Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Benggaul]

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.

Oh I never said it wasn't an issue before. All I've said is that it's been exacerbated with the past 4 years of the Trump Shitshow, which it absolutely has. I'd be interested in seeing a current national map as opposed to nearly 10 years ago, especially since I think it's become much more polarized than it was then, though I admit I haven't been able to find any hard data that says one way or the other apart from the obvious discrepancies with the COVID vaccine. I don't think the GOP has a monopoly on anti-vaxxers by any means, but I'm pretty confident in declaring they have the vast majority currently.

I also don't think the federal government can do anything about it without stepping on States rights (actual States rights...not the ones the South are constantly going on about) unless another Amendment goes through--or an Amendment to an Amendment--but gods forbid we should change what people wrote a couple hundred years ago so that it applies to today's world.

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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.

loooool I didn't even know that was a thing. No wonder things were a bit skewed there. It will be interesting to see if those numbers appear anywhere else.

[solinari6]

loooool I didn't even know that was a thing. No wonder things were a bit skewed there. It will be interesting to see if those numbers appear anywhere else.

yeah, I haven't seen that reported anywhere either, I'm guessing the mainstream media either wasn't aware, or was tip-toeing around it because they didn't want to appear anti-gay or something

[Benggaul]

yeah, I haven't seen that reported anywhere either, I'm guessing the mainstream media either wasn't aware, or was tip-toeing around it because they didn't want to appear anti-gay or something

Hmm, could be, if they would take a critical stance of the mass of bodies I can see it being twisted to that degree. I'm highly critical of any mass gatherings that aren't in aid of basic human rights right now. We still have a long way to go out of the pandemic and now we're taking steps in the wrong direction.

[starlord]

Oh I never said it wasn't an issue before. All I've said is that it's been exacerbated with the past 4 years of the Trump Shitshow, which it absolutely has. I'd be interested in seeing a current national map as opposed to nearly 10 years ago, especially since I think it's become much more polarized than it was then, though I admit I haven't been able to find any hard data that says one way or the other apart from the obvious discrepancies with the COVID vaccine. I don't think the GOP has a monopoly on anti-vaxxers by any means, but I'm pretty confident in declaring they have the vast majority currently.

heres one from 2018:

In most states, however, overall vaccination rates fell from 2009 to 2018, a sad testament to the surge in so-called "vaccine hesitancy" over the last decade. The decline was most severe in Georgia, where local health officials have been troubled by the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media. Similarly, vaccination rates fell roughly 6% in Arkansas, where the majority of vaccine exemptions are granted on religious or philosophical grounds, rather than for medical reasons. Likewise, in Utah, where vaccination rates fell almost 5%, only a tiny fraction of exemptions are medically justified.

Link

I also don't think the federal government can do anything about it without stepping on States rights (actual States rights...not the ones the South are constantly going on about) unless another Amendment goes through--or an Amendment to an Amendment--but gods forbid we should change what people wrote a couple hundred years ago so that it applies to today's world.

i think you are right.

[Hollycakes]

Sorry but I have to laugh at people here in the US complaining about their freedoms being taken away. Has anyone seen the news from Oz today? My aunt sent me this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...wn-Sydney.html

[Ursus]

Sorry but I have to laugh at people here in the US complaining about their freedoms being taken away. Has anyone seen the news from Oz today? My aunt sent me this:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...wn-Sydney.html

Yeah but people in Michigan couldn't buy grass seed or lawn fertilizer last April, the horror

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1250491829155500032

[Breccia]

Sorry but I have to laugh at people here in the US complaining about their freedoms being taken away.

Yeah, it rings a little "how dare you make me show concern for my fellow man and my own well-being!"

It's like the motorcycle helmet law, except pretend all motorcycles that crash, explode.

[PhaelixWW]

FYI, I think we can expect another shitty report from @Benggaul today on the daily COVID numbers.

Uh... that is to say that the report is shitty, not that the reporting is... whatever, you know what I mean.

Taken with a gator-sized grain of salt because, well, Fuck Florida, but worldometers is reporting that Florida is posting a new record in new case counts today. Yes, you heard that right: a year and a half into this pandemic, more than half a year after vaccines have started flowing out to the public, and Florida has had its worst day yet for reported new cases.

