BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

uziq wrote:

the way you are talking about this is inane. the reason the economy is doing badly is because of trump and the republicans' mismanagement of the pandemic. how might it have else 'miraculously' been doing great? how much damage to the economy did trump do with his trade-wars and tariffs against china, even before covid? how many industries continued to wind down despite all his loud proclamations about 'bringing jobs back'?

trump's entire economic platform has been a failure, and predictably so. he has only managed to enrich the already mega-rich and those with enough capital to flex the stock markets. the average lower-middle class american hasn't really benefitted from record levels of unemployment in amazon warehouses or as uber drivers. trump’s re-election campaign was almost flat broke and had a tiny budget/donations roll compared to biden’s (and his average donator/donation amount was NOT wall street).

'if the economy had been doing better' is tantamount to saying 'if trump had led a different government for 4 years then he might have been re-elected'. well, duh. trump supporters and sympathisers still have this annoying habit of talking about his national failures as if they’re not directly his responsibility; the learned response is to blame the dems (or china). trump has been in charge for 4 years. the economy is not good. stop talking about these damning stats as if they’re acts of god or not otherwise entirely foreseeable policy outcomes.

there's plenty of vox pops online in the news media and youtube with disaffected blue-collar voters in PA, WI, MI, etc, who reviewed trump's performance on the economy over the last 4 years and found it severely wanting.

Trump was working to reduce reliance on china and bring jobs back to america, many people were positive about the economy.
Biden barely won by a whisker, a 1.8% swing in the popular vote could have delivered a Trump victory.

Could an announcement about a vaccine and the virus being over in six months have delivered a Trump win? I think so.

So the question is still: Did Pfizer delay their reporting until after the election?

Other corporations are deeply involved in controlling politics, I just wondered if Pfizer is.

wow dilbert has really drank the kool-aid on trumpism huh.

‘trump was working his darnedest to bring back jobs from evil china!’. i suggest you read a little into the fucking subject. judge a politician on his actions and results not his rally rhetoric. all of trump’s amazing big schemes have come
to shit. most of the time he just encouraged china to open factories in rust-belt towns or to repurpose shuttered factories. american workers found themselves in shit jobs earning 2/3rds the pay of their last ones, without unions, without representation, with chinese taskmasters. that’s if they bothered at all, of course. seems trump’s team mostly didn’t bother to do anything for most blue-collar areas. it actually hasn’t been a priority of his administration in 4 years, surprisingly.

saw a great vox pop interview in which an old, ex-union guy who voted for grump was asked ‘so what has trump changed here in the last 4 years of power?’. to which the guy responded ‘close your eyes. that’s what he changed. trump has changed nothing’.

biden won 6 million more popular votes and the same number of electoral college votes as trump did 4 years ago during his ‘big landslide’. it wasn’t the total blue wave that pollsters were hoping for, but it is now looking like a resounding victory. he flipped several blue-dollar mid-west states back to the dems, the places most responsive to the ‘bring jobs home and protect american workers’ line. why? why did MI and WI give up on trump? guess his economic policy wasn’t working so well, after all.

in addition he turned places like AZ and GA. you won’t pay attention to these because they don’t sit with your worldview. you don’t like to consider things like the massive grassroots campaigning efforts by black folks in GA, and the strong groundswell of support for things like BLM. or for things like a non-white VP, or the first ever woman VP. you talk about ‘trump-disappointeds’ because angry white people, normally men, is your thing. but you don’t pay attention to other crucial swing voters: like women, and african-americans (for fairness i should also add the latinx vote that, for different reasons, secured FL for trump).

his platform was typical hardman protectionist bullshit which, unfortunately for you, rarely actually works. he inflicted several shotgun wounds on american farmers by posturing and power-struggling with china. his defeat, whilst not a landslide, is still massively significant. dems could still turn 2 senate seats in the GA run-off, which will again test the groundswell of support for dems there.

i know you like to talk about ‘people being blindsided by reality’ and relish in it when populists win over ‘the elites’. normally based on 51:49 brexit split. well this one goes the other way, and it seems there’s a lot of groups who have fairly blindsided you, too.

trumpism isn’t going away. it relies too much on an emotional appeal, and has positioned itself as anti-establishment, something which will always retain an allure to people who are otherwise disengaged from politics. but the right thing to do now is to honestly appraise its performance. you’re still talking about ‘the economy’ and ‘covid’ as if these haven’t been situations and outcomes of trump’s own choosing. you’re still talking about ‘trump bringing jobs back’ after 4 years, when by most accounts he has let those blue-collar communities swing in the wind and directed his energies elsewhere. stop talking about trumpism like some messianic promise, which will deliver its miraculous turnaround in some vaguely defined ‘tomorrow’.

okay, don't read any case studies then and just produce platitudes. 'baby steps, you know!' great work, chap.

biden won the same number of electoral college votes as trump in 2016. were you saying 'it was close and could have gone either way' 4 years ago when hillary clinton won the popular vote? funny, i don't remember you greeting it with that rhetoric.

