COVID-19 Megathread 4: Grandma Got Run Over by the Dow Jones

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

When are we going to be willing to have a conversation about whether we have massively overreacted without people saying that anyone who doesn't repeat the #StayAtHomeFor18Months #FlattenTheCurve mantra is wanting people to die?

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1246491967841882112

Hopefully soon.  I'm a 63 year old in an essential occupation.  I have come to believe that this is an overreaction that has arisen out of good and bad motives.

The medical and scientific "experts" (and I'm not denying their expertise) have, indeed, been repeatedly wrong about this issue, and that includes the now Iconic Dr. Fauci.  John Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it and Anthony Fauci thought this would be a minor deal before it came the Bubonic Plague Lite.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/17/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands/4787209002/

If that testing shows the virus has slipped into the country in places federal officials don't know about, "we've got a problem," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY's Editorial Board Monday.

Short of that, Fauci says skip the masks unless you are contagious, don't worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don't avoid Chinese people or restaurants.

That was February 19, 2020.  Here's what he said April 2:

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/fauci-national-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-152802623.html

As more U.S. states issue stay-at-home orders and the federal government recommends a 30-day period of social distancing, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday suggested the need for a national lockdown, while acknowledging he does not have the authority to order one.

Fauci has lectured Americans about how people will die and how we need to stay at home longer, or "people will die".  And I get that.  I get it about "lowering the curve".  But will people not die if we tank the economy and they cannot maintain basic necessities?  Tucker Carlson stated last night in pondering the issue that we can go on like this long enough to where we become a poorer nation going forward.  Is he wrong?  Is that an outcome that can happen.  Carlson also suggested that poorer nations are less healthy than richer nations.  Is he wrong?

Our system of government is not an "expertocracy".  There's a place for experts, and Fauci is indeed that, but it's easy for him to talk how others need to hang in there because he's not losing his job and he's got the means to ride out whatever comes.  The same can't be said for millions of Americans' their entire future can be altered for the worse, and permanently so, if they have to do without doing business for 3-4 months (or even longer).  Business "experts" predict all sorts of 1929 scenarios should this go on for 5-6 months; are they to just be blown off?

There does become a point where the cure is worse than the disease.  That needs to be honestly discussed.  I'm not convinced that locking down America to the extreme degree we have is a solution that is smaller than the problem.  Perhaps it IS necessary.  But I'm not willing to blindly listen to "experts" uncritically.  It was the foreign policy Anthony Faucis that advised LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution all the way up through the Tet Offensive.  

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

You know, GOP posters.

You belong to one of the only political parties in the western world that denies the existence of climate change as a real and man-made threat. Your party has overruled doctors, nurses and healthcare experts to impose bizarre restrictions on abortion. Your party has demeaned and belittled the scientific community as shills and liars for decades, in an astonishing display of projection.

Now, we're seeing, in frustrating detail what happens when a party indoctrinates its voters to ignore the experts on a range of scientific issues and instead trust the Trumps and DeSantis types of the world.

It doesn't surprise me that Extreme Republican and Fuzzy Bear believe they know more about epidemiology than Dr Fauci, or a suite of European doctors.

I just wish there was a way to prove them wrong that didn't involve the loss of further life.

I've never said to blow the "experts" off.  But "experts" often disagree, and the "expert" that is currently front and center was pretty much wrong 2 months ago.

Do we just leave the military to the "experts" (the Generals)?  Do we just leave Law Enforcement to the "experts" (the Police)?  We don't do that any more than we just leave everything to business "experts".  Experts see life through THEIR area of expertise, but their expertise is only one area of life.  Our civilian government's job is to balance these competing worldviews as much as possible.

I'm not anti-science, by the way.  I do live in the real world, however, and that real world is a world where there are alternatives for fossil fuels, but no substitute for fossil fuels.  Without fossil fuels, our way of life would be drastically impacted if we stopped using them all now.  That's another issue, but it illustrates the fact that this problem, as well as the climate problem, involves choices that have negative impacts that are significant, whichever way we choose.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

When are we going to be willing to have a conversation about whether we have massively overreacted without people saying that anyone who doesn't repeat the #StayAtHomeFor18Months #FlattenTheCurve mantra is wanting people to die?

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1246491967841882112

Hopefully soon.  I'm a 63 year old in an essential occupation.  I have come to believe that this is an overreaction that has arisen out of good and bad motives.

The medical and scientific "experts" (and I'm not denying their expertise) have, indeed, been repeatedly wrong about this issue, and that includes the now Iconic Dr. Fauci.  John Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it and Anthony Fauci thought this would be a minor deal before it came the Bubonic Plague Lite.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/17/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands/4787209002/

If that testing shows the virus has slipped into the country in places federal officials don't know about, "we've got a problem," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY's Editorial Board Monday.

