TrickstaPriest

I'm sorry I didn't directly respond before, I've just been in too dark a place to give it any justice. At the least, I appreciate you addressing the spirit of the content I was trying to portray. The ghosting and comments is awful. I agree the sentiment is terrible. Stuff that's going on here where I live, people mass buying plates, guns, ammo, and the US's track record of a multitude of white supremacy organizations, makes me extremely nervous from something completely different. I don't disagree that there's a real danger of going too far from the left, but I do genuinely fear those right-wing organizations acting out in particular - much in the way that German group was caught, or the way the Proud Boys were caught. They have training, intent, equipment, and now both a President and mass sentiment supporting them. 'I' have angry people on twitter, and I guess these protests... I guess I have a hard time equalizing the general danger. I don't disagree, as far as human behavior goes, it sucks though. And no matter what happens, its likely to get worse. But the general civil unrest from coronavirus is a whole other kettle of fish on top of that... As are the overall societal direction comments you've described. It sucks. It's been discussed among people I know that this new form of politics, firehosing as much negative commentary about everything to see what sticks, is probably so volatile it's going to completely ruin politics in this country. More to the point on this, it's going to increase water usage pointlessly. More water wasted, one of our most precious resources, for no purpose. I'd wonder if water privatization is going to be up after schools... but who knows 😕

It's pretty interesting that the fatality rate in the US is about ~3%, that was my 'back of hand' estimates I was making a few days ago. Although that was for a completely overburdened medical system, with the majority being unable to be entered. I guess that means the rate is potentially worse than I thought. Yuck.

I'll clamor down as well. I was certainly close to saying unfriendly things. It's not that I think you are a problem, ScottishFox. I'm arguing that the 'thought leadership' saying 'liberals need to be more tolerant' are astroturfing like crazy what I'm actually dealing with when I'm trying to be tolerant.

Literally for the past three years I've been listening to 'the state' talk about 'liberals, welfare people, etc' the same way the Bush era talked about Muslims (edit: to be clear, I found this quite problematic to begin with, and that rhetoric was changed to be pointed at all liberals, for years now). There's kind of a reason why so many 'liberals' are a bit upset right? I won't discount politicians hijacking this upset, but I've seen more anti Jewish tripe online in the last three years than in my entire waking life. I'm literally having conservative people I know and care about 'talk big' on things a single step away from 'exterminating people they find inconvenient' as a desirable outcome, as discussed on this board posts ago, and have people on these boards deflect on that issue as though it was not an actual enormous problem. I'm literally talking about why I don't think some people here understand what they are talking about when talking about 'left being more tolerant'. I have been tolerant for years, and that is what I am hearing in response. As a gift for my tolerance. Open talk about my brother's "group" being killed off (by policy or not). edit: The literal return on my patience and tolerance. That.

Dude, I don't think you grasp the enormity of what I'm talking about here. I have good friends talking casually about groups of people being killed (by policy or enforcement) as a desirable outcome, my brother included in that group. If they were coworkers that I saw daily, I'd be hearing this more than once a week.

This isn't an exaggeration or mis-portrayal. This is literally what the political conversation is that I'm being expected to tolerate when they or I bring up politics. The literal conversation about welfare with some of them is 'cut it and lets see how many corpses we get'. Not a contortion, exaggeration, or mischaracterization of sarcasm, but nearly a quote verbatim of their frustration and anger at the general population and the program in general. This is an uncommon but not rare sentiment I encounter substantially when I talk to people in this state long enough, and they feel safe and comfortable expressing how they feel around me. No names are being named, as I do not think 'cancelling', 'harassing', or even 'yelling' at them is going to change anything. By now, I'm "used to it". As in this sentiment I hear from people online and in this state is so common that it's background noise. At best some are willing to talk about issues with the program, but at their average they are so angry that they cannot express it without practically abusive tones, intent to humiliate and torment, when they have to crush any sentiment other than theirs... and at their worst they wish everyone on it would just die already. This is the background radiation of my political conversation, ScottishFox (edit: referring to you, in that I'm telling you what my 'politically tolerant' life is like. not that you are involved). I put up with the political opinion of personal torment of my ideology, mass death as wish fulfillment, and unintentional-threat-of-genocide-over-wokeness, to maintain some of the few friendships I have around here. edit: The point. This above is the scenario I deal with for not being "thought-policing". I am the 'tolerant left', and this is what I regularly tolerate when politics comes up.

