(03-17-2020 09:26 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  The death rate on a per-capita basis has the United States at just around the lowest measured on a timeframe of 'days from first reported death'. Strikingly better than most elsewhere.

The one thing that comes to mind if you measure 'per-capita' is that China has one humongous denominator.

https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-varies-by-country.php

(03-17-2020 10:33 PM)mrbig Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 09:26 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  The death rate on a per-capita basis has the United States at just around the lowest measured on a timeframe of 'days from first reported death'. Strikingly better than most elsewhere.

The one thing that comes to mind if you measure 'per-capita' is that China has one humongous denominator.

https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-varies-by-country.php

This should remain true as long as we the health care systems do not get overwhelmed in any regions. Plus, we are still relatively early in our outbreaks relative to some of the outbreaks in other countries. Hopefully it stays this way.

(03-17-2020 12:04 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Trump did not dissolve pandemic unit

nope

I know you guys will attack the sources. All I did was google and these came up.

(03-17-2020 03:44 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  And frankly, the fact that there are other posters who also love to get twisted in knots over almost any post on this board by a liberal-leaning poster (not just me, mind you) are getting twisted up here, isn't great evidence that all fault lies here. I've seen Tanq, OO, etc. go down similarly stupid rabbit holes with other liberal posters. It just so happens that I'm masochistic enough to continue to respond to this current thread.

(03-18-2020 12:39 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 12:04 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Trump did not dissolve pandemic unit
nope
I know you guys will attack the sources. All I did was google and these came up.

I mean, there are a couple sites (probably others) saying that Red State is one of the further right-wing and least reliable (aka least factual) sites out there. So yeah, I don't trust the source at all. And I have no earthly idea what "longroom" even is. I won't cite Daily Kos to you if you won't cite Red State to me.

(03-17-2020 06:10 PM)ruowls Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 03:33 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 03:21 PM)tanqtonic Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 02:50 PM)ruowls Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 02:22 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Pot meet kettle, man.

I've never said that a poster on here has made the claim " 'don't be prepared for the worst' " as you put it.

I have argued for a perspective that ignores best-case scenarios that don't have hard evidence behind them, because they can distract and create an unnecessary, and unproductive, sense of security. You have decided to take that perspective and interpret it as me saying people on here are advocating for "not preparing for the worst." Again, your prerogative.

Owl#s put it well "But I'm from the plan pessimistic, be optimistic school."

My comment amounts to, at worst, "don't be optimistic," because it worries me that the optimism will do more harm than good. Like I told Owl#s, I'm glad he has evidence to say "I told you so."

If I may....There is some ambiguity in how you worded it. There is hard evidence. The virus comes from a lineage of viruses that do behave seasonally. Since it is a new virus and has not gone through a season yet, there is no confirmatory evidence of that trait. You are right that you wouldn't want to base actions now assuming it be seasonal. However, the current need is to stop the spread and mitigate the impact on society. And this does not require waiting through a season to see if it behaves seasonally. One would hope it does as it would augment the other actions that are being done to mitigate the spread. But far and away the most important actions now are to stop the spread.

I would add that not just 'one would hope' but also 'one might have a rational basis for both hypothesizing and for planning contingencies' about that, based on the known factors and attributes of closely related known subjects.

I've never denied there being a rationale basis for hypothesizing. I've been explicit in discussing our focus/what we should be doing and whether it should be a realistic part of our planning.

We don't live in a world with unlimited resources. And it seems like we have our hands full trying to mitigate and stop the spread right now - both in our hospital systems and in our general populace. So as RU said, far and away the most important actions we need to focus on are stopping the spread.

If it makes you feel better, if we had unlimited resources and we could develop contingencies for any rationale outcome, then yep, we should be developing contingencies for seasonality.

Well, the P Phil test to predict seasonal transition has been readily available for years and was actually run in Pennsylvania on 2/2. Why wouldn't seasonal transition be used in plans with such recent testing done on that particular variable?

(03-17-2020 04:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/mnuchin-says-trump-administration-is-looking-to-get-cash-to-americans-immediately.html

Quote:Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday outlined her own set of stipulations for any Big Business that receives federal bailout money. They include permanently giving up stock buy-backs and adding at least one seat to the board representing workers.

What an idiot. Does she even know what stock shares are?

(03-18-2020 07:14 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  That’s certainly news to me - I hadn’t seen that posted here or covered in the news. I don’t know a thing about the P Phil test, but it sounds like that’s the kind of evidence that begins to build a case for seriously considering seasonality. I wonder why that news wasn’t as wide spread.

