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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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Vivax
22203 Posts
On May 22 2020 23:56 Mohdoo wrote: I am sad that the topic of HCQ effectiveness is a valid topic for an "American politics" thread. Trump has managed to make HCQ and infection in general a partisan issue  Everyone is free to divert his attention to where Trump doesn't want it to be. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11756 Posts
If this crisis proves anything, it is that facts are still relevant, and that far-right crazypeople who sell you on their post-factual bullshit are just wrong, and if you believe them, you suffer for it. US, UK, Brazil and Russia are currently the countries with the highest amount of active cases. All have far-right crazy governments grossly mismanaging the crisis. | ||
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Vivax
22203 Posts
On May 23 2020 00:54 Simberto wrote: You mean like the fact that due to the utter mismanagement by Trumps completely incompetent administration, corona is still constantly growing in the US, while the situation seems to be getting under control in the EU? If this crisis proves anything, it is that facts are still relevant, and that far-right crazypeople who sell you on their post-factual bullshit are just wrong, and if you believe them, you suffer for it. US, UK, Brazil and Russia are currently the countries with the highest amount of active cases. All have far-right crazy governments grossly mismanaging the crisis. I'm past the political dichotomy in my view. Also, Sweden doesn't have a far-right government and BoJo hardly qualifies as far-right crazyman. It was a choice of kill the economy already on the brink or let the pandemic run wild, no matter the political alignment. | ||
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JohnDelaney
Ireland73 Posts
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mahrgell
Germany3943 Posts
On May 23 2020 01:09 Vivax wrote: I'm past the political dichotomy in my view. Also, Sweden doesn't have a far-right government and BoJo hardly qualifies as far-right crazyman. It was a choice of kill the economy already on the brink or let the pandemic run wild, no matter the political alignment. Oh wow, there was a choice where the economy would not get killed? Why didn't you tell anyone earlier? I'm sure some countries would have been interested in... Sweden didn't do better than the rest of Europe. The UK is amongst the hardest-hit countries in Europe. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15742 Posts
After that? A weekend of hot, sunny weather in a state where vitamin D is recommended for all residents due to extreme lack of sun. Its gonna be insane. Not soon after we learn most transmission is from person to person contact, rather than surfaces and objects, we will all gather a lot. Peachy. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On May 23 2020 00:54 Simberto wrote: You mean like the fact that due to the utter mismanagement by Trumps completely incompetent administration, corona is still constantly growing in the US, while the situation seems to be getting under control in the EU? If this crisis proves anything, it is that facts are still relevant, and that far-right crazypeople who sell you on their post-factual bullshit are just wrong, and if you believe them, you suffer for it. US, UK, Brazil and Russia are currently the countries with the highest amount of active cases. All have far-right crazy governments grossly mismanaging the crisis. Don't confuse being first to have a significant infection run its course with being competent at handling the crisis. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15742 Posts
On May 23 2020 01:52 LegalLord wrote: Don't confuse being first to have a significant infection run its course with being competent at handling the crisis. I do think there will be an advantage to being "done" with covid before other countries. But that "done" point is definitely not happening remotely soon for any country. And I am assuming countries that "reach the finish line" soonest will have endured a lot of pain to get there. Probably a greater total sum of pain than countries that eased into it | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18224 Posts
On May 23 2020 01:54 Mohdoo wrote: I do think there will be an advantage to being "done" with covid before other countries. But that "done" point is definitely not happening remotely soon for any country. And I am assuming countries that "reach the finish line" soonest will have endured a lot of pain to get there. Probably a greater total sum of pain than countries that eased into it You really think South Korea, Germany or Portugal have a greater sum total of pain than the US or Spain? | ||
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Vivax
22203 Posts
