American Politics Discussion Thread

[GeneralKilCavalry]

C. A person who claims that his opponent will "abolish suburbs"

Note that the American city which best handled urban decline was Milwaukee thanks to annexation of suburbs and forcing them to pay the taxes to the cities THAT THEY LEECH OD OFF.

Every time I see a McMansion I want to retch, preferably on its lawyer foyer or some other architectural crime committed by thoughtless architects.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

And regarding covid, you can’t entirely blame trump, or Republicans, or any other political organization. The American people in general behave selfishly and can’t be bothered to give two fucks about the health of their communities. I live in predominantly liberal area, and had an unfortunate encounter in a starbucks where I asked a group of teens to put their masks on their nose (otherwise it’s not effective). My grandma got cursed at by someone MORE ELDERLY than her at the store for politely asking to wear the mask on the face not the chin. People not only wish to remain ignorant but they want to defend their ignorance. Anti-vaccine movement was before trump, idiot I am far before that as well. You can’t pretend like the ailments of this society are all attributable to one person.

At the same time, the reason it leaked into the US is entirely on trump. Early, preventable measures, preventing troops from returning from South Korea or overseas deployments, none of that was done fast enough. The administration was incompetent BEFORE we had to concern ourselves with any economic impact. T-hawk and others who peddle this statistical nihilism are distracting from the massive coverup that happened in the early days of covid. See: Brett Crozier, pentagon shutting down case reporting, the handling of those early few cases in Wash state, the inability of the US to create proper case tracking and informing people where cases broke out.

[T-hawk]

and we are set to loosen restriction in 2 weeks, and lose them entirely in 1-2 months. 

What is the long term plan? Keep Australia's borders closed forever as long as any nonzero number of cases exist in the entire world?

[Bobchillingworth]

You can’t pretend like the ailments of this society are all attributable to one person.

Sure, of course, but tens of millions of people hang on to every word the cretin says, and he has enormous resources at his disposal, so him doing everything in his power to lie, promote absurd miracle cures, cover up the truth of the pandemic, and sabotage the federal response for personal gain has had more than a minor impact.

[Amicalola]

and we are set to loosen restriction in 2 weeks, and lose them entirely in 1-2 months. 

What is the long term plan?  Keep Australia's borders closed forever as long as any nonzero number of cases exist in the entire world?

Erm, no. Keep Australia's borders closed until a viable vaccine is released, which has already been decided by the federal government to be made available and free to all citizens (i would hope this is the case in all developed countries), and strongly incentivised if not mandatory. 

It's a matter of months, not years, until that happens.

I would also suggest that legally closed borders in a virus-free (or at least, extremely low) country is better than functionally closed borders because no one wants to travel to your country thanks to all the case numbers anyway, regardless of the length of time. Neither country gets a whole lot of tourism, but one also has to cope with the virus for far longer.

[The Black Sword]

T-Hawk, everytime I read your posts in this thread, I always come away with the impression that you had already decided the Democrats would perform badly and are trying to find some scenario where this is true.

Like, even take the most charitable case, where everything you say about covid is true. Then your argument is that the Democrats would have done a poor job because they would have listened to the overwhelming majority of health experts. In comparison, Trump was actively harming the messages from these experts but lucked out that this was the correct thing to do. (You don't even seem to be contesting the last sentence?)

In any game with incomplete information, if you're trying to decide whether you made the correct decision, you don't look at the results but the process involved. And just because you lucked out and hit the 1% where you are right this time, doesn't mean you make the same decision in the future.

Personally I find it almost impossible to believe that any president in my lifetime, Republican or Democrat, would have performed worse than Trump on Covid.

[Gustaran]

This is the big question: What do you think ends this state of affairs?  It's not zero cases, that's been proven unattainable by every single polity in the world.  It's not a vaccine - we're already seeing the arguments of "it's not 100% effective" and "you can't prove a vaccinated person doesn't spread it" plus all the usual anti-vaxxer stuff.  It's not some miraculous disappearance or "less-dangerous mutation" on its own.  If you think Germany's approach is correct, then you arguing for the masks and distancing theater to continue permanently for the rest of human society.  No bars, nightclubs, crowded sports events, conventions, ever again.  Is that the world you want to live in?

I am very confident that a vaccine is going to solve the problem during the next ~6-9 months. But to be more specific: Do I think a one time shot will give you 100% immunity forever and eradicate Covid19? According to most virologists probably not.

