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

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The BBC is reporting that President Trump is going to resume his daily Coronavirus briefings.

Let the industrial scale whining and lying recommence, but now there will be no CDC to counter the Trump Administration's"statistics". :mad:
 
Horatius said:
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The biggest problem with the modern Republican party is that the people in charge have started to believe their own propaganda. ...
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Started?:confused:

They believed in GW's evidence re the need to invade Iraq hook line and sinker.

Colin Powell admitted as much after it came to light he'd been conned before he gave his UN speech. Frontline: Colin Powell: U.N. Speech “Was a Great Intelligence Failure”

And they still praise Reagan's tax cuts for stimulating the economy, ignoring the massive deficit spending that went with it. They repeated the same thing in 2017.
 
newyorkguy said:
The real danger from this is just around the corner. Health officials have been
warning for months, we need to flatten the curve over the summer and get
people out of the hospitals before the Fall flu season rolls in. Instead, as July
winds down the U.S. is daily reaching new highs in cases and hospitalizations
have been rising since mid-June. This is setting the stage for a disaster come
September, one that trump seems oblivious to.
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I'm not sure the flu has a chance given the direction of the corona virus cases.

Let's say you have four million cases in the United States. Using the the 1.15%
sixty one day model you'll have 5.7 million cases or using the 2.30% thirty point
five day model you have 8.0 million cases, this time in September. Not much of
an increase.

When the flu gets going around this time in November, the slow model
has 11.3 million corona virus cases and the fast 32.0 million cases.
And when January 20th rolls around, the slow model predicts 22.6 million
corona virus cases and the fast model predicts 128.0 million cases.

So you can see, the flu cannot compete with Covid-19.


That doesn't exactly inspire too much confidence in donald trump.
Now I'm seeing him setting up the United States for a major health catastrophe.
I know if it happens, trump will probably lose the Fall election and, come next
January 20th, he'll walk away. Like he did with the USFL. Let the next guy figure
out what to do.
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I don't think Trump will loose because the Republican Party has been binging
and purging members ever since he became their candidate in 2016. All you
have left, either support him passionately or just don't give a damn. Everyone
else, or the majority of those who care, left for the Democratic Party in 2016.

I'll admit I did have a freakout about a poll showing support for Biden 54%
and Trump 34% because things don't change that fast. If Biden gets above
55% in the polls then I think he'll win, but if he stay at 50% then I strongly
doubt he will win.

Here's the poll I miss read because I was really tired.


Pandemic Surge Damages Trump Boosting Biden's White House Bid by Gary Langer

Three and a half months ago the two candidates were virtually even in trust
to handle the pandemic, Trump +2 percentage points, 45-43%. Today, with
COVID-19 cases surging around the nation, Biden leads Trump on the issue
by a 20-point margin, 54-34%.
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So, I read this as 4% willing to die slow horrible deaths to vote for Trump.
 
Health officials have been warning since last Spring that we need (needed) to get the coronavirus numbers flattened out before the Fall Flu season begins. From a recent article in Time magazine:
Summer has just begun, but health officials are already warning Americans that the fall and winter months ahead will likely be challenging. Once flu season begins, the U.S. will have to worry about not one, but two contagious viruses. “The real risk is that we’re going to have two circulating respiratory pathogens at the same time,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during a TIME 100 Talks discussion with senior health writer Alice Park. “We know flu by itself can cause substantial morbidity and mortality and hospital utilization,” especially for elderly people and those who have underlying health conditions. With the new coronavirus wreaking devastation in these groups and others, “this could be really a very, very difficult situation.” Time link
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The highlighted part is what health officials are worried about. The stress on hospitals if we have high numbers of active coronavirus cases when the Flu season starts. Already we're seeing healthcare systems stressed in Texas and Georgia. Especially given the fact, patients with coronavirus have to be isolated, the logistics could be difficult to deal with. Below is a quote from Bloomberg News, from late June when health officials were preparing to testify before Congress. .
Covid activity is expected to “continue for some time” and “could place a tremendous burden” on an already stretched health-care system if coupled with the influenza season that comes each fall, top officials including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will tell House lawmakers on Tuesday, according to prepared testimony. Bloomberg News link
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ABC News (and others) are reporting today that trump is apparently serious -- very serious -- about reducing the amount of coronavirus testing that is done.
While President Trump has repeatedly mused that the U.S. should slow down testing for the coronavirus as the surging case count has earned the United States the unenviable distinction as having the most reported cases in the world, he now appears to be acting to do just that. ABC News link
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As usual, trump's timing is atrocious. From the same ABC News story.
According to ABC News analysis of New York Times and COVID Tracking Project data, in recent days the daily number of cases was on the rise in 40 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; the percentage of tests coming back positive was increasing in 33 states; the daily hospitalization rate was up in 39 states and Puerto Rico; and the daily death rate was increasing in 28 states and Puerto Rico.
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Myriad said:
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.
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As someone else already said upthread, the maps are fine for conveying certain data - how the counties are doing relative to each other. They're just not particularly useful for other things, like comparing the situation month to month. If the top 3 counties (and only 3) are always going to be in red, you can't go, "Oh look, it's not getting worse; there are still only 3 red counties."

Visualizing data is intriguing but it's pretty damn easy to mislead people who aren't looking at it critically.

An artifact of reduced testing would be increased mortality rates; wonder if Trump realizes that.
 
Horatius said:
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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Sadly... that elected Republicans too frequently believe the propaganda the party spouts is a pretty much inevitable consequence of the long-term propaganda and propaganda drivers, especially when matched with the way that authoritarians have dramatically grown in numbers and influence in the party and the increase in social media and recording in general, which makes it much harder to "fake" beliefs.

