Trump tests positive to covid

[Octavious]

Fake outrage? There's no outrage, be it fake or otherwise, and I'm not even sure what symbol you're referring to. Am I supposed to be fake outraged at Trump, yourself, or jmo? I assure you that I am not outraged by you, if that's what you think. Outrage and contempt are very different emotions.

[Jamiet99uk]

Fake outrage? There's no outrage, be it fake or otherwise, and I'm not even sure what symbol you're referring to. Am I supposed to be fake outraged at Trump, yourself, or jmo? I assure you that I am not outraged by you, if that's what you think. Outrage and contempt are very different emotions.

You were using hyperbolic language and made a series of uncharacteristic spelling errors, suggesting you had lost your cool a little, old chap.

Thank you for confirming that you hold JMO in contempt, but that you are not outraged by his use of symbols.

I, for one, am surprised at JMO's use of the symbol, as from a political perspective it is historically favoured by organisations who currently align politically with Donald Trump...

[Octavious]

There's nothing at all uncharacteristic about me making spelling errors. Whether they materialise on forum posts or not is largely based on what device I use to access the site. My personal phone has a pretty decent spell check, my work phone not so much, and the least said about my desktop the better. If you're using that to make judgements about people's temperaments then you're going to be wide of the mark quite often.

Honestly, man, it's like you've never actually played diplomacy. Please tell me you don't use these "insights" during actual games .

The contempt remark was about flash, as you well know. My only comment about jmo was to state my agreement of Eden's assessment of him.

I, for one, am surprised at JMO's use of the symbol, as from a political perspective it is historically favoured by organisations who currently align politically with Donald Trump...

Eh? Pirates and the Royal Navy Submarine Service are aligned with Trump?

[Jamiet99uk]

Pirates probably are, since he's a criminal and a thief, sure.

I was more thinking about the Schutzstaffel and its' modern imitators.

[Octavious]

People who march around in black shirts destroying things and beating people up? No, I think you'll find Black Lives Matter lean more towards the Democrats.

[orathaic]

In fairness, Trump's policy on not closing the economy might be reasonable, but when wearing a mask has been shown (in two case studies in the US) to greatly reduce the severity of infection (you still get infected, but 95% were asymptomatic when forced by their employer to wear masks before any outbreak occurred, also provided with masks by the employer) - given this, Trump's anti-mask stance puts himself and his supporters at risk for Zero economic gain.

If you want the economy open, you should actually be pro-mask. Trump choosing to put his own life in danger and risking those staff around him is rather disgusting. And I for one don't see how you can fail to see the personal irrational risk taking as entirely analogous to the economy wide risk taking and disregard for human life.

By two whole case studies? Is that the bar of scientific proof you're accepting now? It is incredibly tempting to get enthusiastically behind that idea, and truth be told I've heard similar things from a number of sources, so there may well be some truth in it. And if we can establish whether it is indeed true then the potential benefits have the potential to be hugely rewarding. Giving low risk groups low level infections could result in vast numbers being effectively immunized without the need for vaccines, which would rapidly accelerate the achievement of heard immunity. Universities starting up may well provide some real world data on this in short order. But, as it stands, we are a long way from knowing anything. We need far better studies before we can jump on board this particular ship.

Also, I am pro-mask. In order to get the economy moving you need the population to be active, and leaving the millions of more timid millions of society at home will not achieve that. Wearing a mask, regardless of what it actually does regarding coronavirus, helps give many of these timid millions enough confidence to get off their arses and actually do something, and that is vital.

What I am against is draconian mask wearing, such as when outdoors, or putting pressure on people who should be exempt to wear masks. Only last weak I had to comfort a man who suffered badly from anxiety who was physically shaking out of fear of being demonised for not wearing a mask, even though he was perfectly within his rights not to because of a variety of medical reasons.

To be clear, those 2 cases studies (in facotires) showed 95% asymptomatic infections, there is also a third cases study (on a cruise ship) where mask wearing was only brought in after the first infections were detected, and they managed 80% asymptomatic infections. But I agree this isn't enough to base a herd immunity strategy on.

It is enough to argue for broad swaths of the population to wear facemasks. In the hope that we can protect people's livelihoods, however Trump has not advocated for this, he has instead acted to preserve the profits of some large bisonesses in the short term. Not a good example to be setting.

[Matticus13]

Trump announced he is leaving the hospital at 6:30 PM this evening.

[taylor4]

[RoganJosh]

Herd immunity is not a strategy, it is an end-state.

Ignoring the virus is a (stupid) strategy, which leads to herd immunity.
Bending the curve is a strategy, which leads to heard immunity.
Sheltering in place until a vaccine is available is a strategy, which leads to heard immunity.

Trying to exterminate the virus is a strategy. It's the only strategy which do not lead to herd immunity. And it's the only strategy which is doomed to fail. This is the most stupid strategy of them all.

[orathaic]

@Roganjosh, I don't know New Zealand seems to be doing a pretty good job of eliminating the virus...

The point of using masks for your strategy, *IF* you can guarantee that 95% of the infected will be asymptomatic (in the healthy workers sampled at those factories) then you can suggest intentionally spreading the virus, knowing that only 5% (in this healthy group) will even show symptoms, and even less will need hospitalisation... Now get 70% of the population to recover from asymptomatic infections and the herd is fairly immune (again, assuming this virus is one which leaves long term immunity, not like a cold or flu virus...). If you can do this fast enough you can save lives and money.

