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US GDP Fell 9.5% and Wealth Is Productivity

Dancing Fire

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Our major European allies do not think our country has handled the pandemic well and want us to stay out. You can’t blame that on media bias.
I blame Trump for not banning all European flights into the US on the same day he banned flights from China.
 

Calliecake

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China reopened economy and is doing fine.


And all their citizens wore a mask when leaving their homes. We might have been able to reopen our country too if we had a President who listened to the scientists and epidemiologists.

@Dancing Fire a lot of things may have been different if the president listened to scientists and epidemiologists. Instead we have lost over 150,000 people.

You keep ignoring the fact that this President has done a terrible job responding to the virus.
 
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voce

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I blame Trump for not banning all European flights into the US on the same day he banned flights from China.

Woohoo, the first time Dancing Fire has blamed Trump for anything. I agree; it was naive of him to assume European flights were safe.
 

Musia

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want us to stay out.

Are there many good people in the country who desperately want to travel to Europe now but can't because EU want us to stay out? It may be just their political statement since they know for sure that not many would come from the US anyway.
 

voce

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Are there many good people in the country who desperately want to travel to Europe now but can't because EU want us to stay out? It may be just their political statement since they know for sure that not many would come from the US anyway.

I work with Italians at my company. They have dual citizenship and would dearly love to go see their families in Italy, which they had made a point of doing every year before the current one. Family is very important to their values.
 

Musia

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Family is very important to their values.

That is too bad, I agree. Our people are also not seeing their families. Not the best times for travelling. And I believe most Americans love and value their families a lot.
 

hmr_mama

Brilliant_Rock
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I agree that the EU’s recommendations seem to highlight their opinion on how the US has handled this pandemic. It’s worth mentioning that the same recommendation that excludes the US, recommends lifting travel bans for the people of China. The same China that was the epicenter of the pandemic. The same China that has reported 4,664 deaths from Covid. If you believe that, I’ve some ocean front property in Arizona to sell ya!



While many countries like Canada and South Africa do have blanket travel bans, the EU has made recommendations to its members of which countries to allow. The list notably excludes the US.

Our major European allies do not think our country has handled the pandemic well and want us to stay out. You can’t blame that on media bias.
 

Dancing Fire

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@Dancing Fire a lot of things may have been different if the president listened to scientists and epidemiologists. Instead we have lost over 150,000 people.
I don't recall Fauci recommend wearing a mask in March-May? during his daily Covid briefing. In fact I didn't see him wearing a mask till lately.

Is this the correct way of wearing a mask?

1596153426448.png
 

voce

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I agree that the EU’s recommendations seem to highlight their opinion on how the US has handled this pandemic. It’s worth mentioning that the same recommendation that excludes the US, recommends lifting travel bans for the people of China. The same China that was the epicenter of the pandemic. The same China that has reported 4,664 deaths from Covid. If you believe that, I’ve some ocean front property in Arizona to sell ya!

The same China that has now got the disease under control. I don't believe the official numbers, but I believe my relatives who are living in China, who are healthcare workers and would be the first to know if the virus is raging in the city where they are.
 

Musia

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I blame Trump for not banning all European flights into the US on the same day he banned flights from China.

This would be too much for Nancy Pelosi to handle
 

Musia

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I don't recall Fauci recommend wearing a mask in March-May? during his daily Covid briefing. In fact I didn't see him wearing a mask till lately.

Is this the correct way of wearing a mask?

1596153426448.png

This is the correct way
 

Musia

Brilliant_Rock
Joined
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0''''''''''''''.jpg
 

hmr_mama

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The same China that has now got the disease under control. I don't believe the official numbers, but I believe my relatives who are living in China, who are healthcare workers and would be the first to know if the virus is raging in the city where they are.

“Under control” is subjective.

China’s curve was never flattened. Their vulnerable populations died. Although I distrust their data, they might be avoiding “aftershocks” because everyone that had comorbitities, died at the start.

And I mean no offense to your family in China, but it’s known around the world that the government of China would never let anti-China rhetoric prevail.
 

Musia

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Trump said this supposed doctor had an important voice to share.

Deb, there were many doctors, not just this one black woman who got her education in Africa. She was mocked by media and ridiculed by many people while ALL videos of the other doctors speaking were erased from the Internet. Today they become available again, please watch (If you have a time and desire, of course). I attached the picture of the message my daughter received after her post containing the video was removed from her page. 0'''''''''''''''.jpg
 

JPie

Ideal_Rock
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I agree that the EU’s recommendations seem to highlight their opinion on how the US has handled this pandemic. It’s worth mentioning that the same recommendation that excludes the US, recommends lifting travel bans for the people of China. The same China that was the epicenter of the pandemic. The same China that has reported 4,664 deaths from Covid. If you believe that, I’ve some ocean front property in Arizona to sell ya!

