We Can Work It Out - Politics & Philosophy | Page 109 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Fortunately for me, i live in a state that consistently votes blue, so i’ll be voting for the candidate i like (probably Howie Hawkins of the Green Party) instead of the lesser of two evils, knowing that my choice is unlikely to affect the election results.

As for Kamala Harris, she appears to be somewhere around here on the political compass.

She’s definitely better than Trump but some of her stances bother me, particularly her stances on Medicare for all, abortion*, and free speech.

*I’m fine with a politician being pro-choice but she’s a feminist strawwoman on the issue, supporting little to no regulation and wants it to be publicly funded. This means that if she got what she wanted, a woman who’s 8 months pregnant with a healthy and fully developed baby can walk into her local Planned Parenthood and have an abortion, partially paid for with taxpayer money.

QuarryMan said
I think tactically the main reason for *not* voting Biden would be to effectively force the DNC to finally start recognising economic progressives as a voting block by showing them that they can’t win without doing so. During my ‘Bernie or Bust’ phases, that was pretty much my opinion on the matter, but at the end of the day the immediate wellbeing of minority groups is more important.

That’s what i used to think as well. However, the DNC (as well as the more traditional Democrats) probably would’ve voted for Trump if Bernie won the primaries, just like in 2008 when a bunch of Hillary supporters (including senator Joe Lieberman) voted for Republican John McCain over Barack Obama.

@Ron Nasty said in another thread
Of course, were a vaccine to be found, and things around the world started normalising faster than thought, there has to be a slim chance its release date may be brought forward. The worrying thing is if we’re still in the same situation next August…

I don’t think a vaccine will be enough to return to normalcy, at least initially. The main problem is that vaccines are never 100% effective and the initial doses will likely have a low rate of effectiveness.

My guess would be that the initial vaccine’s ~75% effective and you would need 70% of the population to be immune to the virus (although the vaccine only has to be 50% effective to be approved by the FDA), which would mean that we only have the potential to achieve herd immunity if everyone gets vaccinated that can and it’s possible that even that wouldn’t be enough to achieve herd immunity. However, while this might be enough in most of the developed world, polls show that as much as half of Americans would refuse the vaccine, meaning that as much as 75% of Americans could still be capable of getting and spreading the virus, even after a vaccine’s out and Anthony Fauci has confirmed that there will be no vaccine mandate.

Also, there’s a lot of people who believe that getting the virus gives you immunity. However, it’s unknown whether or not this is actually true and even if it is, it’s likely that the immunity’s only temporary.

My guess would be that we’ll have to let the virus die out naturally by wearing masks, social distancing, and limiting crowds until around mid-2022 (at least in the United States).

Good point. However, anti-vaxxers will just send their children to a private school that doesn’t require them to be vaccinated or even decide to homeschool them and while non-essential businesses could definitely deny service to anyone who isn’t vaccinated, it might not be enough if the vaccine’s less than 70% effective and even if the vaccine’s 70% or more effective, there’s nothing stopping anti-vaxxers from boycotting and or picketing places that deny service to them, which could discourage such places from re-opening or encourage them to open with restrictions like the ones you see now since anti-vaxxers represent a huge chunk of the population.

As for the latter point, i used the wrong words. I don’t think the pandemic will die out in the sense that no one will ever get it after 2022. However, i think that by then, we’ll have a good enough understanding of the virus that we’ll have a highly effective vaccine to achieve herd immunity and highly effective treatments so no one has to die from the disease if they somehow get it.

Ron Nasty said
Has famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward just taken down his second President?

I asked somewhere on here months back if Trump’s attitude to COVID-19 might not be his downfall, and while it’s arguable that Woodward has sat on valuable information he had for months, he has a new book, Rage, coming out which accuses President Trump of misleading the American public on the seriousness of COVID-19 from the very beginning. Not only does Woodward accuse Trump of failing in the most important role of his Office, to protect the American public, but he convicts him with quotes from on-the-record interviews that, most importantly, were taped.

Trump can’t make accusations of being misrepresented or lied about this time. It’s all there in Trump’s own fecking words.

On 7 February Trump told Woodward, “You just breathe the air, and that’s how it’s passed. And so, that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”

He went on to suggest it was possibly 5x more deadly than the worst flu, adding “It’s very deadly.”

Very different assessment to anything he was saying at the time, when he was saying publicly things like, on 26 February, “This is a flu. This is like a flu. … It’s a little like a regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner,” or on 9 March, “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life and the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

To be fair, Trump isn’t the sole person to blame in this scenario, as his son in-law Jared Kushner also played a big part in downplaying the virus.

So, while admitting in an interview for a book just how deadly he knew the virus was, he withheld that from the American public and told them it wasn’t that dangerous and to carry on as normal, discouraging the necessary measures – like lockdowns – to prevent the spread of the virus.

Yes and no. While it’s true that lockdowns do help prevent the spread of the virus, you don’t necessarily need a lockdown to keep the virus under control.

For example, Canada was able to keep the virus under control while only banning large gatherings and in-person dining.

And much of Trump’s reaction over the months can be seen in light of these quotes to Woodward, that he knew from the beginning of February just how deadly the virus was, and that it was much worse than flu, and that he downplayed it because of the effect it might have on the voters in an election year for him.

If that was his strategy (which it appears to be), that’s a terrible strategy.

While it might’ve helped him in the short term, Trump would’ve had a massive boost in his approval ratings if he had handled the pandemic well and tried to unite the nation rather than divide, he would’ve won re-election in a landslide.

While I may not be vonbontee, I think I can still help answer your question (by speaking for Alberta, at least).

On March 12th, gatherings were restricted to no more than 250 people (with grocery stores, places of worship, malls and airports being excluded), international travel was advised against and those who were travelling internationally were advised to self-isolate for 14 days or longer after they returned. All jury trials that had not yet commenced were suspended on March 13th until May 31st or until further notice.

Schools were closed effective as of March 15th (at which point I finished the year online and only went back to school briefly to pick up any belongings and drop off textbooks), as well as daycares with the exception of a few approved day homes due to lower attendance. Provincial achievement tests were cancelled but diploma exams needed to get into university were not (if I recall correctly, we had the option to sign up for diploma exams if we really needed them but otherwise we didn’t take them). Further restrictions on gatherings were also put in place on the 15th, with places of worship no longer being exempted and the number of people allowed being reduced to no more than 50.

Non-urgent scheduled and elective surgeries were postponed on March 17th. Gatherings were even further restricted on March 27th, with no more than 15 people being allowed. Some non-essential business were closed, including close-contact businesses, dine-in restaurants, and non-essential retail stores. Essential businesses like grocery stores and pharmacies remained open. Liquor and cannabis stores were also deemed essential (errr, ok then ) and could remain open.

If you’re interested in it as well, there is a bunch of information about the relaunching here.

I hope this helped.

Interesting @WeepingAtlasCedars it’s not too different from our restrictions except that there wasn’t a stay at home order and restaurants were allowed to stay open for take out (us Americans had to rely solely on the drive thru).

Interesting.