[MP-Ryan]

Okay.  This is a thread about a serious public health issue, and as a result I *moderator hat* have a SERIOUS problem with misinformation being posted from third-party origins.  HLP members are free to make whatever bat**** arguments they want within the rules, but this is not becoming some hub of YouTube algorithmic **** being reposted and spread.

Random Youtube videos are not an argument or a credible source, and I am going to start warning people who post them to make an argument rather than actually making the argument themselves with references to credible sources.  Credible sources include [non-exhaustive list for this thread] peer-reviewed journals, public health institutions, and internationally-recognized public health experts.  They do not include *some guy* on YouTube, ever.

TL;DR:  No more ****ing YouTuber-based arguments.

[karajorma]

Thank you MP-Ryan. I wanted to say the same thing but I'm since I'm the one who has been riding jr2 about his partisan bull**** the hardest I felt it might seem like I was being unfair if I did.

Despite being called on it multiple times you still only talk about, or apparently give a **** about, who is winning some abstract political game. You have never even tried to appear to give a **** about people dying. You can only bring yourself to mention the dead when you want to claim there aren't too many of them.

If feel that people on the right don't understand what this is about. Yes there is a political element to this, there always will be, but that's not the main driving force here. People are shouting at Trump about the Coronavirus because we want to see him doing something useful about it. We want him to realise that his inaction is costing lives. That when he spends two hours giving his briefing instead of governing the country, he's spending time that could actually be better spent making sure that people in his country survive the virus when they would otherwise get sick and die from it. That he shouldn't be concentrating on whether Joe Exotic is in prison or settling debts by purging his perceived enemies from the impeachment. That he has a very important job and he should be doing it!

Instead, people on the right care about the election. They care about blaming China. They care about blaming the WHO. What they don't care about is people dying from the virus. They don't demand better testing. They don't demand that doctors have better protective equipment. Who gives a damn about that if it means Trump loses the next election?

I don't even live in America. Why the **** am I angrier about the ****ty way American doctors have been treated than many of the people who actually live there. Why the **** are foreigners like me who won't be directly affected by Trump's policies desperately trying to convince the people on the right who might actually lose family and friends or might even die themselves, to take action and demand better testing and production/distribution of medical necessities? Why the **** have I had to spend the last two months being insulted on message boards and comment sections for telling people that I'm not trying to "keep them in the dark" when I try to warn them that the "candle" they are holding is in fact a lit stick of dynamite!

[Mongoose]

I've said it many times over the last four years, but this proves it once and for all: the modern American right wing is completely morally bankrupt.

[The E]

This thread debate sections: both sides' issues, summarized (decent job of pointing out that both sides get this wrong)

What the hell is wrong with you?`

No, seriously, what is this malfunction that keeps you from parsing and understanding context? My anger at that footage wasn't really about the footage itself, or the mass graves for the poor. Both of those are incidental to the thing that's really angering me, which is the thousands of people who will die today of a disease that could have been controlled, the tens of thousands of people who will be hospitalized and who may face bankruptcy and hardship as a result, the millions of people who have lost their jobs and thus a lot of whatever stability and security they had, all because your leadership was too busy golfing.

That people die to covid-19 was perhaps unavoidable. Even in best-case scenarios like South Korea, people died, and we all know that the measures taken in Korea would have resulted in an armed revolt in the US; but still: This didn't need to happen this way. This graph has, in my mind, no right to exist:


But that is the reality of the situation. That's the consequence of months of denial, of downplaying. It's the direct consequence of the american right's embrace of kakistocracy, of minarchy, of austerity; It's a consequence of failures stretching back decades and generations to introduce something, anything resembling a resilient social security net.

You've sown the wind, praying that the free market will find a solution to the storm problem you almost managed to convince yourself doesn't exist, and instead of recognizing that a problem exists and that it is a direct consequence of choices you made, you choose to "correct misconceptions" and point out how Nancy Pelosi was doing bad things and how the PRC really is the real problem here.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm in a pretty rural part of England if not THE most rural part of England, and the locals are being bloody complacent.... I had to go to the shops today to restock.  (I always buy more than we need so we only need to restock every 3 weeks or) and ibwas the only one with any sort of filtered respirator on.   People were doing the 2 meters apart rule queuing up outside the supermarket, then once inside just flitting about as if the distancing measures only applied outdoors when monitored, and looking offended when I told them to back the hell up.   

