Do you still believe in Covid 'science'?

When you definitely know what science means.

Also, check your link. It directly contradicts your assertion. Oops.

Covid being transmitted via surfaces has not been debunked.
It is just more likely to be infected via aerosolisation and direct contact. Your linked article even says so.

And in general, science is not a body of knowledge. It is not religious gospel, infallible and immutable.
It is a process, and as such you revise and change your working knowledge based on the information and evidence you continue to collect.

You think that the CDC and other health agencies changing their guidance over time is somehow a mark against science, and that it gives you an desperately desired excuse to just ignore everything they say, so that you can feel justified when you refuse to employ any of the recommended precautions, just because they are inconvenient to you. You could not be more wrong.

@crazyguy With so many diametrically opposed by “experts” it is, at best
confusing!

All I can say is I would not eat anything at @crazyguy‘s house and I would definitely wash my hands if I touched anything in his house.

@crazyguy What do you consider the alternative to “science” as you pejoratively frame it in quotes? Ayurveda? Christian Science? Laying on of hands?

No.

“Science” You keep using that word

@crazyguy What is the reason you expect the conclusions of science to never change?
And why do you trust science less when that happens, instead of trusting it more?

You have confused “science” with “eternal truth”. Science isn’t like that.
Science makes the best sense of the best information available at the time and is completely committed to altering its view if additional information becomes available that clarifies things in a contrary way.

You keep asking questions that suggest that is a weakness of science. It is not. That is science’s greatest strength, to change understanding and conclusions when the data change.

Not only does he not know what science is – he confuses his ignorance of CDC recommendations with scientific confusion. He believes that the primary and secondary routes of virus transmission were just discovered. Yet, the rest of us have known this for 11+ months.

@crazyguy: “Current science has finally recognized the fact that covid is essentially airborne.”

His definition of “finally” = prior to May 2020. Even the CDC was communicating this in May 2020.

It’s a progressing science as more information (data) is collected by Doctors and scientists the more they and in turn we learn from it.
Of course it’s bound to change a bit the more we learn from it.
What are you trying to get from this question, don’t listen to scientists ,listen to extreme fright wing politicians instead they know best?

To summarize: @crazyguy critiques the scientific process by reminding everyone that science works.

The flaw in this thinking is in the language of the question itself: “believe in”. Science is not religious doctrine; you’re expecting science to be an unwavering faith that remains eternally true throughout the ages. That is not what science is. It is always subject to change and refinement. This is how science has always worked. COVID was an example of the public having access to science being done in real time and it has unnerved many. But maybe it will lead to fewer of us expecting science to be faith and taking for granted that what is currently regarded as true may not be so in the future.

That “so-called” science includes the vaccines. I believe in mine.

Yes, science has shown that vaccines are safe and effective. The odds are well in our favor.

Yes, but then I know what science is.

Science is the best thing humanity has come up with for combatting disease of all sorts including Covid19, in fact it is really the only thing.

“I clearly remember scrubbing pieces of mail and packages before opening them because that is what science advised us to do.”
– LOL what? I don’t remember science telling me to do that…

“ASs with most science to do with covid, this one has essentially been debunked:”
– “De=bunked”? What? I don’t think you understand how “science” and medical advisories work. People do the best to provide information that may affect safety, to the best of their knowledge at the time, gather data, and revise appropriately. That’s not “debunking” anything in the way you seem to think/imply.

“Current science has finally recognized the fact that covid is essentially airborne. It is now struggling with whether vaccinated people can transmit the disease.

Do you still believe in the so-called science?”
– Science is not an alternative religion or faith-based way of thinking. Please look up “the scientific method” and “how are medical advisories designed for new diseases?” and try to de-program your anti-scientific Right-wing nonsense programming.

What I continue to “believe”, is that non-political health care officials do their best with their admittedly imperfect and changing but evidence-based rational information about a new disease, to give the advice that they think is most useful and effective to tell people for the greater good.

Of course. Initially, health officials were working off of basic knowledge about most contagious viruses. Better to err on the side of caution.

To be devil’s advocate though, this is why I’m still really angry we weren’t ready with masks from the very start.

It took me a second to understand what it is about this question that upset me aside from the fact that it was posed by the op. And I quickly realized that it was another one of those questions assuming an available alternative to common sense. What are you supposed to think when someone claims to be an engineer in one breath then implies with the next that science is not to be trusted?

