Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden For Its First Presidential Endorsement In 175 Years (scientificamerican.com) 646
goombah99 shares a report from The Washington Post: Four years ago, the magazine flagged Donald Trump's disdain for science as "frightening" but did not go so far as to endorse his rival, Hillary Clinton. This year, its editors came to a different conclusion. "A 175-year tradition is not something you break lightly," editor in chief, Laura Helmuth told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "We'd love to stay out of politics, but this president has been so anti-science that we can't ignore it." In a nod to Trump's embrace of anti-science conspiracy theories, Scientific American editors compared the people each candidate turns to for expertise and insight. Biden's panel of public health advisers "does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called 'very respected' and 'spectacular,'" the editors write.
The editor in chief of Science Magazine, the "apex predator of academic publishing," according to Wired, also denounced Trump but stopped short of endorsing presidential candidate Joe Biden. goombah99 writes: "This may be the most shameful moment in the history of U.S. science policy," writes H. Holden Thorp, a chemist and longtime university administrator. The editorial's key point is that it was negligence but more like malice. "As he was playing down the virus to the public, Trump was not confused or inadequately briefed: He flat-out lied, repeatedly, about science to the American people. These lies demoralized the scientific community and cost countless lives in the United States." This follows on an august issue's lament over the dangerous policies of the unqualified presidential coronavirus advisor Scott Atlas: "Although Atlas may be capable of neurological imaging, he's not an expert in infectious diseases or public health -- and it shows. He's spreading scientific misinformation in a clear attempt to placate the president and push his narrative that COVID-19 is not an emergency." Thorp concludes his article in this prestige journal with a searing indictment "Trump was not clueless, and he was not ignoring the briefings. Listen to his own words. Trump lied, plain and simple."
Will this make a difference? (Score:2, Insightful)
Off hand I'd say the readers of Scientific American are already inclined to vote for Biden
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:2)
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
When Obama signed a bill that made it legal for the US government to imprison US citizens indefinitely without trial we got a dictatorship.
I wondered at the time why his supporters didn't say anything. I was amazed at the lack of response from his detractors as well.
It was then I learned that the most politically vocal and active among us aren't concerned with liberty, justice, and freedom. They are power-centric people who view government specifically as a tool of oppression, designed to subjugate those they do not like, up to and including their indefinite incarceration.
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of Obama supporters were quite angry about the 2012 NDAA being signed, but the bill was fairly bipartisan and amendments to remove the indefinite detention sections didn't pass. It's a big problem with these large "must pass" bills where something like this gets slipped in and congress is too afraid to vote "against national security"
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When Obama entered the White House the Democrats owned both the House and Senate for two years. What did we get? We bailed out the banksters and then refused to prosecute them, protected the prior mAdministration in spite of having committed **war crimes** for which the Nuremberg Commission had executed people, torture and renditions continued, drone strikes increased, and once the Democratic "leadership" declared "Single payer is off the table" we had the insurance industry's wet dream of Romneycare fois
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
RE: You're first paragraph.
Nah, bro.
The Democrats have had full power before and they did diddly dick with it because as much as they preach progressive policies, in the end they're still bought and paid for and they absolutely DO NOT want to upset the current status quo. Of course, the last time they had the ability to enact real change they kept talking about how important it was to get Republican buy-in for each change they wanted to make so that it would stall out as the more rabid shit-talkers in cong
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Monumental peace agreements? Maybe according to Likud, but not anyone even vaguely rational.
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
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I think his point was that by voting for a Demican or Replocrat you're the one throwing your vote away. His contention, you think they are different, but they are serving the same (corporate) masters and just dressed up and pretending to be different so there's a nice show and a feeling of doing something by choosing one of the two "approved" parties.
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Agreed. In other news unlike Scientific American, SCIENCE has debunked neither aliens nor virus therapies.
Re:Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Funny)
Can we simplify this and just say readers are already inclined to vote for Biden?
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:3)
Several people in this thread do not have subscriptions to SA, yet here we are talking about it. Did you consider this was not directed at their readership alone?
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? If so, I would say your problem is on the interpretation side of things. Because the available evidence is utterly clear and utterly damning. Yet you seem to not see that.
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
But a very large part of the blame lies squarely with State and Local officials who are the ones actually responsible for most of the Response.
As an outsider it seems odd to me that your federal government would not play a large part in the response to a national (and international) disaster. I don't think it is fair to blame local governments for the fact the feds are largely AWOL. Props to them for stepping up and doing their best in an otherwise absence of leadership.
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As an outsider who does not understand how it all works it doesn't seem you do. How much of a role did the EU play? We've been a union longer and were independent for less time so people forget the US is a union of states not a state with internal territories. In the US the general power structure is divided in such a manner that the larger the scope of authority the less authority a portion of government is supposed to have. The federal government's authority impacts everyone and therefore it has the least
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are FoS with your Federalist BS. If we can mount a national defense to foreign invaders, we should be able to mount a national defense against a virus. People like you parade a weakness like it's a strength.
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
The President of the EU and the president of the US are rather different things. I don't think we should be considering the POTUS as the erstwhile "leader of the free world" if he is not even the leader of his country. I've seen (or at least read history of) other presidents stepping up before in the face of adversity, both during wartime and peacetime. You may think an absence of leadership is a hallmark of your system, but to me it sure looks particular to this one leader.........