The sort of people to go over the legal speed limit then blame the speed camera when they get caught.

Sympathies and thoughts to everyone affected on HLP.

[Phantom Hoover]

I mean we don't have enough PPE for the hospitals (oh sorry I forgot, the health secretary says we have enough but those damn selfish doctors and nurses keep wasting it), let alone people going shopping.

[Goober5000]

Posting without my moderator hat on, I need to defend jr2 and Trump here.  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.

This is not to take away from the very real threat posed by the pandemic, and my sympathies go to Battuta's family and anyone else who may be affected by the virus or may have family or friends affected.

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

For example:

If feel that people on the right don't understand what this is about. Yes there is a political element to this, there always will be, but that's not the main driving force here. People are shouting at Trump about the Coronavirus because we want to see him doing something useful about it. We want him to realise that his inaction is costing lives. That when he spends two hours giving his briefing instead of governing the country, he's spending time that could actually be better spent making sure that people in his country survive the virus when they would otherwise get sick and die from it. That he shouldn't be concentrating on whether Joe Exotic is in prison or settling debts by purging his perceived enemies from the impeachment. That he has a very important job and he should be doing it!

The Coronavirus Task Force was formed on January 29.  The travel ban from China was instituted on January 31, one day after WHO declared the virus a "global emergency".  The travel ban from Europe was instituted on March 11.

Trump's statements that the virus was under control were the consensus of the medical community at the time.  Even as late as March 1 Governor Cuomo said "there’s no reason for concern" and on March 11 Mayor DeBlasio said "If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life".

New York has been the hardest hit in the US from the virus.  Why aren't the media going after Cuomo and DeBlasio like they're going after Trump?

Also:

Trump promotes the use of hydroxychloroquine

Trump owns stock in companies that make it.

First, hydroxychloroquine is a generic drug, so owning stock in companies that make it isn't too useful.  Second, do the math.  Trump owns a maximum of $435 and perhaps as little as $29 worth of stock, hardly a financial ticket.

[Colonol Dekker]

I mean we don't have enough PPE for the hospitals (oh sorry I forgot, the health secretary says we have enough but those damn selfish doctors and nurses keep wasting it), let alone people going shopping.

Don't wait for any government help in a situation like this. 
Everything I've got is self provided.

[Phantom Hoover]

As a general rule, they will blatantly lie and misrepresent the current situation, Trump's actions, future projections, and even scientific conclusions.

man who believes the world is 6000 years old and climate change isn't real lectures others on ignoring scientific conclusions

[jr2]

@ all before: you people seem to fail to grasp that I'm merely trying to provide some sort of counterweight to a severely biased response here.  As I've said, but apparently it went whistling right over your head, I have been tracking this as a serious issue since late January / early February.  I believe Goober re-summarized the US leadership response at that time, but should you require more details here's some links to follow (you'll need to research the individual claims though, I don't believe sources were provided):

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1240456708838903810.html  OR  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1243301449607581697.html   OR  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1232752316211703809.html

The point isn't that the disease is not a serious threat.  The point isn't that the right-wing leadership was flawless, it wasn't.  The point is that YOUR points claiming the right-wing leadership were incompetent boobs can only be true in a context where the LEFT-wing leadership was EVEN MORE incompetent!   (see: https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1223414099473846273?s=20 )

We can all agree mistakes were made, but if you insist on making these partisan jabs at one side, then claim partisanship when they respond, what gives?

@MP-Ryan: you obviously didn't watch the video, it was one of the clearest non-partisan breakdowns of an issue related to this crisis I've ever seen, and quite excellently done.  If you seriously have a problem with that, then well... I believe I mentioned an echo chamber before?

As a general rule, they will blatantly lie and misrepresent the current situation, Trump's actions, future projections, and even scientific conclusions.

man who believes the world is 6000 years old and climate change isn't real lectures others on ignoring scientific conclusions

Oh, look, I go to post and there appeareth a flying strawman.  Please 2 stay on topix kthxbai.

[Grizzly]

do you even read your own posts

Like at this point it's abudently clear that you don't actually read other people's posts or err, the tweets you randomly include in your posts. You're just failing at basic literacy. At this point everyone who is discussing with you is laying out traps and carefully explaining where those traps are, and you're stepping in them with enthusiasm.