It helps if you know the differences between science and rumor.

@JLeslie – people started hoarding masks early on, leaving few for frontline doctors. If doctors were taken down at that point, we would have been screwed. Officials thus told people to shelter, and leave masks for doctors.

@Dutchess_III I agree with you.

@RocketGuy I know why they did it, but they were not clear about that at the time. I myself said masks should be worn to my friends most at risk and family, but to most people I said let’s leave them for the healthcare workers.

Doctors said they wouldn’t help unless you are sick, and then said you can be asymptomatic and contagious, and so OBVIOUSLY masks should be worn, because people may not know they are shedding virus, but most of the American seemed to accept masks wouldn’t help “healthy people.” So, doctors who said masks won’t help, that wasn’t true, and if they actually believed it they are ignorant. If they knew better, they lied. Understandable why they lied, but it backfired for obvious reasons. If you don’t remember doctors saying that masks won’t help then I would say that’s either amnesia or you weren’t watching and listening to the same programming as me.

I have questioned the use of “science” by our elected leaders and some of their “experts”. We have debated some of these things over and over on other threads. Masks for example. I found no less than 4 peer reviewed studies of mask effectiveness done by groups like the CDC and WHO that all concluded that masks show no great impact on stopping the spread of viruses. Even Fauci said as much…at first. Then it became the thing to push mask wearing and he suddenly came out saying they are great and do a wonderful job….everyone needs to wear them all the time. There was no study showing his conclusion, but since he is a medical “expert” it became “science” to the masses.
Now we have a CDC study saying masks show great effectiveness on stopping the spread of viruses that was released and has been used as the basis to continue pushing mask usage. The only problem is that this study was never peer reviewed. In other words, it is effectively somebody’s writing project and should not have been released to be used as a basis for any actual medical treatments or controls. Releasing it for that purpose does not follow “scientific methods”.
So I think it isn’t science I doubt…it is those that have an agenda that say their views are based on science without actually proving it.

@JLeslie Science filtered through supply and demand issues or the polls is not science. Dr Fauci, in particular, is guilty of doing both. Here are examples:

1. He discouraged the use of masks because he knew there was a shortage. Doc, just tell me do masks help or not?

2. the fraction of people who would need immunity to SARS-CoV-2 (either through vaccination or recovery from prior infection) to extinguish the spread of the virus was initially estimated to be 60% to 70%. In recent weeks, Fauci had raised the percentage: from 70% to 75%, and then to 75%, 80%, and 85%.

When questioned about the moving goalposts, Fauci responded:

“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

Science, indeed.

Then there was Dr Kerkhove of the famous WHO. At a news conference on June 8, Maria Kerkhove said that asymptomatic spread is extremely rare. Her boss, Tedros, sitting a few feet away said not a word.

However, just a few days later, Kerkhove ‘clarified’ her comments.

Doc, when were you lying? The first time, or the second time?

@JLeslie Like you, I believe, in hindsight of course, that we should have all been better prepared. I was glad we had masks handy when the requirement for masks was made mandatory; and for a while I even thought masks might protect us from covid. However, that phase of my life lasted just long enough to determine that masks had become a political football. The, like @seawulf575, I started researching the claimed benefits of masks and, just like him, came away empty. Other than the opinions of so-called experts, there is NO SCIENCE! And you know where you can stick opinions with no science backup.

“I started researching the claimed benefits of masks…” @crazyguy, when you say you did research, what exactly do you mean? Were you conducting independent studies, publishing your results for peer review, revising, etc? Were you researching or just reading articles you found to prove the theory you already held? There is a huge difference. BTW, science isn’t a religion. You can believe or not believe in scientific facts but it doesn’t make any difference. It’s a process, an evolving one, not a belief system. You always confuse me with your supposed logic.

@Zaku

1. Perhaps you have forgotten this:
Limit contact with frequently touched surfaces during deliveries, such as doorbells or door handles. Use a foot, shoulder, elbow, hip, or forearm when opening doors, instead of hands, if possible.

This is taken from
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/mail-parcel-drivers.html

dated April 17, 2020.

2. Debunking: If a political opinion is pushed under the guise of ‘science” and then withdrawn, that is a clear example in my mind of a debunked philosophy.

3.I absolutely agree science is not a religion. When I said ‘believe’ I meant the opposite of disbelieve, not ‘believe’ in a religious sense. But then you knew that, didn’t you?

