All things political. Coronavirus Edition. (17 Viewers)

[Maxp]

I fear we are really going to be in a bad place due to the obvious cuts to the federal agencies that deal with infectious disease, but also the negative effect the Affordable Care act has had on non urban hospitals. Our front line defenses are ineffectual and our ability to treat the populous is probably at an all time low. Factor in the cost of healthcare and I can see our system crashing. What do you think about the politics of this virus?

 

[Humperdoo]

How in the world does stuff like this help? I just don’t understand.

New Jersey professor responds to backlash after ‘F--- each and every Trump supporter’ comment

A professor at a New Jersey university is blaming President Trump and his supporters for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, claiming it’s their fault African-Americans have been dying at a disproportionate rate.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Beach Friends]

How in the world does stuff like this help? I just don’t understand.

New Jersey professor responds to backlash after ‘F--- each and every Trump supporter’ comment

A professor at a New Jersey university is blaming President Trump and his supporters for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, claiming it’s their fault African-Americans have been dying at a disproportionate rate.

www.foxnews.com

You may recall that yesterday I posted an opinion piece in Huffington Post wherein an "academic" at Oxford University expressed anxiety over the prospect that Oxford would wine the race in the development of a vaccine because it would place white people and Western civilization in a positive light,

Now we see this "academic" expressing her strongly held beliefs that "Trump supporters" are responsible for the outbreak of the virus.

So what do these two proffessors have in common? They are both gender studies professors.

Which brings me to a question. Suppose you are hiring for a position that does not require a college degree, but you value education nonetheless. You have two candidates that you like, one is a high school dropout and the other finished with honors with a degree in gender studies. All other things being fairly equal, which would you choose? I am going with the high school dropout every time,

 

[Richard]

How in the world does stuff like this help? I just don’t understand.

New Jersey professor responds to backlash after ‘F--- each and every Trump supporter’ comment

A professor at a New Jersey university is blaming President Trump and his supporters for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, claiming it’s their fault African-Americans have been dying at a disproportionate rate.

www.foxnews.com

It doesn't help. It just adds to the ignorant noise surrounding any honest effort to acquire useful information and is a classic example of starting with a conclusion and fashioning an unfounded narrative to support it. Worthless at best and harmful at worst.

During this crisis, there has been finger-pointing from all sides. While some of it may be warranted and understandable, it does little to solve the actual problems contained in managing our healthcare, supply chain, infrastructure or economic needs. This should be a time when we put aside the majority of our personal feelings for the betterment of society as a whole.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

Maybe try sources that aren’t propaganda outlets that play on racial cleavages built for an audience receptive to that emotional triggering and baiting.

Her underlying frustrations are a valid one, even if poorly articulated, and this is more prime examples of the rot that is Fox and the danger of its consumption. The equivalent of the most side tenuous poster on a forum only going after the lowest hanging arguments.

Republican policy since the end of segregation, when through the Southern strategy the party took up the mantle in order to endear themselves to the pro segregationist south have continued to help ghettoize and marginalize black people. Whether it was direct segregationist policies. the war on drugs, the war on education(cutting public schools as white people fled to restrictive private schools), redlining, institutionalizing, White flight, or broken windows policing. The effect has been to keep black people separate and unequal in American society and as a consequence today, those “essential” workers that we refuse to provide sick leave, labor protections, or comprehensive universal healthcare security are more likely to be at risk of exposure, more incentivized to avoid the system longer, and more likely to be in poor health, are disproportionately people of color. And those same conservatives are now manufacturing protests to pressure governments to put these “essential” workers at even more risk so they can get back to operating their capitalist machines that are hellbent on making sure we don’t take this crisis as an opportunity to start providing a better basic safety net so these people that have been taken advantage of their entire existence here are just a little less exploitable and a little bit more empowered to stand up.

