2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic (Vaccination 2021 Edition)

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

This thread gives me a fucking headache.

It has this de-literacy field where you can feel the neurons that allow you to read slowly wither away and die.

 

[Agema]

People are playing a dangerous, dishonest game of telephone with these statements, and the media is complicit in it with misleading, exaggerated headlines like "Trump Promotes Injecting Bleach" and statements like "President Donald Trump had suggested on Thursday that people should consider ingesting or injecting bleach"

You put both those headlines in quotation marks. I just Googled both of them. The first comes up once from Rolling Stone magazine - hardly heavyweight media - as part of a headline, the second part being what the article is actually about (what ingesting bleach would do to you). The second scores zero hits as a headline. I think this illustrates, perhaps, why we shouldn't be so hasty to leap to condemnation, because if we all took a step back we'd recognise we too can be sloppy, inaccurate, or careless.

Reputable media should be held to a higher standard, sure, and Tstorm's example from post #591 is a pretty despicable media manipulation of presidential comments to unfairly portray him in a bad light, and that certainly does happen. But actually they were nowhere near as bad as some people are making out, and despite their sins they are considerably better than the general public, including us on this forum. Nor are the occasional abuses of the press an adequate excuse for the origin and biggest element of the problem, which is the incompetence of the president in getting his facts right, maintaining a sober and responsible tone, and expressing himself clearly.

 

[Houseman]

The first comes up once from Rolling Stone magazine - hardly heavyweight media

And?

It doesn't matter if it was published in the tabloids at the Walmart checkout counter right next to "I married Sasquatch!"

Someone might read it, try it, and get hurt or die. Someone, maybe even multiple people, probably already have. Anyone who spreads this lie is complicit to whatever harm is done along the way.

The second scores zero hits as a headline.

I didn't say it was a headline. I said "...and statements like...", and then I proceed to quote a statement I found in an article.

Ironic that, in a discussion about misreading and misinterpreting, you failed to read a crucial word that changed the meaning of the sentence and caused you to come to an incorrect conclusion. You're right. We shouldn't be so hasty to leap to condemnation. We should take our time and read carefully, shouldn't we? We wouldn't want to be sloppy, inaccurate, or careless now would we?

Nor are the occasional abuses of the press an adequate excuse for the origin and biggest element of the problem, which is the incompetence of the president in getting his facts right, maintaining a sober and responsible tone, and expressing himself clearly.

And making fun of the President is not an adequate excuse for abusing the press.

 

[tstorm823]

Then why say he told people to inject bleach into themselves as a quote, instead of just saying he's an idiot that knows nothing of medicine?

Because Agema says that all the time already, and he'd rather you or I say it instead. He's saying the wrong thing on purpose as bait someone to say the correct thing in contradiction, which is still pretty bad and therefore a weak defense for Agema to dunk on later. Is rhetorical cheese, that's all.

 

[Silvanus]

See, the thing is, it is.

If someone votes third-party in the US election, it means they're so dissatisfied by their pickings, and yet are serious enough about their civic duty, that they'll throw their vote away. All votes are messages of what the people want, and in that, people are making their voice heard. The proper response is not to sneer at them, but to address their concerns. Yet precious little of that has been happening in this election cycle, to my observation. It's mainly ostracizing, gaslighting, guilt tripping, pleading, and screaming. It's like people have no idea how to build bridges with others at all, which makes me fear for their personal relationships off the internet. I have made the decision to switch my vote from protest to Biden based on my own thoughts, despite the wailing and haranguing of portions of the left which actively repel me from them.

This is why voting third-party (or writing-in, or spoiling the ballot) is hugely preferable to simply abstaining. It at least registers engagement, whereas abstention just sends the message that you probably couldn't be bothered.

But voting third-party also serves as an endorsement of whatever party you actually choose. Who is there? The Greens, or the batshits in the Libertarians?

Of course, all of these options being so deeply unpopular in the US also indicates that theres very little political capital to be made in appealing to their voterbases. Most people who don't vote for the main parties... just don't turn out at all. So they might be staying home because nobody is tackling M4A... or, more likely, they're utterly unengaged and don't give a shit.

 

[Revnak]

Ok he isn’t dead but this is good.

