Yeah, I haven't seen much of a problem at my KY Kroger. And since the mask mandate, I'm hardly seeing anyone without a mask in any stores. Now, they aren't always wearing them right, but I've seen very few people without one on in some form. Just more proof that a mask mandate can work to push people who wouldn't ordinarily wear one to do it because when push come to shove, they really aren't invested enough in the anti-mask thing to challenge the policy.

Good news & some forward looking planning. And supposedly free.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/...17e1cd7c736cfa

So it won't go to the Northeast or West Coast.

Honestly, did anyone think that it wouldn't be given out freely, or that it wouldn't be the government's job to obtain and disseminate it? That was certainly my expectation.

And maybe a week or two before Election Day?

SI

You mean like PPE production and distribu...

SI

I always thought it should, but I also know the Republicans fought hard to make sure the companies could charge for them even after the government gave them huge grants to create them.

There was a time early on when I wasn't sure if testing or hospital/ventilators were going to be 100% paid or had to do the co-pay or meet the max deductible etc.

I guess it makes sense now as it would be political suicide otherwise.

Yes, quite a few people think that. I've never assumed it would be free; likely subsidized at some level so that most people can afford it, but not necessarily free. I think it's a complex situation with the kind of critical cooperation between researchers, producers, and government, and the outcome isn't self-evident to me.

If it's not free then you're placing a dividing line between who is rich enough to be insulated from a virus that doesn't care about SES, and those who aren't GOOD enough to get it.

I saw that they were going to federally hand out the vaccine. Any other administration I wouldn’t have thought twice. But these thugs in charge will definitely choke out certain areas because they are motherfuckers.

I don't know what SES is, and I think anything more I would say here would be overly political for this thread.

I believe he was meaning the virus doesn’t care about SocioEconomical Status SES so a virus to prevent it shouldn’t take that into consideration either in its distribution or it will fail to do its job completely


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It's going to be a clusterfuck. I've heard, free or at an affordable cost, and the admin is relying on insurance companies to pay for most Americans. That will work fine, but it means uninsured people are going to have to go through some sort of screening process.

And you can be certain they'll fuck things up with regards to undocumented folks.

bingo

I thought everyone was required to have insurance now?

Trump and the GOP ended the mandate. Certainly most people have insurance, but I've seen anywhere from 25-35 million people without insurance. That's just those under Medicare eligible age, too.

I am going to guess that the vast majority of the ~20MM unemployed are uninsured (I sure am, yay!). UI benefits are too much to qualify for Medicaid (even without the bonus) and cobra rollover costs average $600/mth for an individual and $1500/mth for a family, which is a high price to most unemployed people.

Checking worldometers, we are now above 1K+ in deaths and 70K+ new cases. I believe it was way under 1K in past 2-3 weeks and so the deaths has finally caught up with increased infections.

The stats are bad but hopeful the deaths won't get as bad as before when it hit 2K+. Rooting for Pfizer, Oxford, Moderna etc.

While NY, NJ and Connecticut seem to have things under control for the time being, NY has issued a 14 day quarantine for anyone coming from 31 of the other 49 states.

Its almost impossible to enforce, but the fact that 31 states are in such a clusterfuck that ours needs to set a quarantine for them and their visitors is kinda frightening.

Yeah, Trump has saved me several years worth of fines.

Is that a good thing?

Well I don't like paying fines, so yes.

Hope you never need an appendectomy.

Good point. The 25-35 million number was from before the pandemic.

I have no doubt that a different admin could distribute a vaccine and it would go pretty smoothly. There will always be some problems, but vaccine distribution isn't a new problem.

This admin, though, I can almost guarantee won't do the proper planning and preparation, and will use distribution as a way to reward allies and punish opposition. It's going to be a clusterfuck.

Probably distribute it on November 3rd outside voting booths to those wearing MAGA hats.

I do not know if it is still in effect, but Massachusetts has the same from anywhere not Like five states or so. As you say though entirely unenforceable and ends up being a “pretty please” that everyone ignores because heaven forbid anyone be inconvenienced.

Nah, they'll give it to everyone. Those not in the chosen group will just be the "control group" getting the placebo. And who says that the administration doesn't believe in science?!?

SI

It's almost as if those of us worried a couple of weeks ago that "the deaths are coming" are (once again) not chicken littles but looking at previous trends and making realistic case guesses.

SI

I honestly don't get the concern over what will happen under the vaccine with the current administration, since the only way that's likely to happen is if they win reelection. First half of 2021 is still the optimistic vaccine timeline unless I've missed a massive development somewhere.

Timetable is all over the place.

Note that even though the vaccine isn't "proven" yet, there's been enough positives where company/countries willing to take a bet and start producing now/soon.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/astr...s-vaccine.html

Given a new admin doesn’t start until mid-January means Trump is going to play a big role in the early distribution.

I'm watching the local school board meeting at length for the very first time. Not gonna lie, not really impressed with the group as a whole.

EDIT:Specified the type of board.

Could you imagine if he withholds it to Blue states out of spite? I could see it.

With the AP report that came out showing he gave minuscule amounts of Ppe to the hardest hit states comparatively due to them being blue states, I am actually surprised that people aren’t considering we will have a repeat. It is a huge concern of mine right now since my wife is high risk.