(03-18-2020 07:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 04:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/mnuchin-says-trump-administration-is-looking-to-get-cash-to-americans-immediately.html

Quote:Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday outlined her own set of stipulations for any Big Business that receives federal bailout money. They include permanently giving up stock buy-backs and adding at least one seat to the board representing workers.

What an idiot. Does she even know what stock shares are?

I learned recently that stock buy backs were illegals until the 80s because it had been considered a form of stock manipulation.

(03-18-2020 07:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 12:39 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 12:04 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Trump did not dissolve pandemic unit
nope
I know you guys will attack the sources. All I did was google and these came up.

I mean, there are a couple sites (probably others) saying that Red State is one of the further right-wing and least reliable (aka least factual) sites out there. So yeah, I don't trust the source at all. And I have no earthly idea what "longroom" even is. I won't cite Daily Kos to you if you won't cite Red State to me.

But Red State is not the source of the information. The Red State article is basically a compilation of quotes from others, including FactCheck, which states,

"Those [funding] amounts went up again in fiscal year 2020, when the CDC was awarded $183 million for global public health protection, overall, and $125 million specifically for its global health security efforts. For fiscal year 2021, President Donald Trump has requested that CDC funding for global disease detection and other programs be increased further — to $225 million total, with $175 million going directly to global health security.
With its current funding, Bartee said, the CDC is actually working in “more than 60 countries” — not 10 — to address the threat of global infectious diseases and outbreaks."

And Tim Morrison, whom Red State describes as the "former senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense on the National Security Council" and whom Wikipdia states, "served as senior director for countering weapons of mass destruction -- "arms control and biodefense issues" -- on the US National Security Council," who stated the following in a WaPo opinion piece,

"It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious."

Further,

"One such move at the NSC was to create the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate, which was the result of consolidating three directorates into one, given the obvious overlap between arms control and nonproliferation, weapons of mass destruction terrorism, and global health and biodefense. It is this reorganization that critics have misconstrued or intentionally misrepresented. If anything, the combined directorate was stronger because related expertise could be commingled."

Hambone, in a prior post, basically stated that what happened was not so much an elimination or budget cutting, but a reorganization, and I'm going to defer to him because he works in the field. A specific office may have been eliminated, but not because the function was eliminated but because it was merged with another office. It does appear that as part of that reorganization some feet on the ground in China were removed. But given the secrecy with which the Chinese have handled this whole affair, do you really think the Chinese would have allowed those people access to function in this situation?

I would think that, before shooting the messenger, one would at least determine the source of the message.

(03-18-2020 08:01 AM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 07:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 04:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/mnuchin-says-trump-administration-is-looking-to-get-cash-to-americans-immediately.html

Quote:Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday outlined her own set of stipulations for any Big Business that receives federal bailout money. They include permanently giving up stock buy-backs and adding at least one seat to the board representing workers.

What an idiot. Does she even know what stock shares are?

I learned recently that stock buy backs were illegals until the 80s because it had been considered a form of stock manipulation.

You were misinformed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-24/stock-buyback-history-is-a-mess

Quote:The language of the law was so broad and vague that stock buybacks could be construed as a form of market manipulation, even if the practice went unnamed...

Were stock buybacks illegal? Or did firms simply have to disclose them?

The SEC never came up with a clear answer, so neither approach gained sway. Then came Ronald Reagan’s election and the great wave of deregulation that followed. In their revolutionary zeal, the SEC’s new masters rejected both the approaches debated in the 1970s. They did so with little debate or discussion, sweeping the whole matter on the rug by sanctioning buybacks with almost no strings attached.

On November 17, 1982, the agency issued Rule 10b-18, which created a “safe harbor” for corporations pursuing stock buybacks. This effectively shielded them from prosecution under the original 1934 legislation. But unlike similar regulatory safe harbors instituted at this time, the new rule had no mandatory disclosure requirements, relying instead on voluntary compliance.

(03-18-2020 08:11 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 08:01 AM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 07:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 04:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/mnuchin-says-trump-administration-is-looking-to-get-cash-to-americans-immediately.html

Quote:Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday outlined her own set of stipulations for any Big Business that receives federal bailout money. They include permanently giving up stock buy-backs and adding at least one seat to the board representing workers.

What an idiot. Does she even know what stock shares are?

I learned recently that stock buy backs were illegals until the 80s because it had been considered a form of stock manipulation.

