The Wuhan virus—how are we doing? - Page 109 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15182308
Godstud wrote:I know covid-19 is bad, but estimates of millions dead is over-the-top.


Although estimates of millions would in fact bring the seriousness of the virus to perhaps its justifiable conclusion far better than tens of thousands. :hmm:

The problem we have is that clearly many states are under reporting the amount of Covid19 deaths that they have for whatever reason and then the West is over zealous in their critique of it. So you will have right wingers bring (true) stats of people being a Covid statistic when the cause had nothing to do with Covid19 and then highlight these stories trying to justify the Wests isn't the worse. But I don't think it matters. If you just go by excess deaths, whether that is official or not - or whether you accept the data of being over the top or not, what the data says is there has been an issue with access deaths globally anyway and on that point at least shows people that Covid has had an impact which we should be concerned of.
#15182311
Godstud wrote:
I know covid-19 is bad, but estimates of millions dead is over-the-top.





A few million have died so far, expect more. The people that do this are really quite good at it.
#15182312
@B0ycey The people who think that Covid-19 is just as dangerous as the flu(idiots, the lot of them!), will not be convinced unless they are standing on the dead.
#15182316
Godstud wrote:@B0ycey The people who think that Covid-19 is just as dangerous as the flu(idiots, the lot of them!), will not be convinced unless they are standing on the dead.


The thing is @Godstud, they don't need convincing they just need to be vaccinated and unfortunately the two seem to go hand in hand. I only wish people would consider Pascels Wager in times like this. If it is as dangerous as the flu (it isn't) then you will most likely survive with or without the vaccine. And if not, you protect yourself with the vaccine. That is why I have less time with anti vaxxers than I do with people who think this virus is as serious as the flu. Don't let pride dictate logic. :hmm:
#15182329
Godstud wrote:This kind of guesswork is precisely why some people on the right-wing say the science is bullshit. People propose things for which there is no evidence.

I know covid-19 is bad, but estimates of millions dead is over-the-top.


By following the commercial media, your hoop-jumping has become very targeted. You claim that "right wing" is a type of dog who "doesn't believe the science" that the mass media feeds them.

Information-management by Facebook, the CIA, and other powers-that-be.... is what secures the link between "believing their lies" and the impression that "you will receive a treat."

What treat do you expect to receive from Giant Corporations and our Corrupt end-of-world oligarchs?
#15182336
Rancid wrote:@Godstud SHUTUP

YOU CAN KEEP YOUR GENOCIDE JAB!

Rightwing-sounding soundbites don't prove that our oligarchs are telling the truth.

You are fooling yourself with internalized propaganda strategies.
#15182342
@Doug64 So overall, Republicans have a clear plurality but not a majority, and any campaign to convince Hesitaters/Rejecters otherwise aimed at just Republicans is going to miss most of them.


Come on now. We Republicans need to own this. It was not until this week that significant numbers of Republican pols have started hitting the pro vaccination message hard. We need a campaign to hit both groups. We had a Republican president who set the virtual requirement that all of his followers forward an anti vaccination tone. Your article about the Michigan vote clearly shows that the party is not prepared to fight this pandemic effectively.

This is not about rights. That is not my argument. It is about doing the right thing for a change. There was a time when the American right was willing and able to take the hard decisions and move the country forward. No longer. It is a party of sold-out wimps. Devoid of leadership.
#15182358
Drlee wrote:Come on now. We Republicans need to own this. It was not until this week that significant numbers of Republican pols have started hitting the pro vaccination message hard. We need a campaign to hit both groups. We had a Republican president who set the virtual requirement that all of his followers forward an anti vaccination tone. Your article about the Michigan vote clearly shows that the party is not prepared to fight this pandemic effectively.

This is not about rights. That is not my argument. It is about doing the right thing for a change. There was a time when the American right was willing and able to take the hard decisions and move the country forward. No longer. It is a party of sold-out wimps. Devoid of leadership.