@flutherother As it pertains to covid the scientific method would involve the following steps:

1. Determine exactly where the virus originated.
2. Determine its spread mechanism.
3. Figure out how to slow down or stop its spread.
4. Figure out how to fight the virus.

While 2, 3 and 4 may be done in a different order, 1 has to be done first. Unfortunately, we are still stuck there.

@AlaskaTundrea I am not a doctor and I am not an epidemiologist. So my research is unfortunately limited to Google searches. Admittedly, that is not exact, since I cannot possibly read every article that Google throws up. I am certain I have a bias; that is why I share my sources. Anybody with a different bias is welcome to present their sources.

Stay home ! Wear a mask !

If you have been in contact with someone that tested positive – - quarantine with NO contact with anyone !

Inconvenient but that is what New Zealand did. They have had less than 3 dozens deaths – US 567,000 and counting.

@crazyguy We are not perfectly in line, but we agree on some things.

I blame Fauci, CDC, and WHO for not recommending ramping up mask production in January. I think Trump would have gone along with it. In March when America, Americans, were becoming more aware and worried then Fauci had to worry about healthcare workers and it became more tricky. I believe the health experts reasoned in their heads that it wasn’t very widespread yet in the US and masks could wait and they did suggest distancing. Distancing is just as good for the most part, except when you can’t distance. I do agree with you that it would have been better to tell Americans to be very cautious they could wear cloth masks. It could have been optional and prevented some spread.

For some reason Americans thought it made sense that masks help stop the spread, but also masks won’t do anything to stop the spread. Go figure. I’m not talking about the political divide, I mean many Americans believed both were true at the same time. Baffling.

As far as herd immunity. I always learned over 80% in school. It does vary a little depending on the disease. With covid, children might have herd immunity with less immunity in that age group, since they shed less virus. Anyway, 70%, 80%, 85%, just like most medication dosages there is voodoo in the science, it is imperfect.

It is the media and talking heads, not scientist, who want concrete answers and push certain messaging. “Follow the science” became some sort of war term between Democrats and Republicans. Both groups are wrong. The scientists were making educated guesses about a lot of it, which makes sense to do. They used the science they do know, and applied it to the current situation at the time, but it wasn’t always the best solution.

People need to stop expecting perfection. Medical science isn’t like that. It’s still a leg image science though.

Typo: still a legitimate science.

@JLeslie Thanks for your very reasonable post.

I began to believe in masks after the Spingfield, Missouri beauty shop super-spreader event where two stylists tested positive, had symptoms but kept right on working. No colleague or customer got sick and none of the customers did either, probably because they were all wearing masks.

I remember wondering out loud to my wife: If that is the case, why don’t they throw open all businesses with a mask requirement? My joy at finding a solution was short-lived. Mainstream media essentially killed the ‘good news’ story because it did not fit their narrative of how bad covid is, and how finding a solution will take until at least the 2020 election, and perhaps the 2022 election!

I had to dig deep to find out that no other stylist or customer ever caught the disease!

Kinda similar to the recent news that only 5,800 positives have been found among 60+ million vaccinated people. Be honest, have you seen that story anywhere?

@JLeslie I forgot to address the second part of your post: Herd Immunity.

I agree with you 100% that science is a series of educated guesses, some of which are tested and found to be correct, and others are discarded. What bothers me is posters on this board and mainstream media choosing to treat some of the ‘science’ as gospel. It just so happens that the science they deem gospel follows their political persuasion. I am probably guilty of the same tendency; but I am willing to listen to reason on the other side.

Herd Immunity, Fauci-style, will take anywhere from 60–90% immunity, whether it is acquired by getting sick or by vaccination or both. He has confessed to changing the actual number based on polls showing what percentage of Americans will take the vaccine!

@crazyguy I haven’t seen that confession you speak of. I think the scientists would like 90% of the population to take the shot, but are hoping 60% will be enough to stop the virus assuming the new strains will be stopped by the current vaccines.

A friend in Australia was telling me they have no virus, except a few people currently in a quarantine hotel because they traveled in from outside of the country. We could have done that. Their country is back to almost normal and no one dying from covid since October. Republicans would have flipped out if people were forced into quarantine.

