I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is | What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is | What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
What’s happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis.
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The last time Donald Trump was President of The United States of America, a viral pandemic emerged out of China, he did not stop flights coming in, he did not enact the war powers to manufacture PPE for our first responders, health workers, or public, he eschewed the use of ventilators, and openly mocked those who wore masks.
A Million fucking Americans perished from COVID during his Presidency, the largest per capital, and total of any nation on gods green earth.
What's happening is not the result of misinformation, it's informed self immolation.
Republicans realized they cannot win on their arguments, so they wish to burn it all down, themselves and their children included.
Yep. Per the article:
But what feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not.
Yeah but at least he was able to send free COVID tests to his Daddy Vlad when supplies were short and Americans were dying.
Free COVID testing machines. Not just disposable tests. It's way worse than what was initially reported.
I'm against the death penalty and I hate these posts that compare to Hitler but hear me out.
Though the US and world death toll in covid wasn't entirely Trump's fault, he was a major, if not the largest, contributer to it being that high through his actions and inactions. He lied about it, dismissed it, made it appear to be no-risk, egged his followers on to ridicule, hate, and threaten those that tried to protect themselves and their families.
Millions died. How many of those were needless deaths? How many were thanks directly or indirectly through the actions of orange dipshit clown? I think his death count is (obviously) lower than Hitler's, but I think it's in a similar range. I think he thinks about the deaths he caused in. A similar way that Hitler did, those that died were nothing, worthless.
If I murder more than two persons in the US, there is a good chance I get the death penalty. Trump willingly caused the deaths of millions just.tonfuether his political career. Why isn't he on death row?
I guess the quote "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" is real indeed.
I relatively yearn for the days where it was only crazy trump supporters getting covid wrong, as opposed to tons of formerly sensible people joining them in pretending it went poof because we got tired of it, or that it suddenly became not enough of a problem to warrant massive action.
You forgot the part where they were literally given a pandemic playbook and they choose to actively ignore its existence, with some republicans even claiming it didn't exist.
How is there any hope against misinformation when the top comment on a thread decrying misinformation contains major misinformation itself? Specifically, way more Americans have died of COVID under the Biden administration than under the Trump administration.
Just one source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/09/18/covid-19-deaths-under-trump-1-million-fact-check/75197222007/
Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).
Please note: I am not a Trump supporter! I am only interested in truth, reason, and reality. Downvoting my post is a sign that you're not interested in any of those.
Granted, the Biden administration has had a lot more time under the COVID pandemic than Trump had, but the Biden administration has handled COVID in a very far from ideal way (see all the CDC missteps under Biden, for one example).
Not only did it have more time under it, but it also inherited a public that was much more threatening toward anyone attempting to advance COVID control measures, including common sense ones like masking indoors.
The utter lunacy that polluted the public square during the late 2020 - early 2021 time frame caused a lot of the deaths that happened under Biden's early days to be in the category of being completely preventable but a large portion of the country had been fed bullshit for a year that told them to resist every possible preventative measure.
A lot of that is fair, except that it wasn't just Biden's early days. The mishandling of the COVID pandemic continues to this day. It's been a clusterfuck from the beginning under Trump to the present under Biden. The US doesn't seem to be that unique in that regard though. It seems like it's been a clusterfuck around most of the world.
Once the virus went from stable to constantly evolving, there was no chance of eradication.
Trump's early mishandling of the virus and America's outsized influence over the rest of the world helped push the virus this direction long before it was a foregone conclusion that it would be endemic.
Agreed about Trump's mishandling, but I'm not talking eradication. That was bound to be difficult. I'm talking about mitigation, harm reduction. This was essentially completely abandoned by the Biden administration.
I agree that Biden's administration wasn't perfect or even very good in this regard. But like with the Afghanistan withdrawal and other issues his administration was completely set up for failure before they even set foot in office.
