Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[starlord]

This forum, I understand now, is not interested in that type of discussion.

it really isn't.
now they're going to call you a "facist sympathizer" and put you on ignore.

[beanman12345]

Thanks for the link, didn't realize the Delta variant could go after the vaccinated so much. That being said, the vaccination still is superior to not getting it from the data we have as even they get it, the symptoms are reduced. But we need to figure out a better vaccine if it is breaking through that much.

Ugh just imagining if this was under the trump administration we prolly wouldn't even know this cause contract tracing was near non existent. Now they're saying outside might not be as safe, which, idk why they thought it was safe in the first place, considering the ACB thing at the rose garden super spreading event that sent Trump and Christie to the hospital.

[Kaleredar]

it really isn't.
now they're going to call you a "facist sympathizer" and put you on ignore.

Your reaction doesn’t actually recant any of the things being said to tear down the person’s argument.

[starlord]

Your reaction doesn’t actually recant any of the things being said to tear down the person’s argument.

i'm not sure whats to tear down about "it's important to look at more factors about the spread of coronavirus than just 'republicans bad'"

[starlord]

People refusing to get the vaccine due to extremist propaganda is large and away the most significant factor in those not getting the vaccine at this point. Are there other factors at play? Of course nothing is black and white, but to try and ignore the elephant in the room in order to search out other minor factors is intellectually dishonest at best imho.

Ever heard of Occam's razor? People need to get their heads out of their asses and go get the vaccine.

he's not ignoring it, he said vaccine outreach will help those other people, especially minorities who are on the fence. and everyone scoffed because "republicans are dumb!!! " like yea we get it you don't like republicans.

[Benggaul]

i'm not sure whats to tear down about "it's important to look at more factors about the spread of coronavirus than just 'republicans bad'"

Except I didn't just say "republicans bad". I showed specific examples of why ignoring safety precautions/mask mandates--which, coincidentally is the side the GOP in general come down on--is bad. This was refuting their earlier point that Florida was no worse off than other states and couldn't have done anything to mitigate their fate. You can be forgiven for not knowing that's what their original point was because they kept changing it quite a few times this week. At no point did I, or anyone, say that we shouldn't look at other factors--but that's not what was being discussed.

[starlord]

Except I didn't just say "republicans bad". I showed specific examples of why ignoring safety precautions/mask mandates--which, coincidentally is the side the GOP in general come down on--is bad. This was refuting their earlier point that Florida was no worse off than other states and couldn't have done anything to mitigate their fate. You can be forgiven for not knowing that's what their original point was because they kept changing it quite a few times this week. At no point did I, or anyone, say that we shouldn't look at other factors--but that's not what was being discussed.

where did he say that those weren't a factor?

[Benggaul]

where did he say that those weren't a factor?

So a policy that's been the same for over a year has caused the surge in the past few weeks? A surge that's happening in all 50 states?

My point isn't to defend DeSantis. It's to show that the problem exists everywhere and focusing just on Florida is missing the forest for one stupid, awful tree. Everywhere has mostly given up trying to deal with this, DeSantis just gave up earlier than everywhere else.

When cases got really low a month or so ago, that would've been a great time to step up contact tracing and other local mitigation efforts to try to stop any new surges like this, but nobody did anything so another big surge was inevitable.

This entire post is basically stating that. As I said in my response the first time "everywhere has mostly given up" is utter bullshit. As is "nobody did anything". There may be a handful of states for which that holds true and we're seeing those states struggling now with this recent wave. To say that "nobody did anything" is to say that mask mandates/social distancing/restrictions weren't a factor. There was another post where he basically said that no other states were doing anything more than Florida was doing, which is also patently false, but I'm not digging through the entire post history of the week. If they want to paint themselves as a martyr for making a point, being proven wrong, and then arguing with other people about a different point, then just making a third point that nobody was arguing against, so be it. I'm done wasting my time.

EDIT: I will also add that there's a reason I make these posts in the Trump thread and not the Gen-OT thread and that's because, behind it all, there absolutely is a very partisan divide in terms of which people were taking precautions and getting vaccinated and which were too busy calling Fauci a fraud and refusing the vaccine because "reasons". These posts are BOUND to get political, not least because one side is in continual denial that it's even still a problem.

[starlord]

I don't have anything against republicans. I was born and raised in Kentucky I have been a registered republican since my 18th birthday. What I don't like are egotistical morons that refuse to believe in the reality around them. I don't like conspiracy theorist. It just so happens that the republican party seems to be collecting those sorts of people these days like they are pokemon cards.