 

[Buyetyen]

Ok he isn’t dead but this is good.

Having him eaten alive by emus, that would be a suitably absurd method of execution for this dingleberry.

 

[Fieldy409]

If you want to claim that Trump was spouting incoherent, stream of conscious nonsense, fine.

But claiming that the he suggested that the American people should poison themselves is orders of magnitude more severe. Lil devils, for example, was even CONVINCED that Trump explicitly said to inject bleach right into the eyeball, based on this same video. Someone else came to his defense and accused me of "gaslighting" when I disagreed.

People are playing a dangerous, dishonest game of telephone with these statements, and the media is complicit in it with misleading, exaggerated headlines like "Trump Promotes Injecting Bleach" and statements like "President Donald Trump had suggested on Thursday that people should consider ingesting or injecting bleach"

And all you have to do is tweak one or two words here and there, and we've gone from a hypothetical question, asked to medical experts, to an official endorsement from the POTUS that could get someone killed.

Key point: ...that could get someone killed.

You've heard of people who have actually injected or drank bleach, haven't you? Where do you think they got the idea from? How do you think lil devils arrived at her conclusion that Trump said anything about eyeballs? Can the blame be placed solely on Trump, or was it the media who, in a mad dash to denigrate their political or ideological opponents, or in an attempt to get more clicks and advertising revenue, made something sound worse than it really was?

It's in everyone's best interest to NOT spread misinformation that could get someone killed. If a "Trump-lover" overhears you saying "...yeah he wants us to inject bleach right into the eye! How silly!", he might actually go and do it. You don't want this to happen, do you? It might be tempting, but I believe that you're a good person who wouldn't wish this on his worst enemy.

Seriously, @lil devils x where did the "inject it into the eye" thing come from? Who told you that?

But anyway, sorry to interrupt. I just think that language is important. I'll go away now.

I don't know about the eyeball but I clearly saw Trump say in his own words about injecting bleach into the lungs.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Just gonna shoot some stuff out quick because I spent too long playing with numbers and I have to get ready for work now, but I found the New York Times excess mortality data here. I only goes up to mid-May, but it's the easiest data set to work with that I've found so far. I then compared to the reported number of covid deaths from here. Between the week of March 9th when covid deaths in the US started and the week of May 11th where the dataset ends, there were 93,385 reported covid deaths in the US compared to excess mortality of 94,532. If we assume other than covid the normal number of people died (which is a bad assumption, but makes easy math), that makes the US death count just shy of 99% accurate.

But more interestingly, of that two month span, it looks like it flipped from undercounting to overcounting. For the first half, the reported covid deaths are thousands under the excess mortality, and then the second half is thousands over, flipping at the point where deaths started going down which suggests its actually just reporting lag. Buuuut the number of people dying to covid continued to go down after that period, so chances are almost 100% that the next few periods at least continued with more reported covid deaths than excess mortality...

The US is reporting more covid deaths than excess mortality, and the data set stopped being maintained exactly the week the numbers were going to trade places. I'll probably dive back into this stuff when I get home in like 12 hours.

I don't really care too much about how exact the numbers are because it really doesn't help anything at this point. I just know from the NYC analysis from a couple months back (I think) where the they doubled the deaths at that time due to excess deaths. Maybe the US is doing slightly worse or slightly better than the numbers show but it ain't going to change the fact that we're doing bad.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

With regards to voting and 3rd parties, we're voting wrong in the United States as you should be able to vote for who want while not putting your worst nightmare in office.

Ranked-Choice Voting

 

[Generals]

You've heard of people who have actually injected or drank bleach, haven't you? Where do you think they got the idea from? How do you think lil devils arrived at her conclusion that Trump said anything about eyeballs? Can the blame be placed solely on Trump, or was it the media who, in a mad dash to denigrate their political or ideological opponents, or in an attempt to get more clicks and advertising revenue, made something sound worse than it really was?

Easy answer on this one: Donald Trump.
And that for several reasons; while he didn't suggest that people should inject themselves with bleach, the way he brought it up would lead any person who considers Trump to be their Messiah (which a lot of his followers seem to believe) to think it might be worth trying it. He never mentioned any potential dangers and brought it up as a potential "kills the Covid 19 virus super fast" cure. You simply don't do that when the "potential cure" you are presenting is actually a method for committing suicide.
Trump was simply 100% wrong on all accounts and had shown yet again how dangerous simple stupidity and ignorance can be when given legitimacy (by being elected as president).

