Quo Vadis GOP?

[alfred russel]

If Trump had been "this is a serious issue" and "follow the science" out the gate, fewer people would've died in the US and across the world.

All of you are absurdly narrowly focused on covid, for reasons I don't understand rather than it being shiny and new. Why should covid be any different than cigarette smoking? If he was inaugurated in 2016 and been like "this is a serious issue" and "follow the science", he could have saved almost 2 million lives by banning smoking. Which is far more than whatever incremental gain you think there could have been had Trump not been a dumbass regarding covid.

Second, "follow the science" really doesn't take you to a neat partisan "democrats rule republicans drool" conclusion. In the early days of this thing Florida opened its public beaches to overwhelming criticism, while for a very long time California kept theirs closed and were doing shit like arresting windsurfers off empty beaches.

[Jacob]

All of you are absurdly narrowly focused on covid, for reasons I don't understand rather than it being shiny and new. Why should covid be any different than cigarette smoking? If he was inaugurated in 2016 and been like "this is a serious issue" and "follow the science", he could have saved almost 2 million lives by banning smoking. Which is far more than whatever incremental gain you think there could have been had Trump not been a dumbass regarding covid.

Covid is a pandemic. It's happening right now. It's a crisis where strong leadership would've made a difference and saved lives. Trump flubbed it massively.

All the other problems in the world, past or present, does not change the fact that if there'd been a good leader in place fewer people would've died.

Second, "follow the science" really doesn't take you to a neat partisan "democrats rule republicans drool" conclusion.

That's cool, because I don't care about that neat partisan conclusion. Trump was in the big seat in the moment of national and international crisis and flunked the test in the most transparently pathetic way possible. Republicans drool to the degree they enabled and supported the lousy handling. IIRC there are some Republican governors who did not follow Trump's lead on Covid, and they don't drool IMO.

In the early days of this thing Florida opened its public beaches to overwhelming criticism, while for a very long time California kept theirs closed and were doing shit like arresting windsurfers off empty beaches.

Agreed, the panic closing of outdoor widely spaced public places was foolish. I don't think that was following the science particularly, and for what it's worth we never did anything like that where I'm at.

[Sheilbh]

All of you are absurdly narrowly focused on covid, for reasons I don't understand rather than it being shiny and new. Why should covid be any different than cigarette smoking? If he was inaugurated in 2016 and been like "this is a serious issue" and "follow the science", he could have saved almost 2 million lives by banning smoking. Which is far more than whatever incremental gain you think there could have been had Trump not been a dumbass regarding covid.

Because it's the crisis that happened on his watch. I have far more forgiveness for leaders failing to address systemic, long-term issues because they're systemic and long-term normally because they're difficult. The new event from outside our normal politics - or, you know, the crisis management - is a large part of what leaders are responsible for managing as well as maybe moving the dial on those long-term systemic issues.

Though - incidentally one area related to smoking where I think there has been a disgraceful failure to follow the science is e-cigarettes. The NHS will prescribe e-cigarettes to people who are quitting smoking because their position is (I think rightly) that there are minor risks about them but they are significantly better than actually smoking and, just like the patch or the lozenge or the gum, if they get a few percent of people off cigarettes (and the evidence is they do) then it is worth it from a public health perspective. I think the moral panic over e-cigarettes in the US and the WHO recommendation to take a hardline on them is really, really bad public health policy that is going to cost millions of lives globally.

Second, "follow the science" really doesn't take you to a neat partisan "democrats rule republicans drool" conclusion.

Sure but I think to a large extent that reflects my issue and concern with covid in the US which was not that Democrats are good and Republicans are bad but that the entire issue would become politicised/partisan because that is what happens to everything in the US. So it becomes the politically correct thing for Republicans to be openly wondering about hydoxychloroquine because that's the line Trump took, similarly there was a policing/moral judgement tone around the whole mask issue that I just found incredible - on the one hand that wearing them is the greatest infringement on your liberty and on the other that failure to wear one almost indicates visually your moral worth as someone who "follows the science"/doesn't deserve to die from covid.

In the early days of this thing Florida opened its public beaches to overwhelming criticism, while for a very long time California kept theirs closed and were doing shit like arresting windsurfers off empty beaches.

Agreed - and I was almost always really annoyed about the moral panic about outdoor spaces and thoughts about closing parks or the police telling of bird watchers () or people going for walks in national parks. I don't think think there was ever any evidence for it and I think it was always a way of signifying which group you belong to.