I guess the reason I'm calling this out specifically is to provide a very direct, concrete example of what this false equivalence looks and feels like. To have a political situation where one side, literally some of your closest friends in the state, argues that 'wokeness is too much' and then talks about letting your brother die.

I hope you understand, the only times I've had to engage in 'thought policing' with my conservative friends is when they literally advocate for welfare to be cut so people on welfare can 'just die already'. If you think political correctness is rough to deal with, try having friends talking about indirectly killing off your brother.

It's specifically stuff like this that has me very doubtful when people clamor about 'overreporting' for 'political reasons'. That's almost never the case as a historical record. And you can suggest politics in CA would suggest that they'd want that... but the truth is, incompetence can produce a lot of problems, and political CYA always is based on hiding damage. In this case, the overall death rates were suggesting a much worse portrayal than what even the media claims... we'll see if those death rates hold out.

I more meant that I didn't break up LT HE as part of my breakdown because I didn't have solid numbers on that. It is good to know the current data on hospitalization rate (10%), which is still substantial given the infection rate could be huge. If nothing else, hospitalizing 10% of the population who get sick, when upwards of 50% of people can get easily sick from this, is... well, a lot of full hospitals. The Georgia camp CDC documentation is really important to get in front of people who think that kids can't get sick from it, and more importantly, that there won't be a big deal from it. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm

Thanks. It's a media briefing, but one with data and over a hundred citations. I really appreciate sharing hard information like this - and it also brings context to that line of dialogue I keep on seeing.

I don't know enough about how common the LT HE's are - I'm waiting on more research and so on to know more about it (articles don't tell me much). I will say the 'survivability' calculations are biased over the average trend, which is improving explicitly because our medical understanding is. But the same resources used for those improved medical approaches will collapse if the virus explodes out, so... at the least, I'm reserved as to the continued effectiveness of that should strong approaches be abandoned. Like, you know, teachers teaching students, physically, in classrooms.

A 60% threshold would still kill as many people as the Spanish Flu just on the straight calculations we have, and that's ignoring the fact that all hospitals would essentially fail... likely doubling, or potentially tripling, the fatality rate. Of the Spanish Flu. It would also kill around as many people as everything else does put together. And what happens when mutation means that this 'need' would be annually, or near every three years?

Yeah, and I know you have gotten responses since, but that's 100 million worldwide. While that's a huge amount, more than the raw calculation of deaths (roughly 11 million per 10% of the world infected), production and means might collapse anyway because four to five times as many people would be sick to the point of near incapacitation for literally over a month. It's also the 'high estimate' of starvation versus the low estimate of coronavirus - if 40% of the US gets infected, that calculates to a couple million straight deaths, but around eight million others who need hospitalization and won't get it. If half those die, that triples the death rate, and it soars much more than starvation (actually, more than all deaths combined including starvation from production/work loss). It's unfortunately 'equivalent' - starvation versus virus prevention, and many of those deaths will be in places that didn't adequately prepare to begin with. To actually succeed going forwards, food support programs will be needed, strong organization of resources for testing and supplies is necessary, and finding ways to safely begin work. But that means remote work, not in-person, with only a few essentials. That means a lot of bored kids playing video games and doing online classes. Until we reach this point, the US will continue to be ravaged by coronavirus until we can count millions, if not ten million, deceased, two to three times as bad as the Spanish Flu (if a little slower in progression).

More to the point, it looks like he's literally denying mail in voting in states where it's apparent he'll do worse because of mail in voting. And now he's trying to use the oval office to file suit to block mail in voting in Nevada. Which may be the start of doing that elsewhere (except where it'll help him, of course). So...

Maybe I'm just reacting to more things he's "threatening" to do too seriously. But it's about this stuff: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/05/lawmakers-demand-explanation-cut-national-guard-funding-392001

Had a brief thought - realized the vaccine information on herd immunity is a good way to analyze herd immunity by coronavirus and its cost. https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/news/20181130/what-herd-immunity-and-how-does-it-protect-us From 2018. Just a reminder why Herd Immunity is not going to work. 80-95% of the population would have to be infected to largely stop a highly infectious disease. 150k deaths / 5 million cases... keeping in mind only 2.5 million have been discharged, so it's really 150k/2.5 million for certain... but we could be generous and say 150k/10million including 'unknowns'. 1.5% mortality rate? Being generous and assuming the recent improvements in medicine and care would equalize against absolutely crushed resources from quantity. 1.5% * 80% = 1.2% deaths of the total population. As per talked about with Spanish Flu, that killed 0.75% of the US population of the time. So about +60% worse. 328 million * 1.2 = 3.9 million. Basically coronavirus would be a greater cause of death than everything else and every other cause put together. --- The real depressing question is what comes after this. Coronavirus is likely to be an annual occurrence, and I question how much its mortality will drop over time because of its sheer spreading ability. I hope the medication people have been testing works well, because even if the mortality rate dropped to only a third, it would be there behind heart attacks and stroke, killing almost about as many people yearly as our other leading killers.

