Virus thread, the political one.

[beeatnik]

So what's your point? The COVID-19 pandemic is a world-wide story, affecting every human on the planet. It affects our most basic human function: life (or lack thereof). Why wouldn't it dominate the news?

Greg

It's bigger than Nam, man.

Also, I don't have the print edition but I read one of the front page stories on nytimes.com. And, of course, it includes the following:

Or perhaps the reality is simply too bleak for any administration to explain away entirely: The president has contracted the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans on his watch. His behavior, since leaving the hospital on Monday, appears to be a continuation of the kind of scientifically dubious happy talk that has left the Trump-Pence ticket at a significant polling disadvantage four weeks before Election Day.

Even the stagecraft on Wednesday included a conspicuous reminder of the administration’s failings: Plexiglass barriers separated the candidates, owing to the virus’s march through the ranks of the capital.

My point, once again: does every story on the front page require that context.

[johnmdesigner]

I would be very satisfied if the NYT had a giant banner on every edition;

36.3M Cases Worldwide
1.06M Deaths Worldwide

If you want variety in the news go out to Podunkville (I'm from Podunkville) and read the local paper.
Trump Pence news.
Football scores.
Very little useful info on the Pandemic.

And in the local paper where I grew up no mention of the super spreader event hosted by the VFW that landed 40 people in the hospital.
I only know because my cousin works in the hospital.

[beeatnik]

I would be very satisfied if the NYT had a giant banner on every edition;

36.3M Cases Worldwide
1.06M Deaths Worldwide

Yes. Robert Del Naja and I endorse that message.



https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...e26-story.html
No such problem for Massive Attack. While the lyrics are generally impressionistic, Times Square-like message light scrolls were used pointedly to add sociopolitical layers, such as the statistics of Iraq war casualties and costs that ran by as Miller and Del Naja sang the simmering-yet-hopeful climax “Safe From Harm.”

[johnmdesigner]

Oh, I forgot about the 16 articles about how not to burn down your neighbors house when deep frying your Turducken for Thanksgiving.

[beeatnik]

If you want variety in the news go out to Podunkville (I'm from Podunkville) and read the local paper.
Trump Pence news.
Football scores.
Very little useful info on the Pandemic.

And in the local paper where I grew up no mention of the super spreader event hosted by the VFW that landed 40 people in the hospital.
I only know because my cousin works in the hospital.

I make a distinction between "variety in the news" and propaganda. And I'm generally all for propaganda. The good non-Stalinist Chomski type.

[ColonelJLloyd]

My point, once again: does every story on the front page require that context.

You may be belaboring it by now.

But I appreciate your persnickety news consumer style.

[johnmdesigner]

I was in love before but now I am unhinged.

[johnmdesigner]

It's bigger than Nam, man.

Also, I don't have the print edition but I read one of the front page stories on nytimes.com. And, of course, it includes the following:

Or perhaps the reality is simply too bleak for any administration to explain away entirely: The president has contracted the virus that has killed more than 210,000 Americans on his watch. His behavior, since leaving the hospital on Monday, appears to be a continuation of the kind of scientifically dubious happy talk that has left the Trump-Pence ticket at a significant polling disadvantage four weeks before Election Day.

Even the stagecraft on Wednesday included a conspicuous reminder of the administration’s failings: Plexiglass barriers separated the candidates, owing to the virus’s march through the ranks of the capital.

My point, once again: does every story on the front page require that context.

Yes.
Think of a dog, a rolled up newspaper and crap on your rug.

[gregl]

My point, once again: does every story on the front page require that context.

As I'm sure you know, the content delivered by a free press media organization is determined by the organization's editorial leadership. In a small-town paper, the reporter and editor may be one and the same. In the NYT, it's an editorial board. If "every story on the front page" of every paper (or website, e-mail newsletter, etc...) has "that context," it's because their editors deem it appropriate. Hopefully journalistic ethics and pressure from other, competing organizations keeps the content factual and accurate (along with the threat of libel or slander civil lawsuits...). Case in point: Trump hasn't denied the NYT story on his taxes or announced that he is taking them to court. Silence appears to equal agreement on the facts in that particular case.

Greg

[Walter Sobchak]

FWIW, currently, the number of dead from Covid19= number of killed, wounded and missing in Vietnam war.

Only on our side. 212,000 deaths so far from COVID-19. 58,000 US military deaths in 'Nam.

Vietnam has 35 deaths from COVID-19. Over 400,000 VC and PAVN deaths in the war. Over a million counting civilians.

It's bigger than Nam, man.

Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is COVID-19.

The repetition is necessary because the idiots feeding the fire have refused to acknowledge the damage they're doing.

[EDS]

Only on our side. 212,000 deaths so far from COVID-19. 58,000 US military deaths in 'Nam.