I do again stress reported new cases because, as we get daily reminders, we have significant reason to suspect Florida's numbers all along. That being said, that suspicion applies equally to today's numbers, so if previous numbers were undercounts, then today's is almost certainly, as well.

Fuck Florida's previous record was 21,015 on New Year's Day this year, but today's mark is 21,683. And this is almost certainly no correction, as the trajectory of their daily numbers has been leading directly to this point.

Buckle up, folks, 'cause Florida's going to take us for a ride. I have a feeling that things are going to get much worse once we actually reach the typical flu season this year unless Governor DeathSentence changes course and starts actually caring about his constituents' lives.

...

I wanted to laugh at that thought, but I can't even, because people are dying.

For all of you here who are living in Florida right now... my condolences, stay safe, and just vote NO to DeSantis in 2022.

[Benggaul]

FYI, I think we can expect another shitty report from @Benggaul today on the daily COVID numbers.

Uh... that is to say that the report is shitty, not that the reporting is... whatever, you know what I mean.

Taken with a gator-sized grain of salt because, well, Fuck Florida, but worldometers is reporting that Florida is posting a new record in new case counts today. Yes, you heard that right: a year and a half into this pandemic, more than half a year after vaccines have started flowing out to the public, and Florida has had its worst day yet for reported new cases.

I do again stress reported new cases because, as we get daily reminders, we have significant reason to suspect Florida's numbers all along. That being said, that suspicion applies equally to today's numbers, so if previous numbers were undercounts, then today's is almost certainly, as well.

Fuck Florida's previous record was 21,015 on New Year's Day this year, but today's mark is 21,683. And this is almost certainly no correction, as the trajectory of their daily numbers has been leading directly to this point.

Buckle up, folks, 'cause Florida's going to take us for a ride. I have a feeling that things are going to get much worse once we actually reach the typical flu season this year unless Governor DeathSentence changes course and starts actually caring about his constituents' lives.

...

I wanted to laugh at that thought, but I can't even, because people are dying.

For all of you here who are living in Florida right now... my condolences, stay safe, and just vote NO to DeSantis in 2022.

The floor is yours today, friend. I don't do reports for Saturdays and Sundays anymore because (as you might have noticed), barely more than a dozen or so states even bother reporting in the weekend, though they all absolutely should be.

But yeah, I saw the total for Florida and was going to post it but figured I'd have too hard a time keeping the inappropriate smug tone out of my writing which is really wrong because, as you said, people are dying.

The only caveat I would add to what you wrote is that their previous high might have actually been a correction given that it was happening around the holidays. Today's is likely legit.

EDIT: Oh! One thing I can actually add is that thanks to some late corrections for Friday we did actually pass 100k already this week. Friday's updated total is 101,098. For those that might think this is a pattern because of what happened last Summer, the highest reached then nationally was about 80k (the high for Florida was about 15k).

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heres one from 2018:
Link

Thanks, though I've noticed in all of the graphics so far the lowest rates has been in the 80's, which is honestly higher than I was expecting. I also note in the part you quoted that they say the "most severe" declines were Georgia and Arkansas. Utah is always fucking goofy. For reasons I would be banned for mentioning.

[unfilteredJW]

Send help.

[Benggaul]

Since I can't seem to find any official numbers on the COVID deaths in Missouri, I guess I'll have to turn to individual news articles to get an idea of what's going on. Like this one. Bit of a long read, but worth it.

31-year-old man recovering in Missouri hospital after being given a 20% chance of survival; eschewed vaccine, citing ‘strong conservative family’

ASSOCIATED PRESS
OSAGE BEACH, Mo. (AP) — Daryl Barker was passionately against a COVID-19 vaccination, and so were his relatives. Then 10 of them got sick and Barker, at just 31, ended up in a Missouri intensive care unit fighting for his life.

It’s a scenario playing out time and again at Lake Regional Hospital in Osage Beach, where 22 people died from the virus in the first 23 days of July. Many other hospitals across Missouri are fighting the same battle, the result of the fast-spreading delta variant invading a state with one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, especially in rural areas.

The Associated Press was given access inside Lake Regional, where just two months ago, no one was hospitalized with the virus. Doctors, nurses and staff at the hospital in the heart of the Lake of the Ozarks region are now dealing with an onslaught of COVID-19 patients — some of them struggling to stay alive.

