powerbelly said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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We have some of the worst Covid outcomes in the world, let alone the developed world. You seriously don't think the prior administration could have done more to preserve life?

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I don't think someone with responsibility to solve the issue should be lobbing grenades to save their own ass. I also don't think there was much difference between how Trump handled it and how the democrats would have

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Really? I'm pretty sure a hypothetical Democratic administration (or literally any other Republican presidential candidate for that matter) wouldn't have flaunted gathering, masking, and distancing recommendations multiple, multiple times during the height of the pandemic (remember when Trump was bad enough he had to go get experimented on at Walter Reed because of that?). I'm also pretty sure they wouldn't have deliberately downplayed the virus, questioned the necessity of testing, or jumped on every quack "cure" that popped up.

Would they have made mistakes? Absolutely. Would they have resulted in such a massive mess and failure? Extremely doubtful.

Sapper Redux said:

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powerbelly said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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We have some of the worst Covid outcomes in the world, let alone the developed world. You seriously don't think the prior administration could have done more to preserve life?

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I don't think someone with responsibility to solve the issue should be lobbing grenades to save their own ass. I also don't think there was much difference between how Trump handled it and how the democrats would have

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Really? I'm pretty sure a hypothetical Democratic administration (or literally any other Republican presidential candidate for that matter) wouldn't have flaunted gathering, masking, and distancing recommendations multiple, multiple times during the height of the pandemic (remember when Trump was bad enough he had to go get experimented on at Walter Reed because of that?). I'm also pretty sure they wouldn't have deliberately downplayed the virus, questioned the necessity of testing, or jumped on every quack "cure" that popped up.

Would they have made mistakes? Absolutely. Would they have resulted in such a massive mess and failure? Extremely doubtful.

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from what I have seen of biden so far, ya, I don't think the democrats would have been better, just different.

I can believe that Sapper would SAY Trump policies killed people because he really, really buys his side's propaganda and repeats it loudly.
I'm not at all impressed with Biden, and doubt he would have done better, because the Covid virus was so highly infectious that there wasn't a whole lot that would do more than slow it down - eventually it would kill the same people it killed no matter who was President, or Governor.
Here is a comparison of NY/Cali with Tex/Fla that backs up my opinion.
The article doesn't say anything about how Dems have allowed huge numbers of infectious illegals in....

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/05/22/covid-what-do-california-texas-new-york-and-florida-have-in-common-stunningly-low-infection-rates/

Using raw deaths per capita is bad. The R0 of the virus is different in Mississippi and New York.

Dilettante said:

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Using raw deaths per capita is bad. The R0 of the virus is different in Mississippi and New York.

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Would you mind elaborating? I'm not sure what you mean. I understand what you mean by R0 but not why you say that it varies from state to state or why comparing raw deaths per capita is bad. Can you also provide a link to the data that supports what you're saying?

And if you're right that per capita death rates is bad, you need to make that point to Sapper, not me, correct? He first raised that data point.

Sapper Redux said:

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We're talking about a national response that could have better prepared states and localities. Instead we had a President trying to avoid bringing Americans with Covid off of docked cruise ships because it would raise case counts. There was no preparation, and so the first wave was an absolute disaster. That could have been it if the administration hadn't immediately politicized the response. What is clear is that after the first wave, it's been more conservative states that have been bearing the brunt of the pandemic. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, and Florida, states that missed the first wave, now have among the highest per capita death rates. And to pretend this was going to happen anyway is to ignore how many other countries with much higher population densities have handled the pandemic much better.

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Winter is coming.

AGC said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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We're talking about a national response that could have better prepared states and localities. Instead we had a President trying to avoid bringing Americans with Covid off of docked cruise ships because it would raise case counts. There was no preparation, and so the first wave was an absolute disaster. That could have been it if the administration hadn't immediately politicized the response. What is clear is that after the first wave, it's been more conservative states that have been bearing the brunt of the pandemic. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, and Florida, states that missed the first wave, now have among the highest per capita death rates. And to pretend this was going to happen anyway is to ignore how many other countries with much higher population densities have handled the pandemic much better.

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No true Democrat would have failed this country like trump!

Everyone politicized this from the start. This is revisionist history and wishful thinking. You don't get to wave away the morons that kept subways open and criticized shutting down travel from China as not representative of the party. This post is basically everything you mock F16 for.

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We all remember Pelosi doing grip and grins in Chinatown after Trump shut off travel from China. Not political at all.