Vietnam has 35 deaths from COVID-19. Over 400,000 VC and PAVN deaths in the war. Over a million counting civilians.



Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is COVID-19.

The repetition is necessary because the idiots feeding the fire have refused to acknowledge the damage they're doing.

To be fair, the aggregate death tolls you reference above are the result of events spanning multiple years. I hope we do not have to say the same about COVID-19.

[jimcav]

To be fair, the aggregate death tolls you reference above are the result of events spanning multiple years. I hope we do not have to say the same about COVID-19.

ha, true, but what a distinction to have to make--that the only comparison we can readily find/appreciate in our living memory is the deaths from the major f-ing wars of the 20th century

[beeatnik]

I asked my wife, who does not consume any major media, to estimate the number of US deaths due to Covid-19. She responded 210K. I asked her to estimate the total for California. She guessed 30k.

We live in Southern California.

LA County cases: 278,665
LA County deaths: 6,726
California deaths: 16,428
CA cases: 845,767

I should ask her to estimate the number of dead in Mexico and Brazil where we are one generation removed.

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...ountry/brazil/
https://www.worldometers.info/corona...ountry/mexico/

edit: she estimated 20k for Mexico. Talk about a place with a Death Cult...
https://theculturetrip.com/north-ame...n-mexico-city/

[colker]

I asked my wife, who does not consume any major media, to estimate the number of US deaths due to Covid-19. She responded 210K. I asked her to estimate the total for California. She guessed 30k.

We live in Southern California.

LA County cases: 278,665
LA County deaths: 6,726
California deaths: 16,428
CA cases: 845,767

I should ask her to estimate the number of dead in Mexico and Brazil where we are one generation removed.

https://www.worldometers.info/corona...ountry/brazil/
https://www.worldometers.info/corona...ountry/mexico/

edit: she estimated 20k for Mexico. Talk about a place with a Death Cult...
https://theculturetrip.com/north-ame...n-mexico-city/

Brasil is at 150k deaths and acting similar to the US: federal and states taking sides. People oblivious to danger and "bored" w/ restrictions. There is some concern about the economic recession, unemployment and the huge shift in how we live= collapse of urban way of life.
Popular response has been "let´s get back to our lives" when there is nowhere to get back.
Seems similar to US.
Papers are doing their part, I believe.

Mexico DF has covid everywhere.

[thollandpe]

I asked my wife, who does not consume any major media, to estimate...
the number of US deaths due to Covid-19
...California
...Mexico
...Brazil

Where you going with this?

US, she essentially nailed it at 210k.
CA? She guesses 30k but it’s “only” 16k.
Mexico? She guesses 20k and it’s 83k.

Brazil is 4th highest in the world for death rate, 700 per million population.
US is 10th at 657.
Mexico is 11th at 640.

Is it that your part of CA has been hit worse than the whole?

Is this like we finished 4th, 10th, and 11th in a field sprint and it doesn’t matter because we’re all literally within an arm’s length?

Is it that the mighty US has numbers comparable with Brazil and Mexico instead of the other English colonies or the EU?

Or that she knows the US number because it’s been reported repeatedly in the media?

[beeatnik]

^What's the value of an American life? 10, 20, 30x that of a life in a developing nation? The irony is that the most jingoistic of Americans have now devalued or abstracted these 211k lives. That's what I'm talking about.

I find it problematic that I need to be reminded daily of American losses with very little context or concern for the worldwide losses. If every article is going to mention the 210K then as Johnnydesigner demanded, every article should mention the worldwide death toll. I read 20 plus stories daily on covid-19 and that's allowed me to navigate the pandemic (still negative after all these months!). Having the total American loss injected into every article has very little benefit for me (as an informed "persnickety news consumer"). All the while the 30K plus who die yearly from Narco violence are ignored by the US and to some degree by Mexico, so I shouldn't be surprised that some lives are bigger than others.

Oh, and papers in CA never report the total deaths (16K). Gotta be cos Gavin is doing such a great job!

Is it that the mighty US has numbers comparable with Brazil and Mexico instead of the other English colonies or the EU?

193,569 deaths in the EU.
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19-pandemic

[colker]

^What's the value of an American life? 10, 20, 30x that of a life in a developing nation? The irony is that the most jingoistic of Americans have now devalued or abstracted these 211k lives. That's what I'm talking about.

I find it problematic that I need to be reminded daily of American losses with very little context or concern for the worldwide losses. If every article is going to mention the 210K then as Johnnydesigner demanded, every article should mention the worldwide death toll. I read 20 plus stories daily on covid-19 and that's allowed me to navigate the pandemic (still negative after all these months!). Having the total American loss injected into every story has very little benefit for me. All the while the 30K plus who die yearly from Narco violence are ignored by the US and to some degree by Mexico, so I shouldn't be surprised that some lives are bigger than others.