The best he was able to do was get the vaccine out to everyone, and to his credit, he accomplished that. Once the vaccines were distributed and everyone who wanted one had gotten a shot, the public appetite for continuing COVID mandates was completely gone.
I think I am probably talking too much about presidents or the public. The key mover was industry the whole time. Industry was willing to hold out until the vaccines were distributed. After that, industry wanted everything "back to normal" ASAP.
They're still fighting for "back to office" mandates to this day.
I think that's still too charitable of an interpretation. The CDC under Biden has been a disaster. They completely dropped any recommendations for masking, requirements for masking in high-risk environments (such as healthcare facilities), or even trying to model good behavior. The CDC director doesn't even wear a mask in crowded environments or photos, and dismisses criticism for this, for crying out loud.
At some point COVID was going endemic. That point was pretty early on in Biden's administration.
Once all of the variants started to emerge, it was going endemic. Once it's endemic it's either mask forever or don't. The mask mandates were never going to last forever, and I think it was reasonable to keep them until the vaccine was distributed to everyone interested in getting it.
I say all of this as someone who masks routinely indoors to this day. Sure, Biden could've continued what became very unpopular COVID controls, or given up on it just like every other country in the world. Even China gave up on "zero COVID" and New Zealanders gave up on it as well.
You do have good points, but even with it going endemic, measures could still be taken to reduce infection, with masks, ventilation, UV lights. I guess what bothers me is that the attitude all of a sudden became "whatever you wanna do". Not even even a recommendation or requirements for healthcare settings. The healthcare settings in particular bother me.
Once it was determined that it was airborne and had become endemic, the mask requirements in those places should have become indefinite. That would also help reduce the spread of various other airborne diseases. As it is now, I keep hearing of doctors and nurses actually harassing patients to take their masks off. Completely batshit insane.
There is no longer any leadership or appropriate guidance from CDC or any other government entity. Sure, China and New Zealand gave up on it too, but as old folks are sometimes fond of saying, you wouldn't jump from a bridge if everyone else did it.
I agree, and the whole thing is a shame.
Part of me wants to think it's just inevitable because industry gets nearly exactly what it wants in this country at all times, but another part of me has a perhaps more hopeful thought which is maybe we could've gotten some of those things if we had organized for them.
Maybe a lot of what's wrong with American policy is that the sane people and the people who want reasonable, good governance of the country just aren't organized enough and just not connected enough to each other.
Despite the likelihood that the million Karen marches at the height of the pandemic for getting haircuts were astroturfing efforts...there was nobody in the public sphere advocating for reason. I understand that it was risky when we didn't know about the properties of the virus and such so the crazies were the only ones risking it. But I don't think this country can have good governance at all until the people who are tired of the crazies organize, unite, and take over.
Do you remember when the media had a fit about Trump being racist for blocking the flights to countries with high covid rates? How about the two weeks after he announced operation warp speed to develop a vaccine and everybody swore up and down that they wouldn't take Trump's vaccine? Trump bears a lot of responsibility for the toxic political culture, but it wasn't just him.
Trump looked like he was going to do the approval for the vaccine himself (or override it). He promised that it'd be ready even sooner than what the organizations making and approving it had said.
As far as "toxic political culture", Trump bears the lion's share of the blame. Before he entered politics, it was not at all normal for politicians to behave like this.
To be honest the other politicians around the world talked a big talk but they also failed to deal with the pandemic as it should have been delt with.
Meanwhile the Cuomo was on the news every night talking about the need to balance human lives with "The Economy" and as soon as democrats were in power, they ended covid measures and testing.
Prioritizing short-term profits over human lives was a bipartisan effort.
Edit: NYC Governor Cuomo, not that he and DeBlasio weren't competing to show how much they were doing to balance safety and the economy.
Thanks for the trollaganda…
Cute. You edited your post to change it from the Mayor of New York to Cuomo and took out the part implying this was only the thing that Democrats were saying and then responded to my post with this innocent "it was bipartisan!" thing.
