It surprises me, too. Because as much as I don't have a ton in common with most of these guys, historically I would have described them as at least sensible, even though we disagreed about political stuff.

Most of the anti-mask/anti-vaxx I have access to is a mono-cultural cluster of folks who are related by family and church ties over years and years (families, cousins and extended cousins, etc.) But I agree that what they have in common with your dataset is a lower level of education...but I've always thought of them as smart, motivated, civic minded folks.

I guess I just don't understand how they made the leap and went from just Trump Republicans to anti-mask/vaxx, boogaloo, cashless society doomsayers in such a short period of time.

Anti-vaxx is something that straddles political lines I have found. You have your super liberal anti-vaxxers (your stereotypical super-organic types) but you also have your super conservative anti-vaxxers (generally they also tend to freak out about "deep state").

Yeah, anti-vax has some strange bedfellows.

The mask thing, though - that's a pretty specific set of folks and the r squared with one particular 2016 presidential vote is pretty strong.

SI

They keep trickling this stuff out to prepare for the bad news in a few weeks.

NCAA president Mark Emmert: "Today, sadly, the data point in the wrong direction. If there is to be college sports in the fall, we need to get a much better handle on the pandemic."

— Heather Dinich (@CFBHeather) July 16, 2020

And then who makes the obvious connection that if you can't have sports, you can't have dorms and classes?

If SEC football gets cancelled, will southerners revolt against Trump?

Nope. His supports are an unbreakable base and those who are perfectly fine with his behavior may not like his antics but are okay with things the way they are...

Reminder that this is a non-political thread.

We may need a COVID politics thread because I don't know where exactly to rant about my absolute moron of a Governor.

I guess I'm not really disagreeing but saying it's a subset. Anedotically I live in a middle class suburb of St Louis and generally the whole city is Trump. (I mean based on yard signs, the local state republican rep running unopposed) The mask seems to vary between the lower priced homes and the richer part of town. All Trump.voters but significantly different views. Take that even a step further to the really weathly suburbs where the voters are like 60% Trump and masks are like 99%.

Great info on who is wearing masks today from NYTimes.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-mask-map.html

...your "duhhhh" moment is the money quote from the NYT item above:

“The big takeaway of all of the data is partisanship is the big determinant of all of the behavior,” she said. “It’s not age. It’s not where you live.”

I am going to call shoddy data there, chance all 5 people are wearing a mask in 5 random encounters? WTF is that? Why not measure how many people are wearing masks period? Why are we measuring people in groups of 5? Why not 4, or 3? Hell, get outside of the major urban areas you're hard pressed to find people in groups of 5, and in many cases those may all be family members who are probably not going to be wearing a mask together anyway.

In SW Ohio, I just ran out to grab a burger with my youngest for lunch. Everyone that came into 5 Guys put on a mask going inside. Wore the mask, exited, those eating at the benches outside took off the mask to eat and left. Those doing carry out, were wearing the mask back to the truck or car where they took it off and ate. Most put the mask on when they got up to throw out their food and go back to their car.

The one group that didn't do this was a group of teenagers that were all in a clump (everyone else was scattered in the area). They sent one person into order, because the others didn't want to wear a mask (predominately females, one guy).

Limited sample size, sure. But according to the NYT article, no one was wearing a mask because the only large group there was not. In reality, everyone else was doing so when they were exposed to other groups. The % of people in grocery stores wearing them is over 75% at the places I go to, but again according to the NYT that still shows up as 0% because of the artificial parameters they are putting up.

That's not going to turn out the way they hope

If only there were a number of vaccine trials going on that look promising.

EDIT: Though this is one of those local news story things that probably should be taken with a bit of salt. I'm sure there are some nutty people doing this just not as many as local news wants to scare you into thinking there are.

SI

Who said anything about groups of 5? It says "Chance all five people are wearing masks in five random encounters" - so all five people in those five random encounters. So each random encounter is with one person.

Yeah, just like the FL story of the church where they did this and it resulted in a 17 year old girl dying "as a patriot" thanks to her mother.