@Drlee ,

There are built-in constituencies across the political spectrum that have a COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, as I've stated before, there's no monopoly on fecklessness and idiocy. Many have a pathological distrust of government or are opposed to all vaccines in general. Let's face it; we've become a country of ignorant neurotics, fearful of everything, dithering at every fork in the road.
#15182359
@Drlee, I didn't say efforts shouldn't be made to convince Republicans to vaccinate. I said that if Republicans are the only ones we focus on, we're going to miss most of the people that are on the fence or flat-out refuse. Though considering that four out of five of those on the fence aren't Republicans, those are the ones we need to focus on to get the most bang for our buck.

Truthfully, considering the evidence that even in the case of the new variant the vaccines are at least highly effective in reducing the impact of catching the virus, and how little of an impact the virus has on children, I'm just about to the point of saying if they don't want to get vaccinated, they're adults, let them--the rest of us can get on with our lives while they take their chances.
Last edited by Doug64 on 24 Jul 2021 22:52, edited 1 time in total.
#15182365
@Doug64 @Drlee

Well I tell you what, mask mandates are back on the table again with these new surges. Britain and Canada are doing a better job of getting their people vaccinated which begs the question why is the U.S. not doing as well as Canada and Britain. The honest and objective answer appears to be this: Trump supporters. Pretty soon we might have to start shutting down bars, restaurants and coffee shops and/or suffer even more severe worker shortages because of risky COVID work environments and have even more shortages in products, goods and services in the economy unless Trump supporters start vaccinating. Moreover, if this continues, our country's credit rating will be downgraded and that will mean it will cost people more money to get a mortgage or business loan which will further hurt the economy.

Harry Enten of CNN wrote:A new Angus Reid poll from Canada finds that 86% of Canadians 18 and older have gotten or want a Covid-19 vaccine as soon as possible. The same poll shows that just 8% of Canadian adults do not want a Covid-19 vaccination.

This matches what the real-world data is showing us: Canadians are far more driven to get vaccinated than Americans.

What's the point: Just two months ago, less than 5% of Canadians were fully vaccinated against Covid-19. At the same time, about 40% of Americans were. Today, a little less than 50% of Americans are fully vaccinated, while a little more than 50% of Canadians are.

Among adults, more than 80% of the Canadian population is at least partially vaccinated, while the US has still not reached 70%.

A big reason (though not the only one) why Canada has overtaken the US is pretty clear: Political polarization is playing a smaller role in who is and is not getting vaccinated there. We see a similar phenomenon in the United Kingdom, where more than 50% of the population is also fully vaccinated.

(Note that those ages 12 and above are eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine in Canada and the United States, while, for most, the vaccine-eligible age in the UK is 18.)
In the Angus Reid poll in Canada, 85% of adults who voted for the center-left Liberal Party in 2019 have been at least partially vaccinated. It's a similar 84% for the progressive New Democratic Party.

Those percentages look similar to what we're seeing in the US for progressives. In a late June ​​NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, 88% of those who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election said they had been vaccinated. A July CBS News/YouGov poll showed that 84% of Biden backers were at least partially vaccinated. A June Fox News poll put it at 81%.

But the difference between the two countries becomes clear when you examine conservatives. Among those adults who backed the Conservative Party in Canada's 2019 election, a lower 69% had received at least one dose.

Still, that's far greater than the 52% of Donald Trump supporters who have gotten a dose in an average of the Fox News, Marist and YouGov surveys.
It's worth noting that the US' vaccination patterns don't just differ from Canada's. They also differ significantly from those of another key ally: the United Kingdom.

When we examine the UK, we see that areas that were more likely to back the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election actually have a higher vaccination rate than areas where that support was weaker.

Specifically, let's examine the 533 constituencies in England (the most populated part of the United Kingdom) where we have vaccination data through July 18.

In the constituencies where the Conservatives did better than they did in the median constituency, about 90% of all adults on average have had at least one dose. In the constituencies where they did worse than the median, about 83% of all adults on average have had at least one dose.