You were misinformed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-24/stock-buyback-history-is-a-mess

Maybe slightly misinformed? Your article digs a little deeper and makes it clear that stock buy backs were never explicitly made illegal. But your article also makes it clear that stock buybacks were viewed as a form or market manipulation, which meant they were effectively illegal until 1982.

Quote:The language of the law was so broad and vague that stock buybacks could be construed as a form of market manipulation, even if the practice went unnamed...

Were stock buybacks illegal? Or did firms simply have to disclose them?

The SEC never came up with a clear answer, so neither approach gained sway. Then came Ronald Reagan’s election and the great wave of deregulation that followed. In their revolutionary zeal, the SEC’s new masters rejected both the approaches debated in the 1970s. They did so with little debate or discussion, sweeping the whole matter on the rug by sanctioning buybacks with almost no strings attached.

On November 17, 1982, the agency issued Rule 10b-18, which created a “safe harbor” for corporations pursuing stock buybacks. This effectively shielded them from prosecution under the original 1934 legislation. But unlike similar regulatory safe harbors instituted at this time, the new rule had no mandatory disclosure requirements, relying instead on voluntary compliance.

(03-18-2020 07:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 04:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/mnuchin-says-trump-administration-is-looking-to-get-cash-to-americans-immediately.html

Quote:Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday outlined her own set of stipulations for any Big Business that receives federal bailout money. They include permanently giving up stock buy-backs and adding at least one seat to the board representing workers.

What an idiot. Does she even know what stock shares are?

I learned recently that stock buy backs were illegals until the 80s because it had been considered a form of stock manipulation.

(03-18-2020 08:11 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 08:01 AM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 07:16 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 04:42 PM)Frizzy Owl Wrote:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/mnuchin-says-trump-administration-is-looking-to-get-cash-to-americans-immediately.html

Quote:Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday outlined her own set of stipulations for any Big Business that receives federal bailout money. They include permanently giving up stock buy-backs and adding at least one seat to the board representing workers.

What an idiot. Does she even know what stock shares are?

I learned recently that stock buy backs were illegals until the 80s because it had been considered a form of stock manipulation.

You were misinformed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-24/stock-buyback-history-is-a-mess

Maybe slightly misinformed? Your article digs a little deeper and makes it clear that stock buy backs were never explicitly made illegal. But your article also makes it clear that stock buybacks were viewed as a form or market manipulation, which meant they were effectively illegal until 1982.

(03-18-2020 12:39 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 12:04 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Trump did not dissolve pandemic unit

nope

I know you guys will attack the sources. All I did was google and these came up.

I mean, there are a couple sites (probably others) saying that Red State is one of the further right-wing and least reliable (aka least factual) sites out there. So yeah, I don't trust the source at all. And I have no earthly idea what "longroom" even is. I won't cite Daily Kos to you if you won't cite Red State to me.

(03-18-2020 07:50 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-18-2020 07:14 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  That’s certainly news to me - I hadn’t seen that posted here or covered in the news. I don’t know a thing about the P Phil test, but it sounds like that’s the kind of evidence that begins to build a case for seriously considering seasonality. I wonder why that news wasn’t as wide spread.

I guess my first question would be exactly what is the P Phil test and what did it find. From comments, I'm inferring that it suggests strong seasonal effects, but I don't know that affirmatively.

If that inference is in fact correct, then I suspect that you and I both know why the news is not widespread. The primary objective of the MSM (save Fox) is to create sufficient panic and hysteria to bring down Trump in the November election. Russia didn't do it, Ukraine didn't do it, so this is their Hail Mary. They're not going to report anything that goes against that grain.

(03-18-2020 12:39 AM)mrbig Wrote:  

(03-17-2020 12:04 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Trump did not dissolve pandemic unit

nope

I know you guys will attack the sources. All I did was google and these came up.

I mean, there are a couple sites (probably others) saying that Red State is one of the further right-wing and least reliable (aka least factual) sites out there. So yeah, I don't trust the source at all. And I have no earthly idea what "longroom" even is. I won't cite Daily Kos to you if you won't cite Red State to me.

(03-18-2020 08:31 AM)tanqtonic Wrote:  What the **** is 'effectively illegal'? That is nonsensical. "Effectively non-existent'... perhaps.


'effectively illegal' is not really even a concept.

That is like saying a woman is 'effectively pregnant'. Is the supposed illegality now your fortified entrenchment point?