Bipartisan. A casual google news search for 2020 shows Cuomo talking about how awful it was that Trump was reopening the economy in May, and how we need to open the economy in April.
But he was also on CNN nearly every night, saying we need to get back to work and reopen as soon as possible, but in a good way, unlike Trump who wants to do the same thing, but in a bad way.
Cute. You edited your post to change it from the Mayor of New York to Cuomo and took out the part implying this was only the thing that Democrats were saying and then responded to my post with this innocent "it was bipartisan!" thing.
Yes, I confused the mayor and governor in the original post. The bipartisan line was original though.
Why are you so aggressive?
There is nothing aggressive in pointing out your dishonesty.
You're still being dishonest by ignoring the part about how you got rid of the implication that it was just Democrats doing this.
There was no implication that just democrats do it, hence why I said "bipartisan" instead of "just democrats do this".
Accusing someone of dishonesty instead of rereading what they posted is aggressive. Maybe chill out a bit.
Yes, you said 'bipartisan' after you edited your post which originally suggested it was not bipartisan. So now you're being dishonest about the chain of events.
Also, I did read what you posted, which I responded to. You edited to the post to make it as if I wasn't responding to what you said, which was dishonest. Don't be dishonest and you won't be called dishonest.
No, the original one had bipartisan, I wouldn't post something I didn't believe. You must have missed it.
It feels ridiculous to be accused of not thinking the republicans didn't side with capital, against the working class.
The dishonesty is listing a single person (the wrong person at first, I might add) and claiming "bipartisan."
We all know that's bullshit so just stop.
Did any Democrats do anything shitty during the pandemic? I'm sure. But please stop implying there is any sort of equivalency there.
We are currently commenting in a thread about dangerous misinformation in which you are providing misinformation.
I think a certain amount of aggression is warranted, and we're long past overdue for it.
Edit: spelling
Mixing up the mayor and governor of NY, and fixing it 2 minutes later isn't spreading misinformation, and it's sure as hell not dishonesty that Flying Squid immediately accuses me of.
When I criticize democrats for adopting republican policies, I'm not absolving the republicans.
Honestly they were all correct if we simply:
A) Got enough masks
B) Got people to properly wear the fucking things
Biden was not correct when he started telling people "The pandemic is over!" or that they don't need masks on public transit.
This shit was wrong and got a million people killed and caused serious health issues with millions more when mostly republicans were doing it, it's not OK when democrats do the same thing.
Yeah but I'm saying like if we would've just worn the masks and not done a lot of the other stuff it would've likely been better than what we did.
Sure, increasing mask use decreases covid spread. As does requiring/providing a certain level of filtration in buildings that expect over X people, banning businesses that went WFH from requiring anyone who did a WFH job from coming back into the office, requiring COVID vaccinations, etc.
Agreed. Overall, I just think the restrictions in the beginning were too onerous for most here.
Masking would've been the cheap, smart way to do a thing to lower the amount of spread without having to (god forbid) stay in your house for a little while or do anything to improve your business.
Correct, distributing and requiring masks was the absolute lowest hanging fruit. But we've seen what other countries that fared far better than we did implemented.
Vietnam mobilized their police and others to help with the safe running of local restaurants and deliver hot, fresh food to locked down communities, this made people more accepting of lockdowns. China built hospitals in areas that were at risk of being overwhelmed and added UV filters+better airflow to schools and public places.
The CDC has insane powers, a century ago they were going apartment by apartment, kicking down doors to vaccinate everyone in NYC. It's crazy that we accept them not mandating businesses have a certain amount of airflow based on the number of people inside.
The American public has been poisoned against all of the stuff you talked about other countries doing and at this point it believes everything besides having a cop smother you to death because you slept outside on a park bench is a communism. I'm being hyperbolic, but only a little.
You named one guy. Come on dude. So fucking disingenuous.
Did you miss the democrats declaring covid is over for real this time, not like when Trump said it, stop wearing masks and ending testing and other protections shortly after they got into power?