[MP-Ryan]

IMPORTANT:

Since I've been asked, I'm going to clarify the reason for "No more YouTube for arguments" in this thread.

YouTube uses an algorithm to deliver content.  That algorithm does not care about the accuracy of the information or that is comes from legitimate sources.  It is very, VERY easy for someone with a YouTube following to make a video and throw in a number of truthful claims with a number of untruthful claims, and without careful research the viewer will not know the difference.  At present time, there is an IMMENSE amount of mis- and disinformation circulating the internet concerning SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus) and COVID-19.  For the reasons above, a great deal of that circulates in video - it's much easier to fact-check print and written pieces and check for their sources than it is through someone's 30-60 minute video adventure.  This is also a text-based forum and there is no expectation that thread participants spend ridiculous amounts of time watching argument-by-video-proxy to participate.

I - and I daresay the other moderators as well - lack the time to sit down and watch every video to fact-check it, check the veracity of its sources, and confirm if it is actually truthful.  The other issue is that there is a tendency - when videos are posted - for the poster to rely on the video to make their argument, rather than checking actual sources and making the argument themselves.  Given that this is a declared public health emergency in a great many countries the world over, and that mis- and dis-information actively harms our ability to fight it, under no circumstances is it appropriate for HLP to contribute to the spread of that mis/disinformation. That's what reddit is for =)

This is not to say that people are not free to express their opinions (within forum rules).  If individuals want to reiterate points from videos and be prepared to back up the sourcing of those points from credible external information (e.g. not the video), then that is perfectly acceptable as I have no doubt it will be discussed vigorously by other thread participants.  Similarly, videos from public health authorities, recognized international experts in public health, and from government agencies or politicians are fine.


There will be no further dropping of videos in this thread to make a point for you.  This extends only to this thread; I will remove any further video links that do not conform to the above guidance and replace with a note instead.  In the interest of fairness and to eliminate any perception of bias, I will also refrain from any further commentary about political action or inaction and stick entirely to information-only posts if I'm adding to the thread further.

[MP-Ryan]

Also, I know many of you are frustrated about the situation and other participants in the thread, but cut the personal attack/sniping nonsense out right now.  Just because 2020 is going to hell in a handbasket does not mean the forum rules got thrown out the window.

[mjn.mixael]

I haven't watched jr2's videos, but there is an abominable amount of misinformation being published by the media.  As a general rule, they will blatantly lie and misrepresent the current situation, Trump's actions, future projections, and even scientific conclusions.

...

If you are getting most of your "news" from the mainstream media then you have been deceived, perhaps a little, perhaps a lot.

I mean, I know Trump spews this rhetoric on a daily basis so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people who are generally intelligent individuals have started to believe it for real. Of course, that was his goal all along.

See this clip of Trump spewing that nonsense. "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening" Once his base believes that, of course Trump is now the only one they can trust. It's dictatorship 101 to do this stuff. How do you not see it? It's dangerous, it's hateful, and it's literally splitting our country in two.

[mjn.mixael]

I mean... I just don't ****ing get it.

The US has more than 6 times the number of cases than China and 6-7 times more deaths. Even if the numbers from China aren't 100% accurate, there's no way they are six times higher than they are right now.

This is what doing a good job looks like to you guys? What is wrong with you? People are dying en mass and we haven't even hit the projected peak infection rate yet! All Trump seems to care about is re-opening the economy. Thank you, those of you who die, for your sacrifice for our money.

[Grizzly]

nationalism is one hell of a drug

[Colonol Dekker]

I don't get the 6000 year old thing. 

Is it true and if so, why is it relevant?  I echo the above re: having time to check every video posted.   Especially now I'm at home and have a wife and kids/man of the house stuff to get on with.

[Grizzly]

I don't get the 6000 year old thing. 

Is it true and if so, why is it relevant?

It's relevant becuase Goober5000 frequently rejects scientific evidence when it doesn't suit his beliefs, and then complains that other people are "rejecting scientific evidence" when it doesn't suit his beliefs of what the scientific evidence is. Goober is hypocritical. Even in his latest post he has made claims about the "medical community" that are blatant lies.

[Colonol Dekker]

I am going to state, that I'm heavily impartial and neutral here.    But to anyone and everyone and nobody in particular,  if someone doesn't like a particular opinion, or the fact that someone else doesn't like their opinion the world will keep turning, just be the bigger person and move on to another subject.   