The media merely reported on the unprecedented level of stupidty like it should have, everyone deserves to know just how stupid Donald Trump is. And heck, had it been Obama saying it and had the media barely reported it i'm 100% sure you and Tstorm would have complained about the "lamestream librul media bias" underreporting democrat stupidity.

And we don't know how Lil Devils arrived to her conclusion, what she read or who she talked to about it, things get distorted by people all the time. Her interpretation is not some kind of ultimate proof Donald Trump is not to blame. Had he been smart and realised the idea was stupid from the beginning and not said anything nobody would have been able to interpret it their own way.

 

[Agema]

I didn't say it was a headline. I said "...and statements like...", and then I proceed to quote a statement I found in an article.

Ironic that, in a discussion about misreading and misinterpreting, you failed to read a crucial word that changed the meaning of the sentence and caused you to come to an incorrect conclusion. You're right. We shouldn't be so hasty to leap to condemnation. We should take our time and read carefully, shouldn't we? We wouldn't want to be sloppy, inaccurate, or careless now would we?

Haha! Exactly. See how easy it is?

Although really I was doubly imprecise, because that quotation you supplied actually got zero hits on a Google search in any form, not just headlines. So this media article you claim, as far as I can tell, either doesn't exist or is was so trivial and irrelevant as to not be worth making a noise over. We can all be part of the family of making silly errors together.

Because Agema says that all the time already, and he'd rather you or I say it instead. He's saying the wrong thing on purpose as bait someone to say the correct thing in contradiction, which is still pretty bad and therefore a weak defense for Agema to dunk on later. Is rhetorical cheese, that's all.

So, what's not true about saying Trump proposed injecting bleach?

Propose means to put forward an idea or suggestion for consideration. And Trump, very clearly, told us in his own words that he put forward an idea to treat covid-19 by some sort of "cleaning" with "disinfectant", through a means such as "injection", which should be overseen by "medical doctors". I mean, that's really not referring to wiping down a door handle with an antiseptic rub, is it? You don't need injections and medical doctors to mop a floor. He also granted that idea he'd put forward a stamp of legitimacy with the public by saying his scientific and medical advisors said they would "look into it".

(And to be fair his advisors possibly did say they'd look into it. Almost certainly because Trump is an ill-tempered fool who can't stand being opposed, denied, or told he is wrong, so his advisors are probably briefed to just agree to his face and then ignore his stupid suggestions when they're out of the room whenever possible. But that is just another form of Trump's dysfunctional governance.)

* * *

I'm really sorry that you tied your political support to such a moron. I feel bad too when I've supported someone who turns out to fuck up and fail. It feels bad because by supporting someone who underperforms, we feel it reflects badly on us, that we made a mistake. Every time a supporter of Trump sees one of Trump's grotesque errors, it can feel a bit like they supported that, too. When other people call Trump a moron, it's likely to be interpreted subconsciously by a Trump supporter with the subtext "... and what sort of moron does that make you for supporting him", just like someone who has pride in their country takes criticism of that country as a personal affront.

But denial isn't the answer. Just accept the fact Trump is a corrupt, authoritarian clown that runs a dysfunctional government, and say you're loyal to your party, or that he's still better than Biden, or you just hate the Democrats and what they stand for that much. Don't run round trying to magic up ways to excuse the inexcusable or pretend that it's everyone else's fault, and try separate your own ego from the deeply flawed person you're going to vote for.

 

[Gergar12]

That idiot Jared Kushner is the problem. What sort of imbecile thinks of a public health crisis as a PR problem. And Trump obviously went along with it.

Also, you have to realize something about conservatives, and many centrists in America. They don't view other human beings in other places like you or I would. Let me explain. To a centrist, a human being's death in say, Yemen or Syria is a statistic. A human being's death in America is a tragedy. The problem people of all political stripes hate Trump is because he kills both Americans and Foreigners if he only killed foreigners he would get allot less hatred at least at the beginning of a war for example.