AGC said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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We're talking about a national response that could have better prepared states and localities. Instead we had a President trying to avoid bringing Americans with Covid off of docked cruise ships because it would raise case counts. There was no preparation, and so the first wave was an absolute disaster. That could have been it if the administration hadn't immediately politicized the response. What is clear is that after the first wave, it's been more conservative states that have been bearing the brunt of the pandemic. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, and Florida, states that missed the first wave, now have among the highest per capita death rates. And to pretend this was going to happen anyway is to ignore how many other countries with much higher population densities have handled the pandemic much better.

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Winter is coming.

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What are the vaccination rates of the states with cold winters? Places like Idaho and Montana might be in for a rough winter. Case counts will certainly go up in the northeast, but barring a new and more dangerous variant, the hospitalizations and deaths will be nowhere near what they were in Florida and Texas this summer.

AGC said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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We're talking about a national response that could have better prepared states and localities. Instead we had a President trying to avoid bringing Americans with Covid off of docked cruise ships because it would raise case counts. There was no preparation, and so the first wave was an absolute disaster. That could have been it if the administration hadn't immediately politicized the response. What is clear is that after the first wave, it's been more conservative states that have been bearing the brunt of the pandemic. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, and Florida, states that missed the first wave, now have among the highest per capita death rates. And to pretend this was going to happen anyway is to ignore how many other countries with much higher population densities have handled the pandemic much better.

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No true Democrat would have failed this country like trump!

Everyone politicized this from the start. This is revisionist history and wishful thinking. You don't get to wave away the morons that kept subways open and criticized shutting down travel from China as not representative of the party. This post is basically everything you mock F16 for.

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You're making a straw man of what I've said. I already said any administration would have had problems. I also said I think any other Republican administration would have run laps around Trump's response. The whole "Trump shut off travel to China! He took it seriously!" bit is always amusing. He didn't shut off travel until weeks after hundreds of cases already reached the US and did nothing about travel from Europe initially, which is where Boston and NYC got exposed to the first wave.

Jabin said:

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Dilettante said:

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Using raw deaths per capita is bad. The R0 of the virus is different in Mississippi and New York.

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Would you mind elaborating? I'm not sure what you mean. I understand what you mean by R0 but not why you say that it varies from state to state or why comparing raw deaths per capita is bad. Can you also provide a link to the data that supports what you're saying?

And if you're right that per capita death rates is bad, you need to make that point to Sapper, not me, correct? He first raised that data point.

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https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/17-1901_article

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even if the infectiousness of a pathogen (that is, the likelihood of infection occurring after an effective contact event has occurred) and the duration of contagiousness are biological constants, R0 will fluctuate if the rate of humanhuman or humanvector interactions varies over time or space. Limited evidence supports the applicability of R0 outside the region where the value was calculated (20). Any factor having the potential to influence the contact rate, including population density (e.g., rural vs. urban), social organization (e.g., integrated vs. segregated), and seasonality (e.g., wet vs. rainy season for vectorborne infections), will ultimately affect R0.

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Comparing raw deaths per capita between states as a measure of effectiveness of control measures assumes that the states would perform the same with the same measures, but that's not true. This applies to countries as well. Raw per capita data is not a very useful metric because a lot of the variables that affect it are unknown. Serious statistical efforts take this type of thing into account.

You're right that Sapper is guilty also.

I agree with that completely which is why most lay people who give off-the-cuff conclusions about Covid at this point are ridiculous. We know very little about Covid at this point and won't until those complex statistical analyses are completed. Unfortunately, what people think that they know will have become engraved in stone by that point, both left and right, and very few will actually pay any attention to the data itself.

As an example of what you're talking about, every study I've seen indicates that each of the vaccines has some effectiveness (ranging from 40-90%) at preventing infection. Yet, as was pointed out on another thread on this board, Great Britain as an entire country shows that the vaccinated are infected at a higher rate per 100,000 than the non-vaccinated. The only way to reconcile those conflicting data points is to acknowledge that other variables are also at play and to attempt to identify and isolate those variables.

Jabin said:

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I agree with that completely which is why most lay people who give off-the-cuff conclusions about Covid at this point are ridiculous. We know very little about Covid at this point and won't until those complex statistical analyses are completed. Unfortunately, what people think that they know will have become engraved in stone by that point, both left and right, and very few will actually pay any attention to the data itself.

As an example of what you're talking about, every study I've seen indicates that each of the vaccines has some effectiveness (ranging from 40-90%) at preventing infection. Yet, as was pointed out on another thread on this board, Great Britain as an entire country shows that the vaccinated are infected at a higher rate per 100,000 than the non-vaccinated. The only way to reconcile those conflicting data points is to acknowledge that other variables are also at play and to attempt to identify and isolate those variables.

