counties. The second highest county and the highest county also all have clear separation from one another. The fourth through seventh highest counties have remained clustered together tightly.

The thresholds on each new map are different, in order to keep the overall number bins (and range of colors on the map) the same. At times, on the daily map, the thresholds for the different colors on the map have been set to group my county (#3) with the 2nd highest county, with the highest county as its own color. Sometimes the highest and 2nd highest have been binned together, with my county all alone with its own color. Sometimes #1 through #3 have all been grouped together. Currently, #1 and #2 are each in their own bin, and #3 has been grouped with numbers 4-7. Since the numbers are now changing very slowly, this current grouping has stayed the same for a few weeks now.

The point is, there's no agenda to conceal the number of cases in MA or to make some particular county look better or worse than another. That's why I think it's software trying to "optimize" the information in some obscure way.
 
Thanks Myriad. Statistics can be hard to understand, and in my experience journalists are pretty bad at it, let alone "random guy on twitter."
 
It's possible the banding thresholds are automatically generated. Whatever.

However the color scheme is a flat out joke, it's so hugely misleading. That's about all that the unwashed masses take in. If that color scheme wasn't intentional, I'll eat my pocket protector.
 
Full disclosure - I'm not going to do this; I have more important things to do.

If I were to show you that the color scheme and parameters were the default settings for that piece of graphics software, would it change your mind?
 
carlitos said:
Full disclosure - I'm not going to do this; I have more important things to do.

If I were to show you that the color scheme and parameters were the default settings for that piece of graphics software, would it change your mind?
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It's hard to believe, but yes. What software is it?
 
The default almost certainly would have been some variation on jet.

The first set of bands is definitely arbitrary, to highlight county variations. They don't make any sense otherwise. I assume the color scheme would also have been chosen for the purpose. Feel free to read into whatever that means. But the second one's bands are just a rough 50% increase across the board. If they were really trying to hide the new data, I imagine they couldn't have helped themselves but twiddle with it even more. This is the state that once put dates out of order to make the curve seem smoother.
 
Aridas said:
In case anyone needed further confirmation...

NYTimes investigation finds Trump administration was desperate to shift blame for a crisis it caused

Also, Birx was apparently feeding Trump a more pleasant spin throughout?
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Over a critical period beginning in mid-April, President Trump and his team convinced themselves that the outbreak was fading, that they had given state governments all the resources they needed to contain its remaining “embers” and that it was time to ease up on the lockdown.
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I started reading Bolton's book about Trump last week, and it confirmed something I've said before, which the above quote re-confirms.

The biggest problem with the modern Republican party is that the people in charge have started to believe their own propaganda.

I expect stupid propaganda to be used to sway low-information, biased and/or stupid voters. It's depressing that this is the way the world works, but there's not much I can do about that. But when the people in charge start believing this nonsense as well, we are well and truly ******.
 
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