@JLeslie Here is the confession:
https://www.axios.com/fauci-goalposts-herd-immunity-c83c7500-d8f9-4960-a334-06cc03d9a220.html

Australia is indeed covid-free essentially. It is rather easy for an island nation to accomplish that. Much harder for the US with two large land borders.

@crazyguy China is also virtually virus free. It got the virus under control within a few months by following the science and imposing restrictions. It was drastic but it worked.

@crazyguy Fauci says there is no way to know for sure what percentage is needed to squash the virus. You are being too strict regarding the percentage necessary. There is not a magic number. Lots of factors will come into play, like what percentage of the population has immunity and what other precautions are still being taken.

@JLeslie I agree that there is no way to know the exact percentage that is necessary fo herd immunity. I just take a dim view of what little science there is, being compromised by extraneous factors.

@flutherother China’s problem was somehow confined to one province. I do not know why. Since the original influx of covid was caused by travelers from China.

If ever the Chinese come clean, we may learn more about the disease.

@crazyguy: In China, their Covid cases were not confined to one province.

China sealed off the Wuhan area and squashed down cases in other parts of China. Strict quarantine and testing.

We could have done it, we had many weeks to get ahead of it. I think we did try in a half assed sloppy way. We held passengers for weeks on a cruise ship in the Pacific off of our coast. We trapped residents in a nursing home in Washington state. We didn’t do enough, and we were truly cruel where we did attempt it.

@JLeslie: I think the problem is that in this country, people would be crying about their rights and probably suing the government right and left.

@jca2 I just wonder if it had been a strict crackdown in just a few cities if the complaining would have been so extreme. Most of the complaints came out of parts of the country that didn’t have a lot of virus or none in the beginning, and they would never have been locked down if we had controlled it in the beginning.

@jca2 You are right that there were a handful of cases in other parts of China. However, the bulk of cases were confined to Wuhan.

@JLeslie The so-called science was invoked rather early in the covid containment process. However, with stonewalling by the WHO (even the possibility of airborne spread was not admitted by the WHO until they were prodded by a letter – see

https://www.brusselstimes.com/news-contents/world/120072/more-than-200-scientists-dispute-who-theory-on-covid-19-transmission/)

it was impossible to get a real handle on covid. Remember we were scrubbing surfaces until August!

@jca2 @JLeslie Without knowing exactly what the Chinese did and knowing what they knew, I am not certain that we can second guess the actions we did take. Remember California imposed a fairly draconian shutdown for two months – even our golf course was closed!

@crazyguy: New York shut everything down from mid-March to early June. New York and California are very populous states, so even with those measures, the virus still spread. Also, New York and California have multiple international airports to add to the mix.

@jca2 Exactly my point. I am not certain what additional steps @JLeslie has in mind.

Too late Mid March. We should have been testing in late January and February. Italy was already on fire and some other parts of Europe had started to have cases. Anyone with half a brain knew it was going to be moving around he world.

Not necessarily the average person realized, but CDC, NIAID, WHO, and people like me who know people in Europe and Asia. I have friends in America who planted fruits and vegetables in late February and early March, because they saw what was happening in other part in the world.

@crazyguy If you were advised to “Limit contact with frequently touched surfaces during deliveries, such as doorbells or door handles. Use a foot, shoulder, elbow, hip, or forearm when opening doors, instead of hands, if possible.”, why were you “scrubbing pieces of mail and packages before opening them”?

“2. Debunking: If a political opinion is pushed under the guise of ‘science” and then withdrawn, that is a clear example in my mind of a debunked philosophy.”
– What political opinion? Why would a contagion advisory be political?

What I remember, and since have read even more about, was that the people politicizing the pandemic were Trump and his idiot/lunatic followers, who in a typically narcissistic, paranoid, self-serving, and destructive fashion, feared the event not for the lives that might be lost, but for imagined political disadvantage, and devised a delusional lunatic political strategy that seems to have been responsible for many thousands of needless American deaths and immeasurable suffering and other damages, of trying to downplay the pandemic, secretly and idiotically hope for “herd immunity”, suppress the distribution of accurate information, and various other imcompetant and death-causing inept deluded selfishly-motivated tactics.

That political lunacy does not mean that well-intended advisories by health professionals were in any way “political”, unless you think speaking truth when the madman POTUS is spouting lies is necessarily political.

And even if you DO think that, then NO, it’s not “debunking” when people are just trying to say what they think is the most responsible advice to give out. It still didn’t hurt anything for people to be more sanitary. The world is full of diseases. Why the bleep are you still harping about having washed your hands (or even your mail) at this point?

