538: Biden's own fault he got Covid, has been too lax about pandemic

[Farmlands]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-president-is-safe-from-his-own-covid-19-policy/

Didn't realize there were too many people out there who thought Biden's been too permissive about the disease, but they're apparently on 538. It also seems to be increasingly becoming a liberal pundit discussion hub, rather than a by-the-books data analysis one.

[Ebowed]

Well of course it's his fault that he caught it.  He should have gotten vaccinated and worn a mask.

[Alben Barkley]

Beautiful takedown in the comments:

This is your science writer?!

This is nonsense.

The vaccine changed the game and made it so that by and large getting seriously ill from covid was a matter of choice. Therefore, we could restart the economy and evade a recession or worse.

The opportunity to do better than this was missed in 2020 when Trump's went FAR beyond "cavalier attitude to party planning". He suggested internal use of bleach as a remedy (never mind that it would kill people) and basically did everything possible to undermine the science-based response and politicize proper personal protective measures, and did nothing to dissuade people from using horse paste.

Meanwhile, his administration was outright stealing supplies from the states to the point that states were trying to hide when supplies were coming and where they were coming from.

And this article is a perfect example of why they mostly got away with it. Typical "both sides" nonsense from the corporate media, when only one ignored all science and good sense. I'm starting to think Trump never be properly blamed for any of the unmitigated disaster over which he presided.

But Biden gets blamed for...getting people properly vaccinated and then letting them go on with their lives? Did you think everyone was just going to wear masks for eternity?

Republican escapes blame, and Democrat is deprived of credit and given the blame. Typical US media, never bothering to actually delve into cause and effect (for instance, where did inflation start? With tax cuts for the rich and global stimulus thanks to the shut down global economy due to the covid that Trump was doing nothing to deal with.

And again, the most shocking thing is -- THIS IS YOUR SCIENCE WRITER.

Get a new science writer. Maybe one that actually writes about science, or does so with scientific rigor. Or, here's a crazy idea, both!

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Trump got Covid too, do you realize these politicians are around foreign leaders all the time and travel overseas all of Trump state department got COVID and Harris got COVID and Warren hubby got COVID you should think before you make a thread

We are shielded by Covid because we aren't around community but as soon as you go to a shelter or nursing home you are exposed,and also the shelters were only supposed to be shut down for a yr they are still shut down due to Covid and before that we had TB

[Fuzzy Bear]

COVID-19 is an endemic disease, courtesy of Communist China, and should be treated as such.  It's no more Biden's fault he caught COVID-19 than if he caught the flu.  What IS Biden's fault is his desire to misuse "emergency" powers to mandate vaccinations and demonize and punish those who wish to not be vaccinated for various reasons (let alone stifle the entire discussion on the issue of the actual safety and efficacy of the various vaccines). 

Until there is a total housecleaning in our Public Health establishment, I will have no confidence in any of their pronouncements.  And I will have no confidence in the replacements until they acknowledge the politicization of public health for partisan ends and vow to never allow this to happen again. 

[Vespucci]

I'm surprised this person works for 538 given Nate Silver's COVID hot-takes.

[jojoju1998]

Regardless of the handling, everyone’s going to get Covid in some way or another.

[Lief 🗽]

Biden getting COVID may have finally shattered what remaining tenuous grasp the pro-pandemic left had on reality. It’s increasingly time that we start committing these folks to sanitariums.

[MATTROSE94]

Biden getting COVID may have finally shattered what remaining tenuous grasp the pro-pandemic left had on reality. It’s increasingly time that we start committing these folks to sanitariums.

There are still about 5 or 10 on this site. Granted they have toned down over the past few weeks at least. The really bad one was banned in March or April of this year for unrelated reasons at least.

[SnowLabrador]

I'm not "pro-pandemic." I want this pandemic to be over, but wishing it doesn't make it so. Quite frankly, I'm appalled that this D-majority site is so anti-mask. It's not a big inconvenience.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

I'm surprised this person works for 538 given Nate Silver's COVID hot-takes.

Seriously, if anything I would expect 538 to put up an article saying "Biden getting Covid is proof that ending Covid restrictions is working"

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

I'm not "pro-pandemic." I want this pandemic to be over, but wishing it doesn't make it so. Quite frankly, I'm appalled that this D-majority site is so anti-mask. It's not a big inconvenience.

Like half my family has gotten Covid in the last week, and while all of their cases are mild thus far, it's definitely upped my level of caution from where it has been for most of this year.

