Bruno Sardine

5. Stop calling people with whom you disagree pieces of shit

And he could show you 100 videos of nonviolent arrests of minorities made by cops. That was his point. Speaking of dissembling.

The purpose of news reporting is reporting the news. Reporters should not be attempting to help further “the narrative” or “take the emphasis away from the destruction of the protests.” That is the job of editorial writers and talking heads. The reason it matters is that the press, like the police, needs to be regarded as a neutral arbiter. When people think cops, or reporters, are biased and take sides, they lose faith in cops, lose faith in reporters. And that can’t be good, though your perspective is shared by many. The New York Times embraced it openly, years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness-and-a-proudly-provocative-presidential-candidate.html?_r=0 But I ask you to honestly consider: has this approach had the effect of strengthening Americans’ faith in the press or undermining it? Because studies suggest it’s the latter. Which is in fact counterproductive, whether your goal is combating police brutality against minorities or thwarting Trump.

Preach it. The thing is – and if it’s been mentioned elsewhere here I apologize – I haven’t seen a single reference to one of the main reasons for the schism between police and the American public. The application of rationalization systems to law enforcement. Quotas, in other words. The same thing has happened, to an extent, in education. But that’s another topic for another day. Many years ago the appealing pitch was made: we can turn our police departments from cost into profit centers. At the same time we can gain a firmer understanding of the relative effectiveness of individual officers by quantifying their performances. That’s why dudes get arrested on street corners and in parks for selling cigarettes and other bullshit. It’s the reason minorities are targeted in Ferguson and many other areas of the country for driving with broken taillights, expired registrations and other bullshit.

Well, my post was in response to your post. If those are the countries to whom we should compare ourselves, you could have done that yourself. Okay, let's compare ourselves to Mexico. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/08/world/americas/mexico-coronavirus-count.html On second thought, let's not compare ourselves to Mexico because it's a terrible comparison and their numbers are utterly unreliable. How about Canada? You said yourself in another post we're "in the same ballpark as Canada." I really don't know much about Australia. If your point is that we haven't handled things as well as Australia, then I'm happy to concede the argument.

You seem focused on the ratio between a country’s share of coronavirus deaths and its percentage of world population, using it to make the argument that the US “is massively over-represented.” Based on the numbers you provide, the US ratio is .25/.04=6.25 The best comparisons to the United States are other, Western countries. Let’s apply your approach to European nations: Belgium - .15% of world’s population and 2.8% of total cases for a ratio of 19 France - .8% of world’s population and 9% of total cases for a ratio of 11 Germany - 1.1% of world's population and 2.5% of total cases for a ratio of 2 Italy - .8% of world’s population and 10% of total cases for a ratio of 13 Netherlands - .22% of world’s population and 1.9% of total cases for a ratio of 9 Spain - .6% of world’s population and 8.4% of total cases for a ratio of 14 Switzerland - .11% of world’s population and .6% of total cases for a ratio of 5 UK - .9% of world’s population and 11% of total cases for a ratio for a ratio of 12 So compared to these Western countries (with the notable exception of Germany and to a lesser extent Switzerland) the United States is not massively over-represented.

That sounds right, but in this particular discussion the reason some of the sailors were tested twice is they started experiencing symptoms again.

Alert: Not peer-reviewed research I am not posting this because I believe it. I accept the conventional narrative that the virus is natural and am persuaded by the evidence offered here to that effect. But this guy is a legit scientist. Not a quack or someone whose area of expertise is tangential. His name is Nikolai Petrovsky and if you look him up you will find he is heading up research into a coronavirus vaccine in Australia. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/fu-cio040220.php In any case, he says the virus doesn’t appear to have come from pangolins or bats. Instead, it seems “exquisitely adapted to infect humans.” Needless to say, his work has received considerable pushback. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-covid-mystery.html From the article: In a quest to find a vaccine or drug treatment for COVID-19, high-performance computer modeling has been used by Australian scientists to study the virus's ability to target a variety of 12 exotic and domestic animals in the hope of identifying the original source of the virus… The study, led by Flinders University scientists, compared the modeling to the virus's ability to bind to human cells and found the SARS-CoV-2 virus targets humans more potently than any of the tested animal species.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/children-may-not-be-super-spreaders-afterall-new-research-suggests-1.5552099 From the article: What Australian researchers are calling the first survey on children and the spread of COVID-19 in the classroom is turning heads in Canada..."Contrary to what we thought, in relation to influenza — that [children] become very large transmitters of the disease in the population — this does not necessarily seem to be the case," said Quebec's chief medical officer, Dr. Horacio Arruda, at a news conference last week..."It really demonstrates there's very little transmission from student to teacher and vice-versa, which is really reassuring," said Freedman [scientist at the University of Calgary and a member of the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute].

Agreed

Yeah, many predicted disaster when the governor decided to reopen. But disaster hasn’t struck. Not sure what gives. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/real-time-updates-coronavirus-in-georgia/85-0022f9eb-87b5-48f1-a179-e6b99912f5ac Highlights (as of 5/13): * Total deaths - 1,505 * Total cases – 35,332 * Over the last 14 days (4/30-5/13) the avg daily increase in newly reported deaths was 27.29 * Over the previous 14-day period (4/16-4/29) the avg daily increase in newly reported deaths was 34.93. * Over the last 14 days the avg daily increase in newly confirmed cases was 659.86. * Over the previous 14-day period the avg daily increase in newly confirmed cases was 703.64.

https://www.dw.com/en/labor-day-berlin-workers-rally-defies-social-distancing-ban/a-53303301

Agree about Alex Jones, but the idea that the increase in total deaths is partially attributable to causes other than coronavirus is not a fringe perspective. I linked this before, so apologies for redundancy. https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional/sick-georgians-avoiding-doctors-offices-due-fear-covid/4wLmeefvZaTyuBD7DXkeyK/ From the article: “A study by Yale researchers and The Washington Post found that the number of U.S. deaths in the first weeks of the pandemic soared well past the number that would have been expected, even with known COVID-19 deaths included.That could be attributed to several factors, including some deaths caused by the coronavirus not being categorized that way. But surveys also show people are putting off all kinds of medical care. A new poll commissioned by the American College of Emergency Physicians found four in five adults reported they are concerned about contracting COVID-19 from another patient or visitor in the emergency room. The poll also found that, because of the virus, nearly a third of Americans are delaying or avoiding some type of medical care, not just the kind that’s provided in emergency rooms. Women are postponing annual mammograms. Families are canceling well-child checkups and vaccinations, and even skipping newborns’ first doctor appointments.”