Theresa a lot of tension in this topic and I'm staying out of it more than I want to be, so I can be objective if I poke my nose in.

[Grizzly]

See this clip of Trump spewing that nonsense.

You're forgetting this ancient classic

[GhylTarvoke]

Moving back to criticism of the CCP - the scale of their continuing cover-up is awe-inspiring. Then again, this is the same organization that tried to hide concentration camps and organ harvesting.

• I've already mentioned several people who were disappeared or imprisoned in connection with the coronavirus. Their names bear repeating: Fang Bin and Chen Qiushi (journalists), Xu Zhangrun and Xu Zhiyong (academics), and Ren Zhiqiang (real estate tycoon).
• Doctors at the Central Hospital of Wuhan were banned from communicating critical information to the public. Some doctors (e.g. Ai Fen and the late Li Wenliang) were punished for warning friends and colleagues.
• Starting on December 31, Chinese social media censored a wide variety of coronavirus-related keywords and keyword combinations, including (translated) "Wuhan seafood market", "SARS variation", "P4 virus lab", "Xi Jinping + epidemic spread", and "Communist Party + pneumonia + demonstrate + rule".
• In defiance of the CCP, Chinese journalists have reported that officials concealed similarities to SARS, and that they delayed warnings of human-to-human transmission.
• Universities in China have posted new policies specifically regarding research into the coronavirus' origins - for example, a requirement that papers on the source of the outbreak (but not papers on other medical topics) be approved by China's ministry of science and technology.

And now for some irresponsible speculation. People have been quick to point out that Wuhan is coincidentally home to "the largest virus bank in Asia", the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The idea that the coronavirus escaped from this lab is generally viewed as a conspiracy theory. Regardless of the true origin, my guess is that the CCP feared - at least at the start - that the virus was connected to the lab, and scrambled to investigate. Hence the secrecy.

[Phantom Hoover]

That the CCP severely bungled the initial response with a characteristic authoritarian focus on stamping out ‘rumours’ and ‘disruption’, with dire global consequences, is pretty uncontroversial. It doesn’t mean that the subsequent harsh lockdowns and control measures once their weird decisionmaking apparatus took the outbreak seriously weren’t effective at clamping down on the disease.

[Grizzly]

In (tentative) positive news, the Dutch ICUs are no longer having more patients go in then go out.

(no that doesn't mean we suddenly have a 90% fatality rate)

[Grizzly]

In other news, Boris Johnson who was totally fine and not in life danger now is saying he owes the NHS his life.

Interesting.

[DefCynodont119]

Going back to origins, A tiger tested positive for corona recently: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/04/tiger-coronavirus-covid19-positive-test-bronx-zoo/

(SPECULATION)
Given the prevalence of Big Cat poaching worldwide, It makes me wonder if that's the animal it came from, If that's the case then the fact it started in china would be just dumb coincidence.
(END SPECULATION)


That said I really doubt that Tigers are the initial carrier.

[Grizzly]

It's actually cats.

The movie was a warning.

[General Battuta]

Goob and jr2, you continue to tell on yourselves by constantly fixating on the issue of who's to blame, whether coverage of the blame is fair, whether people are blaming Trump too much, whether there's 'misinformation,' whether someone's team is winning or losing.

The deafening silence around the actual, objective matter at hand is telling.

Goob jr2 actually managed to formulate the correct response when he said that if the government response was incompetent then the left could be blamed as well as the right. Then he tossed that aside as ridiculous. As if it were unimaginable that anyone could accuse their political allies of incompetence. As if he could not believe anyone would look to objective reality, rather than partisan affiliation, to judge truth.

What matters, right now, is that thousands of people are dying.

What matters, right now, is that the USA's response has been incompetent and ineffective, and that this failure has enormously magnified the number of deaths.

What does not matter is who said what on cable TV on which day. It does not matter whether some national office declared that everything would be fine (it was manifestly not fine). It does not even matter that Donald Trump is president. What matters is that those in power have failed. Whoever they are, they failed to identify and act against a terrible threat.

Was there something specific about Trump and his government to blame for this failure? Maybe. You can argue about that. But you cannot do so by denying that a terrible failure has occurred at all.

Why would people call Trump supporters a death cult? Why would they be so unfair, so irrational, so emotional as to use that language?