On May 23 2020 01:21 mahrgell wrote: Oh wow, there was a choice where the economy would not get killed? Why didn't you tell anyone earlier? I'm sure some countries would have been interested in... Sweden didn't do better than the rest of Europe. The UK is amongst the hardest-hit countries in Europe. I thought I was adamant enough about my belief that there was a credit bubble underway before the lockdowns, and that bailouts were handed out under the name covid-relief. No need to be so snarky. While the lockdowns would have messed up things anyway, they messed it up doubly because of the unnecessary credit expansion imo. It will take time to find out what exactly blew up since the CARES-act put a lid on that but I think we'll get there. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11756 Posts
On May 23 2020 01:57 Acrofales wrote: You really think South Korea, Germany or Portugal have a greater sum total of pain than the US or Spain? Or lets compare Italy and the UK. Comparable total populations, and italy got hit first, so no one knew what to do, or how dangerous the thing was. 100 infected in italy on Feb 23rd, in the UK on March 5th, giving the UK an additional 11 days of looking at other countries to learn how to respond. Italy is now 99 days since there 100 infected day, and their stats look like this: ~230k total infected, 32.6k deaths, ~60k active infected (dropping) (26% of total) The UK is 88 days after their 100 cases day, and they have: 255k cases total, 36.5k deaths, ~210k active cases (rising) (82% of total) To me, this is a clear sign that the UK handled this really, really badly. They had more time to prepare, more knowledge, and managed to get hit harder that Italy. And they are still getting hit harder, while Italy seems to calm down. The UK death rate will only go up from here once they manage to get over the hill on active cases and more of those cases get resolved. In this case, the UK and Italy have suffered roughly equally at this point, but Italy is on their way towards "being done", while there is no sign of that happening in the UK. Compare this to the result here in Germany (which has a larger population than both the UK and Italy) (100 cases on March 1st):180k total cases, 8.3k deaths, ~12k active cases (dropping, 6.7% of total). I think it is really hard to argue that Germany didn't react a lot better to the crisis than the UK. "Getting done with it" by reducing the cases through social distancing seems to be a sign of those countries which were competent at handling the crisis, while those who believed the charlatans arguing for doing nothing have an endless nightmare. (Source for all stats:https://covid19info.live/) | ||
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Sent.
Poland9281 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19574 Posts
If you toggle the per 100k data for deaths, the non-tiny country leaderboard looks like this: Belgium Spain UK Italy France Sweden Netherlands Ireland US Switzerland Ecuador Canada Portugal This list doesn't seem to follow much of a pattern that I can discern, other than it basically being all traditional "Western" nations. On May 23 2020 02:23 Sent. wrote: I don't think it useful to compare Germany to Spain. Germany is such a well run country that it would likely do better than Spain even if its goverment chose an objectively worse method of combating the epidemic. It's also hard to compare South Korea, Germany and the US as those three had to deal with very different circumstances. In my haste I didn't include my own anecdotes from living in a big US city, but this strikes me as exactly right. Back in February when I still had to commute you noticed that East Asians were all already wearing masks, while no one else was. Even now its fairly clear when you make a grocery store trip that there are vastly different cultural patterns in adhering to best practices. I find white people to appear the most paranoid (as in they are the most likely to have someone freak out about an unavoidable violation of their 6 feet), while most minorities are more lax. Particularly employees at the stores who just do all sorts of bad practices. I think these patterns are borne out by some of the breakdowns in death and infection statistics in the US. Although much of that might be artifacts. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
Reality is that there are few countries that look particularly good by "objective" measures, the favorability of most measures is going to shift over time, and the current way of trying to contort the facts to tell a political story seems like little more than a pretty bizarre way of looking for a way to say "my team is better than your team!" | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15742 Posts