[Berkut]

I think the important thing though is to focus on people who could not rock climb or go to the beach for 5 minutes, rather then 100,000 excess deaths and untold number of people in ICUs and deadly sick.

And to be clear...Florida did not open their beaches because they were so damn smart, they did it because it was seen as a way to stick it to those snooty scientists. The same people who did that were going on about "over by Easter" and "Maybe some bleach would help".

It's not like any of their positions were based on anything but bullshit. The fact that they did 100 stupid things and 2 of them turned out to not be stupid isn't all that interesting, at least to anyone who cares about actual science and policy.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I think the important thing though is to focus on people who could not rock climb or go to the beach for 5 minutes, rather then 100,000 excess deaths and untold number of people in ICUs and deadly sick.

And to be clear...Florida did not open their beaches because they were so damn smart, they did it because it was seen as a way to stick it to those snooty scientists. The same people who did that were going on about "over by Easter" and "Maybe some bleach would help".

It's not like any of their positions were based on anything but bullshit. The fact that they did 100 stupid things and 2 of them turned out to not be stupid isn't all that interesting, at least to anyone who cares about actual science and policy.

"Science" means whatever my feelings tell me it does. 

[Syt]

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1408925252181127168?s=20

Marjorie Taylor Greene calls AOC a little communist and says locking her up is a good idea. She also says AOC isn't an American

[Razgovory]

And she wants to be allowed to carry a firearm into the capital.

[The Minsky Moment]

This is usually the point at one gets a restraining order.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think the courts could handle the volume if they issued restraining orders every time someone was called an un-American communist.

[The Minsky Moment]

It's quite a bit more than that. Creepy, stalkery stuff.

[Admiral Yi]

You sure you want to focus the debate on size Marge?

[alfred russel]

Covid is a pandemic. It's happening right now. It's a crisis where strong leadership would've made a difference and saved lives. Trump flubbed it massively.

All the other problems in the world, past or present, does not change the fact that if there'd been a good leader in place fewer people would've died.

I disagree.

Government responses to covid were multifaceted and regionalized so it is really tough to compare, but lets try. Canada had a death rate per million of 689, the US of 1,861, which is roughly in line with Georgia at 1,940.

So Georgia had a death rate about 1,251 per million higher than Canada, meaning a Georgian had a higher risk of death 0.13%. 1 in about 803.

In Georgia, by May 1, 2020, I could go to the gym, restaurants reopened, movie theaters reopened, I could get a haircut, go to church, go bowling if I wanted. Only a few things remained closed (I think it was just bars and nightclubs, but I could be wrong). I've been able to attend sporting events like college football games last fall and baseball games this year. During 2020 I was able to get on a plane to take trips for vacation to Utah, Nevada, and Alaska. Schools were more of a mixed bag: while they could reopen it was a local decision, as with in person graduation last year.

My point: I would 100% risk a 1 in 803 chance of death to live in Georgia last year versus a more restrictive place like Canada. For all its flaws, my assessment is the government response has been dramatically better. I concede that there is a value judgment in this: quality of life versus maintenance of life. But considering the limited life expectancy we all have, our current baseline mortality, and this shit has gone on for 15 months, 1 in 803 isn't bad.

[alfred russel]

And to be clear...Florida did not open their beaches because they were so damn smart, they did it because it was seen as a way to stick it to those snooty scientists.

I've been trying to decipher the thought process here, and am coming up empty.

So there wasn't really any study showing that closing beaches did anyone any good, and early studies were pointing to this being a respiratory disease with very little outdoor transmission. There were differences of opinion on what to do in the face of uncertainty, and you think that Florida chose to open its beaches because the scientists on the "close" side of opinion were judged to be "snooty" and it would be a way to stick it to them?

If the "snooty" people were urging the beaches to be open, would Florida close the beaches? I'm kind of not seeing it. I kind of think they opened the beaches because they wanted to beaches to be open.

[Berkut]

Once again, we see how critical to Trumps ability to get a couple extra hundred thousand people killed were the happy idiots to go along with him and tell us all how it was no big deal, nothing a little internal bleach could not handle, and MUH FREEDOM demands that I get to do whatever the fuck I want!


Trump was not working alone, for sure.

[alfred russel]

Once again, we see how critical to Trumps ability to get a couple extra hundred thousand people killed were the happy idiots to go along with him and tell us all how it was no big deal, nothing a little internal bleach could not handle, and MUH FREEDOM demands that I get to do whatever the fuck I want!


Trump was not working alone, for sure.

You just move from lie to lie completely unmoored from facts or reason.

Why don't you go back to dropping hints that you were fucking Meri?