Fox News, per usual, is more interested in inflaming racial sentiment than providing food for critical thinking, but even if they found the worst person on Twitter in order to dismiss the underlying concerns her frustrations come from, the underlying concerns are valid.

 

[Richard]

Maybe try sources that aren’t propaganda outlets that play on racial cleavages built for an audience receptive to that emotional triggering.

Her frustrations are a valid one, and this is more prime examples of the rot that is Fox and the danger of its consumption.

Republican policy since the end of segregation, when through the Southern strategy the party took up the mantle in order to endear themselves to the pro segregationist south have continued to help ghettoize and marginalize black people. Whether it was direct segregationist policies. the war on drugs, the war on education(cutting public schools as white people fled to restrictive private schools), redlining, institutionalizing, White flight, or broken windows policing. The effect has been to keep black people separate and unequal in American society and as a consequence today, those “essential” workers that we refuse to provide sick leave, labor protections, or comprehensive universal healthcare security are more likely to be at risk of exposure, more incentivized to avoid the system longer, and more likely to be in poor health, are disproportionately people of color. And those same conservatives are now manufacturing protests to pressure governments to put these “essential” workers at even more risk so they can get back to operating their capitalist machines that are hellbent on making sure we don’t take this crisis as an opportunity to start providing a better basic safety net so these people that have been taken advantage of their entire existence here are just a little less exploitable and a little bit more empowered to stand up.

Fox News, per usual, is more interested in enflaming racial sentiment than providing food for critical thinking, but even if they found the worst person on Twitter in order to dismiss the underlying concerns her frustrations come from, the underlying concerns are valid.

There will be plenty of time to assign blame for actions taken during this crisis and to bring up old grievances. It is my belief that her comments did nothing to address any grievance, but rather was an incendiary screed intended to inflame. She may have been expressing personal angst, but her recent comments and some she has made previously indicate that she maintains a constant state of anger. Again, there may be substance to some of what she sees as wrong, but I don't see the value in stoking racial anger for its own sake. It does nothing to address any legitimate concerns and offers no suggestion of solutions. It also generalizes an entire group of people as having the same feelings and motivations. I am more interested in reading about how we can work together to gain control of the crisis. Media outlets obviously have other preferences.

 

[N.O.Bronco]

There will be plenty of time to assign blame for actions taken during this crisis and to bring up old grievances. It is my belief that her comments did nothing to address any grievance, but rather was an incendiary screed intended to inflame. She may have been expressing personal angst, but her recent comments and some she has made previously indicate that she maintains a constant state of anger. Again, there may be substance to some of what she sees as wrong, but I don't see the value in stoking racial anger for its own sake. It does nothing to address any legitimate concerns and offers no suggestion of solutions. It also generalizes an entire group of people as having the same feelings and motivations. I am more interested in reading about how we can work together to gain control of the crisis. Media outlets obviously have other preferences.

So in your mind the way in which American society has ghettoized black people and people of color for a generation, and the way people of color are disproportionately and at times being forced to be on the frontline of this pandemic exaggerated by Republican incompetence is not part of the conversation and they should shut up and avoid such racial baiting?

Anything else you want to tell black people they shouldn’t talk about during the crisis? And any other clearly race baiting Fox News pieces doing exactly what you accuse random woman on twitter for doing you want to look past?

There is a problem, but it isn’t some random woman on Twitter voicing her grievances poorly.

There are grown up conversations needed to be had(Apparently) and not push back too hard on about calling a virus after the people it first infected with the side effect of raising the threat level to those people. But we need to hold off on giving space for those minorities to voice their emotional grievances toward those propagating the policies and race baiting endangering their lives. We need to take seriously the emotional hot takes about abridgments Of freedom from the people that embrace all manner of cultural restrictive laws on others, from saggy pants to a woman’s body, but not the people that will be forced to serve them as they force the rest of the country through attrition and force to endanger their lives at the alter of GDP

 

[Richard]

So in your mind the way in which American society has ghettoized black people and people of color for a generation, and the way people of color are disproportionately and at times being forced to be on the frontline of this pandemic exaggerated by Republican incompetence is not part of the conversation and they should shut up and avoid such racial baiting?

