Eyeball_Kid
Eyeball_Kid's JournalHerd Immunity and its many fatal flaws.
On Maddow's show tonight, she "does the math", and projects that under Trumpy's apparent change in policy toward herd "mentality", or "immunity" (choose your own noun), and using a 3% fatality rate, the US would be looking at around 6 MILLION dead before the hypothetical herd immunity would cause a cessation of infections. Aside from the horrors depicted on Maddow's presentation, there are other horrifying issues. Here are a couple of them.
1. Trump's plan assumes that people will NOT try to prevent infection. For herd immunity to proceed in its idealized form, all US citizens would have to be completely accessible to infection. This means that NO ONE should try to social distance, and NO ONE should be wearing masks. This is because there must be an optimal rate of infection for the math to work and for the US to reach ONLY six million people dead. But we know that people are first interested in self preservation. And we then know that, no matter how enthusiastically Trump wants us to be infected, millions will resist and remain socially distant, and who will continue to wear masks. And there will end up being a correlation between the infection rate and the number of people who are resisting infection. The more that people will resist infection, the SLOWER the reaching of the optimal infection rate in the total population in the US, but the HIGHER the death number because the 70% infection rate necessary for the hypothetical herd immunity will take LONGER TO ACHIEVE.
2. Further, because so many millions will decide for themselves that avoiding infection is far better than getting infected, there may NEVER be the achievement of a 70% infection rate. This would necessarily mean that herd immunity will never occur while millions die for no reason whatsoever. Trump may try to OUTLAW any actions that promote the resistance to infection so that he can realize his fantasy of herd immunity, but even so, resistance will be very high. Can we imagine federal laws that prohibit social distancing and mask wearing? THAT will have to take place to reach herd immunity.
3. The unraveling of this "hypothetical" idea of herd immunity into a chaotic hodgepodge of policy changes and tweaks, none of which will satisfy the herd immunity enthusiasts, and none of which will produce the desired results, leads to a singular bottom line: the idealized death count will NOT be two million or six million. IT WILL BE FAR GREATER. It will be far greater because herd immunity will NEVER BE ACHIEVED.
While the nation's infection rate will sputter and stall, the deaths will not. It will continue to mount. The nation might reach 8 million, or 10 million, before the idea of herd immunity will HAVE to be abandoned. And when that happens there will be a reckoning. There will be a reckoning of people who forced this policy on the American people, who intentionally created situations that caused so many MILLIONS of deaths-- for no reason.
*All of this may never occur if Biden is elected. He'll likely put a quick stop to the herd immunity idea, and the subsequent policy implementation. He'll move quickly toward prevention and mitigation. And he'll examine the decisions that brought about so many unnecessary deaths. And he'll allow his Attorney General to go to work.
Gotta say this. It's not much of a thread topic in its simplicity.
I think it's important to use framing as a weapon in political communications.
Here's my frame:
It's not the Republican Party. It's not the Trump Party. It's the American Fascist Party.
People might be enamored with Trump, and there's nothing that can be done about that.
But they may not be enamored with fascism.
It's important to separate Trump from the method of governing he's proposing.
It's not important to frame the GOP as a Trump Cult. That gets us nowhere. But "fascism"? That's a different matter.
The Dems MUST stop reacting to a Trumpian narrative and make its own. It's fascism that's the issue.
And please, media pundits, stars, and anchors. STOP framing Trump's Administration as a would-be MONARCHY. That's not helpful. He's not a would-be king. He's a would-be fascist DICTATOR. There's a big difference between the two frames. Stop being gentle about Trump's coup. Stop with the "king" shit. That's not what's happening.
Putin's loyalty test.
Placing a bounty on US soldiers' heads, and killing 20 of our military personnel, won't win any world war for Putin. Putin knows that, as valuable as human life might be for US citizens who want protection for our armed forces, bounty murders are small potatoes. So why did Putin make this arrangement? Here's a very likely answer:
Putin did this not only to embarrass Trump, but to demand Trump's loyalty. This was a test for Trump. If Trump is with Russia and Putin, he'll say and do NOTHING about the murders. This PROVES Trump's loyalty to Putin. Trump was forced to choose. And not only did he choose loyalty to Putin, but he also INVITED Putin to the G7 conference. He doubled-down on a show of loyalty to Putin.
For those of you who may not recognize this tactic, it's typical of mob bosses to keep their underlings in the fold by making sure that they don't desert their boss. In this instance, Putin put Trump to the test. Will Trump be loyal to his country, or will he be loyal to Putin?
Trump answered the call: loyalty to Putin is more important than loyalty to the Constitution. Putin dared Trump to desert him, and Trump wouldn't do it.
This is PROOF that Trump is loyal to Putin, and that Trump is Putin's subordinate.
Tin Foil Hat Time once again!