Imagine you’re in the military, and your sergeant tells you to take cover because he expects enemy fire, and you do, but the enemy didn’t fire. Will you be blaming him for a year and inventing political motivations because he had you take a precaution that ended up not to have been needed?

“3.I absolutely agree science is not a religion. When I said ‘believe’ I meant the opposite of disbelieve, not ‘believe’ in a religious sense. But then you knew that, didn’t you?”
– No, you seemed to have been demonstrating great but unknown degrees of misunderstanding of what science is or how it makes sense to think or talk about it, so I didn’t know that. Talking about “debunking” or “believing” in a health advisory doesn’t really make sense. Like the sergeant analogy above. When the enemy didn’t fire after all, was the sergeant “debunked”? Was it a question of “belief”? No. In neither case.

I notice a lot of people talking about how we should have imposed strict restrictions early on. But when Trump put a travel ban from China in place when there were 102 cases in this country, those same people screamed that he was a xenophobe and had no idea what he was talking about, that he was just trying to be a dictator. So we all see how politics can interfere with science?

It is was not a travel ban that was needed, it was quarantine for anyone that came in contact with a positive case ! Nobody goes anywhere but straight to quarantine.

That is how quarantine works.

Don’t be a POTUS and fret about the Stock Market (got to get re-elected) and let all the rich and famous go anywhere !

568,000 dead and counting !

@Tropical_Willie But if you remember reality, you will remember Nancy Pelosi speaking out against Trump for the travel ban. She even urged people to go to China town and celebrate the Chinese New Year. Meanwhile, on the East Coast, De Blasio spoke out against the president and told people it was nothing and urged people to go to the movies, go out for dinner, see a show….just carry on with their lives. And that was in March…about the same time Washington State was declaring a state of emergency due to the disease. So where was the outrage at those actions? If a quarantine was what was needed, why weren’t you calling for it back then? Of course, that was when Fauci was saying masks didn’t do anything to prevent the spread of the disease and to not wear them. So why is it that the left’s arguments back when you say quarantine was needed don’t match what you are saying now? Because the science didn’t support it? They had no problem speaking out against actions to prevent the spread.

Quarantine https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html

QUARANTINE

The Middle Ages

The practice of quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics. Ships arriving in Venice from infected ports were required to sit at anchor for 40 days before landing. This practice, called quarantine, was derived from the Italian words quaranta giorni which mean 40 days.

Early American Quarantine

When the United States was first established, little was done to prevent the importation of infectious diseases. Protection against imported diseases fell under local and state jurisdiction. Individual municipalities enacted a variety of quarantine regulations for arriving vessels.

State and local governments made sporadic attempts to impose quarantine requirements. Continued outbreaks of yellow fever finally prompted Congress to pass federal quarantine legislation in 1878. This legislation, while not conflicting with states’ rights, paved the way for federal involvement in quarantine activities.

Quarantine inspectors are shown in Public Health Service uniforms circa 1912.

U.S. Public Health Service Officers, like those shown in this image taken circa 1912, wore uniforms while performing quarantine station duties beginning in the late 19th Century. Photo courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.
Late 19th Century

Outbreaks of cholera from passenger ships arriving from Europe prompted a reinterpretation of the law in 1892 to provide the federal government more authority in imposing quarantine requirements. The following year, Congress passed legislation that further clarified the federal role in quarantine activities. As local authorities came to realize the benefits of federal involvement, local quarantine stations were gradually turned over to the federal government. Additional federal facilities were built and the number of staff was increased to provide better coverage. The quarantine system was fully nationalized by 1921 when administration of the last quarantine station was transferred to the federal government.
Public Health Service Act

The Public Health Service Act External external icon of 1944 clearly established the federal government’s quarantine authority for the first time. The act gave the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) responsibility for preventing the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States.
Reorganization and Expansion

This PHS cutter ship was used to transport quarantine inspectors to board ships flying the yellow quarantine flag. The flag was flown until quarantine and customs personnel inspected and cleared the ship to dock at the port.
PHS cutter ship transporting quarantine inspectors to board ships flying the yellow quarantine flag.

This PHS cutter ship was used to transport quarantine inspectors to board ships flying the yellow quarantine flag. The flag was flown until quarantine and customs personnel inspected and cleared the ship to dock at the port.