None of that is my fault. If you aren't vaccinated by the time of this posting (assuming there weren't circumstances outside of your control) you are a moron. Plain and simple. An absolute moron and 2021 seems to be the year of Darwin thus far tbh...

agreed.

i've said many times here, anti vaxxers were a problem long before the republicans jumped on the bandwagon. they're all over the world and of all political spectrums.

republicans are a nice easy target but it doesn't really solve the underlying issue. as we've already seen it doesn't matter if republican officials are like "haha just kidding... go get vaxxed now... please..." because most of them never intended to get vaccinated regardless.
as the rot spread it was ignored as "just those crazies"... then measles and whooping cough etc started popping up again... "oh just those crazies"... people demanded more and more legal exemptions and were given them "nope no problem here!" religious groups went to minority communities and brainwashed them into being anti vaxxers "shrug".

then trump came along and it's like "wow how did this suddenly come out of thin air?? surely it's solely trump's fault!". no, he just jumped on the wagon that was already well underway.

[Benggaul]

then trump came along and it's like "wow how did this suddenly come out of thin air?? surely it's solely trump's fault!". no, he just jumped on the wagon that was already well underway.

He didn't jump on the wagon. He installed the biggest sound-system on the planet on it and amplified it to the masses and now there are governors like Abbott and DeathSantis who are seeking the approval of the huge base Trump built and so won't even institute simple measures to help minimize the spread. Before Trump they were a problem. Now they are a blight.

[Bodakane]

Obviously I worded things terribly wrong if that was the implication I was giving. My point I clearly failed to make was that Florida should have been an India/Brazil level disaster (I don't believe either country's "official" numbers) with how old its population is and lack of mitigations, but it never did over the past year (it still might, but we don't know that yet), while states with strong mitigations still had significant cases and deaths, less so, but still not as good as we would've liked. So what caused Florida to not be as bad as feared and what caused other places to not do better than we hoped? What's causing the waves when policies haven't been changing? I haven't seen answers to some of my questions other places so I'd hoped bringing them up would generate a discussion where I could learn either here or from links that others might have given. But there seems to be little discussion here of anything other than ranting about Republicans.

To me, there's no point screaming into the wind about Republicans being dumb poopyheads over and over. We know what they're going to do. I don't have to hear about them over and over when the story isn't changing. It's time to work with the people we can reach (my point about non-Republican communities with low vaccinations), and try to mitigate the damage the Republican are going to do. Or figure out some new way to reach them since what's been going on hasn't been working. This forum, I understand now, is not interested in that type of discussion.

Florida is a disaster. The numbers you're using to determine it its not a disaster are wrong. Desantis has been cooking the books.

[starlord]

He didn't jump on the wagon. He installed the biggest sound-system on the planet on it and amplified it to the masses and now there are governors like Abbott and DeathSantis who are seeking the approval of the huge base Trump built and so won't even institute simple measures to help minimize the spread. Before Trump they were a problem. Now they are a blight.

before covid19, everyone was just content to let it slide. if it had never happened we wouldn't be having this discussion in any case, and the anti vaxxers would be merrily demanding more exemptions.

i highly doubt if trump said for everyone to get vaccinated right now it would make a difference. much like trump didn't invent white supremacy, he didn't invent anti vaxxers either. they were just happy to have someone "on their side", especially the religious zealots who are a huge factor in spreading it.

there's a great deal of overlap between trump supporters and anti vaxxers due to religion, but don't mistake correlation for causation.

besides religion, there's just tons of pure misinformation out there, being spread by doctors and nurses as well. the "vaccines cause autism" garbage never went away.

had republicans instituted measures earlier (or at all), yea it would have made a huge difference. but they didn't and they won't, same for trump, so as the other poster said its more productive to look at other factors and try to reach those who're just wary due to past history, or ignorant.

[Benggaul]

before covid19, everyone was just content to let it slide. if it had never happened we wouldn't be having this discussion in any case, and the anti vaxxers would be merrily demanding more exemptions.

i highly doubt if trump said for everyone to get vaccinated right now it would make a difference. much like trump didn't invent white supremacy, he didn't invent anti vaxxers either. they were just happy to have someone "on their side", especially the religious zealots who are a huge factor in spreading it.

there's a great deal of overlap between trump supporters and anti vaxxers due to religion, but don't mistake correlation for causation.

besides religion, there's just tons of pure misinformation out there, being spread by doctors and nurses as well. the "vaccines cause autism" garbage never went away.

had republicans instituted measures earlier (or at all), yea it would have made a huge difference. but they didn't and they won't, same for trump, so as the other poster said its more productive to look at other factors and try to reach those who're just wary due to past history, or ignorant.

You are greatly undervaluing how much having him give them a platform elevated them and added to their numbers. As an analogy, there were hate crimes before Trump became president, but their number increased significantly once he started dog whistling from behind the podium of POTUS.