China may be the likely source of the virus, but the poor US response to the pandemic is squarely on Trump's shoulders. No amount of deflecting attention to China will change that fact.
 

JPie

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Are there many good people in the country who desperately want to travel to Europe now but can't because EU want us to stay out? It may be just their political statement since they know for sure that not many would come from the US anyway.

On what basis do you assume that this is a political statement rather than a decision based on medical science and facts?
 

hmr_mama

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China may be the likely source of the virus, but the poor US response to the pandemic is squarely on Trump's shoulders. No amount of deflecting attention to China will change that fact.

My comment wasn’t a “deflection”. The EU proved itself illogical by allowing travel restrictions to be lifted on China. This was a political statement from the EU. Period.

How would you have liked the US to respond to the pandemic?
 

voce

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“Under control” is subjective.

China’s curve was never flattened. Their vulnerable populations died. Although I distrust their data, they might be avoiding “aftershocks” because everyone that had comorbitities, died at the start.

And I mean no offense to your family in China, but it’s known around the world that the government of China would never let anti-China rhetoric prevail.

Rhetoric doesn't determine the number of people who show up at hospitals with symptoms at my relatives' workplace, the largest hospital in their region, serving a city the size of LA in terms of population. Rather, I think you are using your rhetoric to comfort yourself in denying that an inferior country in so many ways could have possibly done better to contain a pandemic.
 

Musia

Brilliant_Rock
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medical science and facts

I said It may be. It is my own opinion based on what I am seeing, learning, hearing. There is no science, medical or any other If a scientist or a group of scientists don't have money. Someone pays money in order to prove that things are very bad in the US. Scientists need money, they work for money. You said China may be the likely source of the virus. Why no "science" did find an exact source of the virus? Wasn't it so important to know where it come from? Wasn't it possible to trace and find the epicenter of the disease? Because any science is highly politicized right now. IMHO.
 

hmr_mama

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Rhetoric doesn't determine the number of people who show up at hospitals with symptoms at my relatives' workplace, the largest hospital in their region, serving a city the size of LA in terms of population. Rather, I think you are using your rhetoric to comfort yourself in denying that an inferior country in so many ways could have possibly done better to contain a pandemic.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.


 

JPie

Ideal_Rock
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My comment wasn’t a “deflection”. The EU proved itself illogical by allowing travel restrictions to be lifted on China. This was a political statement from the EU. Period.

How would you have liked the US to respond to the pandemic?

The EU removed China from the list of countries they’re allowing travelers from as of this week:
  • Now the culled list of 11 countries will look like this after all members gave the decision the official nod: Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.
Do you still think it’s a political statement, and not a reflection of the mess here, that the US didn’t make the cut?

As for how I would’ve liked the US to respond to the pandemic, here’s a list that’s not exhaustive:
  • Trump should’ve listened to security briefings in January. That’s how long ago he had warnings of a potential crisis.
  • Trump should not have removed dozens of CDC observers that the Obama administration had placed in China for the purpose of tracking potential outbreaks.
  • Trump should have listened to doctors and scientists instead of lying to the American people that this is just a flu and will go away on its own.
  • Trump shouldn’t be telling us it’s safe to send kids back to school five days a week, but it’s still too danergous to have Election Day as outlined in the Constitution.
If this list isn’t bad enough for you, here’s a great summary of how Trump royally screwed the pooch: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/613591/
 

JPie

Ideal_Rock
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I said It may be. It is my own opinion based on what I am seeing, learning, hearing. There is no science, medical or any other If a scientist or a group of scientists don't have money. Someone pays money in order to prove that things are very bad in the US. Scientists need money, they work for money. You said China may be the likely source of the virus. Why no "science" did find an exact source of the virus? Wasn't it so important to know where it come from? Wasn't it possible to trace and find the epicenter of the disease? Because any science is highly politicized right now. IMHO.

Scientists are actively investigating when and how the virus first jumped from animals to humans. You can read more about it here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5870481/coronavirus-origins/?amp=true

This also seems germane to the conversation:
64C19881-902E-4A11-A078-14AA08F3FCA6.jpeg
 

voce

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Whatever helps you sleep at night.