Originally part of the Treasury Department, Quarantine and PHS, its parent organization, became part of the Federal Security Agency in 1939. In 1953, PHS and Quarantine joined the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Quarantine was then transferred to the agency now known as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1967. CDC remained part of HEW until 1980 when the department was reorganized into the Department of Health and Human Services.

When CDC assumed responsibility for Quarantine, it was a large organization with 55 quarantine stations and more than 500 staff members. Quarantine stations were located at every port, international airport, and major border crossing.
From Inspection to Intervention

After evaluating the quarantine program and its role in preventing disease transmission, CDC trimmed the program in the 1970s and changed its focus from routine inspection to program management and intervention. The new focus included an enhanced surveillance system to monitor the onset of epidemics abroad and a modernized inspection process to meet the changing needs of international traffic.

By 1995, all U.S. ports of entry were covered by only seven quarantine stations. A station was added in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, just before the city hosted the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Following the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2003, CDC reorganized the quarantine station system, expanding to 18 stations with more than 90 field employees.
Quarantine Now

The Division of Global Migration and Quarantine is part of CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases and is headquartered in Atlanta. Quarantine stations are located in Anchorage, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, El Paso, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, San Juan, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. (see contact lists and map).

Under its delegated authority, the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine is empowered to detain, medically examine, or conditionally release individuals and wildlife suspected of carrying a communicable disease.
El paso Quarantine Station sign

Signs like this one, for the El Paso Quarantine Station, identify the Quarantine Station facilities located in airports and at land border crossings.

The list of quarantinable diseases is contained in an Executive Order of the President External external icon external icon and includes cholera, diphtheria, infectious tuberculosis, plague, smallpox, yellow fever, viral hemorrhagic fevers(such as Marburg, Ebola, and Crimean-Congo), and severe acute respiratory syndromes.

Many other illnesses of public health significance, such as measles, mumps, rubella, and chicken pox, are not contained in the list of quarantinable illnesses, but continue to pose a health risk to the public. Quarantine Station personnel respond to reports of ill travelers aboard airplanes, ships, and at land border crossings to make an assessment of the public health risk and initiate an appropriate response.

@Tropical_Willie But it was you folks on the left that screamed about a travel ban. If President Trump had tried instituting quarantines your heads would have popped. They fought against something as simple as a travel ban. Quarantines are far more dictatorial and intrusive. Sorry, you don’t get to scream against something one minute and then, when you realize it was the right move and probably should have been more, scream that more wasn’t done the next minute.
Unless you are now suggesting that the Democrats actually screwed up….?

Travel ban only applied to foreign nationals and not the “landed gentry” of the USA. Nobody should have been going anywhere, if they were in contact with anyone that was COVID-19 positive. People were only staying away from others AFTER they had a fever and after they had spread it to others.

I’ll repeat . . . quarantine for everyone is not a Democrat or left wing or GOP or right wing thing. It is to not punish but protect something Trump didn’t do is protect the country.

It’s the right that is more likely to fight quarantine, travel bans and masks because “I know mah rights! You can’t tell me what do!”
I had no problem with travel bans and quarantine.

I’m joining @Dutchess_III and I’m gonna fight the lock down.

The lock down is long gone.
I never fought it, either. Or masks.
Guess I should have capitalized the word “Right.”

@seawulf575 I remember the hue and cry about the China travel ban. Now the left wants you to believe they were ok with it; and that it should have included the landed gentry; so disingenuous that it makes my head hurt!

Covid saved the Democrats’ ass, and they are hoping it will stick around long enough so they can avoid the curse of the midterms in 2022.

@JLeslie I guess I don’t have half a brain. I truly thought, based on the very low number of infections in California when Newsom shut down the state, that California would dodge the bullet. I was wrong.

@crazyguy California was doing well for a while considering the circumstances. It’s not like California stopped letting people into the state. Newsom saw the virus coming early on. He saw it coming, but he couldn’t stop it from coming.

He was too strict. Again, he was trying to shut down the whole state.

@JLeslie I just wonder if it had been a strict crackdown in just a few cities if the complaining would have been so extreme. That statement is problematic:

1. There is no way to quarantine just a few cities. You would have to close down all the roads to the quarantined cities. I do not know if that has ever been tried before.
2. I wonder how you would pick the cities to not quarantine, since covid can explode from just a few cases.
3. No matter how transparent you made the selection process, there would be more lawsuits than anybody can count.