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I think any reasonable person would agree that making definitive statements, at this point, is quite risky, but I do very much take issue with that mindset being taken to the extreme and to say that since 'there's no way to know' Trump really didn't do anything wrong, or there's nothing really he should have done diff. Given what we knew at the time, the smart thing to do would be to encourage mask wearing, and encourage people to take this thing seriously from the beginning. We know, given the Woodward info, that Trump knew very early this was very diff and could be very troublesome, but he willingly continued to say very diff things publicly.

I don't know if that's your point specifically, but I get the sense there are a lot on here that have that take.

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Given what we knew at the time, the smart thing to do would be to encourage mask wearing,

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I'm not sure that the data that we have so far supports that proposition, especially the cloth masks that everyone wears and that the government is encouraging everyone to wear.

And I say that as someone who bought N95 masks at the very outset of this, has worn them religiously and still do, even though I've been vaccinated.

The reason I'm not sure that masks, especially cloth masks, work that well is that the data between states that have been committed to masks and those that haven't aren't all that different. Secondly, I've seen studies done (by MIT?) that show that if you're in an unventilated room with someone Covid positive, you're going to get infected, cloth mask or no.

I truly try to be data driven on this, though, so if you have data that shows that cloth masks work, I'd love to see it.

On the other hand, I agree that Trump could have handled this much better. A leader he is not. And I agree with the poster above who pointed out the gross inconsistency of shutting down travel from China but leaving it wide open to Europe in the early days of the pandemic. In hindsight, I'm not sure that we could have kept Covid off of our shores no matter what we did, but we and Trump did not know that then.

You're missing my point.

I said, given what we knew at the time, the best course of action would have been to err on the side of caution. If masks even help a little, it was a dumb position to make masks so political and divisive.

Macarthur said:

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You're missing my point.

I said, given what we knew at the time, the best course of action would have been to err on the side of caution. If masks even help a little, it was a dumb position to make masks so political and divisive.

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Oh, I see your point. What exactly did Trump do or say re masks? I truly don't remember.

But you also must agree that the other side of the aisle was also doing everything they could to make Covid political and divisive. The last 1 1/2 years have not been America's finest hour. Rather than rallying together in response to the threat, we split, divided, and attacked each other.

I'm not sure wearing N95s religiously is a good idea, in terms of both your quality of life and health.

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On the other hand, I agree that Trump could have handled this much better. A leader he is not. And I agree with the poster above who pointed out the gross inconsistency of shutting down travel from China but leaving it wide open to Europe in the early days of the pandemic. In hindsight, I'm not sure that we could have kept Covid off of our shores no matter what we did, but we and Trump did not know that then.

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I still think you are being way too generous here. No one reasonably thinks Covid could have been 'kept off our shores'. It is well know that he ignored data given to him by his task force. He actively worked against advice he team was putting out to try and help the situation, all the while knowing in private that what his advisor were saying is true.

Dilettante said:

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I'm not sure wearing N95s religiously is a good idea, in terms of both your quality of life and health.

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Why not? Not arguing, just trying to learn more. Don't some health care workers wear them 8 hours/day or more?

But to assuage your concerns and to clarify, by "religiously" I mean every time I go out. But when at home (most of my time), I'm maskless.

Jabin said:

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Macarthur said:

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You're missing my point.

I said, given what we knew at the time, the best course of action would have been to err on the side of caution. If masks even help a little, it was a dumb position to make masks so political and divisive.

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Oh, I see your point. What exactly did Trump do or say re masks? I truly don't remember.

But you also must agree that the other side of the aisle was also doing everything they could to make Covid political and divisive. The last 1 1/2 years have not been America's finest hour. Rather than rallying together in response to the threat, we split, divided, and attacked each other.

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I'm not fan of Democrats, but while he was doing the things that I said above, what exactly should Democrats have done?

If what Dr. Birx said is true, hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been prevented just in the US. The President has the biggest and most influential Bully Pulpit in the world. And again, it would be one thing if he were just silent or indifferent. He was actively working against what his health team was saying/suggesting.

I think once some history is behind us and more and more info about the early stages of Covid come out, it's going to make Trump look worse and worse.

Macarthur said:

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Jabin said:

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Macarthur said:

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You're missing my point.

I said, given what we knew at the time, the best course of action would have been to err on the side of caution. If masks even help a little, it was a dumb position to make masks so political and divisive.

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Oh, I see your point. What exactly did Trump do or say re masks? I truly don't remember.

But you also must agree that the other side of the aisle was also doing everything they could to make Covid political and divisive. The last 1 1/2 years have not been America's finest hour. Rather than rallying together in response to the threat, we split, divided, and attacked each other.