I could have told you well before any of these articles were published that Chinese agencies censor the internet for anything that they deem political. But Chinese people have so many clever ways to get around censorship, and honestly no censorship is required in the current environment in China. Despite the censorship, news about how the government was cracking down on whistleblowers got out still, didn't it? My parents' group on WeChat were discussing it freely. If the virus was raging uncontrolled in China still now, there's no way my parents' social group wouldn't know. They are made up of people who went to medical school in China right when universities started opening up after the cultural revolution, so after critical and not buying the Chinese state narrative.

I just want to point out that the articles from NPR, I 100% believe, but neither points to the conclusion that you've drawn about the virus still being a big problem in China as of this moment. The monitoring and censorship is constant, but that doesn't mean the virus is uncontrolled. The last NPR article you posted here was dated February, before China got the virus under control, and the Foreign Policy article, despite a publication date in July, was still talking about crackdown on medical professionals back in February.
Screenshot_20200730-204024.png Screenshot_20200730-204215.png

What you're quoting me doesn't support your erroneous assumption that conditions related to the virus haven't changed in China since February 2020.

I recall that during the worst days of the virus in China, Europe did ban travel from China when China was still the epicenter. When it comes to epidemic diseases, the epicenter can shift, and now the epicenter of the world seems to be the United States, so it makes sense for Europe to ban travel from the US for now, and I trust they will lift the travel ban soon after the US manages to get the virus under control so the epicenter is no longer in the US.
 

Musia

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Scientists are actively investigating when and how the virus first jumped from animals to humans.

Any child can do the same for free, just out of curiosity.

So they are still being actively investigating, they didn't come to any certain conclusion yet. There is no country to blame for allowing the virus to spread freely beyond their borders. Some kind of animals somewhere released their virus and then somehow it jumped on humans. So we need some more time to learn how exactly that happened and how to prevent it from happening again. I believe it is not what we can call a science, but a pure speculation. e=mc2 is a science. Anything pertaining to the Covid 19 or the Trump virus at the moment is much more politics that a pure science based on facts and proven by formulas. There is no Third party to check on everything and give their independent opinion unfortunately.
 

JPie

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Any child can do the same for free, just out of curiosity.

So they are still being actively investigating, they didn't come to any certain conclusion yet. There is no country to blame for allowing the virus to spread freely beyond their borders. Some kind of animals somewhere released their virus and then somehow it jumped on humans. So we need some more time to learn how exactly that happened and how to prevent it from happening again. I believe it is not what we can call a science, but a pure speculation. e=mc2 is a science. Anything pertaining to the Covid 19 or the Trump virus at the moment is much more politics that a pure science based on facts and proven by formulas. There is no Third party to check on everything and give their independent opinion unfortunately.

I’m not sure you understand what science is.

E=MC2 is an equation, not a science.

Science is “both a body of knowledge and a process.” That process includes making observations, collecting data, and drawing conclusions based on analyses of that data. It is often peer-reviewed to critique the process and the validity of the conclusion. This is the third-party check and independent opinion that you claim doesn’t exist.

An example of pure speculation is your assertion that the research being done on the origins of the coronavirus is more politics than science.

Scientific knowledge evolves as more information becomes available, so that is why we don’t speak in absolutes and instead say the virus likely originated from China.

While any child can make observations, here’s why we leave the science to the pros:
 

voce

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[/B]Anything pertaining to the Covid 19 or the Trump virus at the moment is much more politics that a pure science based on facts and proven by formulas. There is no Third party to check on everything and give their independent opinion unfortunately.
While I believe there is pure science being applied to finding a vaccine for the virus, I agree that the search for the origins of the virus is highly political...

There are those in the US who support the conspiracy theory that the virus was made in a lab in Wuhan and got out because they didn't follow good sanitation procedures or because they intentionally wanted to release the virus. Impossible to prove or disprove.

There are also those in China who believe in the conspiracy theory the virus was made in the US by the CIA to target Chinese people and cite the fact that free medical exams were offered in LA to elderly people of Chinese descent where they were swabbed for DNA without the participants' consent to donate their DNA. The Wuhan variant of the virus seemed to target a receptor that's much more prevalent in Chinese and Asian men than other populations, so the theory goes. Also quite impossible to prove or disprove.

If the CIA or the Chinese government was up to something, they would plant misinformation and prevent the public from finding out what they did. And I'm sure there are enough scientists who will believe one or the other, based on where their political sympathies lie. I myself count both conspiracy theories and plausible but not likely. It would have to take some grave miscalculation for someone to concoct and release this virus into the world without thinking of the virus evolving into various other strains and causing great harm and generating great ill-will. In the case of the accidental release from a Wuhan lab, the lab was conducting research on coronavirus that was many generations removed from the samples from the Wuhan wet market. But, I understand that there are those who will believe the worst of the Chinese even though that Wuhan lab was a lab where there was international collaboration on research.

