Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

There's a lot to talk about with the Hunter Biden BS and social media's overreaction to what is really a pretty weak story as far as Joe Biden goes.

1) If Facebook and Twitter are blocking access to the NY Post story because the emails were hacked/stolen, then that's wrong IMO. They have a legitimate news value, even if they're not as interesting as the headline makes them out to be.

2) However, the NY Post, being part of the super-sleazy Murdoch tabloid empire, couldn't resist including a gallery of Hunter Biden selfies, several of which make him appear high as a kite, drunk, or disheveled. They reveal how they even have a quasi-sex tape of him. Hate Hunter Biden and Joe Biden all you want, but that shit has NO news value, and they are in fact stolen material. If someone on Twitter started posting the nude selfies of various female celebrities that got hacked over the past few years, they'd get banned. No problem with that. Same principle applies here insofar as that kind of stuff goes.

If the Post removes that shit from the article, I think Twitter should allow it.

3) The story of how Rudy supposedly got this hard drive is fishy. Extremely fishy. Reporters tracked down the owner of this computer shop where Hunter Biden's "laptop" supposedly sat for the better part of a year before the owner claims he reported it to the FBI and then gave it to Rudy. The owner, big surprise, is a huge Trump supporter who has routinely shared conspiracy crap on his social media accounts. He told the reporters conflicting information then claimed he feared he'd be killed to silence him just like Seth Rich.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-wh...arre-interview

4) I kinda get the impression that not even Trump and Rudy privately think this is a game-changer else they wouldn't have dropped it midweek in the middle of a SUpreme Court confirmation hearing and two weeks after voting has already started. But Trump is doing so badly in the polls that it's a kitchen sink approach now and any damage they can inflict to Biden is worth it. Getting moderates to hate both candidates helps Trump.

[lineygoblue]

Harris v ACB

Talent v Wiz

Liney v His Whistle

crash v A Cogent Thought

DSL v A third grade math quiz

hurtful ..... but accurate.

[crashcourse]

ACB

scoreless tie

Liney

STFU

Tossup

[crashcourse]

tend to think most of america could give a shit whether biden met with Baurista and whether hunter got paid for using his daddy influence

but the censorship when you look at the encyclopedia of accusations against trump substantiated or not is pretty damning. Big tech wants something happen they do everything they can. and they are not a platform for free speech but a publisher for the lefties

far as where they got that hard rive --FBI git it in december and i think somebody in the senate got it after that--then supposedly giuliani was last choice

[iam416]

The whole thing is actually very Trumpian in that folks have managed to turn a molehill into a mountain. The Biden story is mostly meh. The fact that social media is censoring it is very much not meh especially, as crash notes, given the sources of the stories run against PDJT continuously for 4 years. I mean, just recently the NYT ran a story on PDJT's tax returns (newsworthy). Of course, those were leaked to the NYT and that's an actual crime. So, spare me the hacking bullshit.

It's just further confirmation that social media platforms are in the tank for the Left. I mean....IN. THE. TANK.

[Jeff Buchanan]

No getting around it. New COVID case numbers are rising. Percent positives are rising - an investigative journalism article alleges FL is baking the % + reports to keep them under 5% with the intent to support the Desantis re-opening plans in the state. The math used to support the allegations is good. FL isn't lying or misleading as the article alleges but they are choosing a way to report numbers more favorable to the governor. I'll spare you a rundown to contextualize those numbers and make them a more meaningful indicator of disease burden Even those metrics are up but not dire consequences up. In the public space fear mongering re COVID drowns out more reasonable ways to look at the impact of the virus.

Here' the thing: One cannot disconnect the reality of growth of viral infections in a logarithmic way. More cases = 2x, 4x,8x ....... new cases. The question remains, what is the real impact of rising case numbers other than, well, more new cases? The lay press does a shitty job of answering that question. Experts are hesitant to offer views because the most accurate ones are backwards looking and become speculative when looking forward. None of these guys want to stake out ground they can't defend. Fauci is a good example of a guy in that boat. But it is unmistakable that by certain measures of disease burden, CFR being one of them, rising case numbers do not portend rising cases of serious illnesses or deaths at least when growth rates are factored in. I don't think from my reading that there is a place in the US where the disease burden isn't under control and being managed. This despite reporting of hospitals "near capacity or close to over-flowing or staff stretched to dangerous levels"...... none of this objectively identified.