Okay. You know how Trump always uses his FEAR-O-METER to point him in a political direction?
What does he fear the most, based upon his behavior?
I think that answer rests with fear of exposure about something. The more he fears exposure, the more he demands secrecy.
Of what we know about him, we know that Trump is absolute about his commitment to hide his tax returns and a full financial disclosure.
What would make Trump flinch? What would make him "obey a command"? It would be a person who holds Trump's most personal, and vulnerable information. The information is Trump's tax and financial records. And that person is Putin.
By now, we should be estimating that Putin's army of computer hackers have breached the security barriers of the IRS and copied Trump's IRS documents, enough of them to have Trump shitting donuts. Now that makes a little bit of sense. Trump's absolute hold on his tax records means that they are the most treasured and private documents he has. What's also true is that they hold information that's criminal in nature. (Just a humble opinion...) And that's why they're the perfect blackmail material. So why wouldn't Putin hold those records over Trump's head and dare him to jump for them?
It's all crazy. Nothing makes sense.
So I've a daughter and her small family living with us. She works in health care. She does P.T. She can't get a CV-19 test to be assured that she's not spreading the virus when she's working and seeing patients. Her supervisor for a big health care outfit can't authorize for her to get a test, even though a few weeks ago she was running a fluctuating fever with a cough and couldn't work for over a week because of her cold symptoms, not because of CV-19.
About four weeks ago I noticed that I'd lost my sense of smell. Couldn't smell anything, and food didn't taste as it should. It was odd. I love to use my sense of smell and appreciate it all the time. Couldn't smell anything. I also got a "cold" with a cough and at one time, a fairly mild fever. I've come to understand that one of the early symptoms of CV-19 is the temporary loss of smell and taste.
Now, my wife is down with a fever and she's bedridden. Her fever fluctuates, but got as high as 101.7. She has extraordinary body aches and for three days now has no interest in being mobile.
During a telephone conference with her doctor this morning, we were virtually begging for a CV-19 test. The doc says that it's likely that both my daughter had the virus and my wife presently has it. (We still don't know the probability that anyone who presumably has the virus can get infected again.) But at the same time, the doc says that her symptoms AREN'T SEVERE ENOUGH TO WARRANT A TEST.
WHAT??? This is when it gets crazy. I could be an active carrier. My daughter could be an active carrier. My son-in-law could be an active carrier. My wife can, right now, be experiencing symptoms of CV-19. And WE CAN'T GET TESTED! No one knows what she has and she can't find out! Because there's a severe shortage of tests, those who should get tested cannot, and those who should get tested ARE spreading the virus. They are leaving CV-19 everywhere, especially if they are asymptomatic.
Yeah, quarantine this, quarantine that. I get it. But being quarantined means that we're acting on a hunch. WE DON'T KNOW AND WE WON'T FIND OUT, unless me, my wife, my daughter, or my son-in-law get so sick, we need to go to the ER. If one of us goes to the ER and end up being hospitalized, we have about a 40-50% chance of needing a ventilator. And then the odds of the virus becoming fatal or causing severe, permanent damage rises dramatically.
So for now, we have to assume the worst and my wife has to isolate, my daughter has to assume that she can get it even if she already had it, and I have to do the same.
So WE CANNOT GET A DIAGNOSIS (This is still difficult to believe.) because the feds didn't order the tests to be manufactured three or four months ago. Why didn't they order them when the White House knew about the pandemic predictions in January? Because Trump was trying to parlay the spread of the pandemic into a money making opportunity and a political victory. I've written this over and over: Trump doesn't care who he pains or kills, as long as he benefits from it. It's a statement of plain fact.
My anger at Trump is normally on the cusp of being out of control. I've followed this wave of evil since the very beginning. But this personal family illness is different. And it's what MILLIONS of people are now experiencing, as CV-19 has touched millions who are either personally infected, or have family members or close friends who are infected.
Trump's evil has touched me personally. It's come all the way down to my level. It's TRICKLE-DOWN EVIL.
Now we have to live with a mass killer who is running the nation. He's acting like a Dictator who treats death like a business opportunity. No one can stop him. No one wants to stop him.
Tin Foil Hat Conspiracy Time.
Okay. I'm listening to Maddow and it's striking me how reluctant the Trump Administration is on managing and releasing PPE and ventilators to the people who need it. It's exclusively Trump's decision-making. So what do we know about Trump that might make this murderous policy have a rationale?
We know that Trump only thinks about money. Remember Eric saying this about his father shortly after the inauguration? The quote was actually made, if memory serves, during the 2016 campaign. Trump only thinks about the money. For Trump, reluctance disappears when money moves. And Trump got the money to move at the expense of deaths.
