This is how embarrassing Trump’s ‘fraud’ claims have gotten

[pasayten]

Yeah... additionally creeped out by his treatment of women "grabbiing" remarks and totally lost respect with his narcissistic personality and disparaging/disrespectful remarks about others. Really just a reality show carnival barker... grifter...

Republicans need to drop Donald Dumpf and bring the party back to its core values of the past.

[dorankj]

Or….you can pay $75-500K for Hunter Biden ‘art’ and access to the White House. For the most popular president in all American history (81 million votes, riiiight) he and his supporters sure seem scared by the last president!

[mister_coffee]

Come on all you Trump supporters... Pony up your $45...
...

Show your loyalty and enthusiasm and pony up even more. $450 sounds like a small price to pay to show your support!

[pasayten]

Come on all you Trump supporters... Pony up your $45...

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-a ... on-1639785

[anonloser]

Lol did you and dorankj just finish high fiving each other to completion with proTrump memes when he mentioned the mean commies were making fun of him on the internet so you came to back him up?

[Italian_Helicoptor]

Actually Alf, the largest group by percentage hesitant to get jabbed are phd’s and the African American community. The rest of your narrative is problematic too but I don’t have time now to refute all that’s wrong with your post. Have a good day, COVID won’t take out the world!

And I must add Mr. Dorankj, you deserve a swift high five. Great work

[pasayten]

This thread was originally about Trump's lies about who won the election...

[PAL]

"They are always putting up divisive Smokescreens that distract us from the poor jobs that they do for this country."

But it is supposed to be our country.

[Fun CH]

impose quarantines on anyone returning from overseas such as the 195 Americans who returned from China at the end of January 2020 and flew to California.

...

I think there was a large-scale failure by our government at all levels in this catastrophe. But it didn't just happen in 2020 or 2019. We have hollowed out public health for almost four decades and the bills came due all at once. Fixing that mistake will likely also take decades, as it takes time to build up and train the staff you'll need at multiple levels to do that job. Unfortunately so far we haven't even been willing to start that process.

that is exactly the point and why I don't blame and shame ordinary people because they are hesitant the become vaccinated with a recent drug that temporary causes our cells to manufacture a specific protein that triggers an immune response.

Our public officials on both sides made this public health crisis a political issue from the get go.

They are always putting up divisive Smokescreens that distract us from the poor jobs that they do for this country.

[mister_coffee]

impose quarantines on anyone returning from overseas such as the 195 Americans who returned from China at the end of January 2020 and flew to California.

...

And I don't understand how that would have made much difference when there was already community spread before that time. Certainly by early January there was active community spread of covid under the radar in California and Washington. I don't know about New York or Boston but I suspect if somebody looked hard enough they'd find evidence there too. I wouldn't be surprised if there is evidence of covid cases in December 2019 that we haven't found yet -- certainly there was an uptick in "viral pneumonia" then that looks suspicious to me. And remember that nobody had covid tests before February of 2020.

Also, you should keep in mind that when we did start trying to quarantine people it became obvious that we didn't have the systems or processes in place to do it (quarantine) very well. In late February early March they had rented out several motels in King County for quarantines. They were inadequately staffed and most of the people being quarantined just left regardless of their actual status and with no followup.

I think there was a large-scale failure by our government at all levels in this catastrophe. But it didn't just happen in 2020 or 2019. We have hollowed out public health for almost four decades and the bills came due all at once. Fixing that mistake will likely also take decades, as it takes time to build up and train the staff you'll need at multiple levels to do that job. Unfortunately so far we haven't even been willing to start that process.

[Fun CH]

Maybe we protect the vulnerable, let any who want it take any jabs they want and get on with life?

That's what I'm doing.

Oh, and USE therapeutics early!

I'm wondering why
So many are dying when there are Therapeutic drugs like thoses synthetic monoclonal antibodies.

Unfortunately Biden is using that blame and shame rhetoric directed towards the unvaccinated in his speeches is now. It's a smokescreen that folks on the left will parrot ad nauseam.

