Coronavirus (Sports-Related and General)

Austinfan 2020-05-22 15:23:37 UTC #1064

Some thoughts:

There is no Republican party, just a Trump party, and this may be the death knell of that party.

Half of Republicans don't think masks are required, imagine a few months of churchs, etc. open in Red States with a sizeable minority refusing to wear masks because it "infringes on their liberty," somewhere around July the death toll will become horrendous and the 65+ voters will desert in droves.

The only reliable (and it still suffers from sampling bias) is from NYC right now, though randomized tests are starting to be conducted elsewhere, in areas of low infection false positives are a real issue for antibody tests. NYC data suggests a 10:1 infected to confirmed ratio, which will decline as testing increases (% positives for tests have declined from 20% to 10% as tests spread outside those with severe symptoms).

Herd immunity is mass murder, right now probably 5% of Americans have been infected and we're nearing 100K dead. To get to 60-70% we're talking a million plus, and we went batshit over the Twin Towers killing 3K.

Basically, the right policy right now is to carefully reopen, MANDATORY masks in any enclosed area with severe fines, ramp up testing - tracing - isolation. The goal should be to keep the rate of infection low until a drug treatment is developed to reduce mortality, and eventually (12-18 months if we're lucky) a vaccine which must be developed, produced and distributed to 300M people.

However, the Great Orangutan (GO) is promoting reckless and stupid behavior, instead of providing leadership in times of crisis, he has the Oligarch playbook, "while I shelter behind a barricade of tests workers should go back to work without sufficient protection to restart the economy for my November election."

Philsmania 2020-05-22 15:25:35 UTC #1065

allentown:

I don't see it as that unusual. The extreme pending threat of fascism was readily apparent even before WWII got underway in Europe and China. Still, it took the Pearl Harbor attack to get our nation pulling in the same direction. Up until then, there was a ton of support for Hitler's Germany. In this area and out toward Reading and south toward Lancaster, there was a whole lot of pro-German Bund action, not to mention out-and-out Nazis and KKK. There was papa Kennedy, and Lindberg, and Vandenberg -- all trying to at least keep us from siding with Britain or pushing us to line up with Germany. We also had local communists and militant socialists who went off to fight in Spain and those who strongly opposed this.

The country never came together during the Viet Nam war ( the come together should have been to get the heck out of there), came together briefly after 9/11, but the Iraq invasion ended the unity. We didn't come together for more than about a week after the 2008 near-depression.

We had the first very bloody Civil War and then the second civil war over integration.

We were not a unified nation during the American Revolution.

Decades of labor vs management and the tycoons against the poor, including the last naval battle in territorial U.S. at a steel plant in PA.

Certainly not unified during the gilded age or Roaring Twenties, and both those period had politics limited to only white males in one case and primarily white males in the other.

Partisan politics have been this divided often in our past. We've fought even harder over immigration in the past, on the role of women in politics (none vs just voting).

A largely unified America, which generally pulled together is myth, which became reality during brief periods of time.

Had a close up view of the final death throes of Bethlehem Steel's Bethlehem plant. I think it could have been saved Labor and management could never put aside the pickier bits of their forever battle to save the plant: some capital investment and management-labor cooperation likely would have given at least another decade of good life, but the death match was on.

I think there is more factual uncertainty today, regarding both the Covid and the economy than existed around important facts and projections related to those prior divisions. Also, the Covid hit at a time of near religious/cultural war in our nation, very reminiscent of the strife between the secular model Kemal Ataturk and the Islam-centered model of Erdogan in Turkey over the past quite a few years.

Very interesting perspective. As a student of history, I see us as having fleeting moments of true national unity (Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, post-9/11). Most of the time, we have either national begrudging co-existence (with one side of the divide triumphant and the other unhappy with but accepting its minority status) or "cold civil wars" (which in one case escalated into a hot civil war) which seek to determine which side is the triumphant one and which side is the minority that has deal with it. I am of the opinion that we have been in a cold civil war since January 1, 1993, the day Clinton took office when the conservative side essentially declared total resistance toward a more modern society and the more liberal side fought back.

bkox 2020-05-22 18:31:27 UTC #1066

zambonir 2020-05-22 19:31:51 UTC #1067

Trump himself is not unprecedented as a public figure or politician. But electing (or even nominating) him sure was!

Regarding MLB and the players, I think the tweet I posted earlier is still correct: this is not a negotiation about how to safely and best resume this season. It's a negotiation about that, this season, and the next CBA. That doesn't mean they won't make a deal, there's a lot of pressue (both symbolic and time-wise) to do so. But I'll bet you right now that the 2022 season doesn't start on time, and it won't be because of COVID-19.

Austinfan 2020-05-22 20:26:57 UTC #1068

Father Coughlin, Huey Long, Sen. McCarthy, George Wallace, et al beg to differ.

rpmcmurphy 2020-05-22 22:45:18 UTC #1069

Yes, I know that we have had major political players who have been just as bad as Trump in their own way, but none have ever sniffed the presidency. George Wallace garnered 13.5% of the vote in 1968, and his appeal was largely in the South.

bkox 2020-05-22 23:49:27 UTC #1070

I think the big difference in the divisions of yesteryear and today is how fast news travels.