So where is money being exchanged? We now know that the White House has established a system of distribution that includes a small cadre of middlemen. The feds distribute to the middlemen who turn around and sell those PPEs to the states and hospitals for around TEN TIMES the price per unit.
What kind of arrangements did Trump make with these middlemen? Will we ever know? These are sweetheart deals. It's very easy money, and it's tons of money. Trump is allowing our tax dollars to bleed into the middlemen's pockets at the expense of dying CV-19 patients. If they weren't buddies with Trump, they are now. Some states get outbid for the PPEs. So what happens in those states? They get stiffed. We haven't seen it yet because it's still early, but states will have to decide who dies because Trump wants business as usual.
In the end, we have Trump killing off tens or even hundreds of thousands of sick people so that "business" can be conducted. And there's a sociopathic element to this kind of business, led by the sociopathic commander in chief.
News outlets haven't described the CV-19 outcomes in this way, but there have been plenty of hints. Politicians, medical experts, and ordinary people have angrily observed the "inefficiency" in getting PPEs to those who need it, and fault the Trump Administration for doing so, but stop short of speculating that it's purposeful. But now we know something about the flow of money. And that makes a difference.
So, does this make sense?
It doesn't make sense if we assume that Trump has morals, or that he has limits to his amoral behavior. Have we ever seen him exercise a moral decision? Why would he have limits? All through his life, he's had opportunities aplenty to show that he abandoned moral turpitude, or, to put it differently, acted in a principled way. Why would Trump change now? So it just makes sense that Trump is intentionally cutting off life saving equipment for both patients and health care workers for business purposes.
We WILL find out that these "arrangements" for the price gouging of PPEs is benefiting Trump in some way.
What's Trumpy's ultimate "reality distortion" tactic and is it being deployed right now?
We, as a nation, RELY on "impartial" polling organizations to give all of us accurate feedback on how we, as a nation, are viewing the issues of the day, and in our situation right now, how we believe Trump is handling the responsibilities of his office.
We trust that polling organizations collect raw data from populations and convert that data into something we can all understand as our true sentiments regarding Trump and his performances.
For Trump, who exists on a Potemkin-like set of images and stunts, the ultimate victory in framing the nation's sentiments HIS WAY is to hack into the computer systems that collect raw data BEFORE the data gets translated into something we can all understand.
As Brad Parscale is earning the tens of millions in salary that he collects as a major player in Trump's propaganda machine, his ultimate victory would be to have control over the raw data that is stored and manipulated by the polling organizations' computers. Having control over the raw polling data is the final victory that Trump's propaganda machine needs to convince the nation that Trump's approval rating is really increasing as his performance descends below the figurative gutter.
The GOP has already made major inroads into controlling the election data in many localities and regions, whether it's voter suppression or voting machines. It's only logical that Trump would make concerted efforts to control the data from beginning to end. It's the ultimate logical sequence in Trump's world to create his alternative reality. Trump can do whatever he wants to keep himself protected from criminal liability because, presumably, the national feedback loop, the opinion polls, are being manipulated from the front end to the back end by Trump.
I know that this sounds fantastical and can feed the "bummer" that many of us feel, but it's entirely within the Trumpian logic of authoritarianism gone haywire. We can all say, "Oh, that CAN'T happen!" But it's Trump we're dealing with, not a person who has any value system outside of his own ideational constructs.
Here's a thought for discussion: Is there a relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic
and GLOBAL WARMING?
In the recent past, some scientists have speculated that climate change/warming can have unpredictable consequences, such as the release of microbes into the general population that were previously contained by biodiversity.
With mass extinctions of life forms presently underway, we may be susceptible to this microbial release as one of many that will affect all of us.
Ignoring the decades-long warnings of fossil fuel emissions releases into the atmosphere may now be coming home to roost.
I know that we don't need more bad news, but it may be even more dangerous to NOT consider the global consequences of climate change.
The Cabinet and White House staff of the next president will be mostly women.
There are plenty of female Congressional stars to promote, and they will be promoted. The 2018 wave has great talent.
DeBlasio on MSNBC... Did he REALLY SAY THIS?
DeBlasio's likely mission on MSNBC was to quell a panic regarding the coronavirus. But he may have done worse.
DeBlasio was describing the INFECTION rate among demographics and said that young people, i.e. school students, were safe from the virus because their infection rate is substantially low. His remark should have been challenged, but IT WASN'T.
DeBlasio is ONLY looking at the infection rate among age groups, and that's outrageously irresponsible. DeBlasio does NOT mention transmissibility, which is of major importance, because even if children do not show symptoms, they CARRY THE VIRUS and can easily spread it among the population, thus infecting those in older age brackets who have higher infection and mortality rates.
What's wrong with DeBlasio??? Doesn't he understand basic information about the virus, or is he placating his constituents without regard to the inevitable spread of the disease by nonsymptomatic children?
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