 

[tstorm823]

I don't really care too much about how exact the numbers are because it really doesn't help anything at this point. I just know from the NYC analysis from a couple months back (I think) where the they doubled the deaths at that time due to excess deaths. Maybe the US is doing slightly worse or slightly better than the numbers show but it ain't going to change the fact that we're doing bad.

Ok, but if you look at the numbers from that period, it seems reasonably obvious that the difference is because deaths with covid were reported later than deaths in general. Which makes sense, NYC was overwhelmed and had a testing backlog a couple weeks long, they probably weren't prioritizing testing dead people, once they caught up the disparity disappeared.

And funny enough, once that disparity disappeared, the academics stopped analyzing it and the news stopped reporting it. "US counts all the covid deaths and then some" isn't the headline they're looking for.

I'm really sorry that you tied your political support to such a moron.

I'm really sorry that you're obsessed with Donald Trump. You know my political support isn't tied to the man, we've been over this a thousand times. You obsessively bring him up over and over again, and then you project that onto me when I call out the parts that are lies. You've got a problem.

 

[Agema]

That idiot Jared Kushner is the problem. What sort of imbecile thinks of a public health crisis as a PR problem.

Any politician more along the sociopathic/narcisstic end of the spectrum.

After all, if the objective of business is to make money, the objective of politics is to get re-appointed into power. Voters are thus in ways like customers. You don't need to make the technically best product, you need to make the most appealing product. Thus the objective of dealing with covid-19 is not necessarily to do a good job, it's to be perceived to have done a good job. That's why politicians knowingly misrepresent what they've done so much: incompetence is doing okay, mediocrity is doing well, and success is greatness.

 

[Agema]

I'm really sorry that you're obsessed with Donald Trump. You know my political support isn't tied to the man, we've been over this a thousand times.

So you're not going to vote for him, then? You told us in the past you were hitching your cart to his horse.

You obsessively bring him up over and over again and then you project that onto me when I call out the parts that are lies.

I enjoy ripping on Trump. It's fun and...

You may as well laugh at such a clown, even despite the sorrow at the death and suffering his incompetence causes.

Your resistance to something as absurdly simple as clear as saying Trump proposed bleach injections tells anyone how deep a rabbit hole you've fallen. To give an example, you've spent about half a dozen posts just calling me a liar with no argument, and even despite me fulfilling your demand for a source.

 

[tstorm823]

So you're not going to vote for him, then? You told us in the past you were hitching your cart to his horse.

I believe my exact quote is "I didn't vote for Trump... but I probably will this time". That's hardly a declaration of loyalty. Like, while saying that, I was also actively talking about which Democrats I would consider if they won the nomination.

Your resistance to something as absurdly simple as clear as saying Trump proposed bleach injections tells anyone how deep a rabbit hole you've fallen. To give an example, you've spent about half a dozen posts just calling me a liar with no argument, and even despite me fulfilling your demand for a source.

Trump didn't propose injecting bleach. There is no source for that claim because it didn't happen. You're being utterly ridiculous. You are lying, no argument needed.

 

[Agema]

I believe my exact quote is "I didn't vote for Trump... but I probably will this time". That's hardly a declaration of loyalty. Like, while saying that, I was also actively talking about which Democrats I would consider if they won the nomination.

Fair enough, I'll take your word for it.

Trump didn't propose injecting bleach. There is no source for that claim because it didn't happen. You're being utterly ridiculous. You are lying, no argument needed.

So is it then your contention that Trump didn't make any proposal about injecting bleach because he lied to the public about proposing to his advisors that they should check out injecting bleach? I suppose, in the emptiest of technicalities, that would make you correct.

 

[Silvanus]

Like, while saying that, I was also actively talking about which Democrats I would consider if they won the nomination.

Out of interest, which Democratic candidates would you have considered voting for in the Presidential election if they'd won in the primaries?

 

[Houseman]

Haha! Exactly. See how easy it is?

Although really I was doubly imprecise, because that quotation you supplied actually got zero hits on a Google search in any form, not just headlines. So this media article you claim, as far as I can tell, either doesn't exist or is was so trivial and irrelevant as to not be worth making a noise over. We can all be part of the family of making silly errors together.

That statement came from here: https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/i...ls-about-injecting-and-ingesting-bleach-spike