Whenever I see a Biden ad, the voice over by John Doman always throws me a bit. I'm like, oh, Rawls from The Wire is endorsing Biden.

I think when we're being compared more to the Russia plan and the India plan and the Brazil "plan", it's safe to assume we're in the bottom tier of responses.

And the calculus involving economic restrictions should definitely include how most other countries are more open than we are now because they have it down to a few isolated outbreaks rather than still having a /100K rate that's higher than most other countries as their peak even though it's "improving" here.

I know we can't double blind this with some alternate universe scope and see how a different President acts differently. But it's hard to see our response as anything but towards the bottom.

SI

Whatever deaths there may be from economic restrictions have to be small. We know the total excess deaths and we know how many of those are linked to COVID.

I've seen this getting a ton of play in conservative circles arguing that we're doing more harm than good with the restrictions.


Revolver Exclusive Study: COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself - Revolver

That's fucking rich. Their argument, as I understand it, is that all of the economic consequences are the fault of government restrictions, and the result of those consequences will lead to many people dying earlier than they would have otherwise.

They also argue that dying 7 to 17 years sooner than expected, as they say is true for almost all COVID deaths, isn't something we should shut down the economy for.

And then there's the whole problem with assigning all of the blame to the government, and not even attempting to figure out what the lost years cost might be without any restrictions.

But all that's hard to explain, while more people died because of the shutdown is pretty easy to say. I have no doubt it will be coming to my Facebook page.

That site is something special.

All those countries are doing better than us. Even the ones that fucked up early on.

3 debates (1 town hall like) and 1 VP debate.

I will watch the VP debate because of Kamala, want to see her in action on the big stage. Interested in the Presidential town hall debate but not the other 2 (assume traditional format).

Joe needs to be prepped (Hunter, sexual harassment etc.), focused and hopefully get a better make up team. IMO he also needs to find a way to get under Trump's skin early somehow.

if you need to watch a debate to make a decision here, good luck.

The Trump team is upset because they didn't get their choice of moderators. Chris Wallace of FOX is the possible closest and Trump isn't a big fan of him.

If you don't think a poor Biden performance (e.g. dementia like symptoms) and a good Trump performance won't make a difference, you are kidding yourself.

But no, I don't need to watch the debates. I do enjoy a good town hall and Kamala is an unknown to me.

JFC. THERE IS NO DEMENTIA!

There is no doubt as people age they have some sort of cognitive decline.

I did not say he has dementia but as I posted somewhere else/earlier it's not clear to me the difference between senility and dementia so I can't definitely discuss either or (and probably neither can you) unless we have a panel of experts that certify one way or another (and not like the Trump gimmick).

It is absolutely fair for US public to judge for themselves in the debates if Joe's (or Trump's) amount of cognitive decline causes them concern. How candidates present themselves (e.g. can they answer questions without being confused etc.) especially in a stressful situation is a valid reason for people to view the debates ... even if one's mind is pretty much made up.

I think it would be a lot more fair if the bar were equal. In one corner we have "covfefe" and in another we have a guy who might ramble a little like grandpa because he's forgotten more about policy than most people will ever know. But totally comparable situations.

SI

Sure, Biden is getting a raw deal vs Trump in the "cognitive decline" discussion. No one in their late 70's and 80's is going to be as sharp as in their 40's and 50's.

However, Trump's cognitive decline symptoms is mixed in with his narcissism, BS, outrageous conduct, sexism, racism etc. If Biden screws up, it's because he is senile or has dementia. Because he is a pretty straight shooter (other than being an oblivious sexual harasser earlier) what else can people attribute his mistakes to.

Part of the problem is the left-wing media hasn't been successful in sticking the cognitive decline on Trump (there were so many other shiny objects to report on). The right-wing media is going to make this one of the pillars of Trump's strategy and going to pounce on it if Biden screws up somewhat often.

There is literally no evidence of dementia. It's a lie to say there is evidence. The best way for it not to be an issue is to use your eyes and ears and recognize that there is no evidence of dementia.

I'm tired of treating outright lies as savvy campaign tactics that we have no control over. Stop spreading lies and the tactic won't be so savvy. If you do spread the lies, you're a liar.

So you don't believe there is any evidence of "cognitive decline"? (vs senility or dementia which I have stated I do not have a good definition for).

Because that is what we are discussing now.

One guy asked about injecting Lysol to cure a virus.

