jakee

Ah man, IIRC a lot of season 4 and all of 5 shift to moving forward the overall Machine vs Evil Machine plot instead of the standard case of the week.

Fucking asshole. The guy is the absolute definition of deplorable. While it's nice that he's losing a ton of money in civil cases it's a genuine injustice that he isn't in prison for fraud.

Yep, like you do when you think someone has done anything remotely like that the other way around. You had to exaggerate the polarisation in order to be able to argue there should be less polarisation?

That's a gross mischaracterisation stemming from your biased view of the conversation. I haven't seen any debate over whether the incorrect information from the WHO was of major or minor importance, but over whether or not it was intentional. Airdvr is saying the the WHO was complicit in a Chinese cover up over Coronavirus, when in reality it seems they were simply sharing the best information available at the time, and corrected it as soon as they learned it was incorrect. (This is another thing you should be jumping all over him for if you were at all consistent in how you post to people from either side of centre, by the way.) Trump, on the other hand, is being criticized for spreading misinformation and making false promises at times when the correct information is already widely available. That fundamental difference is plain to see to anyone whose bias doesn't demand them to be blind to it.

Have some perspective. Reports are that BoJo has a mild fever. He may have Coronavirus but he doesn't appear to be in any danger. Twisting their words to make out like 'the left' is gloating over his impending death is deplorable. (And again, amazing how that sense of humour you're so proud of only appears when it's politically expedient for you.)

Link to that?

Yikes. I mean, a lot of them look to be in the 'at risk' category but that's still a bit harsh.

Again, that's not a death panel, it's a triage decision. They happen and are necessary in any mass casualty event. Why?

Why Bloomberg? He tanked.

Triage and death panels (as meant by the republicans who popularised the term in response to the ACA) are not remotely the same thing.

Unfortunately the people who go to church don't stay in church. They go other places after that, and take whatever they have with them. Ok, that's a great start. Now in light of that, do you want to reconsider any of your comments on the matter?

Why does a study need to come from Johns Hopkins to be valid? Ultimately, I'm more inclined to trust the results of the government's own simulations since in many cases they closely resemble what has actually happened in reality, while some of the Johns Hopkins results, specifically being No 1 in early detection and reporting, rapid response and mitigation do not. Unless you take the view that all the systems were there and it was purely and only the Trump administration that fucked everything up, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Some key passages from the NYT report: "The simulation’s sobering results — contained in a draft report dated October 2019 that has not previously been reported — drove home just how underfunded, underprepared and uncoordinated the federal government would be for a life-or-death battle with a virus for which no treatment existed. The draft report, marked “not to be disclosed,” laid out in stark detail repeated cases of “confusion” in the exercise. Federal agencies jockeyed over who was in charge. State officials and hospitals struggled to figure out what kind of equipment was stockpiled or available. Cities and states went their own ways on school closings." Does that sound familiar to you? It does to me. It also points out largely unaddressed deficiencies that were identified after the Ebola scare. "The weaknesses Mr. Kirchhoff identified were early warning signals of what has unfolded in the past three months. His report concluded that the United States assumed more ability on the part of the World Health Organization than the agency actually had. The United States had its own issues. There was no airplane in the U.S. fleet capable of evacuating an American doctor who was infected while treating patients in Liberia. The Pentagon was largely unprepared for the intervention that Mr. Obama ordered. While the United States rapidly developed a way to screen air passengers coming into the country — borrowing from intelligence tools developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to track possible terrorists — Mr. Kirchhoff found deficiencies in even measuring how fast the virus was spreading." Again, sounds familiar. Now maybe try this link, it's the actual report on the pandemic excercise from the government. Selected conclusions which, again, sound rather familiar. "Existing statutory authorities tasking HHS to lead the federal government's response to an influenza pandemic are insufficient and often in conflict with each other. Currently, there are insufficient funding sources designated for the federal government to use in response to a severe influenza pandemic. The Biological IncidentAnnex to the Response and Recovery Federal Interagency Operational Plans (January 2017) and the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan Version 2 ( January 2018 ) do not outline the organizational structure of the federal government when HHS is designated as the lead federal agency. Exercise participants lacked clarity on federal interagency partners' roles and responsibilities during an influenza pandemic response. Confusion regarding the purpose of and target audience for national conference calls hampered coordination among state and federal response partners. HHS and DHS/ FEMA' s use of disparate information management systems hampered their ability to establish andmaintain a national common operating picture. HHS' regional staff lack clear guidance on the distribution of federal information management products to state and local partners. The current medical countermeasure supply chain and production capacity cannot meet the demands imposed by nations during a global influenza pandemic. States experienced multiple challenges requesting resources from the federal government due to a lack of standardized, well-understood, and properly executed resource request processes." All of the above speaks to being prepared. It's not just Trump making or delaying decisions to fight the virus, it's also the fundamental pre-existing ability to implement those decisions and effectively fight it in the way that countries like Singapore and South Korea have. I'll give you a chance to reconsider that statement.

