To be clear you are suggesting there was a path that would have stopped this? I am sincerely sorry for what you and yours had to deal with, but I truly believe shutting everything down was a detriment to society and we are in the same place we would have been.
there's a massive gap between "shutting everything down" and "acting like fools." Our school navigated the highly restrictive regulations, which changed weekly, daily, sometimes during the work day. You did what was best practice at the time. If everyone was on the same page, moving in the same direction for the benefit of the whole rather than doing the I/me/my/mine shit and continuing to allow it to spread and mutate, then yes, absolutely we would have been in a different place. Give a fire more fuel -- or in this case, more un-vaccinated precaution-less hosts for the virus -- and it will spread.
People were forced out of jobs instead of allowing businesses and people to determine their own risk appetite. I think everyone should have gotten the vaccine as well. But I feel it should have been up to individuals to make those choices.
If by "same place we would have been," you mean "Set us years behind," then yes. All of the inflation that we are seeing these days is directly tied to the two huge spending bills that were passed during the the China Virus* times; one signed by Trump, and the other by Biden. FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS just "printed" into existence. Both houses of congress just had to cram as much pork as they could into those spending packages. And I understand why they did it. People needed money; both the poor minimum wage workers that got laid off, and their bosses who pocketed shit-tons of Payroll Protection loans. MY FORMER BOSS WAS ONE OF THEM! I want to make one thing very clear, from an independent voter: When the Chinese Virus* hit, the people in power in EVERY country saw an opportunity to grab money and power, and they took it. They will try it again, but they used up a lot of public good will this past time. With that said, the lockdowns and any arbitrary rules about the virus were bullshit. Fight me. *It absolutely came from China.
people determined their own risk appetite outside of work. We saw what happened. "People," when left to their own devices, are selfish and stupid. They're not determining their risk appetite for the population as a whole, they were deciding it for them as individuals. And they fucked up everyone else in the process. If you wanna shoot yourself in the foot go ahead, but don't shoot me in the foot in the process.
If people (Trump) simply called it the Wuhan Flu no one in good faith would've had a problem with the term. Except for China because they can't ever lose face.
So, did Harris release her medical records, or is it just a letter from a doctor saying she’s healthy? If it’s the latter, I mean, how can you compete with the guy who’s doctor’s note says he’s the Healthiest Human Who Ever Lived? I’m curious, actually. Is a political “release of medical records” really just a doctor’s summary, or has any politician actually fully waived their HIPAA protection to be fully transparent?
Dude, the entire world had the same problems with inflation. And we had less of it than most parts of the developed world. It was caused by the worldwide shutdowns which led to demand outstripping supply. And we know damn well that corporate greed contributed to a good part of it too. I agree that a lot of the spending was damn stupid, but it wasn't the main driver of inflation here. Not by a long shot.
Texas is stupid cheap to live in. Gas is consistently under $3. I don't know how HEB's prices are where they are, but it should be criminal. Prime NY strip is around $15/lbs. Their house brand is not only cheaper, but often times better than name brand (looking at you, dairy). This isn't directed at Dixie in particular, but more of a general complaint since I hear it all the time from people around me who don't understand that inflation is a global thing and that the US has it wildly better than everyone else. Texas though, specifically, is just absurd.
Yeah, I know that the rest of the world is experiencing inflation. I was focusing on the US because - SURPRISE - I live in the US, and this is the North American political thread. The people in power - upper and lower levels - saw an opportunity to grab money and power, and they took it. There shouldn't be ANYONE profiting off of a disease, but how many people got rich because of this? On the flip side, how many people's lives got ruined? Yeah, it's cheaper in Texas (for how long, though?), but it's still more expensive than it used to be, and that pisses me off because it didn't have to be this way. Yeah, let's hear Mr. Six-Figures talk about how the inflation really isn't that bad. In 2022, I got my new job, which came with a substantial raise. Welp, that raise was pretty much erased by inflation. I had big plans for the extra money I was going to be making, but I'm right back where I started.