Of course, great leaders seek to unite their people. You leader seeks to divide his people. Maybe it is for the best that the hard work is left primarily to others.
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Interesting)
A few remarks, from the point of view of someone who is neither an "outsider" nor an "insider".
It's so naive to compare EU to USA. It's probably not surprising, but most EU residents aren't very familiar with how the USA works, and most USA residents aren't very familiar with how the EU works. For better or for worse, you can't very meaningfully directly compare EU's policymaking and decisionmaking with respect to its countries, to USA's policymaking and decisionmaking with respect to its states.
Perhaps, unless you lived for many years or decades in both, you may not be able to realize this.
But to anyone who traveled and lived extensively in both, there's quite obviously no way to make direct comparisons hold in a very meaningful way. It's perhaps less meaningless to compare the USA to an individual country within the EU, just like you may compare the USA for example to Canada or Mexico - they're also countries, after all.
In any case, if you really want to compare the USA with the EU, with respect to this pandemic, let's:
(just a few random comparisons here)
1) the EU was late in coming up with a common policy, but they did, eventually. Many EU policies were also preceded by individual EU countries' measures, such as actual complete lockdowns. Not pseudo-lockdown measures as witnessed in most of the USA territory, where everyone pretty much kept moving about without much fuss - of course excepting a few places such as NYC, etc.
The USA government and legislation, in a country that is a federal union of states (which the EU isn't) did what, exactly, other than spending tons of federal funds, in good part to save corporations?
3) When USA residents pay their taxes, do you realize how much of those taxes are federal taxes, compared to the portion of EU residents' taxes that end up in EU-wide taxation and use of such EU-based taxes? The sheer power of USA federal funds is quite obvious at the military level. Not so much about using federal funds to protect some other human rights within the USA - such as the right to health, and this obviously shows, especially this year. If it were a democracy, USA citizens could perhaps decide about it - but perhaps they don't care about their health as much as they care about their guns. This also shows, in many comments throughout slashdot. Not so much in EU-based equivalents to slashdot. Few other people around the world seem to be as obsessed about guns as people are in the USA, especially among so-called "industrialized countries".
4) I'd have a hard time imagining any state within the USA enforcing entry/exit at its borders with other USA states, in the same way that EU countries can (and did, during lockdown) quite strictly enforce entry/exit at their borders with other EU countries.
" And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. "
The lifespan of most species is, or rather was, before humans showed up, in the millions of years (unless you are a creationist, of course). Doesn't look as promising for your current dominant species though.
Good luck in your respective countries.
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Scots will likely have a referendum next year. There is an election there on May 6th and the Scottish National Party will stand on a platform of having an independence referendum in the autumn. Current polling suggests they would win it.
Theoretically the UK government may have the ability to block the referendum, it needs to be tested in court. But current thinking in the Tory Party seems to be that they will let it happen but try to sabotage it by forcing the Scots to negotiate a settlement before the vote, i.e. the opposite of the brexit catastrofuck. The irony is pretty thick.
Anyway 2021 will probably be the end of the United Kingdom. A border poll in Northern Ireland is likely in the next few years as well. Even the Welsh are talking about independence.
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Informative)
Playing the game of "It's another government's responsibility" is a long-standing tradition in American politics. Typically it is federal-level politicians who want to avoid taking a position on a difficult issue. They cite "state's rights" as their cop-out. That way, they don't have to alienate anyone. The buck stops somewhere else, they tell you.
The Bush administration drafted some internal guidance on what the response to the first SARS should be, when there was a concern that it'd take off in the US. Central to the plan was for the federal government taking the lead role. The Obama administration wrote similar pandemic guidelines. I doubt either of them would have done everything perfectly - I didn't see any comprehensive plan for dealing with the economic fallout - but basic measures like "Everyone wear a mask" would have obviously been implemented.
Notice also the OP seems to be under the impression that there were lockdowns and mask mandates coming from the federal - there were not. There still isn't. But, the patchwork response was designed to give that impression. The state where I live (Texas) did not have a mask mandate until July. The county next to mine had a mandate in place earlier, but people live in one county and go shopping in the other, so the effect was you go to get groceries and half the people there don't have masks.
The confusion was rampant for months. In May and June, the State government was busy telling cities and counties that they were not allowed to have mask mandates. For a few days around late May, you were seeing Harris County and Montgomery County officials giving differing (opposite) interpretations of the same order, and Governor Abbott's office simply refusing to provide any clarification to the media or the public. Nor, seemingly, to his own subordinates.
The most generous way to read that is a complete lack of leadership. However, Abbott did make a point to praise Trump for the great guidance he was personally providing. Trump would make his daily TV corona briefings later in the afternoon, and relay how much time he was spending on the phone with the state governors. So to me, it doesn't seem like a lack of leadership. It seems the leadership wanted people to be in a state of confusion about the government's response. If you want to believe there's a mask mandate - There's an official telling you that. If you want to believe there's no mask mandate - There's an official telling you that too. Pick whichever alternate reality you prefer, and live in that one.
The end result of it all is, for about 4 months March to July, I'd go to the grocery store and half the people did not have masks. I'm sure there were other localities with better percentages. And I'm sure that is what allows people like the OP to pretend Trump but everyone on lockdown and enforced mask mandates.
