Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    OK - I have to set the record straight here. Without revealing too much information publicly about my job, I can say with every fiber of my being that this is not the case. I have not encountered anyone, ever, in working with any agency or office officially tasked with providing official US statistics, that's not a political appointee, in my decade of service to my country in a statistical organization tasked with providing relevant and timely statistics to inform public policy that has been 100%, without any doubt, fully committed to providing unbiased and non-partisan national statistics. We just don't do that. The fact that the appearance of bias in reporting of official statistics is now codified by law (or at least, given the current guidance from OMB) as a federal offense per the Foundations for Evidence-based Policy Making Act makes this question of "biased statistics" a complete line of bullshit.

    Statistics spouted by politician? Likely biased, un-punishable.

    Statistics as published by a "mother" statistical organization within the US statistical system? As unbiased as they come, worldwide.
     
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  2. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Sorry @yotacowboy but I have to disagree. Should I try to trust the government (or any group that uses information from the Government) to give me accurate information when for years they lied to our faces? I really don't trust the numbers, and most likely never will.

    Federal Gov lied to me about Iraq, burned that bridge for me when I was growing up. I don't trust for example on the state level stuff on the Covid number in NY (not too shocked thanks to Cuomo doing his usual self) or the numbers in FL (which I am convinced is underreported to help the political majority in FL look good for 2022 and beyond).
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2021
  3. Ghost of Zorin

    Ghost of Zorin New

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    error
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2021
  4. Ghost of Zorin

    Ghost of Zorin New

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    Implementing Marxist political and social agenda is not radicalism ??
     
  5. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Dunno who you are.

    As much as I can't stand former NYC Democrats...I do wanna go to this place:

    [​IMG]

    It's real. Thank you Texas. I would go to eat that awesome burger and also laugh internally as a NYC Native of when did this guy from Queens who was up the butt with Clinton and Cuomo was popular with Texans...

    Eh...give me a cowboy hat and two burger patties and two slices of cheese and make it medium.
     
  6. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I dunno. Stats from the state level, that depends upon the state. Texas and California are really good. (Texas tends to present raw numbers, California likes to do color codes in addition to the numbers like purple, red, green, fuschia, etc.)

    Generally on the federal level, I do trust the stats. 99% of the people working (the actual workers, not the unqualified politically appointed mouth-breathers at the top) at the Federal agencies are good people and not overly political. They may have political leanings, but ultimately they are professionals at what they do. Presidents, members of Congress, and their appointees come and go. The number crunchers working at the Fed level, they are a constant. These institutions are big ships. A term or even two from a "bad" President can't steer them off course. Likewise, any reports of institutions being gutted and rendered ineffective (such as CDC) are fake news to serve a narrative. And if they were real news, it would take years to take effect - usually best to blame the President from the prior term.

    I would cite stuff like the UBPR: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...incorrect-audio-blog.7261/page-78#post-324517 and with respect to the Wuhan Pneumonia*, of which I was curious of the excess deaths - since people die anyway:

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

    I love how the Feds, the CDC in this case, take a very conservative approach in calculating excess deaths. This is good stuff. The blue bars are the average of deaths in the past several years. Being extra careful, an orange line is put as an upper bound (95% prediction interval). Yeah, definitely more people than usual are biting the dust because of the Wuhan pneumonia*. A lot of people.

    upload_2021-3-27_10-20-12.png

    * Acknowledged politically incorrect statement specific to the USA and probably a jailable offense in China. To make myself clear in light of the current trend or fad of Stop Asian Hate, I am not an Asian racist. Wuhan pneumonia was a term used early by in China and still used by people in Taiwan and also colloquially by my parents (who are Taiwanese). COVID is a nonsense term used by the WHO (a organization controlled by China) to defect the blame away from the China Communists who fucked up early on during the pandemic in not letting the world know the extent of the danger of the virus.

    As far as the tensions between Blacks and Asians in Oakland and New York, "China virus" has nothing to do with that despite what ABC News says. That shit is complex goes way back decades, maybe even more than century. Sure we see Blacks attack old Asian grandpas and granmas, but I'll let you guys in on the dirty secret that many Asians in these neighborhoods dislike blacks. I don't buy this shit that this is the white man's fault either - that the white man has pitted Asians against Blacks and vice-versa. People just gotta own this shit and make it right. Prejudice is normal. The proper thing to do is the recognize that one is prejudiced rather than pretend that one isn't and quickly label anyone as racist.
     
