Coronavirus: Already In a Neighborhood Near You

[Mr.TaterSalad]

NPR: Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

 

Next at 11, the vaccine helps reduce your symptoms and severity of illness an you get less sick when you are vaxxed.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Mr.TaterSalad

[Mr.TaterSalad]

I guess Fifth Avenue turned out to be a lot bigger than expected.

[gehringer_2]

17 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

NPR: Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

 

Next at 11, the vaccine helps reduce your symptoms and severity of illness an you get less sick when you are vaxxed.

has there ever been a party in any democratic country anywhere whose politics actually helped to kill their own members (other than in a war)? Is there any precedent to this in the short history of democracy?

Edited December 6, 2021 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

27 minutes ago, chasfh said:

That's true, the United States is the best country for women to live in. Well, except for the Netherlands. And Norway. And Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Spain, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, Portugal, and ... wait for it ... Singapore.

https://ceoworld.biz/2021/06/11/the-worlds-best-countries-for-women-2021/

well if....squints...."ceoworld magazine" says so then it must be true.  lol.  ridiculous.

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, buddha said:

well if....squints...."ceoworld magazine" says so then it must be true.  lol.  ridiculous.

Well, if they don't know the difference between a "clip" and a "magazine", or what a risk pool is, I guess their opinion on this means nothing.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

2 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

has there ever been a party in any democratic country anywhere whose politics actually helped to kill their own members (other than in a war)? Is there any precedent to this in the short history of democracy?

In something other than a wartime, I can't recall one. Maybe there were incidents in Africa during an Ebola breakout, but even then, nothing comes to mind. The Japanese telling their citizenry to jump off cliffs with their children rather than being captured in WWII comes to mind, but as you said, that was during wartime.

Republicans are literally killing off their voting base one by one and they still can't even manage to take Covid and this pandemic seriously.

[ewsieg]

So this is why some folks are for charter schools.

I just got a text message stating to look for an email notification from our school regarding quarantine actions required on our part.  I look up the email, it's for my daughter who is supposed to sing at a christmas tree lighting event with her school choir class.  Current policy says I can send my daughter into school based on certain conditions.  As she is not fully vaccinated yet (second shot in a few days), we can test her daily which would allow her to still attend school if negative.  The process requires to provide proof of a negative test when she goes into school in the morning.

So I call the school right away and see if I can give her a test tonight and provide it to her teacher to allow her to attend tonight.  Initially the secretary states they believe that would be work, but checks to verify.  After speaking with the office manager, I learn that the quarantine process technically doesn't start until tomorrow as she was not identified until the end of the school day.  Therefore, I can send her to the event and no test is needed.  Awesome!

[gehringer_2]

18 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

The process requires to provide proof of a negative test when she goes into school in the morning.

So I am curious, what do they accept as 'proof'?

[ewsieg]

18 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

So I am curious, what do they accept as 'proof'?

I've sent in the binax test which you can visibly see if it has one or two lines (although I don't think it has a key explaining that attached to it).   For another one, you actually use an app, so I did a screen shot and sent it to my daughter.  She showed it to the office on her ipod and they accepted that too.  My guess is it's probably an honor system to a point as every time I talk to a different parent, their kids are in quarantine too.

[Tiger337]

10 hours ago, chasfh said:

That's true, the United States is the best country for women to live in. Well, except for the Netherlands. And Norway. And Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, Spain, Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, Portugal, and ... wait for it ... Singapore.

https://ceoworld.biz/2021/06/11/the-worlds-best-countries-for-women-2021/

Do they have the same list for men?  I honestly don't know how great this country is to live in.  It's good enough for me and I doubt I'll ever leave, but I suspect other countries are just as good or better.  I have lived here my entire life and don't really have anything to compare it to (as far as actually living some place else).  America is the most powerful country and there are many opportunities here, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best place to live in.  

[Jim Cowan]

47 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

It's good enough for me and I doubt I'll ever leave, but I suspect other countries are just as good or better.  

That's how I feel and I suspect most of us feel the same way.  I am lucky to have been born into a free society, with readily accessible education and health care and a favourable business environment.  Coulda been worse.  But almost everybody who lives in the G20 would say the same thing, and boasting that "this is the greatest country in the world" is not something that you would ever hear from the residents of the other G20 countries.  As you said, other countries are probably just as good or better.

There are lots of those "best countries" indices out there on the internet and the Scandinavian countries usually are ranked pretty high.  An interesting one is the UN's Human Development Index whose rankings are derived from 3 factors:  life expectancy, education, and per capita income adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity.  It produces a list that is a bit different from the usual "best countries".

[ewsieg]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Do they have the same list for men?  I honestly don't know how great this country is to live in.  It's good enough for me and I doubt I'll ever leave, but I suspect other countries are just as good or better.  I have lived here my entire life and don't really have anything to compare it to (as far as actually living some place else).  America is the most powerful country and there are many opportunities here, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best place to live in.  

It's a great country to live in.  It's not the only great country to live in though.  For my values and views, I do believe it's towards the best.  Values and view are subjective though.  I was telling my younger cousin about vacationing in Germany years ago.  My uncle lived there as he served in the Army and he married a german women.  My aunt took us to a pig roast on a Sunday morning.  We were planning on driving to Munich that afternoon, so I wasn't drinking.  By 9:30 in the morning, the roughly 150-200 folks in this soccer hall/complex in the middle of nowhere already had 2-3 steins of beer and shots of some thick liquor.  A guy across from me said how he heard everyone in the US is an alcoholic and we all get DUI's.   Turns out, if you want to get avoid a DUI in Germany, you need to get into an accident.  They utilize camera's in order to deal with speeding, running lights, etc.   Basically, you need to get into an accident, which would then require you to call the police, in order to have to deal with the cops.  