And, as I said in my previous post (which I added later so you're forgiven if you missed it), this is a political thread in a political forum, so I will continue to talk about what the politics of Trump and his GOP allies have done/will do to affect us with respect to the pandemic. I would not post this in Gen-OT for that reason. I also think not talking about what they have or are doing wrong is in itself a misstep and I have also spoken about how policies/decisions the current administration have taken may be wrong (see my previous posts on being in disagreement with mask mandates being lifted). If some people here say they respond to trolls to correct them and keep the rest of the public informed, then responding to what the supposed leaders of the nation are doing is at least equally as important.

You're free to ignore me if you don't like reading about it; I won't hold it against you.

[Fugus]

Ugh just imagining if this was under the trump administration we prolly wouldn't even know this cause contract tracing was near non existent. Now they're saying outside might not be as safe, which, idk why they thought it was safe in the first place, considering the ACB thing at the rose garden super spreading event that sent Trump and Christie to the hospital.

Oh yeah, if we were still under old Traitor Boy Trump aka the Russian Agent Orange aka the Luffa-Faced Shit-gibbon, things would be much worse off without us having near the facts we have now with people outside of Florida even more willing to believe the lies coming from Florida.

At this point, I honestly would say just to let themselves get themselves killed and let Darwin sort this out if only it weren't for the kids and those whom medically can't get vaccinated. Except that also ends up with more of us who actually listen to professionals and admit we don't know everything still have a chance of catching it as well and they give it more chances to mutate further which again puts the smarter ones of us at risk.

About the closest thing we have to a silver lining to this is its hitting their dumb asses harder and taking them out at a 99 to 1 ratio weeding them out of the gene pool and voting base faster while also proving to their families that they were wrong in a way they largely can't deny as easily. Still fucked up, but the closest thing to a good thing that can be found here. But that still feels like point out how Hitler's immoral experiments advanced modern medicine by decades to try and find something good about his crap.

[Kaleredar]

i'm not sure whats to tear down about "it's important to look at more factors about the spread of coronavirus than just 'republicans bad'"

It's the predominant factor, though. And not like a 51%/49 predominant, it's a "it's painfully clear that the republicans are majorly in the wrong, here."

The fact of the matter is that the majority of the country that are unvaccinated reside in red states. The majority of misinformation about the coronavirus, masks, and the vaccine come from red sources, whether those sources be pundit, news station talking head, or politician. The majority of the complications we're seeing with the Coronavirus are coming from red states. It's not a fucking coincidence that somewhere like Florida or Texas that have a conservative-dominated government, that have lower populations than a state like California, still have more new cases of Coronavirus. And that's not from a "percentage of new cases per X people" standpoint even, that's a flat "there are wholesale more cases in Florida than California. Nothing can explain that except abject failure from the governance of Florida to address the situation, which itself is a lock-step extention of the response of conservative governance the country over as a response to COVID.

Addressing those "other" concerns, including African Americans mistrusting the US healthcare system after it treated them poorly in the past, are issues that need to be dealt with, but dealing with all of those piecemeal issues will still not address the necessity of Republican voters and the republican party adequately addressing COVID, which they are not doing right now and which is by and large the problem.

[starlord]

You are greatly undervaluing how much having him give them a platform elevated them and added to their numbers. As an analogy, there were hate crimes before Trump became president, but their number increased significantly once he started dog whistling from behind the podium of POTUS.

And, as I said in my previous post (which I added later so you're forgiven if you missed it), this is a political thread in a political forum, so I will continue to talk about what the politics of Trump and his GOP allies have done/will do to affect us with respect to the pandemic. I would not post this in Gen-OT for that reason. I also think not talking about what they have or are doing wrong is in itself a misstep and I have also spoken about how policies/decisions the current administration have taken may be wrong (see my previous posts on being in disagreement with mask mandates being lifted). If some people here say they respond to trolls to correct them and keep the rest of the public informed, then responding to what the supposed leaders of the nation are doing is at least equally as important.

You're free to ignore me if you don't like reading about it; I won't hold it against you.

well, i guess it's a matter of "do we want to address anti vaxxers as a problem, or use it as a political football to own the other team."

step 1 ought to be removing these:

[Benggaul]

Addressing those "other" concerns, including African Americans mistrusting the US healthcare system after it treated them poorly in the past, are issues that need to be dealt with, but dealing with all of those piecemeal issues will still not address the necessity of Republican voters and the republican party adequately addressing COVID, which they are not doing right now and which is by and large the problem.

And I'd like to add here that while addressing vaccine hesitancy among minorities and other groups is also a concern, it's not as big a problem as some may think.

This is a week out of date but I doubt the percentages have changed much in that time.