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This is not meant as a political post, more of a "who the hell can we trust for information?" rant. I posted an article in the political thread about Kemp's backdating tests to show GA was in a decline to support reopening the state. Other states have done some similar monkeying with the numbers, most notably Florida. But on the flipside, the reporting of numbers is hardly as smooth as they are presented on TV or in articles, which is understandable. There are a lot of moving pieces and coordinating all of this information is not an easy job, I'm sure.

All of which is to say, I found this article below about the way deaths are being reported and am once again trying to figure out how the hell to parse any of this with just an objective truth about what's going on. It turns out that deaths reported each day are not just new deaths since the day before. That makes sense given lag time and periodic review of information, etc., but that bit of context is completely missing from any reports I read. The article points out instances where articles are touting the single largest one-day number of "new deaths in a 24-hour period" in states like AZ and FL, only to see that dozens of those deaths (or in some cases almost all of them) did not occur in the previous 24 hours, but days or weeks earlier and have only now been reported due to review of death certificates.

These deaths happened, of course - although I suppose here is where some will interject the whole "hoax" or "overblown" thing about which deaths should actually count as Covid-related. But what I'm getting at is the narrative of things getting worse, that there's some pattern to trace to state reopenings, or protests, or Memorial Day, or July 4th celebrations... if you look at the Florida chart in this article, actual deaths in mid-July went down despite the "reported deaths" number skyrocketing. That context deserves to be known.

So where the hell are we supposed to get objective information without having to parse the raw data ourselves? I'm also expecting someone to explain how this article is misleading because, well, it's from the media so apparently it has to be biased/shoddy/false as they all are. Just freaking frustrated by it all...

The Big Surge In Coronavirus Deaths Is A Media-Fed Myth

Tired of the "hoax" shit because of the claim deaths are being reported as covid that weren't. That is inevitable going to happen, but even if half the deaths are incorrectly reported thats 70K dead which is unacceptable.

I figured it was a bullshit article once I saw the other articles of it's "agenda" (i.e. complaining about cancel culture, railing about Portland, and how to get rid of BLM murals).

Look at the note on the bottom of their chart.

The argument is that death counts aren't accurate because there's a lag between deaths and the reporting of those deaths. If that's true, you can't then also say that recent death numbers are accurate and proof of a declining number of deaths. What will those death numbers look like in a couple of weeks when all the reporting is in?

Kinda amazing how badly the US Administration has been played.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/23/ameri...ntl/index.html

Simple way for the US to play it, do you want to accept Chinese help the way they helped the nations of Africa?

To minimize this as non-political. I'm sure the "leaders" of those nations have no problem taking the money while the people of those nations are exploited. The difference is that China's influence and controlling of resources will either force the US to put money into Latin America or face a lot of undue China influence on those who cross into our border.

I think it's the people of the Latin America that are getting played here.

No I think you're missing the point. It's not that the total death numbers aren't accurate, it's the timing of when they occurred and how the media is using recently categorized Covid deaths to show that the trend in deaths is rising on a daily basis when that's not accurate. The fact is that in some cases, 100 of 150 "new deaths reported in a 24 hour period" are actually not new deaths from the past day. Which, if reported with the proper context, kinda puts a dent in the overall narrative about certain states.

I believe the numbers are overall accurate (or if anything, undercooked), and I believe certain states are a problem, but the death numbers that seem to demonstrate a linear progression and cause-and-effect between actions and supporting case/hospitalization numbers doesn't support the narrative. Yet, anyway. But that's not how it's being portrayed

Death count as portrayed as being a new deaths in the past day. I didn't take from this that they were arguing against particular deaths being attributed to Covid, although that's certainly out there as an argument from certain people. This is about timing of deaths as supporting the media narrative that deaths are at their highest per-day numbers since this began. Which is clearly how it's being reported - "X state has smashed it's 1-day record for deaths 4 times in the past week," etc. That's not true - or, at best, the numbers are far less than being reported.

Regardless of motives (and we know its tied to thinking long-term economic opportunities & political ties), it is the humanitarian thing to do so kudos to China.

LATAM is getting played but it's a win-win (albeit probably not equal win-win) as LATAM gets to save more lives, re-open earlier than they would have been able to etc.

We we are talking about trillions for our stimulus bill what's another $2-4B. It would be smart for US to offer or coordinate something similar for the friendly/neutral countries in LATAM, Africa and most importantly in Asia (including India).

Most countries in Asia see China as a threat. The US should be leveraging that mis-trust and (re)build and (re)strengthen relations for the friend & neutral countries.

Very interested in who Biden will pick for Secretary of State.

Of course literally 2.5 weeks ago, Issue Insights was using declining daily confirmed COVID 19 deaths as a reason for why COVID 19 was coming to an end.

Is The Pandemic Coming To An End At Last? – Issues & Insights

Never heard of I&I before I ran across this article, but that's why I said this wasn't intended as a political post. I'm looking for information and no one is providing anything honest or objective.

No, we don't yet know the number of deaths, say, for yesterday, but that doesn't mean they are far less than being reported. There's a discussion, perhaps, on how daily death reports are actually an accumulation of days due to a lag in receiving the information, but that doesn't mean that death counts are actually far lower than is being reported.

What I expect happens, just based on timelines we've seen previously, is that death counts will first be undercounted, then be roughly equal for a while, then be overcounted as the deaths subside, but reporting still lags. In a practical sense it's hard to see how it could work perfectly given the realities of having to record and report.

I commented on this a while back. Here is where the distrust of “the news”, “science”, and “facts” come back to bite us.