Why is there no talk about the numbers of natural immunity cases contributing towards the goal of herd immunity?

[Fun CH]

Chris, I am trying to understand what you exactly expected blue-state governors to do and when you expected them to do it.

impose quarantines on anyone returning from overseas such as the 195 Americans who returned from China at the end of January 2020 and flew to California.

Americas keep coming home from overseas. The were screened, and some just barely, not quarantined.

As I said and cell phone data confirms the country was being seeded with the Coronavirus during that time. Flights from overseas passing through Blue State International hubs on the way to other American city destinations carried those seeds.

Why do you think the blue State urban areas got hit so hard?


Inslee did a fairly good job relative to everyone else except for losing 646 million dollars to foreign unemployment scammers, while the needy could obtain unemployment funds.

[dorankj]

Oh, and USE therapeutics early!

[dorankj]

Back then stopping this seemed doable, now it seems pretty clear COVID is here to stay. Maybe we protect the vulnerable, let any who want it take any jabs they want and get on with life?

[mister_coffee]

Chris, I am trying to understand what you exactly expected blue-state governors to do and when you expected them to do it.

Trump's first travel order was released on February 10th, 2020.

We had a confirmed COVID-19 fatality in Santa Clara County on February 6th, 2020. Her name was Patricia Dowd, and she was 57 years old, otherwise healthy, and had no recent travel history. So one can only conclude that she got the covid from somebody else, which implies that community spread was happening in early January. February 6th is before February 10th.

It is also interesting to note that confirmation of that fatality did not happen until late April of 2020. So again we have to realize that everyone here was operating with imperfect information.

In order to make a damned bit of difference, we would have had to impose travel restrictions and quarantines sometime before mid-December. We just didn't have the information in place to make that decision. And given how states have limited authority to control interstate travel, what I think would have happened is that even if, say, Washington were to implement strict quarantine measures in December 2019, people would have just rescheduled their flights to arrive in Texas and then fly, train, or drive to Seattle. Or fly to Boise and drive to Seattle.

There is also tantalizing evidence of some covid deaths in January 2020, and additional tantalizing evidence of community spread in December of 2019 and January 2020. So we were already behind. Thinking that quarantine measures in February would have made a bit of difference is wishful thinking. The most generous thing you could argue is that it might (emphasis on the might) have slowed down the spread a bit.

Sources:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... y-february

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/22/ ... y-thought/

[Fun CH]

Quote:
"Not at all.

When, specifically, would they have done this?

The earliest confirmed COVID-19 death in the United States was a woman in Santa Clara county, who died February 7th, 2020. We don't know who she got the disease from, but based on what we know about the incubation time and progression of the disease, she easily could have been exposed to the COVID in early January or even late December. There is also some additional evidence that the virus was circulating below everyone's radar in the San Francisco Bay area and around Seattle in December and possibly earlier.

So you are arguing that the governors needed to have perfect precognition to start quarantining people sometime in December, or even earlier? How would that have worked?" End quote


CBS 60 Minutes did a good program on a company that tracked cell phone data from the start of the pandemic when flights into the US were restricted from China. The tracking showed passengers leaving Wuhan for other destinations around the world and then those same a passengers arriving in the United States.

Returning Americans flew into International hubs such as Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York. From there they took flight to their home States. The tracking data correlated with the early outbreaks of covid-19 in the United States.

There was also lack of early testing which of course was blamed on Trump, however that surge of Americans returning to the United States we're flying into blue States under the control of blue State governors. Why didn't they take effective Coronavirus screening action instead of passing the blame to the federal government?

I also remember seeing a national news report on passengers returning to New York from overseas. They were asked one question about whether or not they were coming from Italy even though other hot spots were occurring at the time.

Our government was very distracted at the beginning of the pandemic at all levels. Governor Inslee was licking his wounds from his failed presidential ambitions, Governor Cuomo was horndogging his interns as usual, and the Congress was putting on an impeachment sh**show where a simple censure of the president would have been sufficient.

