US To Exit WHO (whitehouse.gov) 250
The United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization, according to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, who cited WHO's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic and demands for "unfairly onerous payments" from Washington.
The order -- which takes a year to go into effect -- halts U.S. funding to WHO and recalls American personnel working with the organization. It also revokes a January 2021 letter that had kept the U.S. in WHO after an earlier withdrawal attempt. The White House ordered officials to find new partners to take over WHO-led activities and directed a review of the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy.
The order -- which takes a year to go into effect -- halts U.S. funding to WHO and recalls American personnel working with the organization. It also revokes a January 2021 letter that had kept the U.S. in WHO after an earlier withdrawal attempt. The White House ordered officials to find new partners to take over WHO-led activities and directed a review of the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy.
WHO cares? (Score:2, Offtopic)
I still reckon that Tennant was the best Doctor
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Him or Baker.
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Tom was the best of the Classic Doctors
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"Tom was the best of the Doctors"
There. Fixed that for ya.
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Tom Baker was the best Doctor. Hands down.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like global pandemics are a thing.
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They are. The common cold does not qualify as a "global pandemic" though.
Are you saying that people have claimed it does?
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are. The common cold does not qualify as a "global pandemic" though.
7,010,681 people don't die from the common cold.
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We also know coroners altered death certificates [truthout.org] because family feelings were being hurt. Some didn't even bother recording anything [columbiatribune.com].
But that doesn't fit your narrative, does it?
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Informative)
If 7 million people died from COVID-19 from 2019 until now then that's a smaller percentage of the population than other pandemics, and this time period ranks as undoubtedly above the norm but not wildly so if we lump all deaths from flu and pneumonia together. Is it "fair" to lump COVID-19 in with other more common viral disease? Maybe, maybe not, but we have been lumping viral diseases together statistically for a long time.
Percentage-wise, it's about 1% of the known cases, which while less than, for example, polio, is still rather alarming. And during the pre-vaccine period, it was several times that high.
The biggest problem was that hospitals couldn't keep up with the rate of incoming patients and didn't know how best to treat them, often making things worse instead of better with unnecessary intubation. Your risk of dying from COVID was way worse during that initial surge than afterwards.
There was a lot of things wrong with the response to COVID-19, and I can certainly see how WHO and China only made matters worse by putting international politics above public health. Maybe withdrawing funds from WHO is going too far but they need to have some consequences for their screw ups or we can expect a repeat event in the future.
There were some things wrong with the response, sure. In particular:
None of those had anything to do with the WHO. There's really not much that the WHO could have done beyond what they did. They can't force China to be more open. They can't force countries to react quickly to an emerging pandemic. They can't force knee-jerk reactionaries to stop ignoring science in the name of protecting their right to get other people sick. The evidence is pretty clear that it wasn't the specific policies that affected COVID mortality, but rather the willingness to adapt to new information. Areas that adapted more quickly and followed the rules, whatever they were at the time, had statistically significantly lower mortality [healthaffairs.org], with a high degree of confidence. And the likely reason for this is because those areas reacted sooner, before the case count was ridiculously high.
Besides, this hasn't ever been about the WHO screwing up, because apart from not being more critical of China, they really didn't screw up. Trump is mostly mad because the U.S. provides such a big chunk of the WHO's budget and other countries don't pay their fair share. While a legitimate complaint, shutting off that funding just means that a whole lot more people are going to die from preventable illnesses around the world. It's a really dirtbag thing to do.
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>>It's a really dirtbag thing to do
Perfect slogan for trump's second term
Re: What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
What does that have to do with the discussion at hand?
WHO to blame [Re:What could possibly go wrong?] (Score:4, Informative)
Summary, the COVID-19 pandemic killed a lot of Americans during Donald Trump's administration, so he's basically trying to blame somebody, anybody else, to avoid people saying his actions exacerbated the problem. The WHO is the most convenient target at the moment.
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98.6% survival rate
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
The problem with corona was not the people who died, it was the people who got sick. Several countries had problems treating everyone who got sick.