It's insanely dangerous. I want to know if this is a new problem or one that's been endemic in other areas.

So, are Texas and Florida exempt from paying the National Guard? Is this the California being punished by being denied assistance for the wildfires only in reverse? I'm asking for people outside the echo chamber here - have you heard of any incidents like this from other Presidents? Denying/providing federal resources purely for the sake of voting? Is this a 'normal' thing, or is it literally as abnormal as I thought? I'm not even going to suggest the denial of the coronavirus was a political machination as a 'blue state' issue until we have corroboration, just those two that come straight from the horse's mouth.

And we exist in an era where literally tens of billions have been spent on market/political research to extensively manipulate human beings. yaaaay

I'm sure voting by mail can become a target for malfeasance. Which the current administration could secure instead of suggesting we delay the election. Instead of directly trying to sabotage that system, close polling locations, or, you know... anything to service themselves at the cost of a stable country with an actual future.

More to the point, even now among my friends I'm talked to about how the 'democratic party' and 'woke culture' is 'bringing us close to civil war'. Literally, that woke culture is so apparently bad in this country that they are willing to destroy the country over it. As if they haven't been paying attention to what Trump has been saying, and how he has been saying it, over the literal last three years of my life. The point is that people (like my friends) are telling themselves they need it to have a future. That a literal purge is necessary. That it's a requirement to defeat this great evil and potential horror 'the left' will unleash. As if they (the Republican Party) haven't literally lied for nearly literal lifetimes about global warming, as if there aren't dozens of literal paramilitary right wing terrorist organizations in the US that have military training camps churning out 'warriors' for decades, as if they didn't entirely lie repeatedly about coronavirus and literally destroyed the US economy and future over it (but no, its the democrats fault for wanting to try and spend money and do things to 'prevent' an 'inevitable' problem. As if the spent money is why the economy is in shambles). This is the messaging that people are receiving on a daily basis. That 'democrats' are the problem. That 'democrats' (not homeless, unemployed) are the protesters, and that's why they must be dealt with. And when we have ten million more homeless, protesting people, what do you think they are going to say? I've literally seen advertisements on right wing channels talk about 'wellfare people' as cockroaches, while literally suggesting that they (cockroaches) need to be exterminated. Let me tell you, 'left wing violence' has barely ever been a thing in this country. The last time it existed in real form was when America created the unions, because workers were attacked for daring to complain about job conditions. As if the Ludlow Massacre was justified. Protesters are protesters, and pretending that things are so explosive solely because of a 'democrat issue' wholly ignores the literal economic situations that have built this into a roaring fire. As a thought experiment - remove the man who died, those protesters could still be out there. Protesting different things, from a different spark, but there are so many sparks that protests of this size could easily still exist. But if you removed coronavirus - or gave us an actual government response - would you still have the protests, huge and desperate, like this? If you didn't have Trump literally charging up his base for years with violent, almost literal "kill the other guy for me" rhetoric, while the rest of the country watched in anger and frustration, would you have that level of opposition to it? If you didn't have the Federal response literally use tactics in the military Field Manuals marked as "DON'T DO THESE THINGS AGAINST PROTESTS IN SYMPATHETIC AREAS UNLESS YOU WANT A CIVIL WAR OR INSURRECTION"? These protests may have already been winding down. Literally I listen to friends talking about how woke culture is tearing America apart when the reason we are in a near civil war is Republican voters are listening to Republican leadership. There is literally no simpler common denominator.

If we are conceptualizing 'free' coronavirus versus 'identified/contained' coronavirus, there then also is a distinction between number of unknown cases moving and number of known. This is mainly a thought experiment on why initial doubling takes a while for it to explode. But, as explosive growth is aptly named, you eventually hit a point of 'active infectors' hitting a lot of people, and then...

(Not on thread topic, but any excuse to post this)