Anything else you want to tell black people they shouldn’t talk about during the crisis? And any other clearly race baiting Fox News pieces doing exactly what you accuse random woman on twitter for doing you want to look past?

There is a problem, but it isn’t some random woman on Twitter voicing her grievances poorly.

That was quite a leap you took to characterize my comments in that way. Nothing in what I said marginalized the legitimate grievances that black Americans have and rightfully address. I agree that the Fox piece sought to draw attention to her "poorly" voiced statements and that it constitutes race-baiting. I can also recognize that her statements offered nothing positive either and was more than just poorly worded. To blame all Trump supporters for the crisis and to suggest that they rejoice in black deaths was race-baiting itself.

There are important questions to ask in relation to why the virus has disproportionally affected certain demographics. The woman's comments and the Fox article did nothing to address those questions and IMO just adds to the negative noise surrounding the crisis. I believe I can articulate my own point of view without someone telling me what I mean, so your attempt to rephrase my position and use terminology that I didn't say or elude to is wrong. I simply answered the question posed and I repeat that I believe statements like hers and the subsequent article are not helpful during this crisis. I suggest you re-read my previous comment and ask yourself if it warranted your reply.

 

[RobF]

There is a problem, but it isn’t some random woman on Twitter voicing her grievances poorly.

Right.

This might really be better suited to the media literacy thread, but the way this has been framed here is odd (albeit not unusual). We do not routinely police the twitter accounts of anyone with any position of notional authority whatsoever and check whether their content is 'helpful' or not. The relevance of her tweets is that they represent a genuine perception and anger among part of the community, which exists, regardless of whether others consider it helpful or not. Considering what such tweets represent in general could be helpful; it can help us recognise and address real underlying issues and the effects they're having.

But singling out the tweets of an associate professor in New Jersey and considering them in terms of whether they're 'helpful' or not, is, in itself, not helpful. It doesn't make the anger and frustration vanish, it does nothing to address the underlying issues, and it's certainly not going to stop people, associate professors or otherwise, being angry and frustrated on twitter.

Just as singling out the angry tweets of some Trump supporter and saying, "how is this helpful", wouldn't be helpful.

The relevant questions are, what are they angry about? Why? If we consider their anger to have merit, then isn't that, the source of the merit, what we should be talking about? And if we consider their anger to lack any merit, then we could consider where it's coming from, why the misperception has arisen, what could be done about that. But simply going, "Look! It's a person being angry and not helpful!"? Not helpful. We'll be here literally forever if we're going to do that.

More generally, there's this notion going around - as expressed in this tweet by Lord Sugar about UK journalism - that we can achieve consensus and move forward by essentially demanding everyone with frustrations or negative criticisms shut up. But that's just magical thinking for a very authoritarian version of consensus - back the boss or shut up - it's not how that works. We can achieve consensus and move forward by hearing people's frustrations and negative criticisms, however they're expressed, at the very least acknowledging them, and seeing what can be done. If we don't think they're valid, we can ignore them, or attempt to address the causes of misperception and prejudice; no notion of progress depends on every single individual, associate professor or not, behaving in the way we want them to. But effectively telling groups of people they should just shut up, is, in itself, divisive.

And singling out particular individuals, but ignoring others, to be labelled as 'unhelpful', is particularly so.

 

[Beach Friends]

It’s not knowable, but extremely likely that any other administration would have been far better. Even countries in Europe that haven’t handled the crisis well are doing far better than the US. There may not be a country in the world that has handled the pandemic worse.

Furthermore, any other administration wouldn’t have cut our eyes out by allowing funding to runout on Epidemiologists monitoring hot spots. We had the advantage of some isolation from Asia. Europe is less isolated, so it isn’t surprising that they got hit hard.