Short of that, Fauci says skip the masks unless you are contagious, don't worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don't avoid Chinese people or restaurants.

That was February 19, 2020.  Here's what he said April 2:

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/fauci-national-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-152802623.html

As more U.S. states issue stay-at-home orders and the federal government recommends a 30-day period of social distancing, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday suggested the need for a national lockdown, while acknowledging he does not have the authority to order one.

Fauci has lectured Americans about how people will die and how we need to stay at home longer, or "people will die".  And I get that.  I get it about "lowering the curve".  But will people not die if we tank the economy and they cannot maintain basic necessities?  Tucker Carlson stated last night in pondering the issue that we can go on like this long enough to where we become a poorer nation going forward.  Is he wrong?  Is that an outcome that can happen.  Carlson also suggested that poorer nations are less healthy than richer nations.  Is he wrong?

Our system of government is not an "expertocracy".  There's a place for experts, and Fauci is indeed that, but it's easy for him to talk how others need to hang in there because he's not losing his job and he's got the means to ride out whatever comes.  The same can't be said for millions of Americans' their entire future can be altered for the worse, and permanently so, if they have to do without doing business for 3-4 months (or even longer).  Business "experts" predict all sorts of 1929 scenarios should this go on for 5-6 months; are they to just be blown off?

There does become a point where the cure is worse than the disease.  That needs to be honestly discussed.  I'm not convinced that locking down America to the extreme degree we have is a solution that is smaller than the problem.  Perhaps it IS necessary.  But I'm not willing to blindly listen to "experts" uncritically.  It was the foreign policy Anthony Faucis that advised LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution all the way up through the Tet Offensive.  

So America is now somehow special from literally every other country that has gone under lockdown?
We have the most cases in this country because of people like you, who fail to understand that a complete collapse of the healthcare system and millions of deaths as a result (not just from Covid, but from the hospital collapse) will also hurt the economy. We had months before to prevent this outcome, and you people called us “alarmists”, told us to stop panicking over every little thing, compared it to the flu, etc. Your actions have consequences and it’s too late to prevent any harm to the economy. The smart thing to do would be to go under a strict lockdown for two weeks nationally, and then to ease restrictions based on infection rates in certain states. Of course, you would still cry about the economy and “muh big government” no matter what. We get it, you think science is an imprecise guessing game and Fauci doesn’t know what he is doing. We get it, your amazing internet biology knowledge triumphs over decades of public work and experience in fighting epidemics.

Your post is an ignorant personal attack.  Ignorant, in that it ignores my central point.

I've never been opposed to a "strict lockdown" for a "two-week period"  I have never said I'm opposed to THAT.  But there has been talk from "experts" (including Dr. Fauci) about continuing a stay at home order for several months, drastic restrictions for up to a year, and massive shutdowns of part of our economy for an extended period of time, and these proposals (which are, indeed, out there) are proposals that propose a long-term cutting back on things that are the stuff of life.  And it's being made by people who underestimated the scope of the problem not that long ago.  

I'm not the one that predicted what Fauci predicted, and I don't have the credentials to give an expert opinion.  I'm not a science guy, period.  But I'm acquainted on a daily basis about the economic devastation this quarantine has been on the most ECONOMICALLY vulnerable in our country, and that's the relatively unskilled working poor.  They may receive checks to get them through for a while, but what after that?  I'm also not a "much big government" Republican; go through my posts and find me emphasizing that theme.  (That's an argument which required you to use your reading glasses and not your flamethrower.)

I'll again remind people of the Vietnam War.  All of the "experts" were for it after they were against it.  What's the pre-eminent book about the Brain Trust of experts that got us into Vietnam, and got us stuck there?  It's David Halberstram's The Best and the Brightest.  The questioning of experts is often silenced until after they're proven wrong, when other people are paying for their miscalculations.  Dr. Fauci is an expert, and I'll give him that.  I'll give him a number of benefits of the doubt.  But I'm not going to agree to the idea that, yes, a 5 month lockdown is OK; anything to beat this virus.  That's a cure that is likely worse than the disease, yet people are proposing that in this situation.  

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

When are we going to be willing to have a conversation about whether we have massively overreacted without people saying that anyone who doesn't repeat the #StayAtHomeFor18Months #FlattenTheCurve mantra is wanting people to die?

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1246491967841882112

Hopefully soon.  I'm a 63 year old in an essential occupation.  I have come to believe that this is an overreaction that has arisen out of good and bad motives.