I know never to suspect malice when it could be incompetence... But "alternative facts" has been the official line of the current administration, with such an extreme cadence, that they lost the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. This fits their modus operandi too well.
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This is entirely false.
Not sure of the US figures, but in the UK Covid19 was accounting for over 1/3 or all deaths (4x as many as flu and pneumonia) before the lockdown started to bite in a situation where weekly deaths peaked at twice the 5-year average, and a excess death rate peaking of over 100%. It killed more people in eight weeks than flu and pneumonia do in an entire season.
It was by far the biggest killer until lockdown started to work. Deaths are low at the moment, but that's because most people a
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
At no point has your chance of dying from COVID-19 been higher than dying of heart failure or the car trip to the place you are afraid of getting COVID-19. ... Yes, the virus is real the THREAT was bullshit.
That is stupid logic. Just because something else can kill you doesn't mean that Coronavirus is not actually a threat. For example, you could be killed in a car crash, so does that mean that it is safe to put a gun to your head and pull the trigger? And before you go try it to test that question, the answer is no.
The Coronavirus threat is in addition to heart failure and car accidents. It also means that the threat of things like heart failure rise too, because when the hospitals are over capacity because of the virus, people will not be able to get timely care in case of a heart attack. There are around 200,000 dead from this virus in the US right now. How many more would there be if we didn't have the minimal response that there has been so far? How many fewer dead would there be if the country wasn't run by a president who also claims that the threat was bullshit (even though he privately disagrees with that assertion)?
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Interesting)
A major problem was that the FDA, supervised by the CDC, turned out to be incompetent at coming up with a test. (good review is here, may have paywall, sorry: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] NYT report here, also paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com])
The failure, on Trump's part, was failing to take the threat seriously, and failing to put a team on it wit instructions that this was serious. Nobody was really paying attention to the fact that the CDC was failing to provide a test, and the FDA was disallowing anybody else from even working on making a test-- at the same time Trump was saying "oh, it's not a problem, it will go away."
There is an interesting lesson here, actually, which is that what makes an executive effective is not what they do, it's who they appoint. Trump failed to appoint good people.
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Informative)
the CDC was failing to provide a test, and the FDA was disallowing anybody else from even working on making a test
And don't forget the Chief Executive's decision to refuse to use the perfectly valid test that had already been developed by other countries, apparently "because 'Murica" or something.
The FDA screwed up (Score:5, Informative)
Well for one, the FDA doesn't develop anything, they regulate those who do.
And the FDA screwed up [reason.com] on doing so. Big time. They didn't allow anybody to work on making a test, even when the CDC test wasn't working. They didn't allow tests from overseas to be used, even when functional tests were offered for free.
The CDC does R&D for testing, but doesn't have the facilities for large-scale production of kits or processing of results. That, as well as most R&D, is done by private entities.
Would have been a good idea. But the FDA expressly blocked private entities from making COVID-19 tests.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/... [nbcnews.com]
https://www.statesman.com/news... [statesman.com]
The problem with the presentation of events in the popular press is that it ignores the flurry of behind-the-scenes activity that was going on while Trump was trying to prevent a panic.
The "flurry of activity" did not exist. It did not exist primarily because the FDA expressly put barriers in the way of private entities making any COVID-19 test.
Work to develop tests and vaccines began the instant samples were available.
Yes... the CDC started developing a test. Which didn't work. While tests that did work had already been developed in both China and Europe. Which the FDA didn't allow to enter the country.
That the FDA is buried in red tape isn't the fault of any President, it's been building up in the bureaucracy for generations.
It turns out that the FDA actually has a process to cut red tape, called "emergency authorization." And they used this process... to block companies who wanted to develop tests.
Read the literature.
If you're saying "but no, it wasn't Trump who screwed up, it was the agencies that work for the executive branch: true. The problem is that Trump did not appoint effective people to run those agencies (his approach in appointing people has been to appoint people personal loyalty to him, or who donated to his campaign; not competence in the field.)
(This actually is an odd thing: the most important thing that a president does is to appoint competent people to run the various parts of government. Yet this isn't what people want to hear in campaigns, they want to hear about policies.
more refs [washingtonpost.com]
Re: Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to know precisely how Trump's lies, specific to COVID-19, have cost lives. [...] I want to know who would do things differently, what they would do differently, and how that would have saved lives during this pandemic, if Trump had instead told the truth (and specifically what truth should he have told instead of his lie, and when should he have told it).
This is an unreasonable level of detail to demand, since to satisfy your requirements we would need to accurately predict the actions of every alternative president. And of course Trump has told many lies. I think you only have a right to expect broad analysis of his most egregious deceptions.
Because as I recall the whole country went into lock-down and across the country people were ordered to wear masks, with business given powers to throw you out and police given powers to ticket you if you did not wear masks.
Lockdown is not a binary concept. Many GOP state politicians live in fear of Trump's public disapproval, since GOP primary voters are very loyal to Trump - many GOP politicians who opposed Trump have lost their primaries. And also to a lesser extent because of public protests encouraged by Trump. As a result, many GOP states and probably to a smaller extent some democrat states implemented less severe lockdowns that they otherwise would have.
So Trump's beliefs sure didn't stop any of that!