And we know how Trump turned a blind eye towards the pandemic while Bob Woodward held onto critical information regarding Trump's pandamic lies until Bob had a book finished.

In other words business as usual for politicians at that level.





https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/t ... demic.html

"The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19
Aggressive screening might have helped contain the coronavirus in the United States. But technical flaws, regulatory hurdles and lapses in leadership let it spread undetected for weeks."

[mister_coffee]

regarding your question, if sitting president Joe Biden said the next election, assuming he lost, was rigged would you believe him on election night?

No. That would be an extraordinary claim and without extraordinary evidence it would not be credible.

Do you blame the victims of predatory lenders or scammers for having made bad choices and wind up losing their money?

That depends on the scam. Some of the "best" scams involve convincing the mark that he is in on something shady or illegal and his discretion is required and that is what he will be "rewarded" for providing. Think of the Nigerian advance fee scams which, if they were legit, were encouraging the marks to commit serious multiple crimes (bank fraud, money laundering, &c) in order to score a few easy dollars. I have a lot less sympathy for those victims than for the people who are put in a tight spot under pressure and a forced to make any decision in a very short period of time, under pressure.

Do you place any blame on Fauci who told us we didn't need to wear masks at the start of the pandemic?

Then told us he said that lie so the public would not use masks needed for health care workers.

The health care workers needed the masks in order to treat sick people who didn't have access to N95 masks or a directive to wear them from the CDC. Kind of a catch 22 there but the fact is Dr. Fauci started the whole mask controversy. Then the scammers used that public confusion for political or monetary gain.

This one again isn't simple. The public health messaging on masks I heard in early March was clear: don't wear a mask because there aren't enough N95 masks to go around and we need to reserve those for front-line workers. I ignored this public health advice and wore homemade and improvised masks even before this advice was out there.

I think a lot of the problem is that we had piss-poor public health communications throughout this pandemic. I give pretty much everyone involved in that process, down to local government figures, a C-. And that is mostly because the situation was so new to everyone and it was obvious that everybody was desperately improvising and there wasn't any game plan, or if there was the plan got lit on fire and thrown out a window.

When you added in the news media, which isn't ever very good at communicating precise technical information to a general public who probably won't pay attention anyway, you have a grade IV clusterf*ck.

Do you place any blame on a broken health care system for lack of available beds?

Not really. Yes, we have a broken health care system. But health care systems considerably better than ours (in France, in Italy, in Spain) were also overwhelmed. And in some cases still appear to be.

Do you blame the blue state governors for not quarantining newly arriving Americans from covid hot spots such as Italy and England at the beginning of the pandemic? That lack of action led to the seeding of the Coronavirus throughout the US.

Not at all.

When, specifically, would they have done this?

The earliest confirmed COVID-19 death in the United States was a woman in Santa Clara county, who died February 7th, 2020. We don't know who she got the disease from, but based on what we know about the incubation time and progression of the disease, she easily could have been exposed to the COVID in early January or even late December. There is also some additional evidence that the virus was circulating below everyone's radar in the San Francisco Bay area and around Seattle in December and possibly earlier.

So you are arguing that the governors needed to have perfect precognition to start quarantining people sometime in December, or even earlier? How would that have worked?

I agree with you that our health care system, our public health system, and our elected officials most certainly screwed the pooch on this one. The fact of the matter is that we just weren't equipped for a crisis like this and we botched it, badly, and that cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives, with perhaps millions more suffering chronic health problems for the indefinite future.

You seem to be arguing on the one hand that people should be free to make their own decisions, but on the other hand that if they make a bad decision it isn't really their responsibility and we shouldn't expect better of them. I don't buy it. If people have the authority to make a decision they also need to own responsibility for that decision. Authority without responsibility (and vice versa) are basically unworkable.

I'm not trying to blame anyone. I'm saying that if there is so much disinformation that people are unable to make good decisions, it seems reasonable that someone in authority should intervene and make good decisions for the poorly informed people. Ideally that somebody would be elected officials that are accountable to voters.