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I'm not fan of Democrats, but while he was doing the things that I said above, what exactly should Democrats have done?

If what Dr. Birx said is true, hundreds of thousands of deaths could have been prevented just in the US. The President has the biggest and most influential Bully Pulpit in the world. And again, it would be one thing if he were just silent or indifferent. He was actively working against what his health team was saying/suggesting.

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To me, this is a big "if".

I also think presidents go against advisors' advice more than we know. They aren't, and shouldn't be, puppets.

Jabin said:

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It is well know that he ignored data given to him by his task force. He actively worked against advice he team was putting out to try and help the situation, all the while knowing in private that what his advisor were saying is true.

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How is that "well known"? I don't know any of that and I suspect that you don't either. You've probably read it from some hit job on Trump. I worked at a high level in a previous administration and learned that most of what the media reports are gross distortions of the truth or even outright lies.

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Dr Birx this week said he ignored their info/suggestions.

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And isn't that the leader's job to take advice and then make his or her own decisions? Personally, I don't want a leader who just does what his advisers tell him. If Trump did that, we'd still be waiting on the vaccines. If Eisenhower had done that, we'd still be waiting to invade Normandy. If Elon Musk had done that, SpaceX wouldn't exist.

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Frankly, I think this is pretty pathetic.

Mostly they just suck to wear. Lots of people say they're bad for you too, but I don't know if that's true.

The decision to downplay the severity of the pandemic at that time was correct in my opinion. Avoiding panic was good. I'd prefer the government be honest, but there's a ton of precedent for that type of "for your own good" messaging.

Dilettante said:

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Mostly they just suck to wear. Lots of people say they're bad for you too, but I don't know if that's true.

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OK, comprende. I typically wear the ones with the little valve up front, which doesn't do any good in keeping me from spreading Covid if I had it, but makes the masks a lot more comfortable to wear.

Jabin said:

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Macarthur said:

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Jabin said:

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It is well know that he ignored data given to him by his task force. He actively worked against advice he team was putting out to try and help the situation, all the while knowing in private that what his advisor were saying is true.

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How is that "well known"? I don't know any of that and I suspect that you don't either. You've probably read it from some hit job on Trump. I worked at a high level in a previous administration and learned that most of what the media reports are gross distortions of the truth or even outright lies.

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Dr Birx this week said he ignored their info/suggestions.

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And isn't that the leader's job to take advice and then make his or her own decisions? Personally, I don't want a leader who just does what his advisers tell him. If Trump did that, we'd still be waiting on the vaccines. If Eisenhower had done that, we'd still be waiting to invade Normandy. If Elon Musk had done that, SpaceX wouldn't exist.

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Frankly, I think this is pretty pathetic.

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Why do you believe Birx? Can't you see that she's engaging in a lot of CYA and history re-writing? A lot of what she says now is completely opposite to what she said publicly at the time. Where was her courage and candor back then? If Trump was so clearly horrible, why didn't she resign and go public with her criticisms when it might have made a difference?

I'd like to see the transcript of her statements in meeting with Trump from back then. As we've seen, transcripts typically prove the critics to be liars.

And I'm not making these points as a Trump apologist. My own opinion is that when Trump runs again, he will lose again but will destroy small government conservatism in the process. He is a vile man, as his recent tweets about Colin Powell demonstrated yet again.

But not everything he did was wrong, and some of what he did was incredibly good. His opponents cannot admit even that, though, and are the mirror image of F16. F16 cannot admit that Trump is anything less than a saint, and Trump's opponents cannot admit that he is anything more than the devil.

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Yes, I do believe her. I think it is a fair criticism to ask why she didn't stand up...However, I think many folks that worked in those types of capacity had a difficult decision. Try to stay and make some sort of positive impact or just walk away. As I said, I think it's fair to criticize her, but I also think it unfair to not acknowledge that some of those types of folks in similar situations had very difficult decisions they had to make.

And in fairness, it's not like she is going on the circuit with a book tour...her testimony was in a closed door House Select Subcommittee.

mRNA vaccines were extensively studied before Covid. The odds of some severe long term negative effect is minimal. The odds are far, far lower than the odds of permanently disabilities from Covid.
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This is the first and only mRNA vaccine…. There have been none prior to this one

gordo97 said:

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mRNA vaccines were extensively studied before Covid. The odds of some severe long term negative effect is minimal. The odds are far, far lower than the odds of permanently disabilities from Covid.
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This is the first and only mRNA vaccine…. There have been none prior to this one

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There's a difference between mass produced and studied. Why do you think they could produce a vaccine using a novel delivery mechanism within a year?