BGBD
BGBD's JournalRyan Grim and Katie Halper proving they are disingenuous.
They are both already moving the goalposts from "Biden needs to release the documents" to "The documents aren't important and can't disprove anything." This is their way to buttress her story as it falls apart.
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1256217475005526017?s=19
https://twitter.com/NoTeamsIndy/status/1255938523615703048?s=19
They aren't interested in an investigation to the truth. They are only interested in pushing a story to hurt Biden, even when they know it is bullshit. They want to dig through decades of information to find a speech or conversation they can take out of context to beat on him with.
They either want to install Bernie as the nominee or for Trump to win so they can claim a socialist would have won and get to try to take over the parry again in 4 years.
How risky are protests?
I got to thinking about this today, so I made a rudimentary model to see how much of a risk a couple hundred people getting together are.
First, I made a conservative model that only about 0.5% of people are infected. I ran a simulation of 200 random people getting together 10000 times.
The results were that about 37.3% of "protests" had no COVID-19 infections present. However, another nearly equal 36.84% had one infection. Around 18% had two infections, and the remaining 7% had three or more.
If we just increase that to 1% of the population being infected we end up with only 13% without an infection present, 27% with one, 26.5% with two, and the rest with three or more, and a few with as many as nine.
Let's go one step further and say that 5% of the population is infected. You end up with 1 event with no infections. That's 0.01% of gatherings with more than 200 people NOT having a COVID-19 infection present among them. Indeed most, close to 94% have more than five and some have over 20.
Now, these were random draws and if I ran it again I would expect to get slightly different results. However, with 10,000 simulations I feel very confident that the numbers would be close for each run of the Monte Carlo. If also make the assumption that there isn't a reason that infected individuals would be more of less likely than anyone else to attend a protest. This is probably not true since some number of infected will be symptomatic and more likely to stay home. However, given that I believe the true number of infected to be pretty high, I think these numbers are reasonable to assume possible for asymptomatic or presymptomatic infection rates among the general population.
This doesn't just apply to protests either, it would apply to grocery stores, restaurants, bowling allies, etc. Anywhere that 200 people could gather is applicable here. So, take it as a good reason to strictly limit your time outside the house as much as possible.
Have we crossed a line regarding UHC?
Editing to include definitions:
UHC = Universal Healthcare - Policy meant to ensure all individuals have health insurance
M4A = Medicare for All - A form of UHC that is gained through government provided healthcare for all individuals.
Six months ago I'd have told you that M4A was a losing issue in the general election, and at the time that was right. However, COVID-19 has since changed everything. The issue didn't help Bernie in the primary, but there were a lot of reasons for his loss, particularly that voters didn't want a revolution and they didn't want to burn down the Democratic Party.
Still, there's nothing better to make the argument that there needs to be a disconnect between employment and health insurance than a deadly pandemic disease that leads to 25-30 million people becoming unemployed almost simultaneously.
So, would it be a good idea for Biden to make a big policy announcement where he comes out in favor of a slightly more moderate version of M4A. One where private insurance isn't abolished but rather left as an supplemental thing, much like the Canadian model?
We can rehash the UHC debate we've had forever, but looking at it just from a political stance right now shifting to M4A would do a few things.
1: Solidify the Bernie supporters. That is their main complaint, that they want M4A. So it would be the ultimate olive branch to them.
2: It forces Trump defend employer based insurance fully. As long as M4A is open, there's a chance Trump could incorporate it. Look, it's ridiculous to think republicans would support it, but Trump would do or say anything he thinks would help him win and that includes atleast hinting that he will do M4A. Take the position and don't give him the chance.
3: The cost seems a lot lower now. In the past few weeks we have seen trillions of dollars spent. Hearing numbers that big will make the M4A pricetag easier to defend.
4: There are going to be stories upon stories of people who don't have insurance going through hell because of unemployment and COVID from now to election day. We should position ourselves to be clearly on the side that wants to take care of them without them having to take on payments that they can't afford.
So, should he adopt the position or stay with what he has?
There is a price to pay to open the economy
That price can be paid either money or blood.
There are three options.
Open now.
The price here are the deaths of a couple million Americans over the next few months. Eventually the virus will runs its course and most people who are still alive will have immunity.
Open after a vaccine.
Here we keep high social distancing going bbn until a vaccine is brought to public. We devote every resource to getting there, but it's still atleast 8 months away. We enter a depression and tens of millions of Americans are unemployed long term.
Open slowly with the perfect mix of testing, tracing, distancing, and treatment.
In this option we are able to open because we are aggressively testing not just the sick but random samples of people as well. We use diagnostic and antibody tests, trace all contacts, keep our distance from others while in public and work at home as we can, and find effective treatments for those who do get sick.
Option 3 is clearly the best, but we aren't close on any of the criteria we need to meet. We cant even say one place is better off than another because we dont have any idea of true cases in most places. This is like walking a tightrope with our eyes closed and drunk.
Trump wants to open it up as soon as possible, but he hasn't done anything to earn it.
How secure would you feel
Going back into public if the current outbreaks of COVID-19 died down but there was still no vaccine?
Would you be willing to go back to the grocery store? A sporting event? A movie? Eat out? Go to the mall?
Would you still be using online orders for groceries and staying home?
Would you take a vacation? Fly?
I'm curious where everyone is on this because I keep hearing how the economy is going to storm right back to life as soon as we "open back up." I just don't buy that. I think people are going to be much less likely to do things because they are still going to have coronavirus on their minds. I also think that there is almost no chance that all of the people who have been laid off are going to get their jobs back. Once a company lets someone go and does the job without them, they are going to be less likely to rehire that position or rehire back to the level they had previously.
I also think that testing won't be enough to stop outbreaks before they reach stay at home levels again. We know that COVID circulates in an area for several weeks before the first cases are detected. How aggressively would be need to test to find those silent cases before a severe one pops up to get attention? I think by the time we are going to find the first case, there are going to be too many mild cases to do effective contact tracing and isolation.
I think for the next year (at best) we are going to be seeing outbreaks in random cities around the world pop up, force the city to shutdown for several weeks, and then fade away. There isn't going to be enough stability for people to feel confident in resuming their normal lives and there likewise isn't going to be enough confidence to resume normal business activities either.
This doesn't feel like a blip to me, or something that is going to suddenly reverse.
Today, John Lewis and Sherrod Brown...
endorsed Biden.
However, if you go onto Twitter the Rose Brigade is only attacking one of them. Why is that?
Bonus points: Wanna guess which one they are going after?
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Member since: Wed Mar 11, 2020, 01:07 AMNumber of posts: 3,282