@seawulf575 I agree 100%. The so-called science behind covid was nothing but political science trying hard to masquerade as the real thing. Scientific conclusions filtered through supply and demand issues and polls do not reflect any ‘science’ that I am familiar with.

@crazyguy If we had tested people in NYC, Miami, Detroit, and a few others in February we might have lost half the number of people that we did in those cities.

Some cities are very difficult to close off, some not so hard. In March at one point Florida was stopping traffic coming into the state, telling them to quarantine from certain states. My friends said it was like going through immigration. Wuhan was basically closed off. Australia has quarantine hotels for people who travel.

You might be interested in this bit of history regarding quarantine. https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/historyquarantine.html

The science of health for the country is very multifaceted. Trump was right that people get harmed by closing businesses and being isolated, it is a balancing act. Most Democrats didn’t want to hear it. It’s also true that covid kills a lot of people, lots of Republicans still don’t want to hear that. Why is it so hard for people to see it is not a simple black and white situation.

Just as a matter of curiosity, has anyone here looked into the history of this country (or the world) in the pandemic of 1917–18? There is also a spectacular book entitled “Justinian’s Flea”, which along with being an excellent panorama on the much neglected history of the origin and growth of the Byzantine Empire, devotes the back two thirds of its pages to the great plague of 542AD. It’s also on audiobook and available from your public library. I cannot recommend it more ardently, though I doubt if any of you will tackle it. And that’s really too bad, because anyone who DOES read it will come away with some very different expectations regarding OUR probable outcomes.

@JLeslie I think most people do see it as a shade of grey. However, it is to the benefit of the have nots to paint it darker than it is, in order to get more from the government; and to change the politics of this country.

Thanks for the link – it was more interesting than I expected!

As far as isolating cities on the mainland goes, I still think it is practically impossible. Unless you are in China!

Test people if they are positive quarantine them and anyone they came in contact with.

You don’t have to shut everything down.

Just remove the carriers and potential carriers for 14 days.

That would require contact tracing, which worked great in Taiwan, but greatly invades privacy – not something Americans would willingly allow.

@RocketGuy We still do not know for sure whether our former President was a spreader or recipient! Tracing is just an over-used word.

He was the best friend covid will ever see. The man remains a monument to willful ignorance and wrathful ineptitude.

@JLeslie “If we had tested people in NYC, Miami, Detroit, and a few others in February we might have lost half the number of people that we did in those cities.” That may be true, except for one problem. There was no test back then. They didn’t come out with a solid test until a few months later and it wasn’t readily available for everyone until even later. I know because I had flu symptoms in March and was supposed to get “tested”. The only “test” they had at the time was (a) a medical professional to evaluate your symptoms and (b) do a flu test to see if it is flu. Both of those are flawed. At the time, one of the defining symptoms of Covid was a fever of 100.4F. We found out later that many people that had the disease never got that symptom. So medical professionals were evaluating based on incomplete and inaccurate results. The flu test would prove if you had the flu, but that doesn’t mean you don’t also have Covid. It just means you have the flu.

@seawulf575 We didn’t have a test because Trump wouldn’t take the ones offered by Korea and Germany.

@JLeslie China didn’t release the genetic testing of the virus until January 2020 which means there were no tests available in January. A molecular test was developed first from this data, but the antigen and antibody tests weren’t developed until much, much later.
Another issue was that even when tests were developed, the materials needed (including reagents) were not readily available. All this resulted in further delays until widespread testing could be done. And that is all over the world.
Also consider that any test developed overseas still needs to be approved by our own FDA before it can be approved for use. Our own laws do not allow us to take drugs from other countries and use them blindly here.
So while you are itching to try blaming Trump, you might want to consider facts. So far you have made a comment that was physically impossible. When I called you on that you went right to blaming Trump. When tests were being developed both here and in other countries, the one thing that COULD be done is to minimize and/or fast track any regulatory hurdles that would block us from getting timely help. And President Trump did that. It helped with getting PPE, testing, and vaccines. Unless you are suggesting that he should have dictatorially superseded the law? Is that what you are saying he should have done? And if someone died from one of the tests showing a false positive? Would that then be on him as well?
You are smarter than that. Don’t let the Trump Derangement Syndrome prove you otherwise.

February there were tests.

@JLeslie I just gave you a citation that says no. Your proof?