[dorankj]

Hey Alf look in a mirror! You ARE what you say you hate.

[PAL]

OMG. You guys have to read the book I am reading, Doom, the Politics of Catastrophe. I am on a chapter now, that talks about us cleaning up our act as far as animals. There are 8 deadly diseases from domesticated animals.
The Athens plague back oh so long ago, makes Covid look like a cakewalk. It was a killer with symptoms much worse than Covid. And I did not know it but small pox was not eradicated until 1970!
And this is in a chapter called, "Networks." Oh yeah.
Leadership, is where it broke down with Covid. On all fronts.
I do remember asking my former health care provider about it, when it was still in China. I remember the date, Feb. 27th. I asked if we needed to be concerned. She said she thought it was dying out. Little did she know and she couldn't have known. But I came home and called some others in the medical field.
They said, yes, it will come here, don't know how bad.
Pearl

[Fun CH]

Quote: "Remember, correlation does NOT prove causation" end quote.
...

A further and deeper question: is it reasonable, in the face of a torrent of misinformation, to expect people to make good decisions about their health all on their own?

regarding your question, if sitting president Joe Biden said the next election, assuming he lost, was rigged would you believe him on election night?

Do you blame the victims of predatory lenders or scammers for having made bad choices and wind up losing their money?

Do you place any blame on Fauci who told us we didn't need to wear masks at the start of the pandemic?

Then told us he said that lie so the public would not use masks needed for health care workers.

The health care workers needed the masks in order to treat sick people who didn't have access to N95 masks or a directive to wear them from the CDC. Kind of a catch 22 there but the fact is Dr. Fauci started the whole mask controversy. Then the scammers used that public confusion for political or monetary gain.

Do you place any blame on a broken health care system for lack of available beds?

Do you blame the blue state governors for not quarantining newly arriving Americans from covid hot spots such as Italy and England at the beginning of the pandemic? That lack of action led to the seeding of the Coronavirus throughout the US.

The point is, we are all this together and there is plenty of blame to spread around for lack of action that has lead to the current situation.

I don't blame ordinary people who had little to do with a potentially deadly pathogen entering this country.

One of the lessons learned from the 2002-2003 Sars cov-1 outbreak was to clean up the way we treat animals, such as live meat markets that are a conduit for animal-to-human virus transmission. That didn't happen.

The buck stops where the leadership resides.

[mister_coffee]

Quote: "Remember, correlation does NOT prove causation" end quote.
...

Your own link reports that Republicans were the largest group (23%) who were definitely not going to get vaccinated. And that more white people than black people say they definitely won't get the vaccine, as well as higher percentages of white people than black people.

So what we know:

1. Republicans, and groups closely associated with voting Republican (like white evangelicals) are the most likely to not get vaccinated.

2. Republicans, and groups closely associated with voting Republican, are the least likely to take public health measures like wearing a mask and social distancing seriously (multiple public opinion polls have shown this).

3. Information outlets such as Fox News, very popular with Republicans, repeatedly spew anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and generally anti-public health misinformation.

The statistics I cited are predictable and consistent with the above. You're right, the correlations by themselves would merely be suspicious. But we have an extremely visible mechanism in place and we have a pretty good measurement of public sentiment on these topics. It all fits.

A further and deeper question: is it reasonable, in the face of a torrent of misinformation, to expect people to make good decisions about their health all on their own?

Another deeper question: which is worse, denying care to people because hospital capacity is exhausted or force people to be vaccinated? You have to pick one.

[Fun CH]

Quote: "Remember, correlation does NOT prove causation" end quote.

Yes, correlation is weak, it doesn't even imply proof. A deeper dive into the available data is required.

The bias of the person doing the statistical analysis is also a factor in proving causation, especially when it's political bias.