This... but also there are the necro politics involving covid. Since there is no vaccine, scientists told us to isolate and if that calls for loweriing the level of economic activity so be it. Some nations went w/ that but others, like Italy, adopted a "ignore covid and it will go away". All the neo extreme right wing politicians went the same way. Press, journalists didn´t think so and decided to shout everyday how wrong it is.

[gregl]

^What's the value of an American life? 10, 20, 30x that of a life in a developing nation? The irony is that the most jingoistic of Americans have now devalued or abstracted these 211k lives. That's what I'm talking about.

I find it problematic that I need to be reminded daily of American losses with very little context or concern for the worldwide losses. If every article is going to mention the 210K then as Johnnydesigner demanded, every article should mention the worldwide death toll. I read 20 plus stories daily on covid-19 and that's allowed me to navigate the pandemic (still negative after all these months!). Having the total American loss injected into every story has very little benefit for me. All the while the 30K plus who die yearly from Narco violence are ignored by the US and to some degree by Mexico, so I shouldn't be surprised that some lives are bigger than others.

Reasonable people the world over understand that all lives have equal value. COVID is a global tragedy. News organizations tailor their content for their intended audience. If you read/watch US-based news, the content will have a US-centric slant. Likewise, if you follow news from other countries, you will find the news that their intended consumers want. None of these news websites mention the US COVID death toll on their front/home page stories:

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/
https://riotimesonline.com/
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/
https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/english

Greg

[Bob Ross]

Trump Failed the 3:00AM Test

(Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic)

in its entirety, because it's important to share:



A memorable campaign ad from 2008 urged voters to ask themselves which candidate would perform better in an unexpected emergency: “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing ... Your vote will decide who answers that call.” Franklin D. Roosevelt answered Pearl Harbor. John F. Kennedy answered the deployment of Soviet missiles to Cuba. How would this year’s candidates respond when confronted with an emergency?

Joe Biden has never held the top job, so voters can only speculate. But a pandemic began on Donald Trump’s watch, so no speculation is needed. Trump showed us how he did perform in a crisis: He failed. Trump is obviously not responsible for all of the COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. But the U.S. has fared much worse than the median developed country. And among wealthy nations, its per capita deaths rank in the top five. Trump can’t avoid blame for America’s subpar performance, because voters can identify specific actions he took that contributed to the country’s failures. Especially damning is that Trump couldn’t even protect himself from the disease.

Compare the White House to the NBA. Months ago, the league decided to go ahead with its season by bringing 22 teams into a “bubble” with coaches, trainers, referees, support staff, and media, despite a formidable challenge: Hundreds of young basketball players would run, pant, sweat, jostle for rebounds, huddle together in time-outs, and fill their off hours together, away from friends and family. The league developed sound protocols. Players, coaches, and others executed them competently. And the NBA went months without a positive COVID-19 test, allowing it to salvage a season worth billions of dollars while entertaining the American public.

A presidential bubble is comparatively easy to protect: Trump had all the resources of the federal government, no need for close physical contact, the ability to consult with any expert on optimal protocol, and a Secret Service to enforce whatever he decided upon. Yet he proved unable to stay healthy, not because he was stricken early, when little was known, but because he failed to take the most commonsense precautions, such as wearing a mask or not hosting large events.

Trump’s carelessness didn’t just jeopardize his own health, and that of his wife, his aides, and the Secret Service. The September 26 White House event for the Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett appears to have compromised the health of many important officials. “More than 100 people gathered,” NPR reported. “Guests mingled, hugged and kissed on the cheek, most without wearing masks. An indoor reception followed the outdoor ceremony. Seven days later, at least eight people who were at the ceremony have tested positive.” Someone may die because of the White House’s bizarre laxness at an unnecessary event. And because U.S. senators are among the infected, its consequences could conceivably delay or even derail Barrett’s nomination. Nothing like this could have happened to a president exercising good judgment.
But the drama of recent days should not overshadow Trump’s actions prior to his illness. His compounding failures of leadership date back to the very beginning of the pandemic.

Mendacity was his most avoidable failure. Presidents in a public-health crisis should tell the truth. Trump lied to Americans from the outset of this life-threatening emergency. In early February, he privately told Bob Woodward that COVID-19 spread through the air and was more dangerous than the flu, even as he downplayed the seriousness of the disease in public. “I wanted to always play it down,” he later told Woodward. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” The false impression he gave was echoed by his allies through the conservative media. Millions would have taken COVID-19 more seriously if Trump hadn’t repeatedly downplayed it. But instead of leveling with Americans, Trump kept lying month after month.