On May 23 2020 01:57 Acrofales wrote: You really think South Korea, Germany or Portugal have a greater sum total of pain than the US or Spain? My understanding is that they aren’t done yet, since there is no vaccine and not widespread immunity. Until that happens, they still need to disallow travel and stuff, right? Lots of stuff back to normal, but isn’t it assumed the issue doesn’t fully go away until vaccine or immunity? | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On May 23 2020 02:45 LegalLord wrote: Frankly this whole "competence scoreboard" discussion seems pretty silly to me right now. It seems to come from a fairly nationalistic position of perceived strength in the response from Germany, and using whatever methods paint (less favorable country) in the least flattering light possible while hyping up the performance of (more favorable country) based almost purely on what countries the poster does and doesn't like on a political level. Reality is that there are few countries that look particularly good by "objective" measures, the favorability of most measures is going to shift over time, and the current way of trying to contort the facts to tell a political story seems like little more than a pretty bizarre way of looking for a way to say "my team is better than your team!" Given how common it is to single out Trump and America’s response for particular scorn, it’s a necessary corrective to point to the data (however incomplete it is) and turn it around to the accusers. Essentially, are you opposed to Trump and this holding this perspective, or is it more about what they’ve done as opposed to other options/countries. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On May 23 2020 03:15 Danglars wrote: Given how common it is to single out Trump and America’s response for particular scorn, it’s a necessary corrective to point to the data (however incomplete it is) and turn it around to the accusers. Essentially, are you opposed to Trump and this holding this perspective, or is it more about what they’ve done as opposed to other options/countries. The way to judge the response to the crisis isn't I think just quantitatively but also qualitatively. It's not just about how many people die and the US isn't exactly doing great on that front, but it's also how people like Trump essentially turned it into some sort of circus, advocating miracle cures, running around without a mask, strange science-denial and so on. The fact that the US isn't doing even worse compared to other countries in raw numbers isn't that surprising when you think about the fact that in the UK, 85% of the population live in England with a density of the state of New York, and a quarter lives in the London metro area. I don't want to know what it would look like if the US has the geography of your average European country. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
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ZerOCoolSC2
9032 Posts
On May 23 2020 03:28 Nyxisto wrote: The way to judge the response to the crisis isn't I think just quantitatively but also qualitatively. It's not just about how many people die and the US isn't exactly doing great on that front, but it's also how people like Trump essentially turned it into some sort of circus, advocating miracle cures, running around without a mask, strange science-denial and so on. The fact that the US isn't doing even worse compared to other countries in raw numbers isn't that surprising when you think about the fact that in the UK, 85% of the population live in England with a density of the state of New York, and a quarter lives in the London metro area. I don't want to know what it would look like if the US has the geography of your average European country. I think that is the paragraph worth focusing on the most. If you look at how NZ, SK, Japan, Malaysia, etc have handled this through leadership alone, then it's a stark contrast to how the US handled it. If there weren't competent governors (for the most part) in some of the areas hit hardest, this for sure would have been a lot worse in those places. Now that testing is spreading of course the numbers are going to rise, but I wonder about the deaths as well as people are willing to let gram gram die to protect the economy. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On May 23 2020 03:28 Nyxisto wrote: The way to judge the response to the crisis isn't I think just quantitatively but also qualitatively. It's not just about how many people die and the US isn't exactly doing great on that front, but it's also how people like Trump essentially turned it into some sort of circus, advocating miracle cures, running around without a mask, strange science-denial and so on. The fact that the US isn't doing even worse compared to other countries in raw numbers isn't that surprising when you think about the fact that in the UK, 85% of the population live in England with a density of the state of New York, and a quarter lives in the London metro area. I don't want to know what it would look like if the US has the geography of your average European country. The response in term of rhetoric has been more bad than good, though I think the impact is widely overstated. Major media also loves to one-up Trump and kind of feed off him in symbiotic fashion. Thus it is with populists and the discredited institutions that give them power. And don’t forget, ~80% of America live in major metro sprawls. The situations are rather comparable in the aggregate, though not quite regionally. It really makes no sense, aside from political tribalism, to not applaud the rapid expansion in testing capacity, massive trend towards constant or declining rate of spread across the vast majority of states, and efficacy of current measures taken by states by fiat and conscientious citizens by choice. I also suppose it’s just easy to be pessimistic. | ||
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