Recent studies have shown and remote learning had very little negative effects. People just assumed it had, without any studies. Same studies showed that remote learning had also positive effects, e.g. with bullying.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the outcomes were only (a) you're fine, and (b) you're dead, that sort of analysis would work out well. But that simplified view (which I am not disputing) ignores two serious problems.
First, there are a large number of people who were in neither camp, ending up with a chronic illness that not only defies treatment, but contributes to mortality. We will start seeing the effects of this in the coming years with an increase in cardiac, kidney, liver, and brain disease (those are the organs most sensitive to microclotting).
Second, during the pandemic, it wasn't like the rest of the diseases went away -- people still got cancer, had heart attacks, etc. Heck, they still had babies, so there was still a need for normal healthcare. But the healthcare systems around the world were inundated with people who were sick with a respiratory disease that, at least initially, was substantially more fatal than later on. These people generally recovered, but they were also really pretty sick. The impact on health care across the globe was brutal.
In short, I think by reducing the analysis to just a fatality rate you're underplaying the severity of the epidemiological and societal impact. It was much worse than that.
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We followed their advice for the last pandemic and shut down our economy for a virus with a 99.9999975% survival rate.
Assuming that the 99.99... number is correct (and it appears to be high and sort of arbitrarily fuzzy), the big question is whether that apparently high number is good or bad. The answer is ... it depends. For some demographics, the survival rate was far lower. And depending on the total number of infections or symptomatic cases, the seemingly low fatality rate multiplied by a very large number can result in a large number of deaths. In reality, the total number of infections was likely in the billions.
The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more crazy actions we see here, the more we will see China and Russia fill in the gaps. This is nothing about making America (the US) great again, and all about destroying its legacy. Former presidents and veterans must be rolling their graves.
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Most GOP representatives probably also know this, but Don has them by the gonads, they gotta tow the Party Line, or Don backs their competitor in their district and accuses them of eating preachers or whatnot.
Re:The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cowards, the lot of them. They do evil to hold on to power rather than lose power standing up for their constituents.
Re: The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's comments like this that make me so disaffected with politics. When I read this morning that trump granted blanket clemency to the January 6th club, I let out a quiet groan. Not a few weeks prior, I did the same when Biden issued blanket pardons to other people for who knows what reason, especially damning was his son.
Not a god damn one of you like to hold your own guy to account, so stop pretending that only the other guys do it. Shit, I live in a one-party state where incompetence on the part of elect
Re: The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:3)
Re: The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cowards, the lot of them. They do evil to hold on to power rather than lose power standing up for their constituents.
Indeed. What a pathetic showing. That is not what honorable conservatives look like.
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honorable conservatives
You've got a contradiction right here.
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No, actually I do not. Honorable conservatives are the ones you can talk to and you can reach a compromise with. And they will stick to it. People that value their principles over "winning". People that would never made a criminal, and especially not a rapist, their "leader". Sure, the US does not have those anymore, but they do exist.
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And they will stick to it. People that value their principles over "winning". People that would never made a criminal, and especially not a rapist, their "leader".
So, basically, Democrats?
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The irony being that they already lost power when they decided en masse to become a rubber stamp brigade for whatever the King of Snowflakes wants. Instead of losing it to voters, they lost it willingly through abdication.
Re:The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think he's been planning the U.S. destruction, but I do think his alleged administration might lead to that. I think he has sold the U.S. Government to the Billionaires' Club. This is all a gamble because he's been gambling all his life. He was convicted of fraud, but the real question is why did he commit fraud. I think there are several contributing factors.
1. He's particularly stupid and wouldn't know how to run a real company, look at his strings of losers.
2. Being particularly stupid, he believes he a fucking genius. This is never a good combination. Most tyrants believe this and most wind up on the trash heap of history along with their countries. The stupid things multiply.
3. He's a gambler. Not having any real skills, he gambles on X and if Y happens, he claims X caused Y. In the past, he gambled with other peoples' money, now he's gambling with the U.S. Economy. And he a spectacularly bad at gambling.