“We’ve had a big-time delta virus surge here. A lot of admissions, a lot of people who are very sick and are dying,” said Dr. Harbaksh Sangha, Lake Regional’s chief medical officer. “So as a human being it’s very frustrating, but as a physician we just take care of whatever we get.”

Just 47.5% of Missourians have initiated vaccination, nearly 10 percentage points lower than the country as a whole. Around Osage Beach, a town of about 5,000 people that straddles two counties, state data shows only 38.6% of Camden County residents and 26.7% in Miller County have started the process.

Barker, of Branson, about 120 miles southwest of Osage Beach, understands the hesitancy.

“I was strongly against getting the vaccine,” Barker said through labored breathing. “Just because we’re a strong conservative family.”

In the U.S., many people who identify as politically and socially conservative have been more reluctant to be vaccinated — so much so that in Missouri, faith leaders have joined the effort to encourage shots. Meanwhile, the summer outbreak is so alarming that Democratic-led St. Louis city and county and Kansas City have reinstated mask mandates.

*ahem*

The virus has recently run through Barker’s extended family. Not only did he and his wife, Billie, get it, but so did eight other relatives.

Barker got so sick that his wife took him to the emergency room in Branson. He was sent home with oxygen, but got worse.

With the Branson hospital maxed out with COVID-19 patients, doctors contacted a dozen hospitals in all corners of the state. All were at capacity. Lake Regional was nearly full, too, but Dr. Joe Sohal, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, found a bed for Barker.

He arrived critically ill. Placed on a ventilator, Barker was given a 20% chance of surviving.

“The doctor told me he was going to let my wife and kid in so I could say my goodbyes because he didn’t think I was going to pull through,” Barker said. In those conversations, he told his wife and 6-year-old son, Brody, that he loved them “and I wasn’t going to give up.”

Slowly, Barker started to recover. Sohal is optimistic but said Barker, who has been hospitalized for three weeks, isn’t out of the woods.

“This is the time when he’s going to get a lot better or a lot worse,” Sohal said.

The Lake of the Ozarks region draws nearly 5.5 million annual visitors and made national news early in the pandemic, when large crowds were spotted ignoring social distancing while partying at bars and swimming pools.

That mindset remains in Osage Beach. Few people — locals or visitors — wear masks, even in crowded spots.

If tourists are getting sick, they’re taking it home with them. Sohal said most of the COVID-19 patients at Lake Regional are locals, or people like Barker transferred from other hospitals.

Statewide, hospitalizations for COVID-19 have more than doubled since the start of June, and the number of ICU patients has more than tripled. Since June 7, Lake Regional has admitted 125 patients with the virus. As of Tuesday, it had 21 COVID-19 patients, including eight in intensive care and four on ventilators. Sohal himself signed about a half dozen death certificates over the past week.

Sohal said many patients now are younger — in their 20s, 30s or 40s — and sicker, often with gastrointestinal distress in addition to breathing problems.

Hospital staff members are exhausted. Among those feeling the strain is ICU nurse Chris Murphy, who spends much of his day running from one room to the next.

“It’s devastating people and families,” Murphy, a former combat medic, said of the virus. “And you should take precautions.”

Sohal said nearly everyone hospitalized is unvaccinated. Patients have said they worried about vaccine side effects, or felt the vaccines were rushed out took quickly.

Daryl and Billie Barker both plan to get vaccinated once he recovers.

Daryl said his wife and son are why he’s fighting so hard.

On a sweltering day, they sat outside the ICU in lawn chairs, looking at Daryl through glass. Every now and then, Brody walked up to the window and waved to his dad, who smiled and waved back. Billie used a dry erase marker to scrawl “I love you” backwards on the glass so her husband could read it.

“I don’t ever want to have to do this again,” she said, “and if that means getting a vaccination to prevent something like this, that’s what I’ll do.”

Does it really HAVE to take a near-death experience to get people to save themselves and their loved-ones? Fuck's sake.

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Send help.

My sister and her family are currently stationed down there and I'm worried sick about them. She and her husband should be okay (both fully vaccinated), but they have two kids under 12. They're being relocated abroad next month and for the first time in her husband's tour I've been hoping they get moved early.

[PhaelixWW]

But yeah, I saw the total for Florida and was going to post it but figured I'd have too hard a time keeping the inappropriate smug tone out of my writing which is really wrong because, as you said, people are dying.