It still comes down to risk/cost/benefit. So, what is the age stratified risk of serious illness from the virus and does the cost of a mitigation measure produce a desired public health outcome by age cohort as measured by disease burden. Those calculations have to be made regionally and that still isn't being done. Not even close......at least as far as we are told in the public space. We're getting not enough or too much mitigation on a local level. I don't have a solution and we may be simply wondering in the woods towards one. There are plenty of examples of well thought out regional or local responses to the pandemic. I think FL is one of them despite the hammering Desantis absorbs and the disparate mitigation measures and ways to enforce them on a county wide basis.

What this situation cries for is a centralized pandemic response.

[Dr. Strangelove]

You can get 7-day rolling averages for every state here. Daily tests/cases but more significant are the daily hospitalizations and deaths. There are some states, like Ohio, where cases are up because tests are up. But that's not the explanation everywhere. Check out Wisconsin in particular

https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/all-metrics-per-state

[Jeff Buchanan]

........... This morning I read two articles. One of them measured economic success or lack thereof during the Trump presidency. It was a good effort given the controversial and often speculative nature of measuring stuff like this. The bottom line using several economic measures is that Trump's economic policies produced a marginally better economy during the years 2017-2019 The strongest improvement came in wage growth of low to moderate income earners. Tight labor markets contributed to this. So, yeah, if Trump wasn't such an egregious lair and shitty human being, I cold vote for him based on his economic policies alone. Unfortunately, That's not enough.

OTH, while the economy was good before COVID and his economic policies stand a good chance of producing a strong recovery after COVID, COVID has to be whipped and that gets me to the second article I read: Biden's COVID plans:

Takeaways: from the article

Mr. Biden wants to start his presidency with the capacity to perform 100 million tests per month, up from about 25 million currently. He calls for a “Pandemic Testing Board” to increase the supply of tests, something of a parallel to Roosevelt’s War Production Board.

Mr. Biden said he would quickly appoint a national “supply chain commander” to coordinate the logistics of manufacturing and distributing protective gear and test kits. His advisers have also been working on a plan to distribute a vaccine.

He wants to mobilize at least 100,000 Americans for a “public health jobs corps” of contact tracers to help track and curb outbreaks. Mr. Biden counts on securing money from Congress for schools, hospitals and other priorities.

Still up in the air: a national mask mandate. Mr. Biden said his team was still exploring whether he had the power to require Americans to wear masks outside their homes — or whether he would have to leave it to governors, as Mr. Trump has.

I've advocated for improved testing and reporting as a way forward and a more centralized pandemic response. The Biden approach seems to me to lean in that direction. I'll probably vote for him on that basis alone as I see it central to post pandemic recovery. As well, my take is that the US needs a second round of massive economic stimulus legislation. R's have mostly held this up niggling over less substantive elements of the D legislation. Trump, if he wins, is going to continue to dicker with this and it may already be too late if we're waiting till January for Biden to deliver it. After that I'll rely on our system of checks and balances to hold a progressive legislative agenda in check.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Talent- Remember that AP or Gallup poll you posted about a week or so ago? This NBC/WSJ poll shows similar stuff

50% say they are personally better off than 4 years ago (34% say they're worse)

But only 38% say the country as a whole is better off than 4 years ago (58% say it's worse)

And 62% say the country is going in the 'wrong direction'

https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/WSJNBCPoll-Mid-October-2020.pdf

[Jeff Buchanan]

Yeah, Wisconsin is an outlier. I'm actually in Wisconsin right now. Way up north and out of Milwaukee though I flew in there yesterday. I'm not sure there is a single reason foe this other than the reality of exponential growth. It certainly started in Madison in early September but state PH officials note that lately, it's Packers Parties, weddings, birthdays and large gatherings. IOW congregate settings. They also speculate that mask wearing and social distancing isn't being followed. Nothing new to see here.