This cannot end well. Remember the money men to which he's sold off bits of the government are some of the ones that gave us the Great Recession and others the AI craze and others the Crypto-Scam markets.
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I expect to be dead by the end of the year. Probably kick my door in, in the middle of the night, and shoot me in the head.
You, really are not that important.
That's how it starts: get rid of the lower end to show the masses they need to fall in line, or else.
Re: The US withdraws from the world stage? (Score:2)
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Members of Congress have been passing laws that have been handing more and more authority to the executive, and now people are shocked and aghast when a recently elected POTUS uses this authority to meet his own goals on government policy? Maybe the congresscritters should have given more thought on how much room they gave POTUS on what would normally fall on Congress to decide. If Congress, and by extension the members of the voting public that elected these congresscritters, didn't want Trump to have th
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Sigh ... no surprise here, only the beginning.
I'm making plans on how to sit down on the Pope Field (near the former Fort Bragg) runway to block the C-17's on their way to Greenland, Panama, wherever. You know, kind of like the little Chinese guy with his bags in front of the Tienaman (sp?) Square who became so famous.
I'm _pretty_ sure the C-17 pilot wouldn't run me over like a dog. But you never can tell about those flyboys :-(
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If that $500M is, instead, spent on increasing the US vaccination rate, it will certainly make us greater and healthier.
Yeah, sure - THAT'S exactly the plan with this administration... increased vaccination. hahahahaha
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the US puts in $500M to WHO and China puts in $39M to WHO
Could you provide your sources? At the "Assessed contributions payable summary 2024-2025" table Here [who.int], I see $87M for China and $130M for the US.
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Indeed. Lets hope the EU can take up some of the slack, but the US will basically get the leftovers in the next crisis.
It's only a matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Before he defaults on the debt and starts a war over it. This is the exact strategy he uses in business.
Re: It's only a matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Which ever country he decides to be the bogeyman, rather than being honest. Itâ(TM)s not about what makes sense, but what keeps in control of his followers.
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Most of the debt is owed to American citizens, exactly who would we start a war with over it?
Uhhh ... Yourselves? It's called a civil war.
Re:It's only a matter of time (Score:5, Funny)
To start a civil war you would need a huge amount of guns and two opposing parties that have very hard time agreeing on anything. It is very unlikely that both of these conditions happen at the same time in the same country.
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Hehehehehehehe, well said!
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Canada, Panama, and Denmark all come to mind.
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Not a Good Plan (Score:3)
Of course there is no chance at all that
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Most people who classify others with a color are entirely hateful.
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If what
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No country that is the issuer of it's own money can ever be unable to service it's debt. All it takes to service it is to print some more money. Now as to whether that would create any problems, well about 95% of the money in circulation has been printed by private banks via fractional reserve banking, that is, by creating loans. We don't see much problem from that, and a bit more of govt printed money is not going to make a difference, either. Where the problems do start is when you lack an actual real eco
Re: It's only a matter of time (Score:2)
I see that you pretended there that over half of price inflation wasn't caused by increased corporate profits.
....next we we will also exit WHAT, WHEN and WHY (Score:2)
Tweet (Score:2)
Trump revisionism (Score:2, Informative)
If one follows the WHO timeline, they took a measured and incremental approach from when the first cases were discovered before declaring it a pandemic in March 2020. Meanwhile, Trump was already declaring it over in February 2020. Out of these two, it's not the WHO that mismanaged the US response.
Re:Trump revisionism (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump didn't mismanaged it, he maliciously managed it - there's a difference.
When it was mostly killing in Blue areas he wanted it to burn through. When PPE was looking profitable, he redirected it for his own gain. When it was killing in Red areas but the cult has drunk the koolaid, he used it to gain power politically.
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Yep. Evil to the core. A real psycho.
We didn't get to a national emergency (Score:2)
Meanwhile here's a timeline where WHO warned him in January [nytimes.com]
What little Trump did was with great reluctance and only after he was told our entire healthcare system was going to collapse killing tens of millions.
