At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[Moliere]

I think it's 'left-leaning' because progressives take way more stock in science. Conservatives are very skeptical of science.

[Moliere]

To provide a sense of scale on the numbers?

It would probably be more helpful if we compared it to the number of abortions each year.

[Moliere]

My wife says: "most statistics get a lot less interesting when you hear more statistics."

I suspect that someday when we look back at the lockdowns, shutdowns, etc. we will see that Society asked poor people to make a lot of sacrifices for the benefit of rich people. The way that shutting down has come to align (more or less) with left-leaning politics surprises me, since it doesn't seem very progressive

What I find most interesting is when the left-leaning business owners are the ones furloughing or laying off workers, resulting in wealth preservation for the owners. That seems to run contrary to their whole schtick as advocates for the poor and underpaid.

[Uncle Ted]

I think his point is that it's disingenuous to compare deaths in the Vietnam war to deaths from Covid. We could every year be making comparisons to deaths from cigarettes, flu, car accidents, CV disease, cancer to the Vietnam war, but we never see that. Hell, half the time more people die from flu than the Vietnam war. It's just sensationalism to say more have died from Covid than those boys who went to Vietnam and fought in a war they didn't start, didn't even understand, and didn't choose to fight in, and died before they really began to live far from home. It's a disingenuous comparison. Thousands of people die every day, and we don't usually pay any attention at all, unless it's a war or Covid. it's our media that trolls, constantly.

We all need to look at the positive news... deaths from other things, like dying in the Vietnam war, are down!

An Egregious Statistical Horror Story

With the latest reports of plummeting death rates from all causes, this crisis is over. The pandemic of doom erupted as a panic of pols and is now a comedy of Mash-minded med admins and stooges, covering their ifs, ands, and butts with ever more morbid and distorted statistics.

The crisis now will hit the politicians and political Doctor Faucis who gullibly accepted and trumpeted what statistician William Briggs calls “the most colossal and costly blown forecast of all time.”

An egregious statistical horror story of millions of projected deaths, suffused with incense and lugubrious accents from Imperial College of London to Harvard School of Public Health, prompted the pols to impose a vandalistic lockdown on the economy. It would have been an outrage even if the assumptions were not wildly astronomically wrong.


Flattening the curve was always a fool’s errand that widened the damage.


President Trump had better take notice. He will soon own this gigantic botch of policy and leadership. No one will notice that his opponents urged even more panicky blunders.


The latest figures on overall death rates from all causes show no increase at all. Deaths are lower than in 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2015, slightly higher than in 2016. Any upward bias is imparted by population growth.


Now writing a book on the crisis with bestselling author Jay Richards, Briggs concludes:

“Since pneumonia deaths are up, yet all deaths are down, it must mean people are being recorded as dying from other things at smaller rates than usual.”

Deaths from other causes are simply being ascribed to the coronavirus.
[...]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/egregious-statistical-horror-story

[CardiacCoug]

We all need to look at the positive news... deaths from other things, like dying in the Vietnam war, are down!


https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/eg...l-horror-story

Now that’s a crazy article, a wacky hodgepodge of conspiracy theories like: “ventilators turned out not to help” and “impaired hemoglobin in the blood rather than lung damage.”

[myboynoah]

My wife says: "most statistics get a lot less interesting when you hear more statistics."

I suspect that someday when we look back at the lockdowns, shutdowns, etc. we will see that Society asked poor people to make a lot of sacrifices for the benefit of rich people. The way that shutting down has come to align (more or less) with left-leaning politics surprises me, since it doesn't seem very progressive

Fully agree. We see that already. We are asking lower-wage workers to staff our hospitals, take care of and protect our elderly, keep our supermarkets stocked and open, maintain our supply chains via production and transportation. All so our social distancing is not as distressing as it might otherwise be. The poor and minorities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in terms of sickenss and mortality. Low wage hospitality jobs were the first to be lost.

Had we prepared better, had we acted sooner, some of this pain could have been avoided, or at least lessened. I would think the more progressive among us would have been better at that. My view has been that progressives have always been more inclined to sound the alarm bells, and conservaties have been more inclined to say all of that is a big overreaction.

Given the necessary steps we took, the government needed to and still needs to step in to fill some these gaps to lessen the pain. I would think the more progressive elements would happily jump on board that train.

[myboynoah]

Cool

Embedded Tweet

[Uncle Ted]

Fully agree. We see that already. We are asking lower-wage workers to staff our hospitals, take care of and protect our elderly, keep our supermarkets stocked and open, maintain our supply chains via production and transportation. All so our social distancing is not as distressing as it might otherwise be. The poor and minorities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in terms of sickenss and mortality. Low wage hospitality jobs were the first to be lost.

Had we prepared better, had we acted sooner, some of this pain could have been avoided, or at least lessened. I would think the more progressive among us would have been better at that. My view has been that progressives have always been more inclined to sound the alarm bells, and conservaties have been more inclined to say all of that is a big overreaction.