It is an error to speak here of Trump's beliefs, since it's clear from e.g. statements to Woodward and his hygienic precautions he was aware the pandemic was dangerous. It was his statements, more precisely his lies, which caused the deaths.
There were and are many people who refused to comply. Trump did not order them to refuse. Are we saying that if Trump had changed his tune that these teeming masses of rebels would have all changed their tunes too? Because that seems unlikely to me, as these rebels are refusing to wear masks due to their own ignorance and pride, not due to the president's words.
Some would have. But Trump has enormous influence and respect within a large minority of the population. Certainly far more flouted the mask and social distancing rules because their president advised them the precautions were unnecessary. Certainly many adopted conspiracy theories that masks were harmful, because their president told them the virus was a hoax. Some would have anyway but in pandemics numbers matter.
I also understand that many states lifted lock-down too early. Were those state governments doing that because Trump lied?
Some of them, yes. For the reasons given above.
Re:Honest question, not looking for a fight. (Score:5, Insightful)
You should ask Herman Cain.
Re:ANOTHER moderation fail (Score:5, Insightful)
During the exact same time frame, he encouraged his supporters to "LIBERATE" blue states from their lockdown.
He said that people who wear masks, "dont like him", discouraging his supporters from wearing masks.
FFS, he held an illegal indoor rally, just a few days ago!
I honestly don't understand how anyone who has a basic understanding of science, can look at his actions over the past year, and think he acted in the best interest of public health. You could certainly argue that the cost to public health is lower in the long term than the economic destruction. But to say you don't even understand how his actions cost lives, indicates a lack of awareness so incredibly profound, that I thought the GP must be engaging in distraction and trolling, and not interested in a good faith discussion.
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science should not be outside of the politics, it should be the key driving factor of political decisions. Science is the best tool humanity has at its disposal to make better decisions about important things, why would you or anyone prefer to go by the "gut feeling" of corrupt, uneducated imbeciles instead?
Re: Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
My problem with this is that science should stay outside of politics as much as possible.
That only works if politics stays outside of science, but too often that just isn't what is happening. From climate science to Covid-19, from evolution to the link between smoking and cancer, from the denigration of scientists as grant-loving liars (leading to the rise of distrust from the likes of anti-vaxxers) to the defunding of scientific institutions that study topics that could inadvertently affect their donor's wallets, politicians have shown no hesitation to meddle with science. More often than not, the politicians come from the one end of the political spectrum. Can you guess which side?
I know it appears like you are being reasonable saying that science should stay out of politics, but it really is not the case. Do you also believe that the opposite is true? When the institutions of science are under threat for political reasons, it is right for them to fight back. The world works when politics uses sound science to make policy decisions. The world fails when politicians driven by ideology dictate what the science should say.
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Are you really serious? Science cannot be neatly separated from the rest of human activity. So scientists will feel it important to weigh in on political issues of the day. One of the most famous scientists ever (Einstein) was heavily involved limiting nuclear weapons.
It is important for scientists to distinguish between their "science" work and their political work, but a publication like Scientific American has the right and even the obligation to speak up if they feel that science is being diminished by
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Organizations take a stand all the time. It's not as if the American Medical Association hasn't been against tobacco use for a long time. It is probably not universally agreed upon within the organization, but enough of a majority that it isn't controversial. Having a group of people take a stand can be more effective than leaving it up to individual members. I am not sure why Scientific American would be excluded from making a collective opinion (i.e. an editorial in the name of the organization rather tha
An easy and incorrect explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
I urge people, especially those who consider themselves centrists or slightly right-leaning to take this really seriously. There's an obvious incorrect explanation if one doesn't want to pay attention to this. One can dismiss this as evidence of the politicization of science and that SA has been taken over by "the liberals." But that's not what this is about. This administration has been uniquely awful in terms of paying attention to basic science. This isn't just even about climate change and environmental issues. We now have over 200,000 dead Americans and more to come https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm [cdc.gov].
The high death rate from COVID is not completely due just to Donald Trump. Bill De Blasio and Ron DeSantis have been other politicians who have handled this very badly; and this isn't a Republican v. Democrat thing. De Blasio is a Democrat and DeSantis is a Republican. But Donald Trump is the one politician who oversees the entire US. And his repeated failures to listen to scientists is the major cause of where we are today. We know from the Woodward tapes that Trump knew how dangerous this was early on https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/09/politics/coronavirus-trump-woodward-timeline/ [cnn.com] , but that he decided not to tell anyone. We know that they backed off taking serious steps when they decided that more deaths would occur in predominantly blue areas, a horrific decision that somehow Americans who voted for Trump were worth more than others, a bizarre reaction to the person who is supposed to lead all Americans https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-states-is-worse-than-previously-thought.html [nymag.com], and in good contrast to the last Republican President who when New York was faced with 9/11 did everything he could to help a city which had voted strongly against him.