We are one minor mutation of H5N1 away from a disaster that'll make COVID look like a fond memory. H1N1 had a 50% fatality rate. Obama kept it in Asia. I remember reading about RAM shortages because of it.
The next 4 years are going to be a disaster. At be
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H1N1 had a 50% fatality rate
I'm not seeing any estimates higher than maybe a 10% CFR. Which is still very high. But that's on the high end of the estimate range because of how many people were not confirmed cases.
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If one follows the WHO timeline, they took a measured and incremental approach from when the first cases were discovered before declaring it a pandemic in March 2020. Meanwhile, Trump was already declaring it over in February 2020. Out of these two, it's not the WHO that mismanaged the US response.
Of course. Whenever there are errors or problems, someone has to get blamed, but not Trump himself - ever. Trump's game is to distract people with something else so they overlook something about him, then he takes credit for anything good and blames others for anything bad. And, for some reason, people believe him, or are willing to overlook the obvious lies. But, Trump was right that if we had only stopped testing for COVID, there would have been a LOT fewer cases -- I mean, that we knew about; he alw
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Bah, facts? We need no lousy facts to be sure they are to blame!
In other news, the average person cannot fact-check for shit and has an extremely short memory.
Re: Trump revisionism (Score:2)
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Hey guys are Haitians still eating the pets?
Re: Trump revisionism (Score:2)
"think" isn't the right word, but sure, he believes it
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Because, of course, pathogens give a fuck about treaties.
You are aware, I hope, that Canute was trying to demonstrate that he, even a King, couldn't control the tides, because what I'm beginning to think is that Republicans actually believe they have magical powers capable of warping reality.
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The sovereignty is held by the ability to withdraw at any time. Withdrawing for just this reason alone is just premature. Otherwise you are calling mutual cooperation an impedance to sovereignty.
Re:Trump revisionism (Score:5, Informative)
Oh for fuck's sake, by the time anyone knew what was spreading, it was already in the United States. It might have bought a few weeks at most.
Fuck me, it's the 21st century. Are there still people who don't understand how fucking pathogens work? Six hundred years before aircraft were even a thing and most people didn't travel more than a fifty miles from where they were born, the Black Death made its way across Eurasia and North Africa in four years.
Re: Trump revisionism (Score:3)
You still don't understand that having more infected people come into the country faster meant a faster spread, so no. There is no chance that people will understand how this works.
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When infection rates lead to cases doubling at a known interval, the addition of hundreds or even thousands of cases doesn't do that much more.
Re: Trump revisionism (Score:2)
No, he fucking well did not.
Trump prohibited FOREIGN NATIONALS from coming into the country from SOME COUNTRIES. He did NOT close the border, ever.
You traitors have only lies to work with, and we can all see them.
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Trump did not close the borders. Stop lying.
Don't provide information (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's not even the benefit the US gets from the WHO. The benefit that the US gets is preventing global pandemics from reaching the US in the first place by helping fund research and coordinating international efforts. From a relatively small line item on the federal budget.
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Sure they do. Kids are by default punished for shit parents do. Not necessarily physically punished, but if your parent is in the news for divorce, spousal abuse, rape, you are being punished.
I also did mention about diseaes coming into the country. That was my last part about travelers coming into the country.
If the convicted felon wants to be "America first", then the world should oblige. We saw how wonderful things went the last time he tried it.
Re: Don't provide information (Score:2)
"Let's have CDC and NAID stop ALL research investment on foreign soil"
Pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist and nothing that happens there can harm us? Great plan
It's fine. (Score:2)
When the Saudis wanted to crush the shale energy companies in the US by flooding the market and cratering oil prices, the unintended effect was to force them to be efficient and well run. In effect, they built worthy competitors.
As the US withdraws from the world stage, countries are already building the capability to function in the vacuum. Militarily, economically, and politically, the US is slowly making itself a secondary consideration. Trump will speed up that process.