The medical and scientific "experts" (and I'm not denying their expertise) have, indeed, been repeatedly wrong about this issue, and that includes the now Iconic Dr. Fauci.  John Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it and Anthony Fauci thought this would be a minor deal before it came the Bubonic Plague Lite.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/02/17/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands/4787209002/

If that testing shows the virus has slipped into the country in places federal officials don't know about, "we've got a problem," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told USA TODAY's Editorial Board Monday.

Short of that, Fauci says skip the masks unless you are contagious, don't worry about catching anything from Chinese products and certainly don't avoid Chinese people or restaurants.

That was February 19, 2020.  Here's what he said April 2:

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/fauci-national-lockdown-stay-at-home-orders-152802623.html

As more U.S. states issue stay-at-home orders and the federal government recommends a 30-day period of social distancing, Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday suggested the need for a national lockdown, while acknowledging he does not have the authority to order one.

Fauci has lectured Americans about how people will die and how we need to stay at home longer, or "people will die".  And I get that.  I get it about "lowering the curve".  But will people not die if we tank the economy and they cannot maintain basic necessities?  Tucker Carlson stated last night in pondering the issue that we can go on like this long enough to where we become a poorer nation going forward.  Is he wrong?  Is that an outcome that can happen.  Carlson also suggested that poorer nations are less healthy than richer nations.  Is he wrong?

Our system of government is not an "expertocracy".  There's a place for experts, and Fauci is indeed that, but it's easy for him to talk how others need to hang in there because he's not losing his job and he's got the means to ride out whatever comes.  The same can't be said for millions of Americans' their entire future can be altered for the worse, and permanently so, if they have to do without doing business for 3-4 months (or even longer).  Business "experts" predict all sorts of 1929 scenarios should this go on for 5-6 months; are they to just be blown off?

There does become a point where the cure is worse than the disease.  That needs to be honestly discussed.  I'm not convinced that locking down America to the extreme degree we have is a solution that is smaller than the problem.  Perhaps it IS necessary.  But I'm not willing to blindly listen to "experts" uncritically.  It was the foreign policy Anthony Faucis that advised LBJ prior to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution all the way up through the Tet Offensive.  

So America is now somehow special from literally every other country that has gone under lockdown?
We have the most cases in this country because of people like you, who fail to understand that a complete collapse of the healthcare system and millions of deaths as a result (not just from Covid, but from the hospital collapse) will also hurt the economy. We had months before to prevent this outcome, and you people called us “alarmists”, told us to stop panicking over every little thing, compared it to the flu, etc. Your actions have consequences and it’s too late to prevent any harm to the economy. The smart thing to do would be to go under a strict lockdown for two weeks nationally, and then to ease restrictions based on infection rates in certain states. Of course, you would still cry about the economy and “muh big government” no matter what. We get it, you think science is an imprecise guessing game and Fauci doesn’t know what he is doing. We get it, your amazing internet biology knowledge triumphs over decades of public work and experience in fighting epidemics.

Your post is an ignorant personal attack.  Ignorant, in that it ignores my central point.

I've never been opposed to a "strict lockdown" for a "two-week period"  I have never said I'm opposed to THAT.  But there has been talk from "experts" (including Dr. Fauci) about continuing a stay at home order for several months, drastic restrictions for up to a year, and massive shutdowns of part of our economy for an extended period of time, and these proposals (which are, indeed, out there) are proposals that propose a long-term cutting back on things that are the stuff of life.  And it's being made by people who underestimated the scope of the problem not that long ago.  

I'm not the one that predicted what Fauci predicted, and I don't have the credentials to give an expert opinion.  I'm not a science guy, period.  But I'm acquainted on a daily basis about the economic devastation this quarantine has been on the most ECONOMICALLY vulnerable in our country, and that's the relatively unskilled working poor.  They may receive checks to get them through for a while, but what after that?  I'm also not a "much big government" Republican; go through my posts and find me emphasizing that theme.  (That's an argument which required you to use your reading glasses and not your flamethrower.)

I'll again remind people of the Vietnam War.  All of the "experts" were for it after they were against it.  What's the pre-eminent book about the Brain Trust of experts that got us into Vietnam, and got us stuck there?  It's David Halberstram's The Best and the Brightest.  The questioning of experts is often silenced until after they're proven wrong, when other people are paying for their miscalculations.  Dr. Fauci is an expert, and I'll give him that.  I'll give him a number of benefits of the doubt.  But I'm not going to agree to the idea that, yes, a 5 month lockdown is OK; anything to beat this virus.  That's a cure that is likely worse than the disease, yet people are proposing that in this situation.  