[Jim Cowan]

26 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

It's a great country to live in.  It's not the only great country to live in though.  For my values and views, I do believe it's towards the best. 

Yes that's it exactly.  The vast majority of residents of G20 countries would say exactly the same thing, word for word. They would not be very interested in relocating to any of the other G20 countries, even if language were not a barrier.  The country that they currently live in, its flaws notwithstanding, meets their needs unless they are at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale.  

[chasfh]

The United States is inarguably the greatest country in the world in reach and influence. Whether it’s the best country to live in—that’s up to the individual to decide.

[Motown Bombers]

I would probably prefer to live in Canada but it's not worth the effort. 

[chasfh]

28 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

I would probably prefer to live in Canada but it's not worth the effort. 

I wouldn’t. Kraft dinner with ketchup is simply an abomination. 🤢

[Tigerbomb13]

6 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I wouldn’t. Kraft dinner with ketchup is simply an abomination. 🤢

 

[Motown Bombers]

10 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I wouldn’t. Kraft dinner with ketchup is simply an abomination. 🤢

I went to Montreal prior to the pandemic and became smitten. It has just enough of Europe. The lack of mass abandonment and crime was appealing as well. 

[Tiger337]

18 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

I went to Montreal prior to the pandemic and became smitten. It has just enough of Europe. The lack of mass abandonment and crime was appealing as well. 

Montreal is a great city.  Ramener les expos!

[Motown Bombers]

14 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Montreal is a great city.  Ramener les expos!

Speaking of the Expos, one of my favorite parts was the Olympic Stadium. I understand it was a complete boondoggle and terrible for baseball, but it was an impressive stadium from the outside. It was probably too ahead of it's time. 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

11 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Do they have the same list for men?  I honestly don't know how great this country is to live in.  It's good enough for me and I doubt I'll ever leave, but I suspect other countries are just as good or better.  I have lived here my entire life and don't really have anything to compare it to (as far as actually living some place else).  America is the most powerful country and there are many opportunities here, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best place to live in.  

What depresses me more than anything is I can drive 25 minutes from my house, cross the bridge or tunnel into Windsor and be guaranteed certain rights, like healthcare, that I can't get just a stones throw across the river.

[Motown Bombers]

9 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

What depresses me more than anything is I can drive 25 minutes from my house, cross the bridge or tunnel into Windsor and be guaranteed certain rights, like healthcare, that I can't get just a stones throw across the river.

Yeah but can you walk in downtown Windsor with an AR-15 over your shoulder? Think about that. You may need it even though the murder rate across the river is about 40 times higher. 

[Motown Bombers]

Next time you're in Windsor, how about you throw over their cheap prescription drugs instead of stones? 

[chasfh]

21 hours ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

NPR: Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

 

Next at 11, the vaccine helps reduce your symptoms and severity of illness an you get less sick when you are vaxxed.

This dovetails into a pet peeve that has taken root in the past year or so: the synonymization of the words “misinformation” and “disinformation”. They are simply not the same, and NPR is a repeat violator of botching the difference.

“Misinformation” is defined by the OED as “The action of misinforming someone; the condition of being misinformed” or “Wrong or misleading information”. Specifically, intent is not contemplated in the definition, the general idea (which you may have experienced in your own life) being that when someone is “misinformed”, you generally give them the benefit of the doubt that they tried to obtain the correct information, and that when they turned around and relayed such information to you, they thought they were dealing in the truth—but were instead misinformed. It’s fair to assume that they are trying to be honest actors.

“Disinformation”, on the other hand, is defined by OED as “The dissemination of deliberately false information, esp. when supplied by a government or its agent to a foreign power or to the media, with the intention of influencing the policies or opinions of those who receive it; false information so supplied.” Differently from the word “misinformation”, malevolent intent is front and center in the definition of “disinformation”, the dissemination of which is, again, deliberate and with intention to influence those who receive it. People who spread disinformation know the information is wrong, know it’s a lie, and yet spread it anyway, typically for a clear purpose beneficial to them.

There is no way red hats are being misinformed, because the people they are getting their direction from are not trying to be honest actors and deal in the truth. Instead, they are lying for gain. That's not misinformation. That's disinformation.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Florida Sentinel: Governor Covid, Ron DeSantis, Underreporting Covid-19 Deaths

Quote

 

The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that the Florida Department of Health had commenced an inquiry into the state’s reporting of COVID-19 deaths, after Governor Ron DeSantis suggested that the official reports overstate the number of deaths. According to the report, Governor DeSantis and members of his staff repeatedly questioned the accuracy of the COVID-19 death rates, with his press secretary Fred Piccolo Jr. tweeting: "we can tell you definitively that Florida is counting deaths that were not directly caused by COVID-19.” Mr. Piccolo has also sought to downplay the COVID-19 pandemic in other ways. On one occasion, he erroneously tweeted: “we had one COVID death in Florida yesterday . . yes you read that right. One.” In fact, on the day in question, there were 47 deaths.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and other independent public health experts suggest that Florida’s total death toll from the pandemic is actually understated. Experts noted that Governor DeSantis’ administration has used a COVID-19 infection rate that gives “more weight to negative test” results, and thus skews the results. Governor DeSantis has used the skewed rate to justify reopening schools and businesses. In response to criticism, Mr. Piccolo denied that Governor was attempting to question the official death toll, stating “[n]o one in the administration is trying to cast doubt on the number of COVID deaths, we are trying to get to the facts.”