[7,052,770]

I'm not "pro-pandemic." I want this pandemic to be over, but wishing it doesn't make it so. Quite frankly, I'm appalled that this D-majority site is so anti-mask. It's not a big inconvenience.

As you know, the problem with mask mandates in 2022 is that the people with the highest risk of COVID (the unvaccinated) will refuse to follow them, so you're essentially asking people who've done everything right to keep going out of their way to protect people who don't do it themselves, don't appreciate that people are going out of their way on their behalf, and in fact mock and belittle the people who do.

[Aurelius]

I am pro-common cold

[Sir Mohamed]

Sooner or later, pretty much much everyone gets it unless you lock yourself up in a bunker. POTUS by definition has a lot of personal contacts inside his admin and out. It's hardy possible to avoid that in the long run and it's quite surprising it took that long for Biden to catch it.

And I guarantee you, certain commentators would have attacked him relentlessly, had he been overcautious. Or just use it has proof that vaccines are useless ("if the vaccines are so great, why is Biden hiding?"). The attack ads write themselves.

[emailking]

Article is more reasonable than you would think from reading this thread.

[Lief 🗽]

But while President Biden has approached the pandemic in a very different way than President Trump, he, too, has made a series of choices that set the stage for his own infection. If the overarching theme of Trump’s approach to COVID was to shut his eyes and hope the pandemic couldn’t see him if he couldn’t see it, the overarching theme of Biden’s approach has been to frame a collective disaster as just another matter of personal responsibility.

The administration thought it had a silver bullet, going so far as to declare that July 4, 2021, would be a celebration of freedom from COVID. They were so certain that individual vaccinations would be enough that they rolled back federal mask mandates in May 2021 under the assumption that if you did the right thing and got vaccinated, then you’d be fine. Even as delta, omicron, and multiple omicronlets proved this theory wrong, Biden’s policy has continued to focus mainly on getting more Americans vaccinated and boosted. Other policy options that could prevent spread — ventilation requirements, reliable data collection on case numbers, masking during periods of high transmission, getting vaccines to other countries where the virus still spreads unchecked — have largely been left to wither.

How is this reasonable? It's just more zero covid fanatic nonsense. Imagine still arguing for mask mandates at this point. And I'm not even going to get into the multiple paragraphs arguing that Biden "deserved" to get covid or suggesting that he and Trump were equally bad on covid.

[lfromnj]

Biden getting COVID may have finally shattered what remaining tenuous grasp the pro-pandemic left had on reality. It’s increasingly time that we start committing these folks to sanitariums.

Shhh let Xi take down his country.

[kwabbit]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-president-is-safe-from-his-own-covid-19-policy/

Didn't realize there were too many people out there who thought Biden's been too permissive about the disease, but they're apparently on 538. It also seems to be increasingly becoming a liberal pundit discussion hub, rather than a by-the-books data analysis one.

As 538 has grown and tried to expand its coverage, it naturally had to shift left because it’s had to hire young journalists, a group that’s overwhelmingly left. All the good nonpartisan people have been poached by other news outlets for election analysis. Tbh a lot of the time Silver seems annoyed by the editorial stance of his organization.

[Aurelius]

But while President Biden has approached the pandemic in a very different way than President Trump, he, too, has made a series of choices that set the stage for his own infection. If the overarching theme of Trump’s approach to COVID was to shut his eyes and hope the pandemic couldn’t see him if he couldn’t see it, the overarching theme of Biden’s approach has been to frame a collective disaster as just another matter of personal responsibility.

The administration thought it had a silver bullet, going so far as to declare that July 4, 2021, would be a celebration of freedom from COVID. They were so certain that individual vaccinations would be enough that they rolled back federal mask mandates in May 2021 under the assumption that if you did the right thing and got vaccinated, then you’d be fine. Even as delta, omicron, and multiple omicronlets proved this theory wrong, Biden’s policy has continued to focus mainly on getting more Americans vaccinated and boosted. Other policy options that could prevent spread — ventilation requirements, reliable data collection on case numbers, masking during periods of high transmission, getting vaccines to other countries where the virus still spreads unchecked — have largely been left to wither.

How is this reasonable? It's just more zero covid fanatic nonsense. Imagine still arguing for mask mandates at this point. And I'm not even going to get into the multiple paragraphs arguing that Biden "deserved" to get covid or suggesting that he and Trump were equally bad on covid.