At this point, Donald Trump's narcissism, cynicism, selfishness, and refusal to listen to scientists has put us where we are today. The US has had 6 approximately million COVID cases, one 20% of all cases worldwide, even as the US is about 5% of the world population. Nor can one blame this on China. The Chinese government did try to hide details from the world, and millions around the world might be alive if China had been more transparent. But even given that, other countries are doing far better than the US is. The US's uniquely bad response is not due to China. It is due to almost completely in who sits in the Oval Office. This is but one example of many of how Trump's antiscience and antireality attitude has caused harm for all of us. Scientific American didn't do this when Mitt Romney ran, it didn't do this when John McCain ran, and for good reason. We would not have the problems we have today if either of those were President. Indeed, SA didn't even do this in 2016, because it wasn't apparent then that some of the worst possibilities for Trump really would come to fruition. But now we know.
This is not about partisanship. This is about facts and a President who does not care about them.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Florida has had literally 1/3 the deaths/million population as NY has and is below the national average.
If you think both states handled COVID equally badly, then you haven't been paying attention to anything except partisan news. DeSantis actually followed "the science" by protecting the most vulnerable (older nursing home patients).
When a group which is 90%+ comprised of Democratic Party candidate supporters announces that they're supporting a Democratic Party candidate, that's not "news", nor indicative
Re:An easy and incorrect explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Florida has had literally 1/3 the deaths/million population as NY has and is below the national average.
Florida has about 13,000 deaths from COVID https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html [nytimes.com], with a population of around 21.5 million. For a ratio of about 600 /million. US has had around 200,000 COVID deaths with a population of around 330,000 million, which is around also 600/million. But that's with the official COVID death total for Florida, while using the estimate for excess deaths. The official US death total is 196,000 which gives around 580/million. So when when we make a comparison, we get that Florida is slightly worse than average. It is also worth keeping in mind that New York was the initially most hard hit location, which meant that they were less prepared, and we knew less about how to treat the disease. In comparison, Florida had far more warning, and as with some other state governor, he squandered it.
If you think both states handled COVID equally badly, then you haven't been paying attention to anything except partisan news.
Curiously, neither I, nor anyone else in this thread said anything about both states handling things "equally badly"- the statement was that Bill De Blasio and DeSantis have both handled things badly. Note comparison was made in that sentence, and it would be pretty tough to make a comparison when one is a mayor and one is a governor. (And your mention of nursing homes seems to reflect that you are thinking about the activities of Cuomo, the governor of New York State, rather than the mayor of New York City.) But this really is secondary to the central topic which is Trump's activity and direct harm he has caused.
When a group which is 90%+ comprised of Democratic Party candidate supporters announces that they're supporting a Democratic Party candidate, that's not "news", nor indicative of any new information.
What isn't surprising that individual members of the group in question would support the Democratic candidate. I'm pretty sure if you had polled the editorial board of SA in 2012, or 2008, it would have been almost equally high a percentage voting for the Democratic candidate. What is notable here though isn't them as individuals, but the endorsement as a group. Teacher's unions endorse candidates all the time. That's normal. Scientific American endorsing a candidate is not. The editorial board decided in this case, that Trump really is awful on science issues to an absolutely unprecedented degree. And that's something that should get one's attention and not be dismissed as simply liberals being normal liberals.
Re:An easy and incorrect explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
But look at the state-level data. The worst death rate states are led by governors with a (D) next to their name. It's not just NY.
The Democratic/Republican divide in the U.S. is primarily an urban/rural divide.
Democrats tend to be governor in areas with large urban population concentrations.
The virus spreads more readily in areas with large urban population concentrations.
Re: An easy and incorrect explanation (Score:3)
They have passed the peak but it looks like they haven't even tried to get the daily number of deaths down afterwards, it continues to stay at a high level. Give it a few weeks and their death rate will be firmly above the (constantly rising) US average.
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Governors take cues from the President. People who are in states pay attention to what the President says. About a third of Americans can't even name their state governor https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-americans-knowledge-state-government.html [governing.com] https://releases.jhu.edu/2018/12/11/jhu-survey-americans-dont-know-much-about-state-government/ [jhu.edu]. The President has an ability and influence that governors do not, and that influence extends beyond any single state. When a President repeatedly says that
Re:Trump did as well with Covid as anyone could ha (Score:5, Insightful)
t in reality had a Democrat been president they would have reacted around the same timeframe
This isn't true, and it isn't just not true, it is worth realizing how not true it was. A Democrat wouldn't have reacted as Trump did. Nor would any other Republican. John McCain, Mitt Romney, or George W. Bush would all have reacted far faster. And we know this from Trump's own words, as well as the fact that all three of those are competent men of honor. On March 19th, Trump told Woodward that he had deliberately played down the virus. On April 3, he said that the virus was going away, even on April 5th he acknowledged to Woodward the severity of the situation https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/politics/trump-woodward-fact-check/index.html [cnn.com] How different do you think things would have been if instead of taking literally less than a minute in his February state of the union address, Trump had actively addressed the problem and acknowledged that briefings were already telling him how serious it was?
Re:Trump did as well with Covid as anyone could ha (Score:5, Informative)
Trump had a big crowded indoor coronavirus party in Nevada on Saturday. 4 days ago. Do you realize how absurd it is to even quibble about February at this point?
This isn't about somebody who was a little slow to come around and do the right thing. To this day he hasn't even taken the very first step of turning to lead in the right direction.
Re: (Score:3)
What I am talking about is having rallies that fly in the face of all that is known about how to keep people from catching a deadly virus. So much so that it is specifically, no-questions, black and white illegal to do what he did.