I wonder what analysis you went through to conclude that the United States of America was dead last in the entire world in handling this virus. Setting aside the numbers for a moment, did you consider the preservation or infringement on human liberty?

It may be easy to overlook that, but it's not exactly a small issue. Take a look at the following video, and although it is not the most egregious example you will see in the clip- pay particular attention to the first incident where Chinese officials pay a visit to a home to "moderate" what the residents said on social media:



Before you shrug off the infringement of civil liberties as only being tangential to how a nation has "handled" the pandemic, remember that doctors in Wuhan tried to warn early on that the virus was spread between humans and those doctors were arrested for spreading "misinformation" and causing a civil disturbance. Yeah, when you look at it in that light, freedom of speech is kind of a big deal.

I know, you probably think that sort of thing can't happen here - but it can.

 

[Beach Friends]

Right.

This might really be better suited to the media literacy thread, but the way this has been framed here is odd (albeit not unusual). We do not routinely police the twitter accounts of anyone with any position of notional authority whatsoever and check whether their content is 'helpful' or not. The relevance of her tweets is that they represent a genuine perception and anger among part of the community, which exists, regardless of whether others consider it helpful or not. Considering what such tweets represent in general could be helpful; it can help us recognise and address real underlying issues and the effects they're having.

But singling out the tweets of an associate professor in New Jersey and considering them in terms of whether they're 'helpful' or not, is, in itself, not helpful. It doesn't make the anger and frustration vanish, it does nothing to address the underlying issues, and it's certainly not going to stop people, associate professors or otherwise, being angry and frustrated on twitter.

Just as singling out the angry tweets of some Trump supporter and saying, "how is this helpful", wouldn't be helpful.

The relevant questions are, what are they angry about? Why? If we consider their anger to have merit, then isn't that, the source of the merit, what we should be talking about? And if we consider their anger to lack any merit, then we could consider where it's coming from, why the misperception has arisen, what could be done about that. But simply going, "Look! It's a person being angry and not helpful!"? Not helpful. We'll be here literally forever if we're going to do that.

More generally, there's this notion going around - as expressed in this tweet by Lord Sugar about UK journalism - that we can achieve consensus and move forward by essentially demanding everyone with frustrations or negative criticisms shut up. But that's just magical thinking for a very authoritarian version of consensus - back the boss or shut up - it's not how that works. We can achieve consensus and move forward by hearing people's frustrations and negative criticisms, however they're expressed, at the very least acknowledging them, and seeing what can be done. If we don't think they're valid, we can ignore them, or attempt to address the causes of misperception and prejudice; no notion of progress depends on every single individual, associate professor or not, behaving in the way we want them to. But effectively telling groups of people they should just shut up, is, in itself, divisive.

And singling out particular individuals, but ignoring others, to be labelled as 'unhelpful', is particular so.

Although I disagree with your opinion that highlighting an associate professor's comments is not helpful, I am glad to see someone from the UK concerned about preserving freedom of speech. Perhaps as a free speech advocate, you might consider taking a few moments to create a thread discussing some of the struggles the UK has been having in that area. Sometimes folks in the United States take our First Amendment for granted, so it might be helpful for you to discuss your own nation's experiences just to show how bad things can get.

 

[The moose]

It doesn't help. It just adds to the ignorant noise surrounding any honest effort to acquire useful information and is a classic example of starting with a conclusion and fashioning an unfounded narrative to support it. Worthless at best and harmful at worst.

During this crisis, there has been finger-pointing from all sides. While some of it may be warranted and understandable, it does little to solve the actual problems contained in managing our healthcare, supply chain, infrastructure or economic needs. This should be a time when we put aside the majority of our personal feelings for the betterment of society as a whole.

I hear where you are coming from.

But we have a big but here. Why is fox news scouring Twitter feeds for news at this time really?

Is she anyone important really?

We have plenty of real news right now that deserving of reports. Is this really important or is she important enough to report on? This by design is to split us as a nation and make them money. That is the Fox news business model.