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    Last edited: Mar 27, 2021
  7. roshambo123

    roshambo123 Friend

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    I watched a documentary on the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan with a lot of ground level footage. The key take-aways were not only how the Chinese destroyed their own journalists who tried to report the situation, but how the lockdown of the city caused everyone there, including sick people, to get on a train and get out of the city before the gates slammed shut. The sick would take tons of drugs to reduce their fever so they could get past checkpoints, so in effect, the government lockdown squeezed the sponge on the virus and sent it across China.
     
  8. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    We don't really know what the excess deaths are from, do we? Considering the way they have decided to code death certificates so that every covid infection is a covid death. They may have picked up covid in the hospital while being treated for their motorcycle crash, for pete's sake. Add in all the surgeries set aside, heart conditions turning to heart attacks and strokes, cancer diagnoses being missed plus a plethora of other conditions. Add suicides and overdoses and undiagnosed depression affecting people of all ages. Increase in homicides. There is just no easy number, chart, no reliable tracking. There are other diseases as well that went untreated for a the long while that hospitals were only open for covid. All we know is that Covid happened and the federal response was regrettable. Rushed mrna untested vaccines (that they had considered too dangerous after the previous covid outbreak because of it's nature, mrna) and they distributed them to populations in the midst of a pandemic, which is the worst time to distribute a vaccine. Mutations/r/us. The long term effects are ticking time bombs. From Trump till now, govt has failed us and now Cuomo wants a passport.... the dipshits are in charge and making health decisions based on optics. Best to follow your own best advice here. Do research and learn the best way. Stay away from mass media.
     
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  9. Stuff Jones

    Stuff Jones Friend

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  10. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Yup. I think there is sufficient data, good data, for people to make their own decisions. Early on there wasn't... well that's not true because there were already many lessons learned about OG SARS from the experience of many Pacific Rim countries that had to deal with this shit in the early 2000s.

    One interesting fact: the virus has not been running rampant at the schools in Texas which have remained open with preventative measures (masks, attempts at social distancing, compartmentalizing groups, sanitization, quarantine, etc.) At least not in Corpus. Schools have been open for in-person ever since we moved here. Same thing in Taiwan, but not just for schools, but for everyone, every business.

    These lockdowns technically never needed to happen. The problem is that Americans are too unruly. Whether one believes masks work or not shouldn't matter as they are not that inconvenient. Too many people can't handle the minor inconvenience or the blow to their ego of being "told what to do". I still shake my head at the 25-person "coronavirus" X-mas parties in Orange County I witnessed via Zoom meetings (this is really the kind of stuff that caused the virus to spread like wildfire in California).

    It's like what I've said about certain countries not being able to handle democracy or being deserving of dictatorship. We Americans (and westerners) deserve lockdowns and confused government handling of this virus. I would certainly love to say FU to our gov't, but not to the point of being childish or idiotic where the greater good is harmed.
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2021
  11. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    One thing I will say plagued the pandemic AND election coverage more than ever, was the utter scourge of ill-wrought opinion pieces. It's always been a thing, but I think when internet intellectuals became a thing, it went on overdrive. Because now people look for that. They're used to having subjects delivered that way. Often your first and last exposure is through some avenue for opinion.

    And the thing is, if you do some research, try to pull some reliable information, maybe go back and study the relevant subjects... I'm talking academic sources predating the current issue, stuff that gets into the mechanics of what you're dealing with, that protects you to a degree. If you have a foundation going in, you see the errors and slyness. You get that this is part-fact, part-grift. People without that foundation won't see. And if it suits them emotionally, they'll forget they're reading an opinion piece.

    I guess the way actual stories are ran isn't much better, though.

    Goes hand in hand. Toss out some vague facts, show a little footage, describe some revolving events and factors. Maybe have an expert on to give the most superficial background possible. That's a story these days. It's not nearly enough to know what's going on. I as a viewer can only rationalize that as what I think is happening. And if I get invested in that, maybe I watch more... maybe I see some opinion pieces that 'complete' the picture. But can I really say that I understand? Can I even say that *they* understand?

    It's really just such a messy way of making sense of events that I'm shocked anybody understands anything happening in the world. 8 times out of 10 I go on the news, I have no clue what to f'ing think. And I don't want it to tell me! I simply want the tools. The plain information. I can use rational thinking to work my way through it and form my own view, which I can then at least say is my own and map my rationality all the way back to the facts at hand.

