California Recall Election

[alfred russel]

This is the greatest thing going at the moment. Biden won the state by 29.4%...it is the Democrats home base. But you only need a fraction of the population signing a petition to trigger a recall, and some people were mad about covid enough to get one. Newsom isn't unpopular, so the Democrats have scheduled the recall asap which is September 14. Ballots go out on August 16.

The process is:
-Question 1: Should we recall the governor? It is a yes / no question, and if "Yes" ballots exceed "No", that is it, the governor is immediately out of office.
-Question 2: In the even the governor is recalled, who should replace him? You only need to pay $4k to get on the ballot list, and have 65 people support you. So there are 46 candidates. Whoever gets the most votes wins. Newsom can't be on the list.

So the twist is that in order to make sure Newsom survives question 1, the democrats twisted arms to keep anyone credible from their party off the list in question 2. But here is the recent polling:

Mid July LA Times Poll:             Against Recall 3%
Late July Emerson Poll:            Against Recall 2%
Early August SurveyUSA Poll:   For Recall 11%

So if he gets recalled, what happens? With 46 candidates in almost a one party state without a replacement option from that party: chaos. Anyone who can get more than 10% support is a threat to win. There are a couple of republican former california mayors running that may be reasonable options, but republicans seem to be coalescing around Larry Elder, a conservative talk show host. He is the leading candidate in some polls at 18%.

There was a poll that showed Kevin Paffrath in the lead and with support in the 20s, but in that survey he was the only democrat included. He won't be the only person with a "D" next to his name on the real ballot. Kevin is a 29 year old youtube star that goes by his youtube moniker "Meet Kevin".

If the Greens can coalesce around a single candidate, this may be their shot.

Kamala Harris is now going to help Newsom out on the campaign trail, and Biden may be coming too.

[DGuller]

California sure like sowing dysfunction into its politics everywhere.  Another thing to think about is that one of its senators is likely suffering from dementia, and if she's not fit or alive enough to serve out her term, Newsom's replacement may well nominate her replacement.  Hopefully the example of Florida and Texas would shock Californians back to reality, and make them wonder whether all these deaths and hospitalizations is something they should strive for.

[alfred russel]

California sure like sowing dysfunction into its politics everywhere.  Another thing to think about is that one of its senators is likely suffering from dementia, and if she's not fit or alive enough to serve out her term, Newsom's replacement may well nominate her replacement.  Hopefully the example of Florida and Texas would shock Californians back to reality, and make them wonder whether all these deaths and hospitalizations is something they should strive for.

Hospitalizations and deaths from people that are unvaccinated should be separately stated in the statistics. Since about mid May in the US those people chose not to be vaccinated and only have themselves to blame. Society shouldn't be lifting a finger to protect them, except to compel them to get vaccinated.

[DGuller]

One problem is that most children aren't savvy enough to obtain a fake ID that shows them to be 12 years old, so they could get vaccinated.

[Sheilbh]

One problem is that most children aren't savvy enough to obtain a fake ID that shows them to be 12 years old, so they could get vaccinated.

The other problem is that people aren't sophisticated around statistics and the bald numbers may be misleading.

So today Sky News reported, perfectly factually, the Public Health England analysis that 55% of the hospitalised with delta were unvaccinated and 35% had received both doses of the vaccine. That's true - but it doesn't really reflect the truth on it's own.

11% of English adults are not vaccinated - they are overwhelmingly under 30. So 89% of the English adults - including the most at risk are double vaccinated. So I think 55% unvaccinated/35% double-dosed doesn't actually capture how effective the vaccines are. I think just highlighting those stats as AR says would be almost a little misleading for people.

[Berkut]

if 100% of people were vaccinated, then 100% of new cases would be amongst vaccinated people, proving that vaccination doesn't work.

[alfred russel]

One problem is that most children aren't savvy enough to obtain a fake ID that shows them to be 12 years old, so they could get vaccinated.

How many children under 12 have been hospitalized and/or died from covid?

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex-and-Age/9bhg-hcku

If I understand the data set right, 0-17 deaths from covid-19 were 349 through July 31, 2021.

[Sheilbh]

if 100% of people were vaccinated, then 100% of new cases would be amongst vaccinated people, proving that vaccination doesn't work.

Exactly! I think reporting statistics and data is not sufficient from the media. They need to report and explain how to interpret it - I think that's what the best data journalists do in how they present things, like the guy in the FT.

Just giving the bare stats as Sky did is not helpful - and they got a lot of flak online for it and I think are now explaining those figures.

If I understand the data set right, 0-17 deaths from covid-19 were 349 through July 31, 2021.

In the UK I think under 16s there have been deaths but the majority have comorbidities (and will get vaccinated first). But of 2 million cases identified through testing there have been 6 deaths without comorbidities. Obviously it's really sad but I think that is the important context for conversations around children (and indeed conversations around vaccinating children where that needs to be set against risks from side effects).

[DGuller]

To be fair, even professionals can blunder with interpretation of statistics, statistics is one science where intuition can hurt you just as much as it can help you.  Sometimes something seems so obvious that you don't give it a second thought actually turns out to be catastrophically misleading.