Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

“Trump, according to the Times, has asked White House advisers about using Republican-controlled legislatures in states like Pennsylvania to hijack the Electoral College, by appointing electors who would ignore official vote counts and return him to power.”

-the New Yorker

scary shit

 

no, not that people are dumb but that we by nature are more emotional than rational. That’s why advertising works. If we were all rational beings advertising would have no effect but it’s incredibly effective. Politics works the same way. The GOP employ highly sophisticated advertising and branding techniques and the Democratic Party does not. That’s just a fact that isn’t disputable if you understand anything about branding or advertising. What you summiize from that is debatable I suppose. But it’s fairly obvious that there are far more emotionally driven GOP voters than Democratic voters. You have to really try to vote Democrat. You have to think about the issues and vote based on them. To vote GOP you simply need to identify with the GOP brand. Which is very very easy in fact quite difficult for the people they are targeting not to do. And again, not because they’re stupid. It’s just human nature.

 

Did your father in law told you to build him a house?

My Mexican background friends keep getting this insult A LOT back in high school.

 

It’s impossible to get reliable stats when people who die WITH COVID have often been counted as dying FROM COVID. That inflates the numbers as well.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article that claimed since COVID, fewer people were getting influenza. I believe they claimed that Flu was down something like 15-20%. But they never once considered that Flu cases were now being counted as COVID cases.

 

It’s likely this will be a record low year for flu cases due to all the mask wearing, hand washing and social distancing that non-covidiots are practicing all over the world.

 

Incorrect. In America (I don't know about Canada) excess mortality due directly and solely to Covid is about 30%. That is take all the deaths if this was a normal year, and add about 30% on top. It's a nuclear bomb over Cincinnati, Lexington, or Bakersfield.

All the (mostly right wing) amateur epidemiologists on the internet and in right wing media who conflate comorbidities, flu, or fill_in_the_blank are the equivalent of ASR...they think they are doing "science" when all they are doing is revealing their ignorant underbellies.

 

From Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea (both ends), Thailand, New Zealand, and the source of the pandemic, China? Malaysia is doing less well, but that’s likely to be caused by leakage through our porous eastern borders (sorry Lyander).

The lesson from everywhere around the world is that the more you f**k around before locking down properly, the more this will hurt.

 

Let's get real. I am sure North Korea is peachy, it has always been. And the numbers we are getting from them are unquestionable. Same with China

 

I've not been out of my house for 8 months now and am rather cranky as a result. Seeing the sheer volume of people who've been taking this lightly and acting like social distancing and mask-wearing are all optional niceties makes me want to shove chopsticks into ears and eye sockets.

Been working on being less crochety. Limited success.

Other places that have adhered to stringent lockdown advisories grew well to do. NZ and Italy showed promise, but now that people are growing lax cases and deaths are on the rise all over again. On my end there's been storms, flooding, and an earthquake just today in the south of the country (Indonesia seems to have felt that last bit too, hope y'all are okay)— piss and perdition, now there's leptospirosis, dengue, and all sorts of other fun things to worry about besides.

What kind of f'ing stupid do you have to be to not be able to put together that keeping people from mingling will help mitigate the spread of a virus is a question I didn't think I'd have to pose.

I made the mistake of watching news recently and saw a mother's reaction when she found her dead 2 year old buried under mud and rubble. The fact that the news crew filmed and broadcasted that makes me sick, but hey at least they had the decency to blur the tiny corpse. Her expression and the noises she made are still stuck in my head, that isn't helping the insomnia and I'm having some trouble being polite.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Just take a look at this site and the graph about the excess deaths threshold. They have ESTIMATED numbers until the week of October 1st.
Only for four weeks this year in April the excess deaths estimate went above 30%. From the end of August is below 10% and sometimes the margin of error is like 100%. So 30% is not for the year it was the peek during four week at the beginning of the pandemic, fueled probably in large numbers by NY.
How is that possible that those four weeks in April above 30% made the number for the year to be 30%?
Even assuming that in the last 6 weeks the excess deaths picked up significantly, but there is no data to support that.

 

I’m moving to Oregon! Seriously.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oregon-decriminalize-drug-law_n_5fac42e9c5b6cae940423816

It’s so cool to see this as it’s something I’ve believed in for many years. Incarcerating people for small amounts of drug possession accomplishes nothing and in fact only solidifies addiction and makes recovery more difficult not to mention costing huge amounts of money to keep these people in prison - money that could be spent on rehabilitation programs that could really help people’s lives and society as a whole. Hurray for Oregon.

 

NK probably just shot their infected and burned their corpses.

China probably has ~4x the number of deaths they reported, but it is also true that their lockdown made it possible to reopen sooner than most places. Even from a purely economic perspective, locking down hard and fast seems to be the right move.

Contact tracing works fine and all when you have 10 cases a day, but at this point you need to scram your reactors. It’s that or pray that the antibodies for Trump work for everyone else.

 

I stand corrected. Doing a bit of math:

2.8 million expected deaths assuming a 'normal' April/19 > April/20

325,000 excess deaths during this time (250,000 + projected), assuming current overall trend (i.e. this current spike will level back off - this is not a 'second wave')

11.6% excess death rate during time period.

 

Yep, China is pretty much 1984 realised (I’ve read the stuff about crematorium activity). Still would be odd if they reopened without really clearing up their coronavirus cases though. As evil as they might be, they are coldly rational in most things.

 

The silly thing to me about "Police Defunding" is Policing is not a Federal Issue. I triggered a few GOP voters when I pointed out that Policing in general is a 10th Amendment issue, which means this should be a State's Matter on how they handle their Policing. The Federal level have a more limited role here than people realize.

Federal Level can only control Federal crimes, but the amount of people who are convicted on Federal crimes is not close to the amount of people who are convinced under State crimes. This also means policing should be focused on the State Senator/Rep Races, your Town/City Council Races, and Sheriff races. Also, just because you are voting down ticket GOP doesn't mean they will do shit on this issue.

People got triggered when FL Gov Desantis* submitted a draft for a bill to make any "Violent Protest" have harsh sentencing/expand stand your ground. People got pissed about it, but the States have the right to regulate these matters (where is where it belongs).

* A few things next to Desantis name:

• FL Governors do not have the right to introduce a bill per FL Constitution. They can make any draft of a bill they want, but FL Legislature don't have to take the draft at all. FL Legislature can make their own version of the same bill, and their own version trumps the Gov's draft.
• FL Legislature have the running joke: A grand bill that does so much but when it gets to the Governor's desk after surviving the Legislature it is a weak bill that doesn't do shit.
• FL already have tough laws on violent protests anyway (which is why we didn't have no Portland BS here), the purposed bill is give the Police Union's wonderful protections + unlimited support to the GOP.
  • Which by the way, bust the Police Unions like any other Unions who are too big for their own good. Just like those employee Unions who open their wallet for Democrats, the Police Unions are doing the same for the GOP.
• My fat gut is telling me this upcoming bill is once again all talk and full of BS as being a proud member of FL.