Given the necessary steps we took, the government needed to and still needs to step in to fill some these gaps to lessen the pain. I would think the more progressive elements would happily jump on board that train.

Yeah, you should use New York as a case study.

How's the treatment going, BTW?

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[SeattleUte]

Oh yeah I agree. A large percentage of people who die from heart disease have had 20-30 years added to their life by modern technology/treatments that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’m not saying anybody ignores heart disease. I like the way SU said it. I certainly acknowledge that young people are dying of Covid but it’s not the same thing as the government sending 20-year old kids to die in a Vietnamese jungle.

When implementing public policy it’s appropriate to consider facts like life expectancy, co-morbidities, quality of life, etc. Of course we do it all the time. Roe v. Wade is a prime example. The justices weigh the liberty (and economic) interest of the mothers against the interest in life of the fetuses at various stages of pregnancy. Cars are indeed the classic example. Weighing the liberty interest and economic well-being of society from cars or even higher speed limits against a sliding scale of deaths.

For me, possibly the most infuriating occurrence in this was that Cuomo press conference where he cut off that young female reporter and mansplained in his bullying, brutal way, no, losing hour job is not as bad as death; death is the worst, it’s the end, you can’t come back from death. You can get a job. You have a job. Get a job in what I have deemed an essential industry. No shit, you uncouth loudmouth, on an individual level. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

[SeattleUte]

Yes, some people are so ignorant they believe that being in the slipstream of the woke left by definition means science is on your side. Actually, I bet there are more scientists currently skeptical of the lockdowns than supporting them unconditionally.

[SeattleUte]

My wife says: "most statistics get a lot less interesting when you hear more statistics."

I suspect that someday when we look back at the lockdowns, shutdowns, etc. we will see that Society asked poor people to make a lot of sacrifices for the benefit of rich people. The way that shutting down has come to align (more or less) with left-leaning politics surprises me, since it doesn't seem very progressive

The woke left abandoned the poor and labor a long time ago. In the UK only 31 percent of labor is in the labor party. Look what happened in their prime minister election between the conservative candidate Johnson and the labor candidate Corbin, landslide for Johnson.

What’s happening now in reaction to Covid is nothing new. Polls show that the woke left is mostly white privileged people who are now working from home and earning a living from their laptops. They care more about their radical abstractions than actual human suffering.

[SeattleUte]

I personally know a person who died of corona who most certainly wouldn't have died otherwise and it's completely tragic. I can't be callous about this and write it off to 'oh this person would have died anyway.'

That’s very sad. But it’s no way to address public policy. It’s also not scientific. I’m sorry for your friend or acquaintance, but you reject science, which is what stupid people do.

[SeattleUte]

Fully agree. We see that already. We are asking lower-wage workers to staff our hospitals, take care of and protect our elderly, keep our supermarkets stocked and open, maintain our supply chains via production and transportation. All so our social distancing is not as distressing as it might otherwise be. The poor and minorities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in terms of sickenss and mortality. Low wage hospitality jobs were the first to be lost.

Had we prepared better, had we acted sooner, some of this pain could have been avoided, or at least lessened. I would think the more progressive among us would have been better at that. My view has been that progressives have always been more inclined to sound the alarm bells, and conservaties have been more inclined to say all of that is a big overreaction.

Given the necessary steps we took, the government needed to and still needs to step in to fill some these gaps to lessen the pain. I would think the more progressive elements would happily jump on board that train.

Blah blah blah. You had your born again “progressive” moment with Covid. Since when have you been “progressive” Romney guy? So you must be really critical of Cuomo and de Blasio, since if we kicked New York out of the country we’d be Germany in Covid statistics, and they were telling New Yorkers to go to bars and have a good time in the first weekend in March.

[Omaha 680]

Fully agree. We see that already. We are asking lower-wage workers to staff our hospitals, take care of and protect our elderly, keep our supermarkets stocked and open, maintain our supply chains via production and transportation. All so our social distancing is not as distressing as it might otherwise be. The poor and minorities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in terms of sickenss and mortality. Low wage hospitality jobs were the first to be lost.

Had we prepared better, had we acted sooner, some of this pain could have been avoided, or at least lessened. I would think the more progressive among us would have been better at that. My view has been that progressives have always been more inclined to sound the alarm bells, and conservaties have been more inclined to say all of that is a big overreaction.

Given the necessary steps we took, the government needed to and still needs to step in to fill some these gaps to lessen the pain. I would think the more progressive elements would happily jump on board that train.

Since we have performed better than the UK, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands when looking at covid19 deaths per million population, does that mean those countries are also were not progressive enough in the response to the pandemic? Seems like everyone in the west kind of sucks at this.

[tooblue]

That’s very sad. But it’s no way to address public policy. It’s also not scientific. I’m sorry for your friend or acquaintance, but you reject science, which is what stupid people do.

People who lack empathy can be dangerous. In society we call these people sociopaths.