While African Americans and other minorities do lag behind in terms of vaccinations in general, they aren't the group that's falling behind the most:

In almost a dozen states reporting more than 50 cases per 100,000 people last week, White people make up a disproportionately low share of the vaccinated population, which was not the case in the earliest months of the national inoculation drive. In Missouri, Louisiana and Nevada, where new cases are running at least twice as high, the White vaccination rate trailed the Hispanic rate, which had long been held down by the group’s relatively low median age.

Recent polls have found Republicans and White evangelicals are least likely to say they’ll get the shots, which may account for less uptake among White people in certain states, especially in the South, Midwest and West. Since cases, hospitalizations and deaths are now primarily among the unvaccinated, these groups with less vaccine uptake are most vulnerable.

Some handy graphs there to show how various ethnicities rate in terms of relatively more/less vaccinated and how much of the population of the state they represent. For the most part they are approaching par or "fair share" of vaccinations in most states.

So, yes, while it's not the only obstacle to herd immunity, Trump's base remains the largest by far.

- - - Updated - - -

well, i guess it's a matter of "do we want to address anti vaxxers as a problem, or use it as a political football to own the other team."

First of all, insert your favorite "why not both?" meme here.

Second, I agree that those exemptions should be removed. However, when/how do you foresee that happening? Especially when leadership in a lot of those places is deathly afraid of offending the religious? Maybe when they're voted out and more progressive folks are voted in (which, again, when will that happen?), but until then I'll keep pointing out how the current leaders are fucking up various issues.

[starlord]

First of all, insert your favorite "why not both?" meme here.

Second, I agree that those exemptions should be removed. However, when/how do you foresee that happening? Especially when leadership in a lot of those places is deathly afraid of offending the religious? Maybe when they're voted out and more progressive folks are voted in (which, again, when will that happen?), but until then I'll keep pointing out how the current leaders are fucking up various issues.

Yea they did fuck up, our past leaders did too; Vaccine rates were already dropping before Trump:


as you can see, its not a repub vs dem state issue.
washington has long been a notorious anti vax haven. "progressives" are often just as bad as the religious zealots in this.
looking at one specific vaccine (Covid) is missing a big part of the picture imo.

as for solutions, well, people need to vote to stop enabling anti vaxers and cut their feet out from under them. as you say it won't work everywhere.
i don't know if the fed could step in, thats another can of worms.
but otherwise its all just political football imo.

[tehdang]

Right, that was my initial point, that there are places where the $100 could work because it's not just Republican areas that have low vaccination rates. It wasn't meant as a controversial statement.

That was followed up by someone going "No, it's Republicans" with an article using county data and I pointed out a major flaw with such a broad approach to showing low vaccination areas with actual data and references.

It's very important to understand that even if the partisan discrepancy is solved to any extent, there is still a problem with vaccinations that needs addressing. It doesn't help to point out the correlation at the county level when big population centers with very few Republicans still have struggles. The best way of showing you have understanding on the issue is to accept multiple and sometimes overlapping issues without neatly characterizable explanations.

It's not an asinine debate to try to determine if there are patterns. The reason the CDC re-implemented the mask mandate was because an outbreak in Massachusetts where 74% of infected people were fully vaccinated. If the delta variant is breaking through that significantly, we need to do more than just solely depend on vaccinations. If there are patterns, precautions can be implemented in a smarter way, and perhaps break the pattern. Nobody is happy with the precautions even when they do them, so trying to learn ways we can lessen their impact is not asinine.

Obviously this is the wrong forum to try to bring nuance to the situation, so I'll leave it be.

Also interesting to point out with this recent data is that the outbreak in Provincetown, MA was that these were infections and not severe cases. 347 vaxxed people found to be infected, 247 vaxxed were symptomatic, 4 vaxxed hospitalized, 0 deaths.

And this was in a hyped Fourth of July festival with thousands packed into the small towns bars. Lines for the bars went for blocks. Dance parties abounded for travelers fresh off of NYC's Pride parties. So thousands of tourists packed into the towns limited bars, restaurants, guest houses, and rentals. The outbreak reinforced that the worst places for picking up COVID infections, now particularly for Delta variant, are densely packed indoor areas. And it's in no way typical of the country at large's demographics. 85% of victims of infection were men, as an example.

[solinari6]

Also interesting to point out with this recent data is that the outbreak in Provincetown, MA was that these were infections and not severe cases. 347 vaxxed people found to be infected, 247 vaxxed were symptomatic, 4 vaxxed hospitalized, 0 deaths.

Another thing that's worth pointing out, the outbreak in Provincetown was during Bear Week, which is basically a weeklong party of constant circuit parties and orgies. So it's a pretty extreme example of an outbreak to base data off of.