Biden is in mental decline but come on. If people don't see Trump's brain as a bowl of pudding, then they are stupid.

Almost certainly less than the average for a man that age.

But it's a bullshit argument because you keep saying senile and dementia. You've been saying that long after you've been called out on it, so I can only assume you're comfortable lying.

Ignore button very effective guys. Just saying.

Not that effective when everyone keeps replying to him.

Truth. That would be a great feature that this board needs.

Ignore should be pretty easy to do when you have wet sticky hands already.

My response to this post
Was the below:

I can see how you believe I said Biden has dementia but my response was to why people would still want to watch debates to see how both performs onstage. The e.g. means "for example" and not i.e. "in other words"

Also, regarding being called out for using senile & dementia? I agree on senility as that is a normal progression of aging but on dementia (where I think you have the big beef on) I think you are thinking of someone else? See below from Mar 11. I think I'm the first person to use "cognitive decline".

See Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - 2020 Democratic Primaries Thread

I do think everyone believes there is something "off" (not necessarily "dementia") about Trump but when they do the calculus of the other candidate and policies, what has Trump done for me, what they have seen in the past 3.5 years etc. they don't see a pile of pudding. They see Trump being Trump and it being "normal" now because it's been going on for the past 3.5 years, we are numbed to Trump's antics and it's not "big news". This is the 38-42%.

Whereas for Biden, he has not been in the spotlight as much vs Trump. He's been stable, hasn't done anything crazy etc. So when a negative like symptoms of cognitive decline shows up, it's "big news".

Bottom-line to me. Both Biden and Trump have cognitive decline (it's inevitable). Both are getting senile (by the standard definition meaning loss of cognitive functions due to normal aging). The real question to me is not who has it more, it is does it prevent them from doing their Presidential duties.

A hypothetical scenario of a bumbling, confused Biden during the debates against a half-way decent Trump would certainly raise a concern with me. This is getting back to the original question and my answer on why people should watch all/some of the debates even if their minds are made up.


BTW - glad to reengage with you and have discussions. I think we've been doing a pretty good job of ignoring each other recently (even without an ignore button). I would like to continue other discussions but let's both of us keep it civil and not resort to direct or indirect insults. If you don't want to be constrained by this, let's continue to ignore each other.

To me, the Trump mental thing is a double-edged sword for him. On the one hand, if he's diminished that's obviously not good, but OTOH, if this is him perfectly lucid and with no issues whatsoever... I think I'm more concerned!

you act as if Trump currently performs his presidential duties

You may interpret it that way because I voice support for some of Trump's policies and I evaluate pros & cons of each, but I have consistently said I would vote for Biden.

I have voiced concerns about Biden's make up team, and also progress/degree of his senility (which my definition is normal as one ages, not dementia) but he is the best transition candidate that we have for "normalcy" and moderate policies until the next gen takes over.

Senility is not normal. Senile has a strong negative connotation. Senile isn't a medical diagnosis outside of Alzheimer's. Most people die without significant mental decline.

Worries about Biden's senility are lies, plain and simple. I doubt I get you to stop, but you should at least get called out.

You completely missed my point.

Not sure what your definition of "significant" is but most people that die in their 80's plus probably did die with significant cognitive decline.

A layman's definition of senility.

Another definition
Definition of Senile

I'm perfectly okay not using dementia and won't use senility as its not a medical term but more layman's.

Let's settle on "cognitive decline" which is normal as one ages.


Did you find a quote from me where I said Biden had dementia? I noticed you dropped it from the above accusation.

Sure, okay, np.

Sure, okay, np.

On the top bar, click search. Whn that page loads, type your user name into the box on the top right and in the box on the top left type dementia. Scroll to the bottom and click search.

That should show you all instances of you using the word dementia in your posts.

The discussion is obviously regressing with no productive end in sight. Let me know when you find me saying Biden has dementia.

USA Today poll shows 47% expect Trump to win the debates vs 41% Biden. It just drives home the line of thought that the Trump campaign has made a huge mistake in lowering expectations for Biden.

That does seem crazy. Joe has sounded real strong lately in his big-ticket appearances, while we're all still waiting for Trump to complete his first full sentence. Go figure.

Should I just rename this thread to the "2020 General Election Thread"?

Yes, Nobodyhere.

