Covid-19 Politics

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

"Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick deflected criticism of the COVID-19 outbreak in his state by placing the blame on Democratic leaders failing to get enough Black Americans vaccinated."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/texas-lt-g...152705838.html

Someone help me here, did they abolish slavery in Texas? Or is the place run by the clinically incompetent? At what point does Greg Abbott when he is not compaigning to replace the US Constitution with the Ten Commandments get sued for Criminal Negligence over the State's Covid Infection policy?

Maybe the State motto should be 'Abandon Hope, all Ye who Enter Here;...?

Useful article on the latest research on vaccine effectiveness (Pfizer and Moderna).
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covi...-delta-variant

The main findings are that effectiveness in preventing infections has fallen from around 90 per cent to 80 per cent with the delta strain. However, effectiveness at preventing serious illness requiring hospitalisation has remained at around 90-95 per cent.

I see that Trump was recently booed by the MAGA crowd for encouraging them to get vaccinated. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-covid-vaccine

It seems that vaccine scepticism has morphed into outright hostility toward vaccination as a sort of badge of tribal identity.

I hadn't checked this thread and mentioned the Trump booing in our other conversation. It's an interesting phenomenon because he was the leader of this movement. And now he looks for a moment like he is betraying the movement he started. Of course he doesn't have enough character to double down. The feedback goes both ways maybe.

I think Biden has done a mostly mediocre job with covid. The types of things I criticized Trump for: poor coordination of testing, inability to promote better testing tech such as home tests, and lack of initiative in collecting and analyzing data on breakthrough infections have been just as bad with Biden. We are at different points in the pandemic but I can make guesses about how Biden would have responded to the start of the pandemic. People were on Trump's ass for not invoking the National Defense Act and building ventilators and manufacturing ppe. It's not provable but I'm not getting a great sense of organization from Biden's team. Maybe many of these problems have to do with federal agencies that are not staffed with the type of people who can accomplish top down coordinated tasks and that problem is long-standing.

Part of the problem with Trump was that he literally added insult to a bad situation. He tried to barter with ventilators based on which governors were nice to him. He made insulting statements about doctors and nurses who were risking their lives. He encouraged people to violate the orders of their governors. So doing a somewhat average/poor job is an improvement.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Part of the problem with Trump was that he literally added insult to a bad situation. He tried to barter with ventilators based on which governors were nice to him. He made insulting statements about doctors and nurses who were risking their lives. He encouraged people to violate the orders of their governors. So doing a somewhat average/poor job is an improvement.

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What negotiations? It was a fix from the start. The key point is that the Trump admiistration considered developing a National Strategy But key people -allegedly Jared Kushner and Trump himself- decided against it so that they could blame Democrat Governors for failing their State and get a better press for themselves.
https://www.businessinsider.com/kush...20-7?r=US&IR=T

What could have/shoud have been a National Co-ordinaed Defence against Covid, became a squalid act of Sabotage designed to use illness and death to elevate Trump and his party of Sedition, Sleaze and Lies above all others.

It was a policy that has fed into the growing realization that the US is no longer a Union of 50 States, but 50 separate countries whose Governors choose which laws to respect and which to discard. Just as the Constitution is seen by Trump's party of Sedition, Sleaze and Lies as an irrrelevance, and Congress and the Separation of Powers are the handcuffs on deciision-making in the State, so Joe Biden looks impotent because the power he has- that he is not even using- is being repudiated by States such as Florida and Texas.

These Governors are it is argued, guilty of Criminal Negligence, as health services in the State are overwhelmed with Covid cases that vaccination would have prevented, now caused deliberately by indifference to science and common sense - but as we have seen, the former President and his Apostles are not to be subject to the Rule of Law. The US is thus losing the unique characeristics that held it together since 1776, as New Wave Fascists take over with their intense belief in a 'Strong Leader', the Holy Bible, and White Privilege.

There is an absence of rational thinking, about the alternative to the effective secession of Florida and Texas, and as a conciliator and a believer in compromise and bi-partisan politics, Biden's failure may give the Enemies of the USA the tools they are usig to dismatle the Union as you once knew it. Liberal Democracies, after all, when they die, die from internal injuries.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I hadn't checked this thread and mentioned the Trump booing in our other conversation. It's an interesting phenomenon because he was the leader of this movement. And now he looks for a moment like he is betraying the movement he started. Of course he doesn't have enough character to double down. The feedback goes both ways maybe.

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I think Republican politicians have created a monster which now controls them. As a result, they have lost the capacity or willingness to govern effectively because the monster only wants red meat in the form of demonisation of enemies, as well as denial of any inconvenient facts. This is a good article on what is happening in Texas, where all sorts of bread-and-butter issues are just being ignored.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...id-immigration

I think the basis of the differences is that Democrat supporters care mostly about government delivering outcomes they think will improve peoples' lives; whereas Republican supporters don't believe in government and seem to care mostly about performative rhetoric. This creates an asymmetry. Democratic supporters become disillusioned when their leaders under-deliver, as also occurred under Obama. Republican supporters are less likely to become disillusioned as long as they getting the rhetorical red meat, which is easier to deliver.

I think a big part of your problem is that federal government capacity, apart from defence/security, has been run down over a long period. They struggle to do anything complex because they don't have enough people with the know-how and experience. It also doesn't help that senior management consists of political appointees who are replaced every time the administration changes. This is obviously a bigger problem for Democrats who want governments to do things that it is for Republicans who don't.

How CDC data problems put the U.S. behind on the delta variant


http://www.washingtonpost.com/health...delta-variant/

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

"Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick deflected criticism of the COVID-19 outbreak in his state by placing the blame on Democratic leaders failing to get enough Black Americans vaccinated."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/texas-lt-g...152705838.html

Someone help me here, did they abolish slavery in Texas? Or is the place run by the clinically incompetent? At what point does Greg Abbott when he is not compaigning to replace the US Constitution with the Ten Commandments get sued for Criminal Negligence over the State's Covid Infection policy?

Maybe the State motto should be 'Abandon Hope, all Ye who Enter Here;...?

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LT.Governor Dan Patrick is a Trump Enabler,and his comments shows that him and Greg Abbott don't believe in science and did a terrible job of handling the pandemic in Texas. And agree that should be the motto for the state of Texas.

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Originally Posted by filghy2

I see that Trump was recently booed by the MAGA crowd for encouraging them to get vaccinated. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-covid-vaccine

It seems that vaccine scepticism has morphed into outright hostility toward vaccination as a sort of badge of tribal identity.

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Yep Donald-D.A.M.N-Trump was booed by the MAGA Crowd for telling them to get vaccinated,and for over a year he was telling them that COVID 19 was a hoax by the democrats and that they should inject themselves with disinfection and
take a drug that doesn't work. and now he's trying to have it both ways. And indeed it has.

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Originally Posted by filghy2

I think a big part of your problem is that federal government capacity, apart from defence/security, has been run down over a long period. They struggle to do anything complex because they don't have enough people with the know-how and experience. It also doesn't help that senior management consists of political appointees who are replaced every time the administration changes. This is obviously a bigger problem for Democrats who want governments to do things that it is for Republicans who don't.

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I'm not sure what to add to this but it's a problem. The political appointees are often useless and often have no experience within the agency and aren't even capable managers. Probably an issue of underfunding for the career employees as well, made worse by the fact that Republicans don't actually believe in the missions of many of these agencies.