Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

People who are scared. Causing fear such as they experience is a way they fight the feeling of powerlessness.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I have sympathy for some of them. Like the Ohio auctioneer in that video I posted a few weeks back. That dude was an actual human being and probably the first time he'd ever done something like that. A lot of the people in attendance are cartoon characters whose only profession is 'protestin' (the Right has them and the Left has them). I don't have sympathy for the anti-vaxxers or the handful screaming about Jews and one world government. Or grifters like Sheriff Clarke showing up, desperately trying to squeeze a few more minutes of notoriety out of a fading career.

[iam416]

I'm with Strangelove, mostly, on the handful of folks who show up. But, there's a significant minority for whom this applies:

The shelter-in-place orders are bringing into stark relief the divide between folks who can work from home and those who can't. It's a rough white collar-blue collar breakdown, and the latter see the "experts" and the "media" siding entirely with the former because, well, they are members of the former. And not just siding with but utterly dismissing their concerns ("are you ok with killing more people?"). And that breeds a fuckton of resentment. We are very much not "all in this together."

[Jeff Buchanan]

I think it instructive to look at how other country's citizens and their governments are behaving post COVID peaks. Some of them that are re-opening are a month to two months ahead of the US's state by state peaks. I've looked at and read about government actions in SK, China, Australia, NZ, Switzerland and Italy. The one behavior that consistently appears in the behavior of governments is that re-openings don't look at all like what their respective citizens think they should look like. So, we have this friction between expectations and reality.

In the countries I've read about, SK , Switzerland and China have the most compliant citizens, i.e., they trust their governments, AU, NZ culturally are similar to the US but generally see government as effective so, OK. Italy, well, they are a breed apart in obeying laws - they generally don't. Italians know, however, SARS-COV-2 is a pretty bad thing after seeing their friends and family get taken out so, they're like, OK, guess I shouldn't go bar hopping tonight.

IOW, there's little friction that develops among compliant citizenry when expectations and reality don't align. In SK, SUI or China for example, if the group of friends think they ought to be able to go to a bar but the government says, no-can-do, they'll find something else to do and thank the government for keeping us safe. AU and NZ are similar. Italy? They'll piss and moan .... but stay home because they've seen people die in the street.

In the US, nope, like AA points out, the folks get scared and cover that fear up by posing to be upset about the government's abridgment of their constitutional rights. They dress up in tactical gear to be seen with thier AKs but, in reality, it's just theater for them. In addition, there is a strong anti-government disposition mixed with expectations not coming at all close to the reality that the government is feeding them. It doesn't help that the government's management of the pandemic, at the federal, state and county level, has been disjointed and inept. The press augments that by pointing out every misstep. Trust the gov'ment? No fucking way ...... I'm going to the beach, the bar, the park, whatever to defy those ass-clowns. That's the US right now in a nut-shell.

That's where we are. In past crisis, America was the bastion of exceptionalism. If government has been anything in all of this, it has not been exceptional. It has been, for the most part, a dismal failure to appear to be in control and coordinate a reasonable response to this pandemic or, it appears now, in managing a sensible, fact based reopening. I'm hugely disappointed in how the initial response, even though theoretically looking appropriate, turned out to be in practice, in implementation, awful. Now, as it appears the US is emerging from the worst of the pandemic, re-opening has taken an awful, highly politicized course.

The worst part is that it isn't fact based. In fact, the initial response - the shuttering - will very likely turn out to be an inappropriate response, at least in terms of the unnecessary depth of it's economic impact. There's a ton of data out there to support the position that we went too far in winding all this up and are taking too long to unwind it ....... the fear of politicians acting in their official capacity to re-open being labeled as having "blood on their hands" if anyone dies in that process overwhelming the facts and the data. I'm seeing that in spades in S. FL. I'll spare you the details.

It's a hot mess right now nation wide. I don't think I have ever had more doubt about the capacity of government, specifically government officials acting in coordination and collectively, to sort this out and move forward. While COVID-19 is certainly an epic disaster of such proportion as to never have been experienced, how America has acted in facing it is a disturbing revelation of it's ugly flaws. That other democratic style governments and especially those significantly departing from democratic principals, have faced the pandemic, dealt with its peak and managed an exit and is returning to some semblance of normal social and economic activity, is even more disturbing.

[iam416]

I also want to note how profounding fucking stupid it is to say, more or less, "SCIENCE!!!!!" Gavin Newsom, the ever daft dipshit, is emphasizing that California is governed by "SCIENCE."

I reiterate -- that's profoundly fucking stupid. Science is one part of the equation. It is not dispositive. Policy decisions typically involve a number of different factors and considerations from a number of different perspectives. The policy-makers then make a decision based on the aggregation of the factors. For example, "science" offers predictive analysis as to the effects of raising the speed limit from 65 to 75. Other interest groups then way in with their own supposed effects. The policy-makers then make a decision -- considering science as a factor but not a dispositive factor. It's a called a fucking cost-benefit analysis and it's what we should expect government to do.

The idea -- the fucking insane idea -- that "science" should be the only consideration in how we respond to Covid is, in effect, saying other costs don't matter. At all. I can't imagine a more ludicrous position. But, that's the way the issue is being framed (by some).

And to a macro point, it is consistent with the Technocratic model that merely defers to whatever a expert says.

[iam416]

If government has been anything in all of this, it has not been exceptional. It has been, for the most part, a dismal failure to appear to be in control and coordinate a reasonable response to this pandemic or, it appears now, in managing a sensible, fact based reopening.

Yeah, I disagree on the dismal failure part. Exceptionalism is a relative notion, obviously, and I don't think the US is, relatively speaking, a dismal failure. I think our response has been in line with most other countries and we're having outcomes that are consistent with most other countries. The NYC Metro isn't good; a ton of other places are.