    And I'm not saying we can't have opinion pieces. I like opinion pieces on things I'm already up on. But I think the way that we engage with them presently is a problem.
     
    Last edited: Mar 28, 2021
  12. haywood

    haywood Friend

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    Opinion pieces aren’t a problem as long as they’re clearly labeled as such (and ideally it’d be counterbalanced by opinion from the other side) but what we’re seeing is the proliferation of activist journalism and the intermingling of news and opinion. And of course neither side will believe anything that doesn’t come from their own preferred narrative peddler.

    Onto Marv’s point about the lack of disaster in Texas the general lockdowns were always a bad idea after the initial two weeks or whatever to flatten the curve. Covid is deadly to a subset of the population but that means we need to take precautions for those people (and prioritize them for vaccines and whatnot). Of course people have died from covid who aren’t in those demographics but people die of complications from the flu too, we just don’t really hear about it. There was a segment on Joe Rogan when he had Jim Breuer (ex-SNL) on about some of the craziness from an Everyman type perspective. Here’s a youtube version, the story about his neighbor toward the end is nuts.

     
  13. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    I can't shake the belief that the greater good was harmed by our govt. and continues to be. Now if you subscribe to the "Great Reset" proposed by Klaus Schwab and others of The World Economic Forum, you would think that Covid and it's response was the best thing since sliced bread as it allows them to meet their goals. They are open and up front about this. It's right on their website.
    Build back better. You have heard this from Biden and his crowd but where did it start? Who said it first?
    Klaus Schwab did. Maybe the left thought it was catchy and just picked it up to appear smart, unaware of the philosophy they were parroting but I think that's a bit naive and they are fully on board with the Great Reset, seeing advantage in it.

    Just wondering, where does it end? I could go on, ex., Fauci touting HCQ in a study after the last Covid but trying to block it's use in the current crisis. Imagine if instead, HCQ production was ramped up and made available OTC in your corner drugstore. How many lives would have been saved if one just started taking the remedy at the first symptom? If treatment was a priority vs untested vaccines unwisely distributed during the pandemic. You treat during the pandemic. You vaccinate to prevent another pandemic. Instead they blocked treatment, officially, and provided an untested vaccine in defiance of wise medical practice, in defiance of known science and healthcare. Why? Still not sure. I got the FU but understand that there are others moving us in a better direction.
     
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  14. Friday

    Friday Friend

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    You can stop right there. The problem with HCQ is not because Trump liked it but because the study was a fraudulent POS that also breached ethical guidelines.
    https://forbetterscience.com/2021/0...-regrette-rien/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
    The blogpost is hyperbolic, but it summarises a lot of the problems with the study and the principal investigator which you can corroborate against other sources.
     
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  15. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    Tons of studies out there. Here is the one from the NIH 5 years later...https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16115318/
    and an ongoing trial, all pointing to it's safety and efficacy, not to mention the plethora of reports of it's use with Covid 19 by doctors during the course of the pandemic. We'll just have to disagree https://hcqtrial.com/
     
  16. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I miss the good old days when conspiracy theories in medicine were more limited - Mikey's death by Pop Rocks and soda, stuff like that...
     
  17. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    In Canada, according to the government statistics, full 85% of deaths were in the LTC facilities. You know how many provinces addressed this glaring issue? One. The health officer in British Columbia ordered the support stuff to work only for one facility, and the province subsidized their wages and their employees. HUUUGE surprise: the number of COVID deaths in BC is half of national average. Someone just thought for 5 mins and took responsibility. No need for that if you can fuckup vaccine distribution, kill people in LTC, lockdown the rest of the population and call everyone who opposes lockdowns, on whatever ground, right wing conspiracy theorist. Much simpler ,and what frightens me, way more effective politically. Just remember not to make any unwelcome sexual advances in the process, That part will finish you.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Here's my cynical side:

    asianhate.jpg

    Seriously. I am not ordering from Amazon today.
     
  19. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    More cynicism if you handle it [​IMG]
     
  20. sphinxvc

    sphinxvc Gear Master (retired)

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    I'm just happy the energy spent on the opinions in this thread are contained here as opposed to out there.

    Just an update from the outside for everyone: the world seems to be doing okay.
     

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