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Trump doesn't know anything about epidemiology. Neither do you.

The number of cases (and their distribution) is the single most meaningful statistic. It is acquired by comprehensive testing.

It's the US Federal government, not the States, that has been conflating tests of samples and tests of individual people. Trump's administration.

The only way to figure out which deaths are "unrelated" is to test and track over time, attend to the correlations etc.

The direct and accurate way to count the asymptomatic cases is by testing a wide range of people without symptoms.

Unfortunately, all of that requires a modern and competently run public health care system. The US no longer has one of those, and the current US government is not willing to accept help from better equipped countries.

All of that is routine, in places with competent government and First World medical care setups. It's how a pandemic is supposed to be handled. It's how the Obama administration set things up. Trump and the Republican Congress got rid of that setup, restoring the standard Reagan era ineptitude and incapability that has characterized the past few Republican administrations.

 

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In a way you are right ... but he does know how to manipulate the situation to get him self elected even if it means sacrificing his current support base.
His desire to ban mail voting for example means that those that are following his "open up 'merica" line, his supporters, will attend polling booths en-masses to vote him in and probably increase the transmission of the virus. The smart ones, the ones that would vote Democrat would prefer the mail vote and stay home instead.
So Trump launches an attack on mail voting because he knows that his followers, Vociferous included will rock up and risk infection and the opposition votes will not be made.
He is totally unconcerned about the well being of his supporters.
It will be his last term so it doesn't matter if he betrays his supporters in this manner.
A smart, sociopathic narcissist .
Certainly smarter than his support base...

Of the covid death toll in the USA, how many are Republican voters and how many are Democrat?
Do we know yet?
I am sure that the media will eventually do a break down, if not already...

 

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Yeah, ignorant straw men are also a good way to avoid actually listening to or understanding any views other than your own. Mental gymnastics about how you "imagine" someone being "possibly" contradictory just illustrates the qualifiers needed to pretend that bare partisan bias is the least bit intellectually honest.

Of course not, as I have plenty of criticisms of Trump myself. But again, until you tell me some of his politics you like, it really seems just a pretense for you to appear intellectually honest. So, what Trump policies do you like?

Or you can just as readily merely tell yourself that that's what you're dealing with, as a convenient excuse not to engage in anything too much of a threat of cognitive dissonance.

Well, I guess there's no accounting for your lack of reading comprehension.
Do you really think that the federal government has the power to slow local virus testing?
If so, you may be overestimating the power the federal government has locally.
Do you really think that the number of cases, alone, tell us much, without both an accurate number of asymptomatic cases and the death rate?
If so, you may not understand how statistics are used to arrive at scientifically meaningful data.

Or alternatively:
How could the federal government significantly slow local testing?
How does the raw number of cases, usually derived from those with symptoms or who think they were exposed, tell us anything of significance without an accurate death rate or number of asymptomatic cases?

The federal government is ending its support for 13 drive-thru coronavirus testing sites on June 30, urging states to take over their operations — even as cases spike in several parts of the country.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/...tion-drive-through-coronavirus-testing-338217​

Oh noes, 13 test sites, across the whole country, that states can fund themselves. Wow, what a slow down!

 

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The only mental gymnastics on display are by you in your efforts to keep up your apologetics for Trump.

This isn't about me, but about your rather humourous efforts at apologetics. How my silence on the politics of Trump I might like seems to you is irrelevant. And frankly, I couldn't care less how it seems.

You do overestimate yourself, don't you. No, all you are showing yourself to be is a yappy little dog. But even yappy little dogs probably think they're more capable than they are.

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Well, can't really learn to read, can I? Being as your "traditional grammar" is wholly inaccessible in the published world, right?

RRRight, someone has got to count the dead people too--good thinking! Except, didn't you previously say that the number of dead people was the only meaningful statistic? Pull your fucking head out of your ass for a moment, at least.

State and local resources are somewhat strained at the moment on account of a worthless psychopathic serial rapist occupying the White House. In the civilized world, the federal government would step in at such times. Most people account for these things before spewing their inane (and consistently contradictory) bullshit.

 

I think it's a bit of a stretch to describe anything this guy does as "gymnastics"--or an insult to gymnasts, at least.

 

Alex
Without getting into a history/philosophy lesson, (which I will do if you want)
Let me first ask what is the main difference between a slave and an employee?

 

Sculptor would be labelling the slaves as mentally ill and calling for prescription medications to tranquilize them into appreciating the country life.

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For you, the only important difference is that one complains too much, whereas the other one knows their rightful place.

 

From what I have read the slave issue is actually ancillary to the bigger issue of confederate succession. The war was fought to prevent the succession of the Southern states from the union..
The slave issue was the catalyst.

 

Or
if the main difference between a slave and an employee is
The employee can leave whenever she or he wants to.
The slave cannot.
The people of many of the southern states chose to leave the union of sovereign states
and were not allowed to do so.

One wonders, just who was enslaving whom?


.................................
incidentally
before the civil war, the united states was referred to as "These United States"
after the war
It became "The United States"

 

Secession - making their own country. How did that become the big issue?
They'd joined the union only a few decades before - why? What happened to make secession desirable?
South’s economy was based on a system of large-scale farming that depended on the labor of Black enslaved people to grow certain crops, especially cotton and tobacco.

No, slavery was the issue. It had been a main point of contention from independence onward; it was obvious from the day of that compromise that the issue would eventually come to a head.
They were allowed to bring slavery into the newly opened western territories, but there was heavy and growing opposition in the north.
Ironically:
opposition to the act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories.
When a republican won the presidency, they saw the writing on the wall. And the southern aristocracy (that is how the big landowners had always regarded themselves) felt confident of accumulating wealth through overseas trade in slave-produced goods -- that would not have been anywhere near as profitable if they had to employ free men and women.

 

How many of the people? Was there a referendum? Did anyone stop private citizens who wanted to leave? No, I mean did anyone stop white people who wanted to leave; obviously, the black ones who tried it would have their toes chopped off. One might even regard that as a significant difference between a slave and employee.

 

Please tell me this is nothing more than an attempt at some very bad, callous humor?

 

yeh
ok
it has to do with philosophy and a broader perspective.
........................................
Think of a wife who wishes to leave her husband
and
he says
no
and adds that he will use violence to force her to stay
....................................
macrocosm/microcosm
perhaps the framework remains the same regardless of scale?

 

which, of course,
is
what I was getting at.

 

Again, another attempt at really bad humor?

I'm really, really, really hoping you do know the difference?

 

I'm really, really, really hoping you do know that the difference is only one of scale.

 

Yep. He imagines himself to be a brilliant, innovative thinker surrounded by morons. Because he isn't aware of the limitations of his own knowledge and experience, he imagines it to be superior to everyone else's.

I met a lot of people like him while I was teaching. We called them "100 jump wonders."

 

No, I think he's really serious - he really, honestly sees slavery as similar to US states belonging to a federal government.

 

???

This is obscene.