The Coronavirus

[pbrower2a]

(09-20-2020, 03:23 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(09-16-2020, 10:08 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Rachel Maddow’s leading segment tonight focused on an apparent decision by the Trump White House to go for the herd immunity solution to COVID.  Rachel responded by working though the assumptions that people who had the bug were immune, that you need 65% to 70% of the people to have had the bug to get effective immunity, that a certain percentage of the people who have the bug die, which leaves Trump perfectly happy with two to six million people dead.

I have been thinking of six million Jews targeted by Hitler as the yardstick.  It looks like Trump is looking at that neighborhood.

But the idea of as many people as possible catching the bug as quickly as possible is consistent with his running super spreader events, his requiring schools to open, his declaring meat processing plants essential but not requiring the companies to make it safer for the workers, his general contempt for keeping people alive.  He has also started to recommend to the states that they minimize precautions.

Rachel also had reports by two ‘doctors’ who approve of this.  One is the White House adviser.  The other was the CDC spokesman.  Both had emphasized their linkage to certain colleges.  Both colleges found it prudent to make it clear that these folks were no longer associated with the schools, both medical staffs of the colleges are for isolation and minimizing the disease until a vaccine is developed, I guess the common estimate is late 2nd quarter or 3rd quarter of 2021.

The thing I wonder is how long it will take to get 65% of the population infected.  If we are already around 200,000 dead, how long does it take to get to 6 million and herd immunity?  If we assume that Biden will win in November and take power in February, assuming Trump is striving to kill as many people as he can in the meantime, and continues to do so until February of 2021, how many people will Trump kill before a sane scientific approach gets implemented?

I personally am not too worried about it.  It seems like most of the people he is killing live on Earth Two, lacking masks, not distancing, attending super spreader events, opening schools and the rest.  Me, I am staying properly isolated.  It seems to be more their problem.  Will the herd immunity formation be impeded by those stubborn blue people living in blue states taking all sorts of isolation precautions?  How much will it take for the red people to wise up?  How many careful blue folks will be murdered by carefree no precaution reds?

I think very possibly the legislative process you envision for our information age will only be able to start operating if Trump's appointment is blocked. Otherwise the SCOTUS cabal can over-rule everything done, and keep us in the statemate of the last 40 years in which this legislative process has been prohibited from operating. There will likely be no recourse except secession and probable civil war, and a positive outcome also unlikely.

I had never seen the words in use, but they date to 1923, relating to bacterial infections. Viruses spread more easily than bacterial infections and are more easily treated. A new virus such as SARS-2 or the one behind the Spanish influenza outbreak of a century ago can ravage a population. (We just hit the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths, roughly the population of such places as Yonkers, New York; Amarillo, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Augusta, Georgia). 

There could have been fitting protections of people in the meat-packing industry, but such would have cut into profits or raised consumer prices. Someone who believes that all life is economic in objective could make such a decision; Donald Trump is the definitive example of Homo oeconomicus, and therein we find an explanation. Homo oeconomicus can not recognize that he is his brother's keeper when there is economic gain to be had from someone else's misfortune. I would expect such from a slave trafficker or a mobster.

We are in a Crisis Era, and in a Crisis Era people are more willing to make sacrifices for the general good so long as such creates a better, safer, or more just world. People can put up with rationing, higher taxes, reduced income, and shortages at the least. Figure that some waiters who made good pay on tips are often working in fast-food places for near-minimum wages because of necessity. 

Homo oeconomicus is prone to quackery in belief, especially when such serves a definitive expression of the character in scientific or medical quackery.
President Trump has made definitive-sounding statements about the progress of medicine and medical research in developing a vaccine for COVID-19. Ask the experts instead, as Trump knows about as much about medicine as he does about changing the oil on a car.  

In the meantime I can avoid bars and avoid eating in the dining areas of restaurants. I can wear a mask anywhere. And, of course, I have voted early, and you can imagine how I voted.