“We’re very close to a vaccine,” he declared on February 25. On February 28, just before an explosion in cases, he told Americans that the virus would soon disappear, “like a miracle.” In early March, long before the typical person could get tested for COVID-19, Trump told Americans that anyone who wanted a test for the disease could get one. On March 24, he asserted that a shutdown lasting months was untenable, in part because suicides “definitely would be in far greater numbers than the numbers that we’re talking about with regard to the virus.” On April 10, Trump said that the final number of U.S. deaths could be as few as 55,000, a mark the country surpassed before the end of that month. A week later, Trump said that the death toll would maybe reach 65,000. In May, he expressed the hope that the pandemic would end with fewer than 100,000 lives lost, though that death toll was quickly exceeded.

Throughout those months, the U.S. regulatory state was failing in various ways. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed its own test procedures early on, but those proved to be faulty and based on contaminated materials,” the economist Tyler Cowen told me. “At the same time, the CDC legally prevented Americans from pursuing other testing options. That is a major reason America fell behind in the testing race, and with its late start, America was not able to buy up enough testing materials before those items became very scarce.”

A better president would have shored up America’s public-health infrastructure prior to the pandemic rather than letting it continue to decay. A better president would’ve seen the earliest failures of the regulatory state and used the powers of his office to correct them as quickly as possible. But rather than constantly insisting that the regulatory state treat COVID-19 more like an emergency and emphasizing that brief bureaucratic delays could cost thousands or tens of thousands of lives, Trump repeatedly focused on downplaying the challenge that America faced. As Ronald Klain, who served as chief of staff to two different Democratic vice presidents, told my Atlantic colleague Ed Yong, “In the best circumstances, it’s hard to make the bureaucracy move quickly. It moves if the president stands on a table and says, ‘Move quickly.’ But it really doesn’t move if he’s sitting at his desk saying it’s not a big deal.”

Trump’s failures can be exaggerated. He is not the only public official to err. His defenders are correct when they observe that Anthony Fauci fumbled his early messaging on masks, that various governors failed to adequately protect nursing homes in their jurisdictions, and that public-health officials undermined the culture of social distancing when they put out politicized statements justifying large public gatherings to protest the death of George Floyd. Many officials at the national and state levels behaved in ways that suggest they should not be trusted in future emergencies. But Trump is the only one running for president on his record.

Besides, a core part of the president’s job in an emergency is to glean useful advice from experts while overruling them when their narrow insights are outweighed by broader national interests––but for the most part, Trump neither accepted the best expert advice nor rejected the worst. He presided over the worst of both worlds. “Caution has become politically contentious in part because of disputes over whether this spring’s shutdowns were necessary. That is a legitimate subject for debate,” Scott Gottlieb and Yuval Levin wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “But that dispute has kept us from grasping the truly critical mistake––the failure to deploy diagnostic tests early that would have helped gauge where the virus was spreading. Some cities, such as New York, were on the brink of collapse. Others still had little spread and containment was possible. This failure led both to exploding caseloads and overbroad shutdowns.”

No one can pinpoint exactly how many excess deaths Trump is wholly or partially responsible for, or how much excess economic pain America is suffering because of his poor job performance, not only because of the complexity of parceling out blame and the hypothetical nature of what different leaders might have done, but also because the death toll is still rising––every week or two, COVID-19 is killing more Americans than died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

And winter is coming. Cold weather drives people inside, public-health directives that allowed many businesses to reopen by doing as much as possible outdoors will no longer be feasible in colder regions, isolated people will want to travel home to gather with family for winter holidays, and the flu season is almost here. Back in mid-September, when there were roughly 40,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day, my colleague James Hamblin interviewed Fauci. “As we approach the fall and winter months, it is important that we get the baseline level of daily infections much lower,” Fauci told him, adding that “we must, over the next few weeks, get that baseline of infections down to 10,000 per day, or even much less if we want to maintain control of this outbreak.” But Trump had no plan to do that. Daily new cases are still at more than 40,000.
Trump’s response has not been to try something different as winter nears. In fact, his primary message to Americans when he left Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was that they should not fear the disease, because medical treatments have improved and a vaccine is on the way.

Once a vaccine does arrive, distributing it to Americans and persuading skeptics to take it will prove challenging. Trump has given ample reason to conclude that he is not capable of rising to the occasion.
Voters need not speculate as to how Trump might perform in a high-stakes emergency, because he showed us how he did perform: He lied to the American public; he did not avert or quickly correct the federal bureaucracy’s most serious errors; he repeatedly gave false assurances that contributed to many Americans being less careful than they should have been; he responded to catastrophic levels of death by pretending that victory was right around the corner, rather than changing strategies; he presided over a country that was outperformed by much of the world; he failed at the relatively simple task of protecting himself and his wife; and that latest failure threatened the lives of U.S. senators, White House staffers, and many others. Trump answered a 3 a.m. phone call, and he bungled it. Don’t let him answer another one.

[Too Tall]

Thanks Bob.

Y'all have two choices as represented by two tabs at the top of this forum. Vote or watch puppies play. Your call.