I legitimately started typing out a laugh at that point, then had to stop and ellipsis it out, because I really just wasn't feeling it.

The only caveat I would add to what you wrote is that their previous high might have actually been a correction given that it was happening around the holidays. Today's is likely legit.

Yeah, I gave the number on 1/1/21 the benefit of the doubt because it was right near the peak of that wave, and, well... ALL Florida's numbers are suspect, so at some point you just have to roll with it. But to put things on a more balanced level, the highest mark in Florida's 7-day rolling average was on 1/11/21 at 15,985. If today's numbers holds up, Florida's current 7-day average will jump to 15,817, just shy of that record. Tomorrow will likely see that record broken as they're up against the total of 12,773 from 7/25, which means they'd only have to hit ~14,000 or higher to surpass the 15,985 7-day average.

EDIT: Oh! One thing I can actually add is that thanks to some late corrections for Friday we did actually pass 100k already this week. Friday's updated total is 101,098. For those that might think this is a pattern because of what happened last Summer, the highest reached then nationally was about 80k (the high for Florida was about 15k).

It's really depressing. Less than six weeks ago, our 7-day average was 11.8k, and now it's 77k and rising quickly.

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Send help.

I'm legit waiting for the news to start showing people pushing off the Florida coast on rafts, trying to make it to Cuba because they feel like the government there is safer.

But seriously, the silver lining for you is that you at least have the power to vaccinate yourself, despite what others choose to do (or not do) for themselves. There are plenty of places in the world that don't even have that option. So don't neglect your health, and if some idiots around you want to darwin themselves out of a voting right, just do your best to not let them drag you or anybody you care for down with them.

It's also never too early to start laying the groundwork for a push for a new governor.

[Benggaul]

It's really depressing. Less than six weeks ago, our 7-day average was 11.8k, and now it's 77k and rising quickly.

Yeah. Stumbling just before the finish line because some rowdies from the crowd charged the field to party and the ushers in charge of those sections just let them go. I am genuinely anxious about what happens once school starts. Vaccines for 12 and under aren't approved yet and DeathSantis has already nixed school mask mandates.

[D Luniz]

for all the "its the media/left/etc tryign to divide us" mess Ive seen concern trolled in comments sections, I have to ask

just WHAT in conservatism covers vaccination?
Rather sure neither Buckley or Feldwel said a thing about it, completely sure Reagan didn't

[Benggaul]

for all the "its the media/left/etc tryign to divide us" mess Ive seen concern trolled in comments sections, I have to ask

just WHAT in conservatism covers vaccination?
Rather sure neither Buckley or Feldwel said a thing about it, completely sure Reagan didn't

I can't really get deep into it without delving into forbidden topics, but from what I gather it's largely when "science" butts up against "belief".

[Bodakane]

for all the "its the media/left/etc tryign to divide us" mess Ive seen concern trolled in comments sections, I have to ask

just WHAT in conservatism covers vaccination?
Rather sure neither Buckley or Feldwel said a thing about it, completely sure Reagan didn't

Conservatism isn't a concrete ideology anymore. Conservatism is whatever either Trump says it is or the opposite of what liberals want to do.

The ONLY reason there's still a US covid problem is because Dems wanted to treat it seriously, so Trump didn't.

That is it.

People can pretend to be upset about pre Trump anti-vaxxers all day and night, but the simple fact of the matter is that before Captain Orange Dipshit, we didn't have a problem meeting vaccine requirements across the population.

[Breccia]

Fuck Florida's previous record was 21,015 on New Year's Day this year, but today's mark is 21,683.

There's no reason to believe that Florida's numbers will miraculously reverse tomorrow.

But just to be clear, this isn't about a single day vs a single day.

Florida's highest 7-day average weas Jan 8th, and it was 17,991 flanked by 15,XXX on both sides.

The most recent 7-day average is 15,818.

In other words, it's not just possible but likely that Florida is about as fucked as it has ever been. Even if there's a massive 180 tomorrow, which yeah I suppose it's possible a backlog was all reported at once, but even if there was this was the second worst 7-day rolling average. Cases would have to drop by 25% or more tomorrow and ongoing, to keep the average now lower than the highest part of the highest peak.



Saaaaaaaay just for the hell of it, how's Illinois doing?



