Two Years of COVID, by state

[Althea]

Just because you characterize something as theft does not make it so. During that period, we were hit by Hurricane Katrina, GWB launched two utterly needless, terribly expensive yet unfunded wars of aggression, our economy melted down to the brink of depression, and a worldwide pandemic strangled the worldwide economy.

Which is how I know that you are responding to a child. Her rhetoric is childish, and boilerplate Republican nonsense.

The government does not steal from the people. The government is not a thief. The government spends everything it takes in and more. All of the spending is meant to improve America in some way. Because of our dysfunctional politics (much of that dysfunction due to hatred and bitter polarization,) many of our budgeting decisions are irrational. Such as giving away the surplus Clinton created as free bonus checks at a time when America should have been asked to pay additional taxes to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Govt. is necessary to spend on 'loss leaders'. Those things that the private sector will not touch because they don't return a profit. Something that children don't understand. I'm guessing her social studies teacher hasn't taught them about the Erie Canal, and other such projects.

There are actually a handful of private highways across the nation. They do NOT put forth a pretty picture for Libertarianism.

I would like to point out that government is comprised of humans and humans lie. Anyone expecting government to be comprised of 'those imaginary perfect humans who never lie' has placed an impossible condition on judging government, and has likely done so in order to justify irrational hatred of government.

Our govt. was founded by imperfect individuals who were pretty corrupt. They took advantage of the masses who were uneducated. They laid the foundation for the unfair society we have today. Ironically, after a number of 'fixes' over the centuries, we now see Red states attempting to deny the rights of voters who don't vote Republican. We see the same group walking back necessary civil rights laws in an attempt to return to the early 1900s society.

Everyone should question government spending. Everyone should also understand that it is not possible for government to please everyone. It is expected that whatever government does will have the support of some, and the disapproval of others. That is the reality and everyone would do themselves and the country a great favor if they would understand it.

Unfortunately checks and balances, along with a system that is set up to require compromise, is a thing of the past. trump has exposed every flaw in a system that previously relied on people of integrity to preserve. Required, actually. Children tend to conflate frustration with hatred. Our govt. is in trouble. Brought about by a carnival barker who usurped power from half of our govt.. Riling up the racists and the children who don't fully understand the way nations are run.

 

[Code1211]

Of course government spending isn't going to work out when you cater that spending in the form of tax cuts and tax credits to big business instead of to workers.

We know that tax cuts don't ever deliver on any promise made of them.

Tax cuts haven't created a single job ever. EVER.

But they sure have cost a lot of jobs...

I am saying that the lying thieves in government are stealing your money.

You are defending this crime against you.

Why?

 

[PoliTalker]

Hello Mina,

At one point I tried to come up with my own "Risk Index." The idea was to back-test reported data versus excess deaths, in order to figure out what's really going on under the surface.

Just to simplify, picture that there was an average three-week delay between testing positive for COVID and dying from it. Well, then, using excess death data by week and comparing it to positive tests three weeks earlier, you could figure out how many reported cases, average, equate to one statistical COVID death. Then, you could see how much each state is above or below that average (more or fewer excess deaths than we'd expect from the number of infections they report). Then I'd compare that to testing rates and positivity rates, to get an index.

The idea would be to allow you to look at a state's positive case count, testing rate, and positivity rate, and then use that to calculate a "true infection rate" (based on adjustments driven by those other factors). Like, for example, maybe NY and AZ are both reporting 40 cases/100k/day. But if NY is doing three times as many tests and has 1/2 the positivity rate for those tests, It's reasonable to think AZ actually has a lot more infections and just is catching and reporting fewer. Using the method I'm talking about, the idea would be that you could use historical patterns to "norm" that data. Maybe, for example, you'd expect that in reality NY is suffering 50 cases/100k/day, while AZ is suffering 100 cases/100k/day, meaning your true risk in NY is twice as high.

That would allow you to properly assess what the true risk is in given place in a given time (also within cities or counties). Unfortunately, though I messed around with the numbers for a while, I never found a formula I was confident about (one that would consistently predict excess deaths fairly accurately based on those other factors). Maybe I'll take another run at it, at some point, now that there's more historical data to work with.

Are numbers cool or what?

I'd love to see the result if you decide to take it on.

 

[LV426]

I am saying that the lying thieves in government are stealing your money.

Taxes aren't theft, but your statement belies a guilty conscience.

We typically get a return on the taxes we pay in the form of assets like highways, ports, airports, the USPS, etc.

Theft is cutting taxes, then stealing spending from the working class because the taxes you just cut created a deficit.

 

[LV426]

As I said, you know very little about guns. Now is the time you shut your pie hole and do some research.

You have a tiny gun to go along with your tiny dick.

 

[Althea]

Per CAPITA, but that's misleading because NJ & NY were hit at the beginning.

There is no excuse for the states that had advance notice as NY/NJ were getting hammered early on.

 

[Althea]

I wish I had data for that. That's a big issue in the Northeast, too. Like there's a gigantic difference between between the Boston area and Western Mass, or upstate and downstate NY. Even within the states, you'd likely see the kind of pattern you see nationally, where the areas that got hit hard early on were often not those that ended up being worse when the pandemic was taken as a whole (e.g., Coastal Maine saw more early cases, but then Northern Maine wound up doing worse over the full time).

But the method I'm using probably breaks down at the county level, since deaths would tend to be concentrated wherever hospitals happen to be located. Like to take Massachusetts as an example, if you judged by place of death, you'd probably find a wildly disproportionate share of people in the state die in Boston, simply because they're taken there, to the hospitals, before being declared DOA. So, you'd instead need a system that compares where deceased people's residences were, not where they died, which I don't think is how the CDC collects that data.

Some info you would need is impossible to find.


For instance, one reason NYC was slammed so hard was due to the refusal by the Ultra Orthodox community to stop large gatherings before the vaxes were available. If you study the early areas that got hit the hardest, it was New Rochelle and Brooklyn.

NY airports were also a big reason that the area got his so hard. It was 4 months before the trump admin allowed the scientists to be heard re. the virus.

 

[PoliTalker]

Hello Althea,

Which is how I know that you are responding to a child. Her rhetoric is childish, and boilerplate Republican nonsense.


Govt. is necessary to spend on 'loss leaders'. Those things that the private sector will not touch because they don't return a profit. Something that children don't understand. I'm guessing her social studies teacher hasn't taught them about the Erie Canal, and other such projects.

There are actually a handful of private highways across the nation. They do NOT put forth a pretty picture for Libertarianism.



Our govt. was founded by imperfect individuals who were pretty corrupt. They took advantage of the masses who were uneducated. They laid the foundation for the unfair society we have today. Ironically, after a number of 'fixes' over the centuries, we now see Red states attempting to deny the rights of voters who don't vote Republican. We see the same group walking back necessary civil rights laws in an attempt to return to the early 1900s society.

Unfortunately checks and balances, along with a system that is set up to require compromise, is a thing of the past. trump has exposed every flaw in a system that previously relied on people of integrity to preserve. Required, actually. Children tend to conflate frustration with hatred. Our govt. is in trouble. Brought about by a carnival barker who usurped power from half of our govt.. Riling up the racists and the children who don't fully understand the way nations are run.

Yes, our government was set up by elites who favored elitism, but they had to get the support of the masses to do it. And the uneducated masses had no chance of setting up a government on their own. Just as today, the masses are too busy just getting by to concern themselves with the organization of a nation.