But the thing is: It doesn't really need to. Let's not forget that the main problem are not asymptomatic or mild cases, but people having to be hospitalized for weeks or dying. Even a not 100% effective vaccine at least is very likely to cause a milder course of illness. If all Covid19 is doing is causing an itchy throat and a runny nose, we could return to normal tomorrow.
About the duration: It's possible a Covid19 shot needs to be refreshed regularly, but that's already the case with the flu vaccine. So I think that could be done as well.

(I'm deliberately using that term insted of herd immunity, because that's misleading.  It's not immunity at all.  It doesn't mean nobody gets it.  It means the cross-section of the population is collectively resistant enough that any clusters fizzle out rather than continuing to spread.)...
Here's the last missing piece.  That 75% is not of people, it's of spreadable interaction events.  Which are asymmetrically distributed. You can get that 75% threshold with 40% of people if it's the right 40% that account for a sufficient supermajority of interactions.  This is too complicated to fit in a CNN headline, and difficult to study directly with a scientific approach, but it's what has happened.

I don't understand your distinction between resistance and immunity, what you write is bascialy how a virologist explained the path to herd immunity. If those 75% are reached, of course there is no magic immunity for everyone, rather infections will decline and the virus eventually disappear. But that is something that can take many months.

And while your theory on interactions may be correct, the numbers certainly don't hold true for Germany which had only 1.5% positive antibody rate when testing blood donations in July. I think a bigger study from the Netherlands was just under 3%.
On a side note, I am also somewhat wary of these high antibody numbers in New York and other places. I forgot the details, but IIRC some of these studies used quick tests which are prone to false positives and cross react to other human coronaviruses. Optimally these positive quick tests need to be confirmed in a lab with a different procedure, but I admit I didn't look at the studies in detail.

But even accepting your numbers, it would probably be difficult to prevent the 40% critical interaction events, because often the people with most interactions are also careless, because not part of a risk group.
I don't think it currently matters: At least all over Europe there is no sign of any herd resistane/immunity - when people don't follow social distancing rules rules cases start to rise.

[darrelljs]

he's complete lowlife.

.

Darrell

[T-hawk]

T-Hawk, everytime I read your posts in this thread, I always come away with the impression that you had already decided the Democrats would perform badly and are trying to find some scenario where this is true.

Personally I find it almost impossible to believe that any president in my lifetime, Republican or Democrat, would have performed worse than Trump on Covid.

Point taken, but I'll adjust that a bit.  The Democrats think that every scenario is to expand government intrusion.  That's what I'm against.  I don't care so much about Covid itself, as I do about upholding the general principle of liberty and government staying the hell out of the way.  Five or six digits of Covid deaths is a tragedy, but I'll pay that price to sustain and preserve the liberties and livelihoods of 330,000,000.

And making a broader point than me personally.  There is a lot more of America with that same attitude, which the Democrats either don't realize or can't admit exists.  That's why they can't figure out how to dent Trump's support.  If they want to swing votes, they need to engage with that rather than scream it down as deplorable and lowlife.  This is how Trump won originally and will again: he's smart enough to appeal to swing voters with promises like jobs and liberty, rather than flinging insults at them.

I am very confident that a vaccine is going to solve the problem during the next ~6-9 months. But to be more specific: Do I think a one time shot will give you 100% immunity forever and eradicate Covid19? According to most virologists probably not.

But the thing is: It doesn't really need to. Let's not forget that the main problem are not asymptomatic or mild cases, but people having to be hospitalized for weeks or dying. Even a not 100% effective vaccine at least is very likely to cause a milder course of illness. If all Covid19 is doing is causing an itchy throat and a runny nose, we could return to normal tomorrow.

This is all true and correct... but the problem is that the media and government narrative isn't going to follow that.  If it's 50% effective, that isn't good enough, 85k deaths isn't going to be acceptable where 170k wasn't.  And so we're stuck with the masks and distancing and closed borders forever.

I don't understand your distinction between resistance and immunity

No distinction, I just think resistance is a better term for the same thing, because it's more intuitively understood as not perfect.

On a side note, I am also somewhat wary of these high antibody numbers in New York and other places. I forgot the details, but IIRC some of these studies used quick tests which are prone to false positives and cross react to other human coronaviruses.

The growing evidence is that, yes those antibodies are produced from reactions to prior coronaviruses... and they're also effective against Covid-19.  The problem is this phenomenon can't be included in policy because it can't easily be studied with scientific rigor.  To do that properly would involve intentionally exposing subject to Covid-19, including a control group without antibodies, and that plan would be completely impossible ethically. We're stuck in a place where herd immunity/resistance has happened, but we can't acknowledge it.

[T-hawk]

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Darrell

Don't worry, I'm not putting any stock in ad-hominem insults delivered by the person that got himself lynched out of a Werewolf game just by being a combative asshole that nobody wanted to deal with.