There is no way you read the article above in the time it took you to respond to my post. Again, wilfully blind and obtuse.

No it doesn't. You are being wilfully obtuse and blinding yourself to the inherent structural problems in your chain of command that made it impossible to have a co-ordinated and effective response even once it had been ordered from the White House. Basically, the same as the people who failed to make those preparations even when the failings were known well in advance. Before Virus Outbreak, a Cascade of Warnings Went Unheeded The US government was not prepared, and knew they were not prepared, to respond quickly and effectively to a pandemic.

The people having a choice has nothing to do with a state being prepared. That's an odd non-sequitur. We're also not talking about North Korea where people are controlled all the time, frankly I have absolutely no idea how NK is getting on with Corona. We're talking about South Korea and Singapore where there is the ability to control people when needed, although the bulk of those powers aren't normally in use. We're also talking about how highly co-ordinated and effective their response to the virus was. The US has been unable to do anything remotely similar because the command and control structure for pandemic response is so vague and disjointed. I.e. not prepared.

Are you insane? The chronically overcrowded prison system that packs as many people into as small a space as possible? I mean, death row and those in protective custody (the way I understand it) yeah sure, but the rest of it? Lol.

I was hoping the meaning would be 'victories for democracy', just poorly worded. If it's really meant as 'victories for Democrat policies' that's kind of ok, but 'political victories for the Democrats' would be extremely crass.

.

Because the drug exists for a reason, and Coronavirus didn't make all the other diseases go away.

Right, and talking about the thousands of suicides that will happen if restrictions continue beyond then (which they almost certainly will) is so joyously hopeful. A white lie? He's talking about packed churches in a couple of weeks time. Church services cntinuing have already been a problem even in the most well prepared and co-ordinated countries. In the US a lot of Trump's most ardent supporters and also most anti-science communities are hardcore church goers. You don't think there's a good chance that several of them are planning to pack the churches in a couple of weeks because Trump said it was OK and Coronavirus is just an overhyped cold? This is a white lie that could kill people. I have no doubt that if Pelosi was saying this you'd be going fucking apeshit.

Within the last few days, however, the US testing capacity has slowly started to increase. Earlier this month, the CDC said labs were conducting about 2,500 tests per day. On 16 March, the number rose to 8,200. To put things into perspective, South Korea – which has been hailed for its rapid testing of its population that is about one-sixth of the US’s – tests about 20,000 people a day. But not true. It was identified years ago after bird flu that the US command and control structure was and would be woefully disorganised, slow and ineffective in the event of a global pandemic. Obama put some structural changes in place to start helping, but Trump got rid of even those. Then a global pandemic coming from China was wargamed just last year.... and the conclusion was the US command and control structure was woefully disorganised, slow to react etc. And having the means to control people is good preparation for dealing with a pandemic. Otherwise you're just asking - which you yourself pointed out was not good preparation. I know. But pretty much every english speaking human except you would have known I wasn't talking about just asking people - because I explicitly said so several times. But you kept on going, because there are certain people you just have to disagree with no matter what. But it is. You may not like the way they're set up or think it's not a fair trade off, and that's fine. But you can't pretend it's not there just because you don't like it.

So you still can't actually admit to being biased. No surprise there. It's pretty clear that you walk around with several posters here in your brain. By your criteria your posts towards several people on this forum are driven by deep seated hatred.

No, you just lied again. You denied there was any bias in this specific thing I'm talking about even though there clearly is. Again, there's little point in admitting you have some overall bias if you never honestly examine in real time whether it is affecting your thinking.

They both had the infrastructure to rapidly ramp up effective testing capabiities as soon as the virus was identified in China. The US didn't have this - even when the CDC was distributing large numbers of tests the states didn't have the labs to process them all. That's preparation. They had the central command and control structure to co-ordinate highly effective contact tracing and targeted testing and quarantining, and they had the surveillance cpapabilities to help with that. They also had the authoritarian government powers to enforce lockdowns and quarantines, not just to ask. You may not want all of those things in your society, but they are effective preparation for a pandemic.

Not this one you haven't. Where have you questioned how he could know what's in Trump's head and told him it's an example of his bias? The differences in your responses are again an example of your bias.