I thought they started the tests once the lock down began.

@seawulf575 What sets your post apart from others is that is is based on facts as far as we can determine. Most of the posters on this board are too busy trying to blame the previous administration to actually dig up any facts.

@seawulf575
what facts ?

Seven countries including China, the United States, Japan and Germany were working on developing a coronavirus test from the beginning of 2020. The Germans published details of their test on 17 January 2020 and WHO chose this test as being the best. WHO shipped out test kits based on the German model to 60 countries not including the US which had the resources to develop its own test. The CDC published details of the US test on 28 January 2020 but there were problems with the chemical reagents which had to be resent resulting in a slower US response compared to other countries.

No one is blaming Trump for this as I don’t think he got involved. Where Trump did get involved his pig headedness and stupidity are at least partly responsible for the high infection rates in the US and the half a million deaths.

@flutherother Thanks for your statements exonerating the previous President from some of the blame that he normally gets on this board. What you call “pig headedness” is apparently present in most leaders around the world, as covid has shown no signs of abating in the world. In fact, India iOS experiencing record numbers as we speak.

Your math is off @crazyguy:

USA has three times the numbers of deaths as India.

Last time I checked India had 3 or four times the population of USA.

Therefore we have 9 times the number of deaths in USA by population.

To previous poster: You are so full of crap and lack of knowledge, that I stopped communicating with you months ago. Do me a favor and check your so-called facts before posting. Enough said.

You stopped the first time, when I showed you were talking out of both sides of your mouth,

USA 330 Million 571 thousand dead from COVID-19

India 1,344 million and 192 thousand dead from COVID-19

World wide deaths from COVID-19

“We’re the best !”, in my bad Trump voicing.

America first for sure.

“Do me a favor and check your so-called facts before posting. Enough said.”

I did

and you still don’t understand.

India has had a worldwide record number of cases FOUR DAYS in a row through yesterday!

Deflection ^^^^ !

USA is leader of deaths from COVID-19.

India is planning an instruction to wear masks INSIDE homes! See
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/time-to-start-wearing-masks-inside-homes-says-govt-101619437794353.html

So Indians love free-dumb as much as Americans? They are rapidly catching up to us in Covid cases.

@RocketGuy Indians are the most religious freaks that I know of. They recently celebrated something called a kumbh-mela, which is celebrated every few years. This year’s Kumbh Mela was extra special, because it was celebrated in Haridwar, which is a religious city akin to Bethlehem. It is supposed to run to April 30, but many participants have pulled out because of the covid surge. Prior to about April 15, the mela was attracting hundreds of thousands every day and even more on the most auspicious day.

The BJP government was powerless to intervene. Religion in India is much stronger than the government.

As an aside regarding India, Fareed Zakaria is a favorite journalist of mine. When the pandemic began he imagined India would be hit very hard, then a few months ago he was saying how he had been wrong about India, and it had fared well. Then two weeks ago in his Sunday program he sadly told the viewing audience that his mothered had died due to complications caused by covid. She was an accomplished woman of India. If you have a few minutes here is the clip from his show where he speaks about her, and her passing.

The religious holiday likely did spark a huge upsurge in cases. From what I understand millions were out in crowds for the holiday. I think Indians felt “safe” because they had done so well for most of this time. It’s very sad what is happening there.

@JLeslie I used to enjoy the Fareed Zakaria show. In fact I would record it and watch it completely later.

Lately, I no longer enjoy the show like I used to, mainly because my political views have changed to a point where his take on current events is starkly different from mine.

I really enjoyed the clip. Fareed’s mother was gorgeous.

@crazyguy I think he asks balanced questions, and allows for differing opinions. He does have a bias, and states his opinion, that’s part of his show, but he often brings up topics not being talked about (not repeated incessantly) in the mainstream, so I learn new things on his show.

Zakaria is a brilliant man of formidable insights. You’ve been infected by that Orange county nonsense gas.

@JLeslie I do not deny the following:

1. He does ask good, balanced questions.
2. He does state his biased opinion.
3. He did teach me many new things.

However, he just has not grown like I have. And now, I just cannot watch him any more.

@crazyguy I am not trying to convince you to watch him, just was stating why I like him.

Grown?????? It’s more like you abandoned your conscience. HE retains tight hold of his.

@JLeslie I know that. I was just trying to articulate my resistance to watching him.