Oh wow, isn't that interesting? Illinois isn't doing nearly as badly as Florida is doing. illinois is going up, but at time of writing, their current number of cases is lower than every peak they've had.

Did someone say Massachusetts?



Well they shouldn't have, because they're doing contextually pretty well, too. New York? New Jersey? California? Lower, lower, lower. While every state is on an upwards course, some are just comparatively lower than others.

For added fun, in case anyone out there is thinking of cherry-picking counties, I've got the ten worst counties in the USA in terms of cases per capita. Of those ten counties, two are in Florida (although neither is the worst). Two are in Texas and one is in Mississippi. The rest are all Louisiana, speaking of which...



LA has broken past their worst spike ever ever. Remember all that talk we had about the aftermath of Mardis Gras 2020? Double that.

Louisiana and Florida are both at, or near, their highest high records of ever ever ever. Alabama? Arkansas? Both over half their higest peak, something the aforementioned blue states aren't doing. Texas and Georgia are not quite half their higest, which again is not great when compared to states doing well like Massachusetts and Illinois. Texas and Georgia are roughly mirroring the national average, which again, Illinois and Massachusetts are both doing better than. It would take a disingenuous poster, nay, an outright liar to defend Florida while suggesting these states had a problem. An outright, objective, liar.

Deaths follow cases by a week or two. Remember how I said Florida's previous highest peak of cases/day was Jan 8th? Well, they had two massive peaks for deaths, and one of them was 160-180 7-day average deaths from Jan 15th to...holy shit, Feb 11. While not their highest peak, it got up there and stayed up there for basically four weeks, killing four to five thousand people in one month. In 2019 they lost about 3,000 to car crashes in the entire year.

Florida isn't the only state in serious trouble, but they're in serious trouble. More than any other state but one, and with a few of their nearby friends in almost as serious trouble. I'm both surprised and relieved to see Texas isn't that bad yet, in the context of this post of course, by having their new daily cases average 30-40% of the highest they've ever been. Which is bad, but the USA is doing about the same overall, so in comparison it's not too bad. Maybe they've taken some pointers from Illinois and Massachusetts?

To use an ugly but appropriate geographical parallel: America stuck its dick in crazy, and now it's rotting off.

"Time to grab a cleaver?"

NO! Jesus. No, it's time to get the penicillin. Even dick rot can be treated -- but only an idiot would go to the doctor with a case of Acute Dick Rotting Off and complain about a blister on the back of their hand. "Look at this one blister on an otherwise healthy hand," this insane person would say, "it's clearly the big problem we need to discuss." Can you imagine?

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"its the media/left/etc tryign to divide us"

That's not an argument anyone can make in good faith anymore. There might be some individual people or smaller, highly suspect sites like Breitbart or Russian troll's Twitter feed, but there are no major news agencies of any form saying "the vaccine is a bad idea, don't get it".

And those tiny fringe sites that are saying it, I'd bet 3:1 down the line they're right-wing.

[D Luniz]

*snip*
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That's not an argument anyone can make in good faith anymore. There might be some individual people or smaller, highly suspect sites like Breitbart or Russian troll's Twitter feed, but there are no major news agencies of any form saying "the vaccine is a bad idea, don't get it".

And those tiny fringe sites that are saying it, I'd bet 3:1 down the line they're right-wing.

its no different than the sudden "concern" about Chicago, a city no one that didn't at least live in Illinois cared about the crime rate of until a senator from there ran and won the presidency

now its the go to deflection

[Bodakane]

Link

Awesome.

Justice Department reverses course, saying IRS must turn over Trump tax documents to House committee

The Justice Department, in a reversal, says the Treasury Department must provide the House Ways and Means Committee former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, apparently ending a long legal showdown over the records.

Pulse: Trump’s tax returns must be released to Congress, says Justice Department

In a memo dated Friday, Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel said the committee chairman “has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former President’s tax information” and that under federal law, “Treasury must furnish the information to the Committee.”

So help me god, if there's bad shit in there and Munchin/Sinema help squash it and/or Biden does nothing about it.....there will be a few of you getting earfuls from me.

[PhaelixWW]

So help me god, if there's bad shit in there and Munchin/Sinema help squash it and/or Biden does nothing about it.....there will be a few of you getting earfuls from me.

I think @cubby will give you a run for your money on that one.