Understood.
I apologize for misinterpreting your position.
You are correct that in theory, there is a point in which we would need to balance out the costs of human life with the costs of economic/societal damage of long term lockdowns. All that being said, we are nowhere near that point, and likely won’t have to get to that point if we enforce these lockdowns in the short term. Unfortunately, the argument you make is abused by people to justify completely reversing lockdowns, and “going back to work” now. Fauci did talk about some Americans being under lockdown for eight weeks, but that would be a worst-case scenario if it had to be implemented nationwide for that long. As for your comments about how Fauci “underestimated” the problem, that is false. Fauci was well aware of this problem from the beginning, and it was Trump and a few select governors who ignored/downplayed the problem. It is definitely too early to tell how long we will need these restrictions, but I would expect some States to be ready to transition slowly back to normal after a few weeks of lockdown. I can understand completely why you would be opposed to a five-month lockdown, and I think we won’t need something like that anyways.

I'm not going to let Fauci off the hook.  He said what he said in February, and he was advising Trump then.  That doesn't mean he's wrong now, but it is fair to say he was wrong not too long ago, or he's wrong now and was right then.  

I just took my 14 year old son outside.  He wanted to roller skate, and then some kids came by (brothers) riding bikes.  I had to tell him he couldn't go skating off with them.  That really stunk.  Two weeks of that he can handle.  Four months?  Somehow, I don't think so.  You can talk about WWII and how miserable life was for many back then, but this ISN'T WWII.  

On the other hand, I don't want my 65 year old cancer surviving wife to get sick.  That would not be good at all.  That point is hardly lost on me.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

Good to see someone holding Fox News accountable for their lies and hypocrisy:

Yes, it is good, and, yes, many of these folks are lying about what they said two (2) months ago.

I feel for the makers of that youtube.  I've had the experience of calling out people who've told falsehoods and can't apologize for that.

Fuzzy Bear, I haven't forgotten how you joined Trump's cause in dehumanizing (illegal) immigrants by calling them 'insects', the last time we had that discussion.

And I'll make sure no one else does either.    

Quote that.

Game on.

Do you mean THIS post?

https://mobile.twitter.com/markmobility/status/1114287002348863488

This post is false.  Trump said this in a discussion about MS13.  Can always count on Democrats to lie.  

Here's the actual statement in context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v2FdQQIn3U

I don't understand.  You all have a thousand very legit reasons to hate on Trump, why give his supporters ammo by making sh**t up?  YOU'RE NOT HELPING!

Whenever I see a post like this and I wonder why my TV isn't blowing up with this "latest statement" from Trumpy, the Ethnic Cleanser, and when I notice that the comments on that tweet are from 2018, I always smell an attempt at Echo Chamber Narrative Maintenance.

If Trump were talking about a whole group of people as vermin, I'd be very concerned.  That is, indeed, the sort of language that ought to concern anyone, and concern them enough to stop and reevaluate their position and intended future support of such a person.  But he's talking about MS-13 and he is absolutely right about that group.  And before anyone gets high and mighty, folks here have spoken of White Nationalist Groups with the same sort of language.  (And rightly so, I might add.)  MS-13 is, indeed, a plague on America, and a plague whose solution lies in the tightening of immigration laws and border security and in ending the anti-American practice of Sanctuary Cities.  Trump is right about those issues.  Why it is impossible for people to concede Trump is right on those matters while opposing him in general is beyond me.

If so, you've mischaracterized my post to where it rises to the level of lying.  

If you continue to make personal attacks against me in this manner, I will do everything I can to arrange for your permaban.  The ToS is either for all or for none.  But I'm not going to let you lie about me and defame me.

Game on!

That''s not the post I am referring to.

I am retracting my statement but for only one reason -I simply cannot find the post in question.  

I am absolutely convinced you referred to them as 'insects' in a conversation we (as in you and I) had over the subject a year or two ago.  No, it wasn't in reference to MS-13 only, it was illegal immigrants in general.  But to your good fortune, the post or the thread in general was apparently deleted.  

So you make a libelous accusation against me, then retract a statement, but insist it's still true.  You just can't find it after searching.  

You are "absolutely convinced" of this.  Most people who irrationally hate others are "absolutely convinced" of all sorts of things they have no proof of.

Do I get to post things about you that I am "absolutely convinced" of that I can't show any proof for?  Is that going to be OK on the Brave New Atlas of "Talk Elections"?  Somehow, I don't think that will make for a healthy forum.  I suppose the future here will show whether or not you will be able to apply the "Let It Begin With Me" standard for constructive change.

You keep playing the martyr card by all means with every red-avatar who crosses you.  See where it gets you.  Soon every moderator will be ignoring you because you overplayed your hand.  

So we've established this.  You're no better than Fox News.