Your posts on this topic seem to fundamentally misunderstand how public health works. Everyone was able to make their choices on the vaccine. If you chose to not get vaccinated, you experienced consequences like limits to where you could go and what you could do, because going out in public unvaccinated has consequences for other people. This isn't even new. If you went to school, you had some vaccines. If you played sports, you had even more vaccines. You were allowed to make individual decisions on vaccinations, but you were not allowed into certain public spaces if you represented a risk to other people. Masks were similar. In addition, your conclusion - that we just arrived here anyway where the disease is endemic so what was the point? - misses why we did all of those things. It was never because anyone with any disease education thought we were going to complete eradicate an airborne respiratory illness that was blowing through the entire population. That shit was always going to end up infecting a lot more people than we wanted, and was likely always on target to become part of our lives. The point was that millions of people were dying, the hospitals were overrun, and healthcare workers were put at extreme risk and were quitting in droves. Patients were laying in hospital hallways because there were no rooms and no beds. The care, equipment and meds that might help nurse a crashing or high risk patient through the illness were in such short supply they were almost nonexistant. It was desperation time to do anything we could to try and reduce the load on the hospitals and limit spread while vaccines and treatment methods were worked on. Yes, it sucked that advice seemed to be changing day-to-day. Yes, I'm sure some of the messaging could have been handled better. But that was where we were - in the midst of a crisis, learning about what was going on, and offering the best advice based on the current information available. Frankly, I think a big part of the pushback to that highlights just how shit the education is for such a wide swath of the population. Changing information and advice based on new research is not a bug of the scientific method, it's a feature. This should be something we learn about in schools. You listen to the scientists, and that includes changing advice as better information becomes available.
Yeah... what he said. Shit would have been way, way worse if we just ignored the isolating efforts altogether and carried on with our normal day to day.
So get better people to run for office and then elect them in. Right now the people have voted for completely fucking corrupt and stupid people, and go figure that in tough times they do what comes naturally to them. The fact that Trump is in a fight for the lead is fucking mind numbing, and my ultimate reaction is "you suffer the consequences of your actions".
“FEMA received news that the Title 10 (active military unit deployed to NC) came across some trucks of militia units who said they were out hunting FEMA personnel.” WTF is wrong with people.
@downndirty ... do you have any first hand insight into this? Is this really a big problem that you guys are dealing with?
One dude arrested: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...na-hurricane-helene-fema-armed-militia-threat https://www.yahoo.com/news/fema-crews-threatened-amid-hurricane-145523932.html I'm not at liberty to say, mostly because I'm off today, it's not my lane and I'm not involved (yet). We made "operational adjustments", but the work is still progressing as far as I'm aware. My read on "operational adjustments" is the security apparatus received some new threats, flagged some engagements as not worth the risk, and maybe told some folks to switch gears/locations until they could wrap up an investigation. The threats are always taken seriously, but it's a different magnitude when lies are coming from presidential candidates and similarly aligned political figures, and when political violence is a feature of the campaign. Also, this job taught me what a "sundown town" is, so I can imagine we're seeing some of that thrown into the "abundance of caution". Lastly, we rely on local law enforcement a great deal when we are in the field, and if they aren't able to support (remember, we're not the only game in town, and the police are disaster survivors as well), we may pare down to what we feel is defensible until things clear up. The safety and security of our responders is something we ALWAYS deal with, and right now we have literally thousands of people on the ground. My hope is that the only difference between what we're currently dealing with and what would be too normal to make the news is the political overtones and the usage of the term militia. We put forth tremendous effort to ensure anyone responding to a disaster can do so with as few hesitations as possible. Whomever is trying to impede this effort would be made an example of, if for no other reason than a disaster response worker is the worst type of fed to threaten. Our responders are more social worker than soldier, yet come under presidential authority. There is nothing to gain from threatening a responder, and everything to lose. The safety and security messaging we are sending out to responders is....more than what I recall from my last trip out, but less than the COVID messaging. I attribute this to the politics of the moment, and in the rush to get thousands of responders deployed, are finding where our support structures aren't where we'd like them to be. My hot take is that some Y'all Qaeda asshat got a bit too talkative, and someone takes them seriously because they see a gun rack in the back of the truck, coupled with some tweets. FEMA folks in the field aren't exactly hard to find, by design...we want to make it easy for folks to come get help. The idea that a militia is "hunting" FEMA officials is a bit absurd...we put up big fucking signs everywhere we sit down. When we're not on the clock, we're supposed to remove FEMA gear, and mind our business. FEMA does not mind being a lightning rod for criticism of how disasters were handled, we are used to it, and we want to spare the blame being placed on the locals. However, in FL it's not fair criticism when the state can't get hurricane mitigation, the cost of insurance or the cost of housing under control. The lies being spread by a presidential candidate are certainly not helpful, nor fair criticism. That these lies, coupled with violent rhetoric are inspiring this kind of threat is...disheartening.
Fema stood up an internal responder protection page, to provide a single place to report, access training and learn about what protections are in place. That's new. Also, we did get messaging about the misinformation, and what to do if we are targeted on social media. We were told to clean up social media presence, and apparently that wasn't prevention, it was in response. Fun fact, as of this morning, FEMA has disbursed $100m in NC alone since landfall, with more on the way. The people pushing these threats have the attention of our national security apparatus....
I would like to think/hope that there are serious repercussions to people pushing this misinformation that is resulting in this kind of reaction. Thanks for the insight... and I hope you and your teams are staying safe through all this.