Funny you say this, because there are still mask mandates at national parks and other federal buildings. As far as I know there's no real political pressure to end these. Don't expect it to end any time soon, especially since the trigger metrics are based entirely on cases.

[jamestroll]

But while President Biden has approached the pandemic in a very different way than President Trump, he, too, has made a series of choices that set the stage for his own infection. If the overarching theme of Trump’s approach to COVID was to shut his eyes and hope the pandemic couldn’t see him if he couldn’t see it, the overarching theme of Biden’s approach has been to frame a collective disaster as just another matter of personal responsibility.

The administration thought it had a silver bullet, going so far as to declare that July 4, 2021, would be a celebration of freedom from COVID. They were so certain that individual vaccinations would be enough that they rolled back federal mask mandates in May 2021 under the assumption that if you did the right thing and got vaccinated, then you’d be fine. Even as delta, omicron, and multiple omicronlets proved this theory wrong, Biden’s policy has continued to focus mainly on getting more Americans vaccinated and boosted. Other policy options that could prevent spread — ventilation requirements, reliable data collection on case numbers, masking during periods of high transmission, getting vaccines to other countries where the virus still spreads unchecked — have largely been left to wither.

How is this reasonable? It's just more zero covid fanatic nonsense. Imagine still arguing for mask mandates at this point. And I'm not even going to get into the multiple paragraphs arguing that Biden "deserved" to get covid or suggesting that he and Trump were equally bad on covid.

Funny you say this, because there are still mask mandates at national parks and other federal buildings. As far as I know there's no real political pressure to end these. Don't expect it to end any time soon, especially since the trigger metrics are based entirely on cases.

Los Angeles County has a lower positivity rate than Fairfax County, VA. Guess which one is on the verge of a MASK mandate?

When I went to Arches National Park a few weeks back I tried to enter the visitor center and they would not let me in without a MASK.  But I did see a group of people with California plates wear CLOTH masks OUTSIDE. Talk about useless.

[Hammy]

So 538 is part of the faction still pretending covid can be eradicated entirely?

[lakeview]

Beautiful takedown in the comments:

This is your science writer?!

This is nonsense.

The vaccine changed the game and made it so that by and large getting seriously ill from covid was a matter of choice. Therefore, we could restart the economy and evade a recession or worse.

The opportunity to do better than this was missed in 2020 when Trump's went FAR beyond "cavalier attitude to party planning". He suggested internal use of bleach as a remedy (never mind that it would kill people) and basically did everything possible to undermine the science-based response and politicize proper personal protective measures, and did nothing to dissuade people from using horse paste.

Meanwhile, his administration was outright stealing supplies from the states to the point that states were trying to hide when supplies were coming and where they were coming from.

And this article is a perfect example of why they mostly got away with it. Typical "both sides" nonsense from the corporate media, when only one ignored all science and good sense. I'm starting to think Trump never be properly blamed for any of the unmitigated disaster over which he presided.

But Biden gets blamed for...getting people properly vaccinated and then letting them go on with their lives? Did you think everyone was just going to wear masks for eternity?

Republican escapes blame, and Democrat is deprived of credit and given the blame. Typical US media, never bothering to actually delve into cause and effect (for instance, where did inflation start? With tax cuts for the rich and global stimulus thanks to the shut down global economy due to the covid that Trump was doing nothing to deal with.

And again, the most shocking thing is -- THIS IS YOUR SCIENCE WRITER.

Get a new science writer. Maybe one that actually writes about science, or does so with scientific rigor. Or, here's a crazy idea, both!

Disagree about it being a "beautiful takedown." I see a TDS-fueled rant that grossly overstates the effectiveness of the shots.

"Therefore, we could start the economy." LOL, I guess the author of the comment is telling the truth, in a sense. In places run by Democrats, they were always going to wait to "start the economy" until the shots arrived, because that's what their newfound religion dictated.

This fighting between sects (the moronic "Biden got Covid because he didn't enact policies that eliminated Covid" side, and the equally moronic "you can't say that, because it weakens our message that Covid is all Trump's fault" side) hurts the Democratic Party. So I guess I don't mind it, aside from the loss of brain cells I'm suffering from reading the commentary.

[PSOL]

An entirely reasonable article.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I think the article is entirely correct, although I think they have a different way of viewing their own facts than I do. Trump got the virus so severely that he almost died, while Biden basically has a cold. That speaks more to the continued effectiveness of vaccines, including against BA.5, than anything else.