(This gap holds even when you control for age, even as voting patterns are highly dependent on age in the UK.)

In the United States, the pattern, of course, is reversed and exacerbated. About 74% of the adult population has received at least one Covid-19 dose in the states Biden won and the District of Columbia, which Biden won too. It's only 59% in the states he lost.

It's not entirely clear why there is a partisan gap in the US and not in Canada or the UK.

It's possible that what we're seeing in the UK is an incumbent effect. That is, the leader in the UK is Conservative Party member Boris Johnson, and therefore Conservatives are more likely to line up behind the leader.

I would point out, though, that Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a Liberal Party member, and the vaccination gap by party isn't as wide up there as it is in the States.

Further, the gap in vaccine acceptance in the US was evident even when Trump was president and promoting the idea of a vaccine, so this isn't just recent anti-vaccine rhetoric from some on the right. With the exception of a period around the 2020 election (when then-Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and others raised questions about the vaccine approval process), Democrats always said they were more likely to get vaccinated than Republicans in Gallup polling.

To be clear, the partisan gap is not the only reason why the US is lagging. For example, the vaccination rate of those under age 30 is far higher in Canada and the UK than in the US. There are also fewer Black and Hispanic residents in Canada and the UK, who are less likely to get vaccinated in the US.

If the US were similar to these two other countries with regard to vaccination rates by age and race and ethnicity, the partisan gap in vaccines could be larger, because younger and minority groups are more likely to be Democrats.

Either way, the partisan gap is huge in the US compared with two of its closest allies with similar access to vaccines. If it didn't exist, we'd be in far better shape when fighting the pandemic.


https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/24/politics ... index.html
#15182372
Politics_Observer wrote: Britain and Canada are doing a better job of getting their people vaccinated which begs the question why is the U.S. not doing as well as Canada and Britain. The honest and objective answer appears to be this: Trump supporters.


Age is a factor too I might add. The UK has done well because they vaccinated the elderly first and most of them knew they were mostly at danger so didn't need convincing. Now we have reached the younger age, desire is waning even here due to the inaccurate perception that they aren't at risk and the irrational fear of the million to one side effects. You can't change that but what you can do is open up anyway since they have the option to be vaccinated whenever and let people learn the hard way with personal responsibility if they catch it. It is perhaps BoJos only thing I agree with him on actually.
#15182373
@B0ycey

B0ycey wrote:Age is a factor too I might add. The UK has done well because they vaccinated the elderly first and most of them knew they were mostly at danger so didn't need convincing. Now we have reached the younger age, desire is waning even here due to the inaccurate perception that they aren't at risk and the irrational fear of the million to one side effects. You can't change that but what you can do is open up anyway since they have the option to be vaccinated whenever and let people learn the hard way with personal responsibility if they catch it. It is perhaps BoJos only thing I agree with him on actually.


I don't know if that will work if people being unvaccinated starts causing economic damage to where restaurants, bars, coffee shops and other similar businesses to close back up again and necessitate mask mandates once again. This can also make the current labor shortage worse and cause the current shortage of products and goods worsen too. If that happens, then the country might not have any choice but to start imposing fines and penalties on those who don't get vaccinated because of the economic damage being wrought on the entire country. It's do that or continue to take even more economic damage nationwide. There needs to be a stick and carrot approach. Get vaccinated and get rewarded. Don't get vaccinated and start facing fines and penalties due to the fact that the unvaccinated could wreck serious economic damage nationwide. That means people will have to furnish proof their vaccinated. Like I said, it's do that or the nation starts suffering unacceptable economic damage nationwide. Pandemics are serious business.
#15182377
Politics_Observer wrote:@B0ycey



I don't know if that will work if people being unvaccinated starts causing economic damage to where restaurants, bars, coffee shops and other similar businesses to close back up again and necessitate mask mandates once again. This can also make the current labor shortage worse and cause the current shortage of products and goods worsen too. If that happens, then the country might not have any choice but to start imposing fines and penalties on those who don't get vaccinated because of the economic damage being wrought on the entire country. It's do that or continue to take even more economic damage nationwide. There needs to be a stick and carrot approach. Get vaccinated and get rewarded. Don't get vaccinated and start facing fines and penalties due to the fact that the unvaccinated could wreck serious economic damage nationwide. That means people will have to furnish proof their vaccinated.