Unfortunately we don't have enough information to guarantee any of this, and infecting people intentionally (especially without their consent) is reckless.

[RoganJosh]

You cannot exterminate the virus from a single country. New Zeeland "success" would have to be followed by isolation from the rest of the world for the rest of time. Good luck.

In practice, New Zeeland has only taken the "shelter in place until a vaccine" strategy to its extreme. But by presenting it as an extermination strategy, their government has avoided having to defend the downsides of such a strategy.

I don't see what masks has to do with intentionally spreading the virus.

[flash2015]

You cannot exterminate the virus from a single country. New Zeeland "success" would have to be followed by isolation from the rest of the world for the rest of time. Good luck.

In practice, New Zeeland has only taken the "shelter in place until a vaccine" strategy to its extreme. But by presenting it as an extermination strategy, their government has avoided having to defend the downsides of such a strategy.

I don't see what masks has to do with intentionally spreading the virus.

There are some significant upsides though. Sweden has 583 in 1M death rate vs 5 in 1M death rate in NZ. Even if there is no vaccine and NZ have to relax restrictions they would never catch Sweden because medical treatment for COVID is so much better now. Of course the strategy is only feasible because NZ is an isolated island and they have complete control over their borders.

[RoganJosh]

Yes, yes, agree. But that is really an argument in favor of the shelter in place strategy.

And those gains should of course be weighted against the harms caused by the lockdown measures.

And notice the dynamic. The better treatment, the less is there to gain from sheltering in place, the more should you move to a flatten the curve strategy.

[Octavious]

Herd immunity is not a strategy, it is an end-state

Agreed, but I don't think anyone suggested otherwise

Ignoring the virus is a (stupid) strategy, which leads to herd immunity.

Ah, now this seems to depend largely on where you are. South Africa, for example, has done massive amounts of damage to their economy and are suffering from the huge resulting harm after implementing a Western style lockdown early on. When they eventually turned their lockdown off, largely due to lack of resources, they discovered that the impact of covid was a tiny fraction of that experienced elsewhere. Quite why is fully understood, but may well have do do with factors such as younger populations, greater exposure to vitamin D, greater exposure to similar viruses, less urbanisation, and so on and so forth. In their case ignoring the virus would have been a far superior strategy to what they actually did.

Bending the curve is a strategy, which leads to heard immunity.
Sheltering in place until a vaccine is available is a strategy, which leads to heard immunity.

Indeed, and really these flattening the curve strategies are a massive spectrum of strategies from which the entire western world has subscribed to in some form. Shelter in place is just at a more extreme end of the spectrum, and seems to be a massive gamble on an effective vaccine being developed and rolled out sooner rather than later. Although the reality is that every strategy is a gamble based on incomplete information, with the nations of the world nervously waiting to see how badly they've lost.

[Jamiet99uk]

People who march around in black shirts destroying things and beating people up? No, I think you'll find Black Lives Matter lean more towards the Democrats.

No, prick, I mean the Nazis who openly support Trump, and who he encourages and retweets.

[Octavious]

Oh, those blackshirted thugs. It's increasingly difficult to tell them apart.

[Jamiet99uk]

Oh, those blackshirted thugs. It's increasingly difficult to tell them apart.

I disagree. If you don't know the difference I suggest you pay more attention.

[RoganJosh]

@Oct I would still say that ignoring is stupid. But, yes, yes, agreed. If your median age is 14 and you have fragile food supply chains (e.g., Subsaharan Africa), then lockdowns have almost no positive effects and potentially disastrous negative effects. I think Oxfam in August projected some 120 million people will be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of this year due to lockdown measures in India/Africa/South America.

Shelter in place is just at a more extreme end of the spectrum, and seems to be a massive gamble on an effective vaccine being developed and rolled out sooner rather than later.

Agree with this too. Every strategy (except ignoring) is a bet on when a vaccine/effective treatment will be publicly available. When lockdowns were introduced, there was a lot of wishful thinking about a vaccine being available in November, and strategies were chosen assuming this. Now, there is a lot of wishful thinking of a vaccine being available in the Spring. Who knows.

I also wished more people would acknowledge that in a pandemic, there are no good choices. Whatever strategy you choose, people will suffer and people will die. You can minimize, but you can't avoid. The question is who and when. The current lockdown approach has been effective in shielding the middle and upper classes. It is the poor, and in particular the children of poor families, who've had to absorb all the risk. School closures is the most egregious example. The US alone has about 13 million poor children. For most of them, online education means no education, due to lack of parental support. And one year shorter education is associated with about 1.7 years shorter life expectancy. Yes, yes, very rough estimates, not all children are school age, etc. But what is clear is that children from poor families will suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives. They've been thrown under the bus.

[Randomizer]

However children in poor families that get sick are more likely to receive poorer medical care due to minimal health insurance and hospitals being less likely to exam and treat persons of color. Even getting a test to confirm the diagnosis is harder for them.

After a public outcry, Phoenix, Arizona hospitals ended a plan that would decide if patients were worth getting medical care based on their previous health and age. If you were disabled or too old, they wouldn't treat to save beds for richer and younger patients.

https://www.abc15.com/news/coronavirus/ ... -care-plan

[Randomizer]

https://news.yahoo.com/report-white-hou ... 00992.html
White House is pushing to release a vaccine without the standard testing for side effects and safety. Want it available before the election even if it could make users worse.