“This f-ing country is hopeless. The political divisions in the US are almost as

Its probably not a hoax but the left made it a political issue.

It’s never been about left vs right. More like 0.1% of regular ass humans tricking the rest of us into fighting among ourselves while they rob us blind.

This os who you look up to?

Huh

@ChessMaster

Normally it is. But I think people have gotten so used to the left-wing media politicizing everything that they are not noticing that on this specific issue, the right at this moment is taking a lot of same tactics right out of their handbook. It was not the left this time that sowed political division, it was absolutely Fox News' fault that this became a political issue. They are actively encouraging people to break the social distancing guidelines and downplaying the severity of the virus. Fox has gone from inviting approximately 14 medical experts onto their show per day to 1 a day. They'll show you videos and studies of people giving statistics without giving you the real context behind those statistics and why health experts aren't taking them seriously. They cherry pick data from states that haven't been heavily effected by the virus in order to further their narrative that the virus is not dangerous and that locking down was unnecessary. They are actually using examples of lockdown successes and using it to make people think locking down was stupid. Its unbelievably asinine. I don't understand why they are doing this in the first place. What purpose does this serve? The only thing I can think of is they're just trying to find another way to make people resentful towards the left because they know a lot of people don't like the shutdown, which is just as scummy as the stuff the left-wing media has been doing since Trump got elected.

"It’s never been about left vs right. More like 0.1% of regular ass humans tricking the rest of us into fighting among ourselves while they rob us blind."

This has been going on since the beginning of time.

How many shit posts can dance on the head of a pin ?

"Its probably not a hoax but the left made it a political issue." Governing is, and always has been a political process. At least in a democracy. How could it not be? The virus exists. It is spreading, making people sick and killing some. Government's response is a political issue. The virus is NOT. Claiming the virus is a hoax is beyond political, it's an absurd deviation from reality. Claiming the virus a "hoax" is just a straight up LIE.
And the political divisions have gone way beyond politics and into creating a separate world were a birth certificate isn't real, photographs of crowds show more people that are in the picture and now, apparently, a virus doesn't really exist? (just for a few standouts) There's always been some level of promises never made that were never meant to be kept and offering only partial views of complicated subjects to support a point that could often be considered dishonest. But some of the shit I read these days is wholly divorced from any evidence and apparently widely believed is frightening (this whole conspiracy of a 'cabal' of pedophiles operating out of a pizza parlor basement? seriously. WTF?).

CJK - I couldn't have said it better myself. How we can't unite behind not spreading Covid 19 is mind blowing

And hydroxychloroquine... OK, some doctor in NY treated a bunch of his patients and they all recovered. That's great, maybe, just maybe, there's hope? While we can disagree about how to publicize this and whether the president should be on TV telling people to try it... It's getting studied. And the results aren't good. Apparently a few people had some complications. But more importantly, on average, no one taking it recovered faster than people who didn't. So, it's just not effective. That doctor in NY, who had all his patients taking it recover, has no evidence they wouldn't all have recovered just as fast without it. But, instead of just looking at test results, it's become political.

Still nobody knows for sure how this spreads. Throwing away our hard won Constitutional rights and basic liberties even going back to Magna Carta over something with a miniscule fatality rate is unfortunately something that has political aspects. I wish it didn't.

A 1.4% fatality rate is not minuscule. If half the population got infected that would kill close to 2.4 million people.

worldometers.info

Why do people have such a problem with a government mandated shutdown during a virus? I think the marijuana, prostitution laws, and censorship imposed by the FCC on TV and radio stations are a much bigger violation of civil liberties than a government taking reasonable actions to prevent a virus from spreading. If the measures continue after the virus is long gone, feel free to lay into them. But you have to accept flexibility in policy when crisis situations arise.

CC99... The problem is that the shutdown is governmentally mandated. That is the absolute crux of the problem.

If we let communities handle this and provide state or federal support where needed, we would have had a lot more people willing to help.

Why should we treat people in wide open Montana the same way we treat them in NYC?

Let citizens rise to the fight, don't force them to run and hide.