Well I have never agreed that lockdowns were ever the right path and face masks don't really cause economic damage so if you open up the economy you won't see any economic damage actually. The damage is caused by the legislation you bring forward to prevent deaths. There is obviously a health reason to do so given it stops Covid deaths, but you have to consider the other impacts in doing so, some of which ironically are to do with health.

Nonetheless even so, as long as every person has had the opportunity to be vaccinated, that is all you can do as a nation. At some point you do need to just give people their own personal responsibility and let them deal with the consequences given we have to live with the virus forever. The other choice is permanent lockdowns and I can see support for them around the world is fading now.
#15182378
@B0ycey

B0ycey wrote:Well I have never agreed that lockdowns were ever the right path and face masks don't really cause economic damage so if you open up the economy you won't see any economic damage actually.


:lol: We'll see about that. If people aren't willing to support fines and penalties for those who refuse to vaccinate, we'll see how much economic damage the country takes before they start changing their tune when that economic damage starts affecting them and their families personally. Either way, you end up paying a fine even if such a fine doesn't exist under the law due to the economic damage caused by the pandemic, mask or not until people start taking the pandemic seriously and get vaccinated. That's a guarantee. The only way to ultimately get out of this pandemic is through vaccination, not masking alone. And if people don't get vaccinated, then the economy will continue to be damaged even further until they do start getting vaccinated. It's as simple as that. It'll work itself out there, that I am sure of. How painful and how much economic damage is done before this "works itself out" in the process is up to us though.
Last edited by Politics_Observer on 24 Jul 2021 23:20, edited 1 time in total.
#15182379
Politics_Observer wrote:@B0ycey



:lol: We'll see about that. If people aren't willing to support fines and penalties for those who refuse to vaccinate, we'll see how much economic damage the country takes before they start changing their tune. Either way, we are going to pay, mask or not. The only way to ultimately get out of this pandemic is through vaccination, not masking alone.


Coercion never works PO. People will fight the system and complain about human rights. All you can do is educate. If they aren't willing to listen, then it reduces the gene pool. I believe it is called evolution.

As I said, if every single citizen has the opportunity to be vaccinated then the nation has done all it can for a virus we will have to live with. Open up regardless of the case rate.
#15182380
@B0ycey

I don't know man, the penalties the laws offer certainly catch my attention and I certainly wouldn't want to break the law and pay those penalties. For example, when running my business, the IRS had substantial penalties for failing to follow tax or business regulations for specific things. Some of those penalties were pretty darn stiff and I darn sure wouldn't want to get hit with those penalties. I knew business people that did run afoul of the IRS and the law and paid a substantial price doing so and learned a hard lesson. An organization like the IRS can take it all from you and I mean overnight. Take it all. Their was nothing they can do about it. The IRS has that kind of power. They are empowered by the law.
#15182381
Politics_Observer wrote:@B0ycey

I don't know man, the penalties the laws offer certainly catch my attention and I certainly wouldn't want to break the law and pay those penalties. For example, when running my business, the IRS had substantial penalties for failing to follow tax or business regulations for specific things. Some of those penalties were pretty darn stiff and I darn sure wouldn't want to get hit with those penalties.


But this is different. People see it as a human right NOT TO BE VACCINATED and as such won't pay the fine and fight the system. Besides, the economic damage is done by legislation mandate not by the virus. If we never did anything we would have had growth figures as proven by China who did indeed say 'fuck it' last year. That is unless you believe in the Chinese miracle.
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