Re:Except it IS partisan AND you are in error (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific American went very partisan many years ago. I dropped them shortly after they dropped Forrest Mims [wikipedia.org] from the Amateur Scientist pages of the magazine (to which he had often contributed, but offered to run) with the statement that they discovered he was a Christian, and they did not believe a Christian could do science.
Close. They decided not to hire him to write a regular column because he rejected Darwinian evolution, and they though that having a regular columnist who was a creationist would be "a public relations nightmare".
I agree, it indeed would have been.
Re: (Score:3)
Neither Newton nor Kepler had any opinions at all about Darwinian evolution, a theory articulated well over a century after Newton died.
Re: (Score:3)
That makes you utterly stupid. And FYI, I am not with "the other guy". I am an outside observer based in Europe.
Incidentally, a "cretin" is very much human, not "subhuman". Unless you subscribe to fascist ideology where that is not true?
In related news ... (Score:2)
The magazine "Unscientific American" is endorsing Trump.
When asked about the endorsement, their editorial board replied, "Seriously?"
[ Man, if there were *ever* a time for that magazine to actually exist ... ]
They neglect this one fact (Score:3, Insightful)
That Congress and most states completely ignored whatever Trump said or did the opposite.
Who knew that Trump being an asshole would make people go crazy. If they were rational, they might have done something useful, but no.
Here we go again (Score:2)
How is this a remotely relevant article for Slashdot ? Christ it really is circling the gurgler now
This is not helpful... (Score:2)
Endorsement like this has a better chance to turn Trump supporters anti-science than anti-Trump. It would be much more helpful if through inclusive non-partisan presentation of science it would turn Trump supporters pro-science and eventually to resolve an internal conflict, some of them would turn out anti-Trump.
Well I mean obviously (Score:2)
THis has nothing to do with Biden's suitability as a president other than his acknowledgement that anthropogenic climate change is real.
Scientific American (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Scientific American has always been pop-sci. Not quite as low brow as Popular Science, but a bit overboard to call if a Journal !
Regardless, I find it hard to believe their are too many people with a real interest in science, even pop-sci, who don't realize Trump's anti-science agenda is not good for science.
Trump's whole "it's only the flu. it's fake news, like a miracle it'll go away, don't wear a mask" schtick is why USA it looking like a third world country today rather than the leader in science it use
Re: (Score:3)
Now your ad-hominem attack is out of the way do you have any specific criticisms of their reasoning? They say Trump is anti-science and that is hurting the USA, do you disagree?
One of the casualties of covid will be public (Score:3)
Nor is the fact that "scientific consensus" very conveniently lands on political positions that are anti freedom and anti capitalist.
Nor is the fact that when they go on Twitter, a lot of these scientists and science cheerleaders forget that the rest of us are listening and proceed to repeat batshit crazy far left insanity that they marinate in in their faculty lounges.
Trust in science took millennia to gain. Now it's being pissed away in what looks like minutes. Simply awful.
oxyplus whiteners (Score:3)
SciAm has been driving hard-left since 2000 (Score:3, Insightful)
...you know, back when I cancelled my 20+ year sub.
Like when they outright lynched Bjorn Lomborg.
This is just more of the same, SciAm + TDS = Biden endorsement.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:SciAm has been driving hard-left since 2000 (Score:5, Informative)
I was curious who this lynched scientist was, so did a quick wikipedia lookup. Turns out he actually is a "political science" (science?) educated person who wrote a controversial book which talked about climate change -- not denying it, but apparently advocating de-prioretising addressing it for economic reasons.
Interestingly complaints were filed to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (some sort of government-related oversight committee) and his book was found "contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions". This finding was later annulled on some procedural technicalities, but not on the substance. Also a bunch of scientists protested it on the basis that the book in question was "opinion" and not real "science" -- though the author himself appears to have disagreed with this. So basically the usual big stupid mess often seen when non-scientists attempt to cherry pick science to support their preferred political views.
This all happened around 20 years ago, so I assume this is the topic of the "lynching" being referred to. From what I'm reading about htis it seems more likely that around 20 years ago certain political biases started becoming more and more detached from scientific reality. And people who were called out for their lack of rigour and/or qualifications are considered to be "lynched". But I haven't read the primary material so I can't say for sure. "Lyching" certainly seems like probably an overstatement, however.
Scientific American Abandons Science Totally (Score:3)
"Scientific" "American" has now abandoned science in favor of leftist politics, and abandoned Americanism in favor of socialism or perhaps Europeanism. It actually happened long ago, which is why I cancelled my subscription to Scientific American in the late 1990s, when it became obvious.
Biden makes up facts too (Score:3)
Biden will substitute his ideology for facts too, remember the recent "A black man invented the lightbulb, not a white guy named Edison" speech? When facts don't support their ideology or political goals, politicians just to substitute their own. Biden does goes one step further, not only does he spread misinformation himself like Trump, he also advocates his "facts" should be taught in schools, a technique borrowed from North Korean leadership perhaps.