Just rant here. Too damn bad if Edward doesn't want it to be political. The reality is thanks to our horrendous administration Covid has become 100% political.

It is impossible for it not to seep over into this thread.

And if you scroll over areas of the map it tells you what percentage of people say they wear a mask from always to never.

Hey, it wasn't only me and don't think it was me that asked for the rule/courtesy. I updated the thread header because I was the trolling (or was it Russian bot) originator. There were others that wanted this thread to be non-political.

Be self-disciplined or go ahead and be that special guy that breaks the mold (and go ahead and discuss the racism angle while you are at it).

Thank you.

Hmmm, what is that smell ... is it the race (master)baiter again?

Some people just don't want to ever be told what to do, and vaccines are something they are told to do, so they don't want to do it. Or acknowledge that someone else may know more than they do. Which, IMO, does not make them smart or civic-minded.

I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

Do you really want to be body slammed for your racism again?

I respond in kind.

You get personal or insulting, I'll do the same. Go ahead ... (but in a different thread)

But you basically decided to go full asshole over someone saying Thank You to a post saying too bad if you don't want this thread to get political.

If it was a single incident, I'd agree.

But I'm sure you know there's a long history with the guy and there's your oblivious hypocrisy again.

Created a new thread. Linked for easy accessibility. Take it there.

Enjoy.

400 Bad Request

It would be nice to scroll through this thread to get updates without having to read through what is already been rehashed over and over again.

I honestly don’t understand how potential re-election is more important than trying to save lives.

From what I’m seeing the Georgia governor is an absolute piece of work, and others aren’t far behind.

Just waiting for the next stage where Trump’s brownshirts start citing Covid as a reason to drag opponents off the streets, although that would necessitate him acknowledging there is a problem I guess

Some people also complained about too many covid threads, but lets start another one!

The reality is the discussion has shifted from where it started a few months ago and it is hard to keep politics out.

KY Supreme Court is going to decide on all executive orders that have been subject of injunctions in a couple of county court cases and has issued a stay pending review. The unanimous statement issued by the court suggests the governor is going to win (stresses broad executive power in a public health emergency), but who knows.

State/local politics... AG and others have filed in targeted courts with conservative judges seemingly knowing the outcome in advance. Supreme Court doesn't seem to be having any of it.

Sorry shouldn't comment while working, but the same applies here as well. This is not how many people are wearing masks, this is in five random encounters, how many times are all people wearing masks? If I have 5 random encounters and 80% of people are wearing masks, it still gets marked as a 0% because it is what % of 5 random encounters are all people wearing masks.

Again, its not what % of people are wearing masks which was my point.

I really don't see why it's hard to keep politics out. We've been doing a relatively good job for the past 2-3 months. This was in the heyday of criticism of Trump's regular briefing sessions, inadequate response etc. and those (for the most part) went to the Trump thread.

This thread provided pretty good info on symptoms, progress on vaccines, therapeutics; how effective distancing, masks were; stories from Germany, Italy, Uk; what was happening in schools etc.

I'd say let the forum members decide if they really want to incorporate politics into this COVID-19 thread. If this non-political thread dies a slow death because everyone is posting the in the political version, we'll know. If it doesn't, then we'll have given an outlet to those that live and breathe politics to vent.

Just my 2c.

It was already pointed out you could hover over a county to get a % of people who say they are wearing masks.

There are apparently 3 vaccines in phase 3.

There's a nice chart in the middle of the below link with the others in phase 1 & 2. Estimated vaccine by 1Q to late Spring 2021.

I'm going to start making some vacation travel plans for next summer!

A Coronavirus Vaccine: Where Does It Stand? | Kaiser Health News

Moderna sounds promising. The Oxford one I am not sure is going to be sustainable however it sounds like its a good stop gap. I do not know how I feel about the Chinese Vaccine

That's not what the map is showing. The map takes data from self-reported mask-wearing from always to never. Based on that information, they have calculated a percentage chance of five random encounters with single persons where they are all masked.