And I'd also note that American exceptionalism is primarily rooted in its liberty and ideals related thereto. It's not necessarily about being the best at everything. I think it's easier for a grossly authoritarian regime to coordinate a certain response to a pandemic than the US precisely for the reasons that make the US exceptional.

[lineygoblue]

The people who are dragging out the assault rifles and other armaments are over-reacting. Its just not necessary. Gretch hasn't threatened to force compliance on the masses with the National Guard or tanks yet. I've seen no black helicopters. Those people can put the armaments away, and protest by using their voices, and just being a pain in the rear to the Governor, and they have a constitutional right to do so. Kind of like what my barber is doing.

A lot of the people who are protesting are the same people who put Gretch in office. In 3 years, they can give her a review of her performance.

As I've said before, I have no problem with the stay at home parts of the emergency order, but I can see why some people do have a problem with it. They have businesses, and jobs that are being hurt every day this thing drags on. I also understand Whitmer's desire to control the virus as much as possible, before lifting the restrictions. Hopefully, she's listening more to the health professionals and scientists, than she is to the Michigan Democratic Party.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff- I think you greatly overstate or overestimate how much "loss of confidence in govt" there has been. A lot of Governors currently have sky-high approval numbers for how they've handled things, DeWine among them.

[iam416]

That's correct. And, frankly, the Federal Government's "federalism" approach is completely appropriate. That's given different governors opportunities to assess what's best for their state.

[Dr. Strangelove]

For example, all 50 Governors have higher approval ratings than Trump on handling covid19. Andy Beshear is a Dem running a deep red state and his approval's around 80%. Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker are Republicans running deep blue states and their approval is around 80%.

The two-worst performing Governors (Hawaii and South Dakota) are people who ought to be doing well in heavily slanted states. Both have lost popularity because they have seemed to not be doing "enough" to prevent spread.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495504-governors-in-all-50-states-get-better-marks-than-trump-for-covid

[Dr. Strangelove]

I know nothing about the quality of the pollster but this is a terrible poll for Thom Tillis. 33% approval as an incumbent is dreadful. Trailing well behind Trump is another bad sign.

https://www.meredith.edu/assets/images/content/Meredith_College_Poll_Report_April_2020_-_COVID-19.pdf

[Jeff Buchanan]

That's correct. And, frankly, the Federal Government's "federalism" approach is completely appropriate. That's given different governors opportunities to assess what's best for their state.

I don't disagree with this ...... and, I don't disagree with your position on "exceptionalism" with regard to how I used it in my post. I'll get to that. First, DSL, I'm not sure popularity is the best measure of policy effectiveness - it might be but I tend to value what I see on the ground not what officials are saying about it.

For example, Rod Desantis does a much better job of selling himself (and his management of the pandemic in FL) than Brain Kemp of GA does. Both of their approaches to the pandemic have been similar. In GA, Kemp's re-opening plan is pretty good but, since nobody wanting to open their rib shacks has read it (or maybe can even read) there's mass confusion at the execution level. In Desantis' case, what Desantis is saying isn't always manifesting itself on the ground. For example, administration of the PPP and UIB in FL has been a fiasco. At a more local level, the counties of Dade (includes all of the large municipalities in that county including the city of Miami and others - all with their own mayors and own set of mitigation measures) have exempted themselves from the re-opening plan Desantis articulated on Wednesday for the state. WTF is that?

People I'm talking with have no idea why this happened and why Desantis left it up to this gaggle of idiot officials. It makes no sense given the county data I'm looking at parallels the data for the gating measures that all show decreasing values overall in the state of FL. Desantis touted that as the reason he's implementing Phase One in FL (stupidly except in the three most populous counties in the state). So, yeah, I'm a bit biased by the stupid shit I'm experiencing in S. FL that may not be happening in ohio.

talent, while I agree with the basics of a federalist type implementation of policy and that that is what the Trump administration pursued, a crisis like this absolutely requires a coordinated federal government response that is not of a federalist model at all. The problem with the US government's ability to respond to a national crisis is that it is huge and it's organs are decentralized to the extent that they don't function well as a whole - there is intense agency bickering driven by politics and an unwillingness to share information. That information sharing, absent in the current state of things, permits the formulation of effective policy to be articulated by the executive. You've seen the absence of it, the agency power struggles, on display in press briefings. I've seen it. The national media augments it.

On the management of a war-time, national logistics plan, same things apply - federal agencies weren't working together to plan for a crisis like this even though the potential for a pandemic had been raised in the recent past. Instead of a coordinated effort to obtain, stock and then distribute all matter of supplies to the states to contend with the pandemic, that was a cluster-fuck of significant proportion and impact. Instead of providing uniform testing products and reporting processes to the states, they were left on their own to obtain these. That has resulted in spot shortages of reliable testing products and the reporting of mostly unreliable data back up to the federal level where such data is intended to inform emerging public health policy. I read a good article on these two issues a couple of days ago. I'll try to dig it out as it makes my points very plainly.

Right now, I'm trying to fix a spa pump in my place in Atlanta that burned out during the 3 months the damn thing was unattended while I was in FL. 1st world problems.

[THE_WIZARD_]

sciencegiphy.gif
Talent blinded me with science!!!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Another Tyson Foods plant shuts down as almost 900 employees test positive. This time in Logansport, IN

https://www.foxnews.com/health/nearl...ve-coronavirus

[Dr. Strangelove]

IRS accidentally sends stimulus money to thousands of foreign workers

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/01/irs-mistakenly-sends-stimulus-checks-to-foreign-workers-228974