In Georgia, for example, IIRC, Kemp and his opponent in the primaries actively acted to out-racist each other for votes. Kemp's opponent was caught admitting that and then he lost enough ground that Kemp beat him.
 
Minoosh said:
An artifact of reduced testing would be increased mortality rates; wonder if Trump realizes that.
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If the increased mortality was due to "unknown respiratory causes" then President Trump would be fine with that, the Coronavirus numbers would be down.

Heck, he could insist that post-mortems exclude any kind of Coronavirus test (because of false positives, detecting past infection or that the Coronavirus wasn't the main cause of death or some other such nonsense) and keep the numbers very low :mad:
 
This is from a news article on the Voice of America website from a month ago.
The “positivity test rate remains very stable in the country” except for a very few states, according to Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke to reporters along with the president in the Cabinet Room. “Overall, the American people are to be commended” for taking steps to allow states to reopen amid the pandemic. Many states began relaxing some of their social distancing measures last month. Voice of America link
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VOA also reported:
Concerned officials have pointed out that reopening the economy prematurely could lead to a second wave of infections.
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Look at the chart below. June 25th is the date of the VOA article when vice president Pence said the "positivity test rate remains very stable." Looking at the chart, does it seem like Pence knew what he was talking about?

Now it's being widely reported the trump administration wants to reduce testing with the aim of getting the number of cases down. How would the American public benefit from this? What's in it for us? trump says 'we look bad' because of the 'high numbers.'

Who is 'we?' :(
 

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The Don said:
The BBC is reporting that President Trump is going to resume his daily Coronavirus briefings.

Let the industrial scale whining and lying recommence, but now there will be no CDC to counter the Trump Administration's"statistics". :mad:
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What might help Trump in the polls would be if he actually did something about the pandemic.
 
The American media is also reporting trump is going to restart his daily briefings. Sources within the administration say it is largely because trump's polling numbers are down but they were much higher when he was still giving the daily briefings. It would seem in keeping with the way trump's mind works that he would decide, 'If my numbers were higher when I was giving the daily briefing...let's start doing the briefings again.'

Having lived in New York all my life, trump's home base, this is all beginning to seem like a movie I've already seen. Several times. :(
 
Craig4 said:
What might help Trump in the polls would be if he actually did something about the pandemic.
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Yeah, well like the UK government actually doing something is too difficult for the Trump Administration.

If there is a problem with the number of infections and deaths associated with Covid-19 there are fundamentally two ways to deal with this:

  • Take measures to stop people catching and dying of Coronavirus
  • Manage the numbers

The former is difficult, requires hard work and application, isn't certain to be successful and may require measures to be taken which will be unpopular with key supporters and donors. For lazy dilettantes, it's much easier just to manage the figures :mad:
 
newyorkguy said:
The American media is also reporting trump is going to restart his daily briefings. Sources within the administration say it is largely because trump's polling numbers are down but they were much higher when he was still giving the daily briefings. It would seem in keeping with the way trump's mind works that he would decide, 'If my numbers were higher when I was giving the daily briefing...let's start doing the briefings again.'

Having lived in New York all my life, trump's home base, this is all beginning to seem like a movie I've already seen. Several times. :(
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I, for one, am glad to see a return to daily briefings. I'm not sure we need one every day, to be honest, but this is still the story that dominates our lives and regular updates directly from the President are still appropriate. I just wish Trump weren't the one giving them.

In all seriousness, I wonder if he will keep the same format as before, in which he is the center of attention, and where him sparring with the press is the main show. I assume he will. I assume this is all an attempt to get his poll numbers up, and he thinks the best way to do that is get his face back on the air every day. In my opinion, he would be wise to change it up to where he makes major announcements when one is available, but he mostly turns it over experts to provide information. However, "wise" and "Trump" don't go together very well.
 
timhau said:
Then again, if Trump can't drink a glass of water with one hand, he'd look really pathetic tring to throw a ball 60 feet.
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He would just declare a Mulligan, walk ride a cart to the catcher, hand him the ball, and call it the greatest throw in history.
 
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I have no idea about US law, but I know it has a reputation for being a litigious society. With this push for schools to open by De Vos and Trump, et al, claiming that it's safe, what are the chances of a parent/parents suing Trump or their government if their child dies as a result of contracting the virus?
 
TofuFighter said:
I have no idea about US law, but I know it has a reputation for being a litigious society. With this push for schools to open by De Vos and Trump, et al, claiming that it's safe, what are the chances of a parent/parents suing Trump or their government if their child dies as a result of contracting the virus?
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AIUI President Trump is immune from litigation resulting from his actions as President. I'm not sure if the same immunity extends to cabinet members but I would not be surprised.

I can imagine parents being able to sue local boards of education for failing to take adequate precautions but all that will do is bankrupt the local board of education, no pain would be felt further up the tree. :(
 
Armitage72 said:
He would just declare a Mulligan, walk ride a cart to the catcher, hand him the ball, and call it the greatest throw in history.
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President Trump (unsurprisingly :rolleyes:) claims to have been one of the best baseball players in New York in his day. I suspect it's yet another lie.

Here's a Youtube of a bunch of Presidents throwing a baseball or pitching.



My take away:

  • A surprisingly large proportion of left handers
  • It's interesting how it used to be a ceremonial throw but Jimmy Carter actually pitched from the mound and it's become more competitive since
  • Dubya has/had a pretty good arm
 
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