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional/sick-georgians-avoiding-doctors-offices-due-fear-covid/4wLmeefvZaTyuBD7DXkeyK/ Anecdotal evidence warning: re total death counts and people failing to seek medical care due to fear of infection. From the article: “The scene at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital’s emergency room is unlike anything Dr. Sean Sue has ever seen in his nearly 30 years practicing medicine. It’s quiet. Very quiet — in the throes of a COVID-19 pandemic. On some days, there are more physicians than patients. Looking out at the emptiness, “You’re thinking, where are all of the patients?” said Sue. “Where are the patients having heart attacks, strokes, diabetic ketoacidosis?”

Trying to make sense of this disease is like looking at an optical illusion. On the one hand there is the testing which took place in several prisons, involving thousands of inmates who tested positive for the virus, 96% of whom showed no symptoms. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX On the other hand there are stories like these. A person contracts the virus, develops greater-than-mild symptoms (couldn’t leave her bed for 3 days) then passes the disease to people close to her, who also develop serious symptoms (both her parents were diagnosed with pneumonia). https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/05/01/minnesota-familys-illnesses-suggest-coronavirus-may-have-been-here-longer-than-thought What could explain this discrepancy? Seems like there are three possibilities. 1) different strains of the virus 2) genetic component – something specific about the family in the 2nd story predisposed them to getting seriously sick 3) severity of initial exposure (viral load)

If he had written, “There are fucking people who’ve lost their entire livelihoods man,” then your response would make sense. But it is clear he means that some people might still be able to save their livelihoods. So your statement, “then they have nothing to lose by staying quarantined,” does not follow from the sentence he wrote. They do have something to lose: their livelihoods. Your comment, “think of someone else besides yourself for a change, comrade,” also makes no sense when the point of his post is expressing concern for other people. I’m not saying open up or don’t open up. But your response to what was actually written is so bizarrely off base it stands out even by surly standards.

I haven't seen this discussed here. Is this statement independent of coronavirus? Or are you saying that if someone gets a flu shot, and then contracts coronavirus, that the risk of pulmonary infection increases? I did a search for this and couldn't find any sources (probably didn't search enough).

That's why the plants offer mini-tours.

The genetics angle makes a lot of sense (in light of the Ohio prison study where 95% of 3,000 inmates infected with the virus showed no symptoms). It doesn't necessarily rebut your point of view. The truth could be something like, x% of people are genetically predisposed to contracting the virus in such a way that it severely messes with their bodies. If you're not in this x%, you can be a fatty or an old or a diabetic. Your symptoms will be mild or non-existent. But if you are in the x%, then obesity and age and diabetes matter. A lot.

Exactly. The Kintner boy was an aberration.

Not a medical person either, and can't speak to your specific scenarios, but yes there's a correlation between the degree of exposure (I believe "viral load" is the operative term) and the course of the disease. This would help explain, for example, why many medical workers such as the relatively young doctor at one of the Wuhan hospitals died. The idea is that the milder the initial exposure, the more chance the body has to familiarize itself with the virus, which takes time to replicate. Or something like that.

It does seem odd. I know the numbers aren't perfect, but here are some numbers showing actual deaths per million people: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdUOA?Si USA - 107 deaths/million population Netherlands 202 Switzerland 153 Sweden 139 Belgium 445 Spain - 417 Italy - 367 France - 276 UK - 215 Anybody can play the "look at this country, they did things so much better than we did" game. Heck, I'm playing that game right now. Only in reverse. Bottom line is all the western intelligence agencies, all the western countries had access to more or less the same data at more or less the same time. Is the Netherlands a backwards country run by buffoons? Switzerland? Sweden? I don't think I'm guilty of a straw man argument here. There really does seem to be a sentiment afoot that there was something atypical about the way we responded to this crisis compared to other western countries - something negligent which resulted in an unusually large number of deaths as a percentage of our population. This is not true.

I don't doubt this, and thanks for sharing your knowledge. But what is up with all the reports about disruptions to our meat supply? General consensus here is things are fine (there were posts in the recent past about the glut of food in commercial and institutional supply chains). Here are some examples of what I'm talking about: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/833623211/pork-plant-closure-highlights-disruption-of-food-supply-chain-due-to-coronavirus https://www.wsj.com/articles/smithfield-ceo-warns-of-risks-to-pork-supply-11586730489 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/business/coronavirus-food-supply.html

That’s an interesting perspective. On the one hand, your impression of American suburbia does not seem positive. (“And American suburbia is the most antisocial form of living.”) On the other, at least some of what you dislike about it turns out to be, in the context of this crisis, helpful.

Doomsayer alert. Yes, it's the South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079443/coronavirus-could-target-immune-system-targeting-protective But the story’s source is a peer-reviewed article (I think) in a reputable scientific journal. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41423-020-0424-9 It's a Chinese study with one researcher based in the US. Says the disease attacks the immune system itself. MERS does the same thing, but less effectively.