Trump's statements that the virus was under control were the consensus of the medical community at the time.

Please don't lie. You know damn well that there was a constant clamour for more testing. Hell, just read back the thread.

[The E]

If this doesn't make you furious, if all you care about is scoring points on some imaginary scoreboard by deflecting criticism of your governments' handling of this affair by pointing out how evil the chinese are, get. ****ing. lost. Leave this forum and never, ever return.

This applies to you, jr2.

[Rhymes]

Posting without my moderator hat on, I need to defend jr2 and Trump here.  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.

This is bull**** and you know it. I will explain why.

For example:

The Coronavirus Task Force was formed on January 29.  The travel ban from China was instituted on January 31, one day after WHO declared the virus a "global emergency".  The travel ban from Europe was instituted on March 11.

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. This is the criticism that you dumb right-wing ****s don't seem to get: we had ALL of February to do something and we did nothing.

Trump's statements that the virus was under control were the consensus of the medical community at the time.  Even as late as March 1 Governor Cuomo said "there’s no reason for concern" and on March 11 Mayor DeBlasio said "If you’re not sick, you should be going about your life".

I understand that this level of analysis may be hard for somebody who thinks the world is 6000 years old but I will try to explain using small words. Are you ready?

Politicians are not doctors. Politicians are not epidemiologists. The actual doctors and epidemiologists were saying this was a threat in January. Cuomo and de Blasio didn't know what they were talking about, and they were wrong.

Which leads me to this:

New York has been the hardest hit in the US from the virus.  Why aren't the media going after Cuomo and DeBlasio like they're going after Trump?

Because when Cuomo and de Blasio learned that they were wrong, they corrected their assumptions and began taking steps to lessen the impact of the crisis: stay-at-home orders, getting PPE/ventilators/equipment, ramping up testing, publishing data, providing accurate information to the public.

Trump, meanwhile, has doubled and tripled down, consistently saying things are under control (they're not) and saying we can open everything back up soon (we can't) and refusing to learn from his mistakes.

But then, that's the pattern with all you right-wing ****sticks, isn't it. It's never that your assumptions could be wrong, it's that reality is refusing to line up with your ideas. It can't be that Trump ****ed up because he's the perfect God-Emperor, no, it has to be that the media is lying.

Because that's all you care about, isn't it? Scoring political points. The left and the libruls couldn't possibly just be concerned with the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk, that's just a smokescreen, right? Because, after all, that's the way you look at things. Lives don't matter, must praise orange man.

**** off. Don't come back.

[Rhymes]

do you even read your own posts

Like at this point it's abudently clear that you don't actually read other people's posts or err, the tweets you randomly include in your posts. You're just failing at basic literacy.

i'm not sure jr2 knows what reading is

[Grizzly]

Calling these people "right wing" is doing a disservice to the various right wing governments that are doing things properly tbh. The US is rather deep into far-right bull**** at this point. Hell, just take a look at what jr2 considers "anti-partisan counterweight": The actual trump campaign, a far right organization and a far right blog (do yourself a favour and don't look up what "The conservative treehouse" writes about george soros).

[Rhymes]

I mean there really is no moderate right anymore in the anglosphere.

[Grizzly]

I mean there really is no moderate right anymore in the anglosphere.

Centrist democrats would have a word, as would MP-Ryan I'm sure. And perhaps more importantly: There's quite a few posters here who aren't from the anglosphere to begin with. In a thread where the "performance" of the US is compared to that of the wider world, it should constantly be pointed out that in the eyes of the wider world the US has gone off the deep end.

[Rhymes]

I mean yes under anyone else's political system that's what they would be called. They just don't get called that here.

it should constantly be pointed out that in the eyes of the wider world the US has gone off the deep end.

sigh

We know.

[Grizzly]

Sorry I should edit my posts less.

Thing is, I'm not "there". E is not there. Hoover is not there. MP-Ryan is not there. That's kinda a key thing that gets overlooked in all these discussions. The US is not just failing from the perspective of the US left, it's failing in the eyes of people across the poltiical spectrum from -across the world-.

[Grizzly]

I know you know but I'm being performative to get a point across