I agree fox news should be better than this and report what is for the betterment of us as a whole and stop reporting Twitter garbage from unimportant humans for clicks to make a buck.

 

[Heathen]

Potentially good news here? Should be noted that this seems to aid in treating the disease, but is not in any way a cure. Still, I'm happy for any positive news right now:

FDA Moving at ‘Lightning Speed’ on Gilead Drug, Commissioner Says

The Food and Drug Administration is moving at “lightning speed” to review data on Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental Covid-19 treatment remdesivir, Commissioner Stephen Hahn said, after encouraging results emerged from a key U.S. trial.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[RobF]

Perhaps as a free speech advocate, you might consider taking a few moments to create a thread discussing some of the struggles the UK has been having in that area. Sometimes folks in the United States take our First Amendment for granted, so it might be helpful for you to discuss your own nation's experiences just to show how bad things can get.

What are you on about? What I'm describing is worse in the US. You have the President and his administration actively and routinely attacking all 'negative media' as 'fake news'. Lord Sugar retweeting memes is a drop in the ocean compared to that.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Doubt anything comes of this

But interesting nonetheless
=======================

Is President Trump guilty of a crime because he has his name on the coronavirus relief checks?

While some might excuse that as an example of Trump’s narcissism, a letter from three prominent lawyers, who represent disparate points on the political spectrum, says it is more serious than that.

The administration’s action, they argue, warrants the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the improper use of government employees and property to promote the president’s reelection campaign.

That would be a criminal violation of the Hatch Act..........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/these-lawyers-say-donald-j-trumps-name-should-not-be-on-stimulus-checks/2020/04/29/086ac1bc-88cc-11ea-9759-6d20ba0f2c0e_story.html

 

[The moose]

Potentially good news here? Should be noted that this seems to aid in treating the disease, but is not in any way a cure. Still, I'm happy for any positive news right now:

FDA Moving at ‘Lightning Speed’ on Gilead Drug, Commissioner Says

The Food and Drug Administration is moving at “lightning speed” to review data on Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental Covid-19 treatment remdesivir, Commissioner Stephen Hahn said, after encouraging results emerged from a key U.S. trial.

www.bloomberg.com

Yeah good news.

Posted a link to it a couple pages back in what has become this race war thread.

A good first step really.

Hopefully now we know what really seems to help they know what path to go down with other meds.

 

[Heathen]

BTW, why can't our entire country do it this way?

There are people who will not get tested because they fear debt:

Los Angeles is now the first major US city to offer free coronavirus testing for all residents | CNN

Los Angeles is offering free coronavirus testing to all residents, becoming the first major United States city to do so.

cnn.it

 

[Optimus Prime]

I was wondering what would happen if businesses reopened and people were uncomfortable going back to work, for safety concerns or child care issues

=======================
The message to workers is “endanger your life or starve,” critics say

Iowa, Oklahoma and other states reopening soon amid the coronavirus outbreak are issuing early warnings to their worried workers: Return to your jobs or risk losing unemployment benefits.

The threats have been loudest among Republican leaders in recent days, reflecting their anxious attempts to jump-start local economic recovery roughly two months after most businesses shut their doors.

In Iowa, for example, state officials even have posted a public call for companies to get in touch if an “employee refuses to return to work.”.........

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/30/republican-states-unemployment-benefits/

 

[The moose]

BTW, why can't our entire country do it this way?

There are people who will not get tested because they fear debt:

Los Angeles is now the first major US city to offer free coronavirus testing for all residents | CNN

Los Angeles is offering free coronavirus testing to all residents, becoming the first major United States city to do so.

cnn.it

Well that would take the administration to do it.

When you think about all the states that don't pay in as much as they take out how can they.

The thing I love is the the flyover red states that want to complain about people taking handouts yet they are firmly planted on the California tit that feeds them.

That is the truth.