It isn't a binary 0% or 100%.

The article didn't get into it but assume approved vaccines will have essentially the same success rate (e.g. not going to quibble about 95% vs 97%). I'll take any of them as I think the world will breathe a sigh of relief knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Most flu vaccines are in the 30-50% range. I don't imagine a Covid vaccine would be 95+ but who knows.

Good point, it's because flu mutates and the flu makers have to "guess" as to the mix of strains for the upcoming year?

Hopefully for Covid it is much more like the polio vaccine but don't really know.

So I bought a plague doctor half-mask and wore it to the grocery store today. The result is that I got one "cool mask bro!", a kid who thought I looked like a dragon, and some distant laughter that may or may not have been directed at me.

Amazon.com: Plague Doctor Costume Mask PU Leather Steampunk Bird Mask Halloween Cosplay Masquerade Party Mask Black: Clothing

So no one can bitch that I don't wear a mask!

Re: Masks
(Maybe this is more of a random thought thing than COVID-19 related, but whatever.)

We're living with very loose restrictions in the Netherlands right now, some minor outbreaks are occurring left and right, including one in my hometown in a nursery home (yes, some of them died). Masks are hardly compulsory here, unless you're traveling with public transportation (would apply for me to metro and bus rides) and are 'advised' when travelling by car with non-household members (the guidelines are vague). So, I bit the bullet and bought some washable ones.

Long story short: When I got home, I looked at the package and couldn't help but notice the "Made in China" part. This may sound Trumpian, but the conspiracy theories are tough to avoid, or at the very least the irony involved with it.

It looks great.

No reviews yet, let me/us know how it works out after a week of wearing.

Edward isn't the only one who doesn't want it to be political. It's not impossible or even difficult to keep the thread relatively clear of that. We just decide to post overtly political things in the Trump thread as I've been doing most of the time. Simple solution. There are multiple aspects to the reality of the pandemic and not all are political.

I misattributed a quote to JPhillips here because I stupidly misused copy-paste. Removed.

Edward may not have been, but a thread title reading “non-political” with Edward’s name in the byline is especially rich given that 75% of the discussions he starts are political in nature (his very first post concerned Islam), or of some scenario which could lead to dire consequences (markets, etc.). He has never been a non-political poster.

Can you give me a post number so I can see what the reference was?

Hey thanks for the support.

I am sure there were at least a couple more early on who were perturbed about how the this thread was getting into the typical circle jerk of Trump/GOP bashing which unavoidably distracted from trying to provide helpful info & experiences to the forum.

My mistake back then was not creating the 2 threads then.

Welcome to 'how to be a moron with clipboard', population me. The other quote I previously attributed to you, you didn't even say - it was from a completely different forum on a completely different topic and I have no idea how I inserted it here.

So what I was talking about is the NYT map.

95% is wishfull thinking, it will be closer to the flu shot to start with. Although there is a decent chance it does land in between because flu really is an outlier in that you have a vaccine (remember that many, many don't despite decades of trying) but is so ineffective due to the specific problems with regard to Influenza, which is not only changing rapidly but also 1) really is not one Virus but multiple that ebb and flow in terms of prevelance and 2) you have to guess which ones make the jump to your region any given year on their way around the globe. Which makes the window extremely narrow when to make that call on how to design the shot.
17/18 was the worst season of the last decade partly because many countries did not account for the Influenza B strain that ended up the most dominant on the Northern hemisphere after being not much of a factor in the southern winter nor were Influenza B strains in years prior. In Germany for example B strains were a minor factor for years, that year suddenly 70% of tested specimens were a particular B strain. The year after ? Not a single one all winter.

The CV vaccine has different problems i am sure, but not the same as either sth like HIV (which some will bring up as "see, there might be no vaccine") or the flu.


As an aside: Why is the political thread properly designated, but the unpolitical still dubbed with the made up designation ? I mean, i got used to it but struck me as ironic ;)