When it comes to looking at observed facts, someone's political sympathies may lead to them selectively curating which facts they admit as fact, and which facts they reflexively throw out the window simply because they mistrust the source. There are those in the US who mistrust the WHO for political reasons, for example.

Me, I'm someone who tries to keep an open mind. Just because there is political corruption at the higher levels of the organization doesn't mean that all the good work done by doctors working for the WHO should be automatically discounted. That's just my opinion.

An example of pure speculation is your assertion that the research being done on the origins of the coronavirus is more politics than science.

Scientific knowledge evolves as more information becomes available, so that is why we don’t speak in absolutes and instead say the virus likely originated from China.

While any child can make observations, here’s why we leave the science to the pros:

I am in complete agreement with you in the bolded sections. I do not agree with the paragraph where you say the idea that research done on the origins of the virus is political, is down to pure speculation.

You can make some reasonable deductions that scientists are human, and as humans, they are also subject to confirmation bias, so whether consciously or unconsciously, that affects the research that they do, because scientists' political leanings may cause them to throw out facts that they discredit due to their political leanings. Thus they may look at a narrower set of facts than all the facts.

I consider my father to be one of the most scientifically minded people I know. He's incredible with applying science to solving everyday life problems and understands enough to build an MRI machine. He's more fascinated with the origin of the virus than with the practical specifics, like vaccines and how to treat the virus. I asked him why he's more interested in the origin. His answer was: to be able to once and for all decide who to assign blame.

I should add, I've spent a lot of time around the scientific community and don't see even the top scientists as infallible.

When it comes to the scientists who study the origins of the virus, I think it stands to reason that some of them are doing so because of political motivations. Scientific research motivated by politics and funded by governments to confirm their existing biases, I'd be extremely extremely suspicious of. I'm most likely to believe the research of scientists who were already studying coronaviruses before the current pandemic because they are least likely to be motivated by assigning blame as a reason for their research.
 
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missy

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Apologies in advance. I haven’t yet read the thread. Heading to PT but wanted to share this.

From The New York Times.




The autocrat problem

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has used the coronavirus crisis as an excuse to further centralize authority.Pool photo by Francois Lenoir
The European Union seems to be functioning better than the United States in some big ways right now. Europe has been far more successful in subduing the coronavirus. It has also passed a recent economic stimulus bill, while the U.S. Congress has not.

But Europe has a major problem.

It has a rising autocratic movement that the continent’s leaders have no clear strategy for confronting. If anything, the pandemic has strengthened the most autocratic E.U. governments, in Hungary and Poland. Other countries have put a higher priority on fighting the virus and helping the economy than trying to stop the erosion of democracy.

As my colleague Matina Stevis-Gridneff, who covers the European Union from Brussels, told me, “The leading E.U. member states have been willing to partly turn a blind eye to achieve realpolitik gains right now.”

The background: Hungary’s governing party, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has undermined democracy by changing election rules, packing the courts with allies and insisting on uncritical media coverage. Orban has used the virus as an excuse to centralize authority even further.

Poland’s governing party, led by Jarosław Kaczynski, has taken a similar approach, mostly by neutralizing the judicial system.

When the E.U. expanded to include Hungary, Poland and six other countries in 2004, the bloc’s leaders made the mistake of assuming that Eastern and Central Europe were on a one-way path to democracy and the rule of law. (The naïveté bears some resemblance to American assumptions about how China would democratize after joining global trade treaties.)

As a result, the E.U. did not create an easy process for punishing countries that move away from democracy. Doing so can require either a unanimous vote or a supermajority, and Hungary and Poland have defeated either.

Some European officials pushed for a tougher approach in the recent stimulus bill, but in the end, the E.U. leaders chose to avoid a big fight during a crisis. Afterward, Orban gloated about winning “a very important battle.” (This Times analysis does a nice job of explaining the debate.)

There are no easy answers here. Allowing autocracy to flourish may encourage its rise in other countries. But confronting it risks pulling the E.U. apart.

“In the long run, it seems to me, rule of law issues will undermine the E.U.,” Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, says.

 

voce

Ideal_Rock
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@missy that NYT article states "Europe has a major problem", and that problem is moving towards autocracy.

I laughed coldly because autocracy is a problem around the world. What do you think Trump's legacy is if not a move toward autocracy?

Africa, Latin America, China, Russia, and the Middle East... What small part of the world does not have this problem? China has gotten more autocratic under Xi, and Russia has gotten more autocratic under Putin.

The NYT article author's focus seems narrow.
 
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