Good article from the center of the political spectrum.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2 ... ion-sites/

"These data do not, in themselves, show that COVID is killing Republican voters or disproportionately affect Republican families. For example, we know that because of healthcare disparities, Black Americans are more likely to die from COVID than white Americans. In Republican states, increases in COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths could be affecting Black residents, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, even in Republican stronghold states. However, the sudden change in rhetoric from conservative, Republican politicians, and even among Republican leaders who were previously vaccine-skeptical or vaccine-silent, suggests that something else is happening. It suggests that Republican politicians are recognizing where the current COVID wave is hitting hardest, and they aren’t Democratic cities and counties."

[dorankj]

I Didn’t realize our diseases only knew how to spread to certain political positions! The true likelihood of problems from Covid-19 are: 1-obesity 2-over 65 3-one or more co-morbidities. Now could that be rural areas with poorer populations? Remember, correlation does NOT prove causation but thanks for continuing the political divide and furthering distrust and hesitancy.

[mister_coffee]

Actually Alf, the largest group by percentage hesitant to get jabbed are phd’s and the African American community. The rest of your narrative is problematic too but I don’t have time now to refute all that’s wrong with your post. Have a good day, COVID won’t take out the world!

Oh please.

I guess there are a lot of African Americans and PhDs in Stevens County (33.0% fully vaccinated). While King County must not have many of either (70.8% fully vaccinated). What is driving whether people get vaccinated or not is who they voted for in the 2020 election.

The top four and bottom four counties in-state by vaccination rate, and the percentage they voted for Biden:

San Juan: 73.1% vaccinated, 74.% for Biden
King: 70.8% vaccinated, 75.4% for Biden
Jefferson: 69.4% vaccinated, 69.8% for Biden
Whatcom: 67.1% vaccinated, 60.8% for Biden
...
Pend Oreille: 33.7% vaccinated, 30.5% for Biden
Asotin: 34.8% vaccinated, 35.8% for Biden
Skamania: 35.2% vaccinated, 43.9% for Biden
Stevens: 33.0% vaccinated, 27.7% for Biden

You can see the same trend at another scale if you just go to the Okanogan County Public Health Site. 71% of liberal Winthrop has been vaccinated, while much-less liberal Okanogan has only a 39% vaccination rate. If you dig a little deeper you can see the same trends state-by-state.

That kind of correlation does not happen by accident.

Oh, and you can flip the numbers around and see the very same thing. If you look at 2021 covid cases and covid deaths they nicely correlate to whether the area was carried by Trump (or negatively correlate to if the area was carried by Biden). By some estimates you are five times more likely to die from covid if you live in an area that is strongly pro-Trump as opposed to an area that is strongly pro-Biden.

Once again, this is no accident and no spurious correlation. It is happening at too many scales and too many places and when measured too many different ways.

The numbers aren't lying. This is 100% political.

**Back to lurking**

[pasayten]

Interesting and funny comment on facebook post of the "embarrassing claims" article...

I’m laughing at the many people who are so gullible as to believe in the big lie. You’ve been brought up as Americans, Americans incorporate a highly technical highly trusted double triple rechecked process of casting a votes. Yeah you conspiracy hungry malcontents tend to believe every angle, and every angle was accused, to prove that the election was stolen. It was stolen by me and millions of other voters. What you Trump supporters must learn to understand, it’s called losing. Trump lost and Since he lost he has created this narcissist war and everything non-Trump. His irresponsible leadership has led us to point fingers at each other. Hell even members of his own party, which is not what you guys know as the Republican Party. Trumps is busy ferreting out the remaining Republicans whom are not loyal to Trump. Didn’t see that coming did you, we’re talking about the Trumplican’s. They ARE NOT the Republicans as we once knew them. This group isn’t even pro American! I will go on to say that Trump and his followers are EVERYTHING non American. They have ripped apart the established political protocol to obtain their goal “winning” So now you Trumpsters doubt everything huh? Then go! Buy Greenland and make Trump your leader. See how far and what direction that leadership will get you. Maybe Putin will slice off a piece of his country for you.

Note... I am a Republican... always have been... not a Trumplican...