And the one thing Trump is already
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The world pissed on the US? Outside of the Soviet sphere the world made the US the most powerful nation that has ever existed.
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This whole mentality that the U.S. gave everything good to the world since the war is silly. It presumes that the capability to manage trade on a grand scale doesn't precede US involvement. If the U.S. hadn't helped facilitate it, others would have. In fact, they did. It's just a question of the distribution of contribution.
One large reason the U.S. got to dominate after the war is not because there's anything different or exceptional about the people. It's geography. They didn't have to spend decades rebui
A headline you will never see (Score:2, Insightful)
US halts billions in funding for Israel.
WHO is not on first (Score:2)
Don is exiting WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, and WHY.
It's being replaced by ME, ME, ME, ME and ME.
Trump killed hundreds of thousands of Americans (Score:2, Informative)
It beggars belief that he accuses the WHO of anything when his administration allowed COVID in, responded WAY too slowly, spread disinformation left right and center, allowed Red states to flout mask & social distancing rules, slow walked a vaccine. Oh and Trump himself got COVID and so did some of his GOP cronies including some who died because he was so fucking stupid he held rallies and social events.
While he cannot be blamed for all the deaths he IS responsible for some of them. He killed US citizen
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WHO is basically run by China (Score:2, Insightful)
And? (Score:3)
The US had a similar effect, it had been blocking Palestine from joining the WHO until this summer.
Re:WHO is basically run by China (Score:5, Insightful)
That is obvious BS. Look at the funding. But the WHO needs to be diplomatic in all it does or it becomes ineffective. Yes, that does include some public, but really meaningless bowing to China.
Re:WHO is basically run by China (Score:5, Insightful)
China basically runs WHO and it does whatever China wants whenever China wants it.
If this is true, then the only sensible course of action is to be the most active member of the WHO so you develop your network of friends and conquer influence to counterbalance other parties. To win at diplomacy, you need to play.
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He knew what to answer, his answer was to ignore a question, and he did that very professionally. He is not here to give his personal opinion on Taiwan, only to convey that of the WHO. The WHO which does not have an official opinion on Taiwan, for reasons you know).
It reminds me of the (hilarious) interview from a beginning journalist to someone who he believes to be a random diplomat at the end of a UN meeting in New York in 2016.
"Are you concerned about the results of the US election?"
"we don't speak of p
Cool! (Score:3)
Now if only the USA would exit UN and NATO, it would be a dream come true!
Go, Donald Duck! America can live without these shitty imternational âoealliancesâ!
from the developed country with 17% of deaths (Score:5, Informative)
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Like a fucking "shithole" country. Well.
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Indeed.
Guess which country funds WHO the most (Score:2)
The United States is the biggest WHO source of funding by far and we want a better deal
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You don't understand the current deal, how would you know what a better one looks like?
The US got access to outbreak info in otherwise hostile nations. It had influence over how things were investigated and responded to.
That's going away now.
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You don't understand the current deal, how would you know what a better one looks like?
The US got access to outbreak info in otherwise hostile nations. It had influence over how things were investigated and responded to.
That's going away now.
Other countries did too, for much much much less money
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Bullshit. Bill and Melinda Gates fund the WHO almost as much as the whole US does, and in 2020/21 the US was third behind Bill & Melinda and Germay. Per capita I doubt the US is in the top 10.
Maybe Trump's Chistians will pick up the slack (Score:2)
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I used to have a decently sized family. They said the same things you did.
I say used because, for some reason, the ones that refused to mask and proudly went to events were masking was banned were all dead by Thanksgiving. They were screaming about the family get togethers the democrats were trying to destroy...when in the end they weren't there to make a family gathering. Completely sick irony there. Who destroyed what? They used to get pissed at me because I took a "whatever" attitude, wore the mask, didn
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Imagine a disease so terrible you need to get tested in order to ever know you had it, and a vaccine so wonderful that you have to be forced to take it.
This all played out like the Patriot Act - 9/11 was the excuse used to increase the size, scope, and power of the government. In 2020, COVID served as the same excuse.