I don't think, as I offered above, that the growth rates of hospitalizations and deaths parallel those of new case numbers. They are up but they don't follow the same exponential trends of new case numbers. An article I read in the Milwaukee Journal was packed with assertions that hospitals state wide are "almost at capacity." That kind of data is not publicly available for fact checking. It would be nice if it were. My experience with this is that hospital services are centrally coordinated and while one facility may be maxed out, another is empty. There are mechanisms in place to re-balance the load.

There's going to be ebb and flow of data as we move along the COVID journey. Taking the long view and prioritizing the objectives of pandemic management points to rational solutions that balance the social and economic costs of mitigation measures with PH benefits. Right now, the public lacks reliable hard data upon which lay people like us can judge steps being taken by state and local officials as reasonable or not. I doubt the reliability of most data though trends can be informative. Right now, its hard to trust most sources and the lay press is by far the absolute worst.

[iam416]

but more significant are the daily hospitalizations and deaths.

Most significant are deaths. Full stop. Hospitalizations are of a concern because they're a cost. But deaths are what really matters. And to put Wisconsin's spike in perspective, they appear to have spiked up to 35 deaths in a day -- and will surely go higher. Maybe 50. Maybe 60 at some point. New York peaked at Eight fucking Hundred. Per day.

Not to be too crass, but 35 deaths a day isn't a number that screams grave public health crisis. It's not good. It's something to be aware of. But it it's roughly 10,000 deaths in a full year for a state with a population of 5.8M. That's 0.17% of the state population *IF* things continue at the new spiked HIGH for an entire year (they won't).

[iam416]

Talent- Remember that AP or Gallup poll you posted about a week or so ago? This NBC/WSJ poll shows similar stuff

50% say they are personally better off than 4 years ago (34% say they're worse)

But only 38% say the country as a whole is better off than 4 years ago (58% say it's worse)

And 62% say the country is going in the 'wrong direction'

Again, this fits with exactly how I see things. People are better off, but the combination of (a) the Media telling everyone how terrible everything is; and (b) general disdain for PDJT means even if you think you're doing great, you assume everyone else must be doing shitty because that's what's you've been told (or, more simply, you think PDJT is a disaster for the country even though you've done fine w/ him as President).

As I mentioned, it's similar to polls on racism. Without fail, self-identified liberal white people are the group with the largest percentage that think racism is a problem. AAs -- you know, the group that would actually experience the racism -- tend to answer more in line with self-identified moderates/conservative white people. Which sort of gets to -- your "beliefs/opinions" are obviously shaped by what you're told (or indoctrinated with).

In any event, the election is not even interesting at this point. It's so over. And, for that matter, so is the Senate. Whether these numbers mean anything in terms of how the Ds should govern is both (a) up for debate; and (b) irrelevant (they're obviously going to govern like they have a huge electoral mandate).

[iam416]

An article I read in the Milwaukee Journal was packed with assertions that hospitals state wide are "almost at capacity." That kind of data is not publicly available for fact checking.

It's fear-mongering. The word "almost" gives them the leeway. There's probably been one brief moment in Brooklyn (or Queens?) where a small area had legitimate hospital capacity issues.

Otherwise, the US did an excellent job of slowing case growth initially to buy time to prepare for spike-driven capacity.

[iam416]

Finally, an optimistic article on Covid -- https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/...-the-pandemic/

This one looks at therapeutics with a nice nutshell explanation of the different ones being used. In particular, it does a nice job of explaining Regeneron. Unfortunately, PDJT used Regeneron and is now touting the shit out of it, so surely the Media will treat it like it's poison. That's the way it goes. I mean, PDJT is turning the Ds in Anti-Vaxxers before our very eyes. It's fucking astounding.

It also looks at mortality rates and average age of cases and other things. All in all, a nice summary.

[Ghengis Jon]

Informative NR article.


Watching Trump's handling of the pandemic is like watching a drunk driver be the only survivor of a horrific fatal accident.