Maybe because support for Trump seems more important to you than six hundred thousand sick people and counting. Maybe because it seems like support for Trump obliges you to disavow the scale and severity of this disease.

Maybe you should even consider whether partisan affiliation has blinded you to other major threats coming our way. Threats whose consequences will care as little for cable TV talking points, Twitter screenshots, and retrospective 'we couldn't have known' assessments as this disease.

[General Battuta]

Why are you ignoring direct questions posed to you regarding the topic of this thread? Do you feel you cannot answer them?

[Phantom Hoover]

Maybe you should even consider whether partisan affiliation has blinded you to other major threats coming our way. Threats whose consequences will care as little for cable TV talking points, Twitter screenshots, and retrospective 'we couldn't have known' assessments as this disease.

the most soberingly realistic part of The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States was the coda, where it describes the postwar political situation as a deadlock of partisan denial of blame and nobody seems to have learned anything from the utter failure of those in power to avert catastrophe

[Su-tehp]

I originally wanted to post this Family Guy Youtube podcast on the coronavirus in light of MP-Ryan's post on Youtube posting parameters because it's (mostly) apolitical and it's funny as hell.

But after General Battuta's post summing up the situation here...:

What matters, right now, is that thousands of people are dying.

What matters, right now, is that the USA's response has been incompetent and ineffective, and that this failure has enormously magnified the number of deaths.

What does not matter is who said what on cable TV on which day. It does not matter whether some national office declared that everything would be fine (it was manifestly not fine). It does not even matter that Donald Trump is president. What matters is that those in power have failed. Whoever they are, they failed to identify and act against a terrible threat.

Was there something specific about Trump and his government to blame for this failure? Maybe. You can argue about that. But you cannot do so by denying that a terrible failure has occurred at all.

Why would people call Trump supporters a death cult? Why would they be so unfair, so irrational, so emotional as to use that language?

Maybe because support for Trump seems more important to you than six hundred thousand sick people and counting. Maybe because it seems like support for Trump obliges you to disavow the scale and severity of this disease.

Maybe you should even consider whether partisan affiliation has blinded you to other major threats coming our way. Threats whose consequences will care as little for cable TV talking points, Twitter screenshots, and retrospective 'we couldn't have known' assessments as this disease.

Yeah. This. 1,000 times this. There's no question that the Trump administration does not have any (or no longer has) competent people who know how the government functions in order to mitigate the effects of a global pandemic, especially Trump himself. But this can't possibly be a surprise to anyone with at least two brain cells to rub together because it has been plainly obvious for years but especially since 2016 that taking a narcissistic game show host and failed businessman (he went bankrupt 6 times, remember?) who inherited most of his fortune from his father and who never once held elected office before being put in charge of the American freakin' government might not be the best idea when a true global crisis comes along.

Y'know, duh.

I mean it, if a guy tries to claim to your face that he's a "very stable genius" (who the hell ever calls themselves that?) or that "[he] alone can fix" what's wrong with the entire country (sorry but any country populated with millions of people, never mind a population of 328 million, is too big for any one man to "fix"), your Bullsh!t Detector should be going off the scale. If it's not, then there's something seriously wrong with you. It's friggin' dangerous to be that gullible.

It still boggles my mind that many voters vote as if the US presidential election is nothing more than a popularity contest. It still boggles my mind that they vote for the president of the US based on nothing more on whether they'd like to have a beer with him (I still remember people saying this about voting for GWB back in 2000 and I wouldn't be surprised to learn if some people voted for Trump for this reason too). It still boggles my mind that some people vote without taking the time to consider the serious, life-threatening issues facing our country that require sober and careful consideration and vote instead on who will most "trigger the libs." It used to (but no longer does) boggle my mind that they would rather die than see the nation's resources spent to alleviate the suffering of other Americans who are not like them. (Well, now they just might get that chance since the coronavirus is spreading to rural areas. The only question is how many others, both in the US and around the world, they're going to take with them.)

Then a global crisis like a worldwide pandemic comes along and puts millions of lives at risk. When that sort of thing happens, you, me, and everyone else needs someone competent at the head of the US government to manage and mitigate and resolve that crisis, because only that will save lives that would otherwise be lost. If nothing else, at least hopefully this crisis will remind all American voters to vote in November as if their lives depend on it.