I went grocery shopping and had to walk past my local dive bar. It was packed inside with (white) people. I actually took a few pictures because I was so angry.

Is it okay to acknowledge that some people have no one but themselves to blame for getting sick? I double face mask just to get groceries but these people can't go without a drink.

There was an article in the Atlantic about how America drank away it's children's future. Basically we were unable to even have a moment of normality to open schools because a bunch of people couldn't stay home because "I need to live my life"

SuperJail Warden wrote:

I went grocery shopping and had to walk past my local dive bar. It was packed inside with (white) people. I actually took a few pictures because I was so angry.

Is it okay to acknowledge that some people have no one but themselves to blame for getting sick? I double face mask just to get groceries but these people can't go without a drink.

There was an article in the Atlantic about how America drank away it's children's future. Basically we were unable to even have a moment of normality to open schools because a bunch of people couldn't stay home because "I need to live my life"

i've felt the same thing about british people. they've been infantilised in their relationship to alcohol and pubs. it's the thing about lockdown that has caused the most controversy: the englishman's right to get pissed in a room full of sweaty strangers. i like a good pub session as much as the next guy, but we are really a nation of socially awkward, alcohol-enabled man-children.

i know people who seriously switched to just drinking 4 nights a week at home, after the pubs closed. who would get drunk in parks instead. like, jesus, do something else for a few months. look after your health. people are dying en masse. young people are presenting symptoms of long-term reduced organ function. you don't need a beer in your hand every single day.

people drink in parks and outdoor areas here a lot. even more so in europe. drinking by the waterside or sitting in the park with friends, it's very common.

during a pandemic though, can probably leave it for a while.

in certain areas there will be specific district-wide restrictions, imposed by a council normally to deter late-night street drinking, noise, anti-social behaviour, etc. but, no, generally in the vast majority of places here, you can walk around with open bottles and alcohol.

what is that accent? mid-atlantic? guy sounds like bam margera.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-15 16:09:45)

Well fuck my balls.
https://www.sahealth.sa.gov.au/wps/wcm/ … ct+tracing

I'd be drastically reducing repatriation travel at this point, especially from disaster zones like India and the UK.

totally agree. frankly, the trump-supporters have been so derisive of the scientists, experts, epidemiologists, etc, that it fucking blows my mind they want to take the scientific breakthrough as as 'trump victory'. it has nothing to do with trump's fiat or influence whatsoever. half of them were protesting lockdown measures and ignoring the science; i bet a good number of them are actually anti-vaxxers, too. trying to twist this as a coup for the trump administration is laughable.

trump has waged open war on his top scientific advisors for the last 6 months. he has shredded fauci in public and thrown constant doubts onto the predictions and recommendations of deborah birx. he has given strange and unhelpful public health advice. he recommended a miracle cure that went nowhere and actually harmed several people. he recommended people drink bleach or sit on a sun lounger, or something. trump has had fuck-all to do with actual scientific efforts.

i just can't see how the activity of real scientists and the timing of vaccine trials has any political bearing on trump or his re-election. his followers have made purposeful efforts to ignore the science. now the argument is many of them would have been 'won' back to vote for trump over a vaccine? erm, what?? are these people really that fucking stupid/deluded?

wasn't there a running conspiracy theory that this 'plandemic' was a democrat plot, anyway? that it would 'miraculously disappear' during biden's term? sounds like a good number of die-hard republicans have been sure that the whole thing is a hoax, anyway. why would they vacillate away from and back to trump over this issue?

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-16 06:50:43)

I cant speak for the science of it all but I trust pharmaceutical corporations as much as economist and bankers. I will be interested in seeing what the Germans, French, Japanese, South Koreans and Israelis say about the thing before I pressure people into getting the shot.

And still people should know that just because they have created a vaccine we have a long road ahead of us before we manage to create enough of it for everyone and distribute it. And good luck convincing a lot of people to even take the thing. I think in this case vaccine skepticism is justified.

my mother is 70 and has heart arrhythmia and diabetes. she needs help constantly just to get by, and i would fucking kill myself if i infected her with this crap, so i wanted to get what protection there was, even though is was risky - alas, no allergies allowed.
personally, i'm getting the shot the moment it's available to general public.

Good luck. I genuinely worry about the parents of friends and loved ones. I hope everything turns out fine for you.