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by dogwhistle111
1988 days ago
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Agreed on mail ballots. Thanks for sticking to the facts too. But are you rooting for more people to die to further your political agenda? Thats morbid. Thats what Republicans did when Obama was in office BTW, which arguably caused a slower, more painful and incomplete recovery from the great recession than was necessary. I was disgusted voters rewarded that behavior by giving Trump the win in 2016. Republicans legit STOLE 2 supreme court seats too and voters almost rewarded them again in 2020. That's put me firmly in the anti-Republican independent camp, if such a camp exists |
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Americans have not worn masks, for ten months during which it was clear wearing masks would save many lives and shorten the economic downturn as well. Now the anti-liberal and anti-vax and anti-thought camps have joined forces (some would say the latter two camps have been at least associated for some time) to decline vaccines. Millions of doses are expiring in their very-cold freezers. Morons like Gov Cuomo are scheming to make it more rather than less difficult to receive vaccines. Also people still aren't wearing masks, which (when pressed) experts will admit are and have been actually more effective at preventing infection than vaccines. High-quality masks are still more difficult to obtain than they should be.
All of that is to say that the "effective reproduction number" (R) still far exceeds one, and will for the foreseeable future. Since that hasn't changed, the salient difference between 2020 and 2021 is that on 2020-1-1 there were very few infected and contagious Americans. On 2021-1-1 there were millions. My prediction is simple arithmetic, though it's not allowed on all-wishful-thinking-all-the-time TV news.
Of course R could be changed dramatically by dramatic action. Other nations such as Taiwan opted for that early last year. I really do hope we do that. We could make masks mandatory for all public interaction. We could pay people enough money ($1000 a week might do it?) to stay home. We could make covid vaccination mandatory in the same way that e.g. measles vaccination is. We could actually make enough high-quality masks (currently, massive government/corporate/whosever failure to do so is hidden behind the fact that lots of easily duped people have been persuaded not to wear masks). We could actually make enough vaccines (ditto).
Surely I don't have to finish the argument? No currently-conceivable USA government, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, is going to take one of the eminently reasonable steps I've suggested above, while invalidating my prediction will require several of them.
Also, you're completely wrong about 2009. Allowing firms to die is "capitalism" as it's always inaccurately presented. Allowing humans to die is inhumane.