Because they do.

[Goober5000]

Okay, so if the task force was formed at the end of January, why did they wait until mid-March to do anything? Why weren't they preparing plans and guidance for social distancing, contact tracing, scaling up testing to isolate cases, scaling up PPE production and hospital beds and ventilators in the event this escalated into a full-blown crisis.

They didn't wait until mid-March.  Go back and read the actual press conferences.  Here's what they said on January 31:

CDC has launched an aggressive public health response focused on early case recognition, isolation of those cases identified, and contact tracing around those individuals.  This response is a layered response, which includes both targeted airport screening, as well as heightened education and awareness of the American healthcare community to be vigilant in ascertaining the possibility of recent travel to China when they are evaluating patients with upper respiratory tract infection.

And so, domestically, we’re working on — working with our private sector healthcare preparedness.  We’re working specifically around supply chain resilience because much of our healthcare products come from overseas.  And we’re also working actively with NIH and our DOD colleagues, as well as our DARPA colleagues and the private industry to develop better diagnostics, possible therapeutics, as well as vaccines, which Dr. Fauci can speak more about.

And on February 26:

But we’re very, very ready for this, for anything — whether it’s going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not we’re — you know, we’re at that very low level, and we want to keep it that way.

...

The Johns Hopkins, I guess — is a highly respected, great place — they did a study, comprehensive: “The Countries Best and Worst Prepared for an Epidemic.”  And the United States is now — we’re rated number one.  We’re rated number one for being prepared.  This is a list of different countries. ... This is a list of the different countries.  The United States is rated number one most prepared.  United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Sweden, Denmark, South Korea, Finland.  These — this is a list of the best-rated countries in the world by Johns Hopkins.

We’ll also be continuing to reach out to governors, state and local officials.  In fact, in recent days, the White House met with over 40 state, county, and city health officials from over 30 states and territories to discuss how to respond to this — to the potential threat of the coronavirus.  We’ll be working with them in renewed ways to make sure they have the resources to be able to respond.

Q    Mr. President, have you been any plans that would involve quarantined cities, like we saw in China?  And what would have to happen for you to take a step like that?

THE PRESIDENT:  We do have plans of a much — on a much larger scale, should we need that.  We’re working with states, we’re working with virtually every state.  And we do have plans on a larger scale if we need it.  We don’t think we’re going to need it, but, you know, you always have to be prepared.

Q    Mr. President, should Americans be going out getting protective equipment such as masks and so forth?  And if so, what is the U.S. doing to boost production of masks?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we can get a lot of it.  In fact, we’ve ordered a lot of it just in case we need it.  We may not need it; you understand that.  But in case — we’re looking at worst-case scenario.  We’re going to be set very quickly.

This is the only part of your post even resembling a discussion.  I will not address the rest of it, as it consists of extremely hateful attacks and insults, to which MP-Ryan's warning applies.

I mean, I know Trump spews this rhetoric on a daily basis so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people who are generally intelligent individuals have started to believe it for real. Of course, that was his goal all along.

See this clip of Trump spewing that nonsense. "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening" Once his base believes that, of course Trump is now the only one they can trust. It's dictatorship 101 to do this stuff. How do you not see it? It's dangerous, it's hateful, and it's literally splitting our country in two.

Lack of trust in the media did not originate with Trump.  The term "lamestream media" has been around since at least the 90s, as has the bumper sticker, "I Don't Believe the Liberal Media!"  The only thing Trump did was crystallize this using the term "fake news".

The media is deceptive, dishonest, manipulative, often untrue, and usually misleading even when it contains elements of truth.  In a word: fake.

Goob and jr2, you continue to tell on yourselves by constantly fixating on the issue of who's to blame, whether coverage of the blame is fair, whether people are blaming Trump too much, whether there's 'misinformation,' whether someone's team is winning or losing.

The deafening silence around the actual, objective matter at hand is telling.

What matters to me is the truth.  In order to be objective, one must possess accurate information.

At least one personal account of a nurse lamenting the current medical situation was fake.

On at least two occasions, the media showed footage of medical facilities in Italy while claiming it was in the US.

The reports of people being buried in mass graves in New York are misleading.

Nobody has the full picture, and the parts of the picture we do have are contradictory, incomplete, and often fraudulent.  So it comes down to who you trust.