In the past you had more localized groups that might occasionally get together regionally or nationally. Today Qanon can tweet a conspiracy about something and it races to the devices of tens of thousands of people in seconds. Definitely different than the 2 racists meeting at the town general store to get the gossip

zambonir 2020-05-23 00:41:07 UTC #1071

Patrick Ewing being treated at a hospital. He's 57.

jimbomill 2020-05-23 14:39:00 UTC #1072

Ahh - got it. I've seen something similar in Football (hey Rasul Douglas, want to play? Take a pay cut), but those contracts are structured differently. I wonder how this will play out. I hear by June 1st .

bkox 2020-05-23 17:02:37 UTC #1073

julio 2020-05-23 22:47:13 UTC #1074

Per this poll, 28% of US adults said they believed this is true.

I almost don’t know what to say. Almost. So I’ll say it; if these 28% refuse a vaccine, and subsequently die...we will be better off as a society. Addition by subtraction, as in, "Great trade! Who'd we get?"

Believing something like this demands a serious level of willful ignorance. I mean, a really serious level. 28% of American adults?

bkox 2020-05-23 23:36:25 UTC #1075

As I mentioned before I'm currently in nursing home. Yesterday on 2nd shift the on duty nurse started talking to me about the shut downs. She says the entire virus is 80 percent political. That the Democrats couldnt figure out any other way to weaken trump so they had to destroy his great economy. She says the dem motto is whatever it takes.

This is a 60yo health professional who has been in nursing for 40 years. She was comparing it to seasonal flu and (get this) childhood asthma. Oh and she was wearing her mask below her nose

julio 2020-05-24 00:58:14 UTC #1076

What you have there sounds like a cult member, bkox. Cult members will believe almost anything that allows them to continue to believe in their cult leader, in their cult premises.

There's little that can be done about such people.

We sometimes joke that "reality has a liberal bias," or "Science has a liberal bias." They don't, of course - but if a person holds beliefs that depend on dismissing reality, or dismissing science, that person will often see reality/science as "biased," because reality and/or science don't support their belief system. Superstition dies hard. It's even harder when there is organized propaganda being fed to people on a daily basis, by persons with some selfish agenda - persons who benefit personally by misleading others.

The only solution is critical thinking, and "doing the homework" to sort out reality from superstitious (or malicious) nonsense. Unfortunately, too many Americans are ill-equipped to handle that kind of critical thinking and due diligence. This is what you get in a society that extols ignorance and mocks competence.

schillingfan 2020-05-24 01:13:27 UTC #1077

Such people deal with cognitive dissonance by changing reality to fit their previously held position. What to they do when someone they love dies from Covid19? Dismiss it as something else or an anomaly?

LegoDoom 2020-05-24 02:33:11 UTC #1078

A younger me would agree with you, but an older me wants to redirect any energy into educating people. If people knew what Bill Gates as been focusing on in the last 5+ years, then they wouldn't believe this. I could maybe see it if Google was the villain, but not Bill Gates. And I don't want to turn this into a Google issue as I am generally fine with how they use user information.

jimbomill 2020-05-24 12:39:12 UTC #1079

I'm beginning to believe first hand sound bites more than the mass media. My wife's good friend is a nurse at a nearby hospital. There has been no rush of infected patients, although the preparation for that possibility was impressive.

"masks don't help", followed by "wear masks" followed by the analogy comparing filtration capability versus size of covid-19 germ - like trying to use a chain link fence to filter sludge, plenty of sludge gets through.

It was "can live on a surface up to 72 hours" and now is "not highly transmittable off surfaces" .....

It's tough to be an informed individual when the sources keep changing their respective "science".

allentown 2020-05-24 13:36:47 UTC #1080

It never made sense to me to say that a mask wouldn't be effective if it wasn't able to filter out particles as small as the virus, itself. This may well be true if you are wearing the mask for eight hours of continuous exposure and no ability to change masks. For brief exposures, you're protecting against spit droplet aerosol, so it should be the size of those liquid drops, rather than the size of the virus they contain, which matters. I can also see that while touching a surface with wet, contaminated droplets can contaminate you, that the risk of transfer is far less if the droplets have dried, if your hands are dry, and if you engage in frequent proper hand washing. I've also read no mention of this, but I can imagine that an average human might fend off exposure to three virus particles and become ill if exposed to three thousand.

BaseballCat 2020-05-24 15:40:06 UTC #1081

The problem is science is not all knowing. This is a new virus and data needed to come in. Initial suggestions were based on related viruses. My feeling that the initial suggestion on masks was based on saving them for health care workers and first responders. The info that the virus does not survive long on surfaces may change with more data or be confirmed. That is the nature of science. How much data and the quality of the study conditions matter. That is what frustrates some people as they expect one study will give all the answers. The best science needs to be repeated and peer reviewed. This takes time. There are many examples of quick studies or poorly done science that unfortunately gets people excited (vaccines and autism). Bill Gates tagging people with a vaccine is mainly our nation lack of knowledge on scientific basics. As a science teacher, we need to help improve our students comfort in this area.

flyers19rw 2020-05-24 16:06:11 UTC #1082

I wonder if her superiors knew that she had these points of view and if they did if they would continue to employ her. Actually, myself being a sr. citizen with a mild health issue or two, I wouldn't want to have any contact with such an employee.

bkox 2020-05-24 16:15:41 UTC #1083

This isnt the highest class of facilities. The original 'ppe' they gave the staff were dollar store rain ponchos. They are not enforcing social distancing. 20 or more people pack the floors dining room for each meal. The dining room is only a 12x24 or so space. They gave us all masks and we were told we had to wear em if we leave our room... that lasted 2 days.

Last night I noticed the local NBC affiliate was reporting 4 cases at this facility. This was new so I asked my nurse about it this morning and she says expletive they didnt even tell us. And within minutes I had 2 cnas in my room asking to see the news website.