@CC99

"Why do people have such a problem with a government mandated shutdown during a virus?" Do you even realize that there are millions of people who are going to lose their homes and their entire life's savings, and never regain employment equivalent to what they had before, so they can't even start to rebuild their lives after being devastated by this shut-down? Do you understand that the government sending out a few thousand dollars to everybody is going to do almost nothing other than maybe postpone the inevitable by a few weeks, while adding trillions to the national debt?

"I think the marijuana, prostitution laws, and censorship imposed by the FCC on TV and radio stations are a much bigger violation of civil liberties than a government taking reasonable actions to prevent a virus from spreading." Hey man, weed, hookers and dirty movies are all part of what keeps my life interesting, but if you asked me to choose between giving those things up for a few months or suffer the consequences of what this shut-down is going to do to our society for decades to come, that's an easy choice.

"...you have to accept flexibility in policy when crisis situations arise." So you think the virus is the only crisis we're dealing with? 36 million unemployment claims within just a couple of months is not a crisis? What is your definition of "flexibility?" Throwing half the country into poverty? Driving small AND large businesses to bankruptcy? That kind of flexibility?

Also, there's no way this virus has a 1.4% fatality rate. We don't know the true fatality rate, but we do know that there are millions and millions of people who have had the virus, never showed any symptoms and never got tested. If they are ever able to come up with a somewhat accurate estimate of how many people were exposed, you'll see that rate is a small fraction of a percentage point. And your comment about the government taking "reasonable actions," just give me a break. Social distancing, wearing masks, isolating the vulnerable members of our society... those are reasonable actions. What we're going through now, and the financial ruin that we WILL be going through for who knows how long is pretty fucking far from "reasonable."

The 1.4% number was determined by antibody tests in New York state. They tested about 15,000 people and extrapolated from that study that 12.3% of the state got infected. Pretty much everywhere antibody tests are being done, a similar fatality rate of 1-1.5% shows up. In France and Spain, antibody tests are finding that about 5% of the population got infected and both Spain and France got devastated from only 5% of its population getting infected. The lowest fatality rate they have found was 0.5% in Japan but I think that's because their obesity rate is so tiny compared to the rest of the world.

Actually right now is a great opportunity to repair the economy by fixing the infrastructure. We'll probably have to wait until after the election because the Democrats don't want to give Trump anything to put on his resume for re-election. But if Trump gets reelected then he won't be able to serve another term so I think the Democrats would stop trying to block everything he does. Everyone knows the infrastructure desperately needs to be fixed and eventually people are going to get mad at the Democrats if they keep preventing an infrastructure plan from getting passed.

I highly doubt that Biden is going to win. He's an unbelievably weak candidate. As soon as he gets up on the debate stage in September, Trump is going to wipe the floor with him. None of the liberal people I know are enthusiastic about him and some downright dislike him. I've heard several people say they refuse to vote for Biden even if it meant Trump winning. Since Trump really wants to fix the infrastructure I think that will become his #1 goal after reelection to repair the economy.

So don't worry, it is highly unlikely that half the country will end up in poverty. We might have a rough upcoming couple of years but we will recover from this. Even if only 20% of the country got infected though like what happened with swine flu, the prospect of nearly a million people dying is too horrifying to risk.

@Founder

The thing is that these are the kind of situations government is meant for. If one was to take a 100% libertarian perspective then you might argue that we shouldn't imprison people for crimes but rather trust that social consequences or community justice would take care of that issue. Its highly likely if we did that though that crime rates would spike or you would have brutal vigilante gangs.

Similarly, in a case like this, a government mandated lockdown is necessary because a lot of people simply wouldn't follow instructions if there wasn't one. We had a hard enough time as it was trying to get people to take the virus seriously and even with a lockdown we had over 100,000 people die. Many other countries tried not having a lockdown, such as Iran and the UK but those countries eventually reversed course after large numbers of people started dying. Although the US has the most number of deaths, the UK and Iran have had more deaths per capita than the US has (once you take into account how much Iran has lied about their death toll, the real death toll in Iran was actually around 44,000 according to resistance groups in Iran). The number of people who would've died had we not imposed a lockdown would've been a lot more horrific than it already was.

