Vast research has been done on authoritarian personalities. — JerseyFlight

The Republican Party or conservativtism isn’t an authoritarian personality. Granted Trump is a dictator wannabe, and many of his supporters seem willing undermine democracy in their support of him.

The Left favors democracy, the right, monarchy and a violent system of law. Do some research, you will be surprised. — JerseyFlight

Can you point something out?

The general dimensions are normally believed to look like this:

The general dimensions are normally believed to look like this: — praxis

I think we need to a third axis:

Rational <-----------------------------> Irrational (Magical? Conspiracist? Nonsensical? Trumpist?)

How could then Authoritarian left / Economic left be then also rational?

Well, that's just ...

LET ME BE CLEAR. I’M NOT IN COMPLIANCE. I’M IN DEFIANCE.
— Pastor Greg Locke; Jul 28, 13m:14s facebook av
THEY ARE TRYING TO SHUT OUR CHURCH DOWN. WE WILL NOT BE BULLIED.
— Pastor Greg Locke; Sep 1, 8m:31s facebook av

Is that ↑ what draws an enthusiastic crowd in the US?
Should they just be left to their own devices, and perhaps be asked to self-identify so others can keep a distance?



_{False claim shared by President Trump that only 6% of CDC-reported deaths are from COVID-19 is based on flawed reasoning (Pablo Rougerie; Health Feedback; Aug 29)
Still Confused About Masks? Here’s the Science Behind How Face Masks Prevent Coronavirus (Nina Bai; UC San Francisco; Jul 11)
How Well Do Masks Work? (Schlieren Imaging In Slow Motion!) (Jul 4, 8m:20s youtube)
Conspiracy theorist died Covid after trying to catch it to prove hoax (Jimmy McCloskey; Metro News; Jul 11)
Demagogue (Wikipedia)
Persecutory delusion (Wikipedia)
psychoceramics (Urban Dictionary)}

:chin:

Prospect of 'acceptable deaths' in pursuit of COVID-19 "herd mentality" in the US - in order "not to panic" Wall Street by "keeping the economy open" - during a second term for Putin's covIDIOT Bitch:

• US pop. - c328 million

• herd immunity - approx. +60% infection rate, or +197 Million Infected

• .03% fatality rate (based on 198k fatalities / 6.7m infections as of Sept. 16, 2020) - c5.91 MILLION DEAD

FIVE MILLION, NINE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND (or more) Dead Americans - mostly Elderly, mostly Black & Brown people, and mostly the Working Poor (including blue collar Whites) with jobs that cannot be done 'from home'.

:mask:

(Deaths from COVID-19 do not account for the persisting and perhaps permanent illnesses or disabilities from which (at least) hundreds of thousands to a few million of severely afflicted survivors also would likely suffer.)

Interestingly, wearing a mask and locking down stuff has been a right wing thing in my country. Approx the same death rate as in US and Brazil. The social democrat government said few restrictions, no masks, schools open. Right or wrong? Fuck knows...

Sweden?


On a different, more hopeful note, it has long been a puzzle why Covid morbidity/mortality seems to differ significantly in different parts of the world, even after accounting for known factors, such as timing and demographics. Some places just seem more immune to the virus. This could still be down to the known but not fully accounted factors, but one of the more plausible, though speculative alternative explanations has been prior vaccinations, particularly the old anti-tuberculosis vaccine BCG, which is or was widely administered in some countries, but not others. Some of the correlations have been pretty suggestive.

Related to this, here is an interesting article on BBC about vaccines' "non-specific effects:"

For more than a century, certain vaccines have been providing us with a kind of clandestine bonus protection – one that goes far beyond what was ever intended. Not only can these mysterious effects protect us in childhood, they can also reduce our risk of dying at every stage of our lives. Research in Guinea-Bissau found that people with scars from the smallpox vaccine were up to 80% more likely to still be alive around three years after the study began, while in Denmark, scientists discovered that those who had the tuberculosis vaccine in childhood were 42% less likely to die of natural causes until they were