I don’t think there is. The deficit hawks are dead and no voters are sold on balanced budgets. Both parties spending like crazy. Citizens just want their piece of the piece whether govt subsidies, benefits, loans, freebies like health care and college educations but have the other guy pay for it. The schools have their hands out too but the thing you can do most to improve minority education (ship black and brown kids to white school districts) is vehemently resisted by nimby voters and cash demanding teachers unions. White shoe republicanism is dead.
Bad News Thread
- Thread starter kickingandscreaming
- Start date
The two Santa Claus theory was not a step forward, to be sure.
But I don’t see much future for the GOP as the white grievance party, either. Even if you somehow have no moral objections to it, demographics will make it unworkable within 15 years.
WTFRUTA? Stop it!!! Enough is enough and 8 is way too much losers!!!
agree but the issue is the ds seem intent on ticking off minority working class voter too. Certainly the immigration, school closures and woke agenda have the Latino community jittery. The riots and affirmative action in colleges is a potential weakness for the Asian and Jewish communities. Trump did move the needle there even in the African American community despite Harris being on the ballot. Whoever captures these voters has a chance to build a solid coalition but I don’t see the ds doing it if they lean heavily into wokeism, or the rs if they lean heavily into racial dog whistles.
the white community isn’t monolithic either. The umps are very heavily d. This is actually more a class thing than it is a racial thing at work with the workers tilting towards trumpy Populism and the upper classes and lower classes tilting towards the ds. Not a criticism but your particular technocratic position is why you don’t see it. But that also makes the r coalition more stable if they can actually make those voters feel more comfortable in the r tent instead of having to have them look over their shoulder for the confederate flags. It’s a season of odd bedfellows.
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
Alright, 7 weeks ago we were given a 6-14 week range of Osterholm's Armageddon ("OA"). As stated last week, we have flattened out in cases and now hospitalizations are only dropping slightly. That isn't good news. However, we are nowhere near anything like OA. Deaths are still dropping like a rock, but they typically lag hospitalizations by a couple of weeks. If deaths keep dropping like this for two more weeks, I think it's pretty much done - no OA. By then we'll be at about 30% vaccinated (24.5% now). If J&J comes through in the volumes expected starting in April, we'll likely be vaccinating news folks at 1%/day. By the end of April, we'll be nearing 60% vaccinated with at least their first shot.
Gottlieb today went on a limb and says notwithstanding what’s happening in the northeast he doesn’t expect a third wave. If not for our issues in the northeast, the cases/hospitalizations would be dropping.
Reading a good book right now by irshaf manji called “don’t label me”. She rabid anti trump, passionate Obama supporter and has blinders about Obama’s role in all this. She is also anti-woke and quite unbeknownst to me spotted the same thing in her book as I outline above. Coincidence
kickingandscreaming
PREMIER
But CNN did a whole story last summer about how NY had figured it out
. If I had to guess, I'd say the daily deaths keep falling. Maybe cases rise for a bit, but based on what happened in Israel, it looks promising. My only concern is that we vaccinated a higher portion of the older population who were least likely to get it and those in the more densely populated areas aren't getting vaccinated at as high a rate. I'm feeling optimistic about this being pretty much over by May. We just need J&J to come through with the expected doses. Of course, even if this happens, I imagine CA will have its share of "Hiroo Onoda" folks who will keep up the battle.What we should do will depend on whether a seriously vaccine resistant variant develops.But CNN did a whole story last summer about how NY had figured it out
If such a variant exists, then the right response is to mask up even after we are vaccinated.
If there is no such variant, then the masks become unnecessary after vaccination.
But, as yet, no one knows which case applies. And we probably won't know any time soon.
This is an argument though that every time a new variant comes people need to go back to the old npis. Since new variants will be around for a while that means masks (and now 3 foot distancing) forever (at least in the foreseeable future). Rather the proof should go the other way...do that when there’s been shown to be a likelihood of substantial harm
the next question is what is substantial harm. Even if the variant goes around the vaccine does it reduce the rate of death and icu care below that of the flu. Cases don’t matter only serious illness
Bruddah IZ
DA
nothing.
Bruddah IZ
DA
You're a little late to that party Alice.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Fauci's revenge for being too short for the court.VCU out of NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament over coronavirus issue, Oregon advances
This sucks for VCU and the players
You seem to be lumping all NPI together. This is not valid.
The level of risk needed to justify masks is different from the level of risk needed to justify shutting down factories. A 10% chance of another half million people dying seems more than enough to justify wearing a mask. It is not enough to justify shutting schools and factories.
Not that it matters. A large fraction of the country proved themselves incapable of behaving responsibly in the presence of a known pandemic. I can’t imagine their behavior would suddenly improve in the presence of a potential pandemic. Instead, they will scream “LOCKDOWN’ if anyone tries to require them to wear a piece of cloth on their face.
Then they will search the internet for some image or half-informed fool willing to say masks don’t work- preferably a doctor speaking outside his specialization.
Don;t you have a Math class to teach today?
This is an argument, again, for masks forever, since there will be new variants in the foreseable future. At a minimum, once everyone vaccinated, scale it back and restrict it to high risk places like grocery stores, movie theatres, slaughter houses, factories and doctor's waiting rooms and you might get more of a buy in.
If that is an argument for “masks forever”, then you are arguing for “a half million annual excess deaths, forever.”
They both depend on the same thing: how dangerous are new covid variants to a vaccinated population. If the variants, as they mutate, are equally dangerous to 2020 covid, then we get to choose between masks forever and a higher death rate forever. But you don’t get to assume temporary for one and permanent for the other.
That's why I said the relevant question is whether the ifr is in the same ballpark as the flu. The burden of proof though should be that there is proof that: a) the variant has moved away from the vaccine, and b) that the variant is causing substantial ICU hospitalization/death despite vaccination. The NPIs should be tied to the IFR (or even the CFR), not cases which are meaningless. Otherwise we are just engaging in perpetual whack a mole between the vaccine updates and variants.
By the time we have the data you are asking for, it will be too late to control the variant with low cost means. Test and trace doesn't work on high case counts.
You're essentially arguing that masks are so bad it is worth risking a shutdown to avoid them.