Its easy to think of wandering around as harmless but its really not when a virus like COVID 19 is spreading. Simply walking around in public could make you guilty of manslaughter. At this point I do think the worst is over and we should start re-opening the economy. It would be too extreme to have a lockdown right now the same way as we did back in March and April. I do think warm weather and humidity makes it really hard for COVID 19 to spread as we've seen from Africa's resilience. But I do think that the lockdown was a reasonable and necessary step back in March and I'm really glad they did it or else things could've been a whole lot worse.

The partisanship and political divide in this country is a huge issue. The two party system doesn't seem to serve the people as much as it serves elected officials. We often vote for the lesser of two evils. I'm a lifelong Democrat simply because the modern Republican party is straight up evil. I wish I had a real choice. Mitt Romney is hardly a moderate, and he's been thrust into the Voice of Reason role, in no small part because the Mormons in Utah will support him over Trump if it comes to that so he has political firepower.

@CC99, excellent and compelling response.

Others should take note. This is how discussion gets started and problems get solved.

Thanks!

" I do think warm weather and humidity makes it really hard for COVID 19 to spread as we've seen from Africa's resilience."

Well I don't know about that. Brazil is supposedly getting hit hard, second only to us in cases and it basically sits at the same latitude as the majority of Africa. I starting to think that nobody actually has the pulse of this fucking virus, all bets are off.

remember it’s almost winter for most of africa and south america.

Good point, Jascoi.

The Republicans are straight evil lol. I don't even consider democrats to be Americans any longer.

Appreciate the sentiments @founder.

@TheeOSU

Yeah Brazil and Mexico are really throwing a wrench into the weather theory. Its true that South America is going through its winter season but Brazil doesn't really have a true winter. The coldest the temperatures get in Sao Paulo is a high of 73 degrees in June and Mananus, the city that is really getting hit hard has an average temperature of about 87 degrees around this time of year. Mexico City has an average temperature of about 81 degrees in May and 78 in June.

Still though, I can't see any other explanation for why Africa is being spared and South America isn't. If COVID 19 was going to spread anywhere I'd think Lagos Nigeria would be a prime spot. Considering the population density of India and Pakistan, I also would've thought the virus would be much worse there by now.

@JamesSD

I mean, the Democrats tried to charge an innocent man with treason (General Flynn). Treason is punishable by the death penalty. That is truly terrifying. The Democrats are right about the lockdown, but in many other ways, they scare the hell out of me.

Hey @BabyDoc

Remember when you made fun of me for saying that the political divisions in America are almost as bad as an Arab country?

I think you ought to apologize.

^^^ did you post this on the right thread?

Cjkent i guess we are not friends of this website huh

@CC99 “Hey @BabyDoc

Remember when you made fun of me for saying that the political divisions in America are almost as bad as an Arab country?

I think you ought to apologize.”

LOL. I made fun of you for pretending that you knew anything about what goes on in Arab countries.

A common failing among young minds in particular and weak minds in general is that when involved in a “discussion” and supposedly “listening”, they are too often busy thinking about what they will say next rather than paying attention to what is being said.

So keep working on reading comprehension and critical thinking. And try playing with yourself more often because mental masturbation doesn’t seem to be doing it for you.

@BabyDoc

Well I love masturbating so I will happily take that suggestion.

The amount of time I put into knowing all the ins and outs of world societies is comparable to a part time job.

Anyway though, any criticism launched at Japan for “racism” seems laughable right now considering we’ve got what essentially amounts to a mild version of kristalnacht against white people right now with countless businesses and livelihoods destroyed. White people who have so much self-hatred that they are apologizing for being white. Even if the Japanese are a bit fearful of foreigners, at least they don’t hate you and there’s no where in the country where you’d feel unsafe. A bit unwelcome, sure, in danger of being beaten or killed because you are white? No. Our own country is more hostile towards white people than a lot of non-white countries are at this point because of the nauseating levels of guilt we’ve been programmed to have over things nobody alive today even did.

Since you know Arab countries so well, you should know more than anyone else here how minority ethnic groups can still oppress another group even if the marginalized group are the majority of the country.

Japan is the best example in the world of a right-wing society done correctly but mainstream American conservatives are too proud to admit that we fucked up and we should start taking advice from them on how to run a society rather than thinking we are in any position to impose our cultural norms on them when we have objectively failed by comparison.