Re:it doesn't work like that (Score:5, Informative)
There's a lot incorrect here. I'll bite on the Brandolini bait.
they would allow cloth masks that did absolutely nothing
That's incorrect. Almost every mask that covered both the nose and mouth had some beneficial effect. Anything that had the chance of capturing any amount of infected droplets from a person's exhalations was a benefit to everyone around. Some masks (multiple layers of varying weave) were significantly than others (pantyhose).
gather in large protests but churchs and family gatherings were prohibited
The people who took the pandemic seriously did not gather in large groups. Protestors who didn't care as much still gathered as did the church groups. They're part of the SAME population of irresponsible people, not different.
but you could all go to the same grocery store unmonitored and touch everything there
We learned VERY early on that surface contamination was a minimal risk. What we thought was surface contamination was actually asymptomatic spreaders not wearing masks. Still, every damn public transit surface was getting disinfected because defeating that misunderstanding was less important than showing people that "something" is being done (even if there was no measurable benefit).
I'm amazed that all these people who used useless masks that don't actually stop viral particles
An N95 filters out viral particles to a high degree when used correctly, but ANY mask that captures moisture (which carries the virii) from your breath is an improvement over NO mask.
What's more incredibly is I got it, my family got it, and tons of people and everyone was fine.
That's anecdotal and specific to every individual's health. I'm VERY healthy and got it twice. The first time, I was brain-fogged for 3 months. The second time wasn't as bad. I also have kept up with my vaccinations and boosters to mitigate the risk in the first place. Still, I completely recognize the increased risk for people with pre-existing circulatory and pulmonary conditions. And for those with a family history of dementia and Alzheimer's.
Oh yeah, the people who have underlying health conditions where the flu would also killed them, they died.
Correct. And we'd prefer for them not to get the flu, too.
All the kids at school pretty much got it and spread it, and my god, they were all fine, if only we shut down schools faster?
No... not all of them. And not all at the same time. The curve was successfully flattened in capable communities. And in those communities, they also reduced the risk of passing the infection on to high-risk family members.
If it was as deadly as it was, they didn't need to have people who died in car crashes marked as died from covid because they tested positive. It should be able to stand on it's own merits how deadly it was.
You're implying that there was some sort of conspiracy that marked people as having died of COVID when in fact COVID was a non-factor in their deaths and will need to provide SOME sort of evidence to that end.
It should be able to stand on it's own merits how deadly it was.
Over 1,000,000 died of COVID-19 between 2020 and 2023 (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map). Mind you that that's one million despite MASSIVE national reduction of social interaction, MASSIVE focus on spread mitigation, MASSIVE mobilization of medical aid, and the QUICKEST development of a vaccine in the history of medicine.
And still, 1,000,000 people died. It's deadly. You just don't understand what it took to keep the death count "so low".
They also refuse to disclose people who died who were specifically elderly and at risk from dying from any infection or underlying health reasons.
Everyone has a fatal case of "life". Still
Re: it doesn't work like that (Score:2)
We need a trump vaccine. One that works, not the Constitution, which apparently doesn't.
But the vaccines were not Trump's accomplishment. He reduced testing requirements as he was asked to do, as any president would have. But he ordered ZERO doses up front, which means he applied ZERO dollars to the problem. Dolly Parton literally did more to promote a vaccine than Trump did.
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Dolly Parton is a decent human being. Trump is not.
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his mishandling? He made the deals for the vaccines. You did get your Trump vaccines.
The mishandling was by democrat states, closing mom and pop shops and small business while letting big corps and big boxes continue with masking.
I traveled between Texas and Maine twice in 2020/2021, and there was fuck-all difference between them on the ground, including the major airports you have to go through to get there from here. I think you're spouting bullshit.
In rural middle of nowhere in either one, practically nothing changed, masks were seen but uncommon which was fair enough IMO with zero or very low cases in the respective counties at the time. I can't even imagine how small businesses were affected, because everyone ignored it outside