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By what measure? If you mean deaths and cases right now, then yes. But if that's your measure, it inherently absolves Trump of what happened earlier. I certainly don't think that's the proper approach. If you mean death rate over the course of the pandemic, then no. We're doing badly, but Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the UK are among those doing worse. In terms of testing we're actually pretty near the top - though as always those numbers are a poor comparison because contact tracing matters, testing regimes and standards are different, the better you do at containment the less testing is required, etc.


I don't think we know that at all. There are many factors and a lot of them overlap. Not having many deaths from the economic factors would fly in the face of research from past recessions etc. That doesn't mean that isn't true, but for example the hospitalization rate from the flu is up slightly over last year but deaths are far down. A lot of the time we don't know if someone died due to COVID or the flu. There are many categories of deaths such as these where we just plain don't know - the numbers we have are our best guess.

As I've said since pretty early on, it will be years after a effective vaccine is fully deployed until we really have as good a handle on the impact as we are going to get, and even at that point with a ton more data and analysis than we have now it will still be pretty uncertain with a lot of 'give' in the numbers. The global health care infrastructure was simply not nearly ready enough for something like this to give a better result than that. We just plain don't really know.

Your comment above was re: Excess Deaths. I get you saying some of the excess deaths may be caused by the recession etc. but I'm thinking that's a relatively small % of the excess deaths.

It's estimated to be 8-12% and there is a graphic in the article to show a big spike in April (presumably before any significant economic/recessionary impact).

With that said, the 8-12% excess deaths which most we attribute to the coronavirus doesn't seem excessive. It's definitely more deaths that we should count towards coronavirus when it's all said and done, and gives us an indication how good our tracking is. The 8-12% undercount seems acceptable/reasonable to me based on all the confusion and not having our act together earlier.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...ted-2020-08-13

We've had a very short recession at this point. If there were tens or hundreds of thousands of extra unexplained deaths, we'd notice. It would be a tremendous shock to happen in such a short time.

One way we can measure doing a shitty job with COVID is that we never really dropped below 20000 cases a day and we decided that was good enough so now we're plateauing at 40000 cases a day. The flare ups in other western countries aren't anywhere near as bad as our daily normal.

And we're going to pass Italy in deaths per capita soon, because we're still losing 1000 people a day.

Also, as some of the more right leaning folks here like to remind us we live in a country made great and a envy of the world. That being trolled at it is true we are the most advanced and richest country likely in the history of the planet so we should be far ahead of everyone in any measure of success and leading the way for a cure which I am not sure we are.

There's no doubt the US could have done a better job. I do believe Hillary would have been better than Trump in our response but do also think there would still be a lot of miscues etc. where Hillary would also have come under a lot of criticism.

IMO "far ahead of everyone in any measure of success" is too high of a bar. However, "leading the way for a cure" is pretty fair if you account that China probably had 1-2-3 months head start (and had patient near/zero which according to WWZ movie is very important!). Looking at a list of vaccines in phase 3 clinical trials, there are 3 - UK/Sweden, China & US.

Your underlying point that US coulda/shoulda/woulda done better is fair. Where we greatly failed was leadership. Deaths may still have been relatively the same/less but the lack of competent leadership to reassure that everything possible is being done, coordinated well, helping friends and also cooperating with friends etc. is definitely a gap.

You obviously can't say what Hilllary would have done, but unlikely she wouldn't have gutted the CDC pandemic team and the playbook. That alone would have had us way ahead of the game. Then factor in all the things Trump did that were so simple for him NOT to do. Trump downplayed it for a long time, and actively fought a mask mandate. Pitted states against each other, tried to profit off the resale of PPE. Touted fake remedies, etc...all those add up to tens of thousands of deaths that likely could have been avoided.

*But can you PROVE that harmed the response* sarcasm

Hell, if we only had 30k dead in a Hillary administration, the GOP Congresspeople would be calling for hearings and how terrible the response was.

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Fixed that for you.

Literally nobody here is arguing that it didn't. The question is about how much, and even more fundamentally the appropriate level of concern about the number relative to other realities.


Certainly. I think the excess deaths is a good estimate of what we've had so far. But we don't know how long of a tail those will have - in other words, how much longer we will have excess deaths after the deployment of a vaccine. That will be an important point of information. There's also a lot of question as to how we should categorize the excess deaths we do have. Trying to nail down the current situation is like trying to predict what things will look like when we're in the endzone while standing on our own 30-yard line.