Re: (Score:3)
> "A black man invented the lightbulb, not a white guy named Edison"
There's a lot of truth in that statement since a black man was working under Edison and invented a lightbulb that could last a reasonable time period. Sure it's been simplified quite a bit, but it's nothing like Trump's "coronavirus is a hoax" lies
Re:Plitician lies? (Score:5, Funny)
YOUR KIDDING?!?!? Frankly, most of what was done or not done was Governors. If anything was done wrong, most of the blame lies with them and if anything was done right, most of the credit goes to them. They all want states rights until its time to own up.
With a point so well articulated, how could anyone argue with you?
Re: (Score:3)
YOUR KIDDING?!?!? Frankly, most of what was done or not done was Governors. I
Turns out that there were screw-ups done at both the presidential level and the governorial level.
it's not an either/or; it turns out to be both.
Re:Plitician lies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Plitician lies? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Never heard of them (Score:5, Insightful)
Never heard of Scientific American until now (firmware engineer). Guess thats the point, they want publicity.
Two posts in a row. You must really want publicity. Scientific American is a very old publication and is not really something that would be considered obscure on a site like slashdot.
Re: (Score:3)
As much as I dislike the military-industrial complex, it has provided a ton of jobs for engineers and manufacturers. It's one of the most successful socialist institutions (unfortunately we sacrifice things like universal healthcare to keep it going and it's an environmental nightmare). Our large investments in research have likewise paid off—government money has funded most of the basic research that has propelled America to the status of a global tech leader. I'm sure Eisenhower had Oppenheimer and
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Never heard of them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Never heard of them (Score:5, Insightful)
More on topic it is important that they are now favoring someone in the political realm for the first time in 175 years of existence. To me it signals the end of good times, as factions are clearly growing vocally malcontent within our society.
Re:As opposed to the activist wing of the Democrat (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointing to a small splinter faction on the other side does not remove the exceptionally large stain on the Republican's honor, integrity and decency.
Re: As opposed to the activist wing of the Democra (Score:5, Insightful)
Mite vs Mote. Speck vs. Plank.
Democrats only offering is a dictatorship of the proletariat - the Lenin/Stalin thing.
Democrats tend to be better educated than Republicans [theatlantic.com] so your characterization of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" seems pretty far off base.
Republicans are a coalition of the extremely wealthy, white trash, and evangelical Christians. Two of those groups are being played by the other.
It's really strange that you accuse Democrats of seeking a dictatorship when our current president openly fawns over dictators and doesn't understand checks and balances on executive power.
Re: (Score:3)
Now that's the type of mental gymnastics I would expect from someone with an Ayn Rand donate URL in their sig. I do find it delightfully ironic that the Ayn Rand Institute asks for donations rather than raising funds by selling goods or services on the free market. I don't think Howard Roark or John Galt would approve of accepting charity. I also think it's weird that Objectivists don't see eerie parallels between Trump and James Taggart.
But what do I know? I'm apparently brainwashed because I went to grad
Re: (Score:2)
You mean the "splinter faction" that was pretty-well represented between Warren and Sanders?
You picked some odd candidates to support your point. Those two are primarily concerned with economic issues. In fact, the faction on the left you are vocally complaining about largely disliked Sanders because he thinks that inequality can be solved through economic initiatives.
If I had to guess, you're one of those people who says Trump is alt-right, despite his habit of being pro-Jew, pro-Israel and sympathetic to the black community's concerns.
Being pro-Jew and pro-Israel are entirely different things. I know a lot of Jews and none of them support the apartheid theocracy Israel has erected. I have yet to see Trump demonstrate that he's sympathetic to the black community's
Re: (Score:2)
"The Left" isn't very left at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Economically you won't find a single communist or actual post-capitalism socialist in American politics. There's a handful of them on Breadtube with subscriber numbers in the thousands.
Meanwhile Joe Biden, the defacto head of the Democratic party is basically a mid-1980s Republican. What passes for "The Left" in America detests him and is only voting for him because our First Past the Post, Winner Take All voting system means the alternative is fascism.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, better a strong conservative like Kamela, than a con-man like Trump.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I see the Biden-Harris ticket as a strong win for actual republicans. Not the tea party fascist nutters which seem to have taken over most of the party, but the old-school, been republican for 30 years folks. The still sane republicans in my family all love that ticket. It's got deep roots in anti-abortion, war on drugs, crime and punishment, etc., but still wants to keep Medicare and Social Security, and doesn't seem too interested in socialism or socialized medicine.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is how
Re:Matches my thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
More lies from the deranged. Trump was the one who wanted to ban travel from China early on, it was the dems who screamed "Racist! You can't do that!" with Pelosi and crew urging people to go down to Chinatown and shop and mingle in the crowds instead.
And still, to this day, the best scientific evidence suggests that travel bans are mostly useless.
Trump brought up his doctor's recommendation of zinc and HCQ. Immediately the anti-science media, dems, and pharma-shills jump out and start shrieking that it's fake and harmful, with none of them taking a step back to look into it first, or acknowledging that it's a cheap, safe, proven combo that's been used for a long time.
It is absolutely not proven. Every study suggesting that it is effective has been thoroughly debunked. And every study suggesting it is safe has been at such a low dose that it has no statistically significant effect.
Twitter, Facebook, and the media was immediately censoring and attacking anyone who claimed that this came from the Wuhan lab instead of the claimed "wet market". Any evidence put forth was deleted and the author's smeared.
What "evidence"? You mean a bunch of conspiracy theory drivel spewing from people with a long history of spewing conspiracy theory drivel? If there were any evidence that were even *slightly* c
Re: More TDS (Score:3)
New Zealand would beg to differ on travel bans.
Re: More TDS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
New Zealand would beg to differ on travel bans.
New Zealand had massive contact tracing and mandatory quarantines for everybody they let in. That's what makes a difference, not arbitrarily saying that one person can enter and another can't.
Re:More TDS (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, here's why travel bans don't work:
Isolating people does ease the spreading of communicable diseases. But banning travel per se is almost completely useless, and can actually make things worse. At best, it reduces the number of cases by the number of people who would have gotten sick while on the plane, and only if those folks wouldn't have otherwise gotten sick.
What does help is a strict post-travel quarantine policy — requiring everyone, whether a tourist or a local returning home, to be quarantined for two weeks *after* they travel, to ensure that anything they picked up (whether on the ground or in the air) doesn't spread any further.
Re:More TDS (Score:5, Informative)
I've been through dozens and dozens of case where it's claimed that Trump "got the facts wrong". I was surprised because I struggled to find a case where that was definitively so.
OK, here are a few.
Wednesday, February 19: Trump: The coronavirus will weaken “when we get into April, in the warmer weather—that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus.” (April was a peak)
Thursday, February 27: Trump: The outbreak would be temporary: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” (Nope.)
Monday, July 6: Trump: “We now have the lowest fatality rate in the World.” (Note that the U.S. has neither the lowest mortality rate nor the lowest case-fatality rate.)
Monday, May 11: Trump: The United States has conducted more testing “than all other countries together!” (nope).
You need more?
Re: (Score:2)
Since both he and Harris have referred to the Harris-Biden administration in the last few days, I'd say yes.
Re: (Score:2)
It does not get more uneducated and anti-science than Trump. I mean, the guy is functionally illiterate.
I don't know, Trump said he read Woodward's 480 page book, "Rage", on the 3.5 hour flight home from a rally the other day. According to "So, Donald Trump read 'Rage' in 1 night? Um..." [cnn.com] that would be less than 30 seconds / page or about 900 words/minute.
So, that's about three and a half hours of travel time. The Woodward book, according to Amazon, is 480 pages long.
A bit of back-of-the-envelope math produces this: Trump would have had to read, roughly, 2.2 pages a minute in order to finish the whole book on the flight. That's less than 30 seconds per page.
Which is very fast! The average reader (someone who reads 300 word per minute) takes about 1.7 minutes to read a book page, while a fast reader (450 words per minute) just over 1 minute.
In order then for Trump to have actually read the whole book, he would need to have read more than twice as fast as a fast reader, consuming 900 words or more every minute.
And when I say every minute, I mean every minute. As in, all 210 minutes it took him to fly from Arizona to DC. No staring out the window for five minutes. No naps. No checking his phone. No tweeting. (According to his timeline, Trump or his staff sent 12 tweets or retweets while on the flight back to DC.) No nothing -- except reading 900 words a minute.
So, not only does he read, he's apparently one of the fastest readers *ever* -- probably the fastest and strongest (so fast folks). :-)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure why you got dowmodded for this. You'd have to be an absolute moron or a shill to think Trump is literate and knows or cares what science is or how it works.
Some things are indeed self evident.
Re:CDC and Fauci both said (Score:5, Insightful)
I figured you were a sad troll in a basement somewhere, so I looked at your "source". What's the heading? "Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza"
And you think that applies to COVID-19 why? Are you a fucking moron who thinks it's "just a flu", or are you a shill? Because it's one or the other.
Re: (Score:3)
But you clearly haven't looked because this has been publicized widely, and there are plenty of studies.
Yep, they lied, they admitted it (Score:3)
They were trying to prevent a run on N95 masks by stupid Americans. If we had a proper, functioning government it wouldn't have happened because a) We wouldn't have pulled our pandemic response unit out of China and b) we would have been stockpiling masks for the pandemic we knew was coming (and we knew it was coming because Biden/Obama left Trump a "Pandemic Playbook" that was ignored).
Re: (Score:2)
It's all politics. Viral particles are too small to be arrested by the masks, even N95s,
True. But the virus particles are carried by droplets, which are large enough to be stopped by masks.
I think a lot are troll (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignore the trolls, if you've got mod points upvote good posts and continue to make genuine attempts to improve the conversation. And remember, at least we're not Reddit
Re:I think a lot are troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot has got much more partisan than it used to be.
It certainly wasn't ever even slightly apolitical, but the politics aligned much more along early internet freedom lines; the feeling was broadly in favor of personal freedoms, suspicious of law enforcement especially heavy handed law enforcement of computer crimes, deeply suspicious of large corporations and the legal support on them, against indefinite copyright laws.
Sort of a cross between "live and let live" and "fuck off and let me use my computer in peace".
There was some variety, there were always gun nut libertarians, religious wackos and
Loony Lefties, but defense of party above all was very very rare.
And we could all agree that Orrin Hatch was a total shithead. Now I'd expect him to get staunch defenders here due to his party affiliation.
Mostly I think it's just the natural growth and eternal September. Back then, this was a nerd forum sought out by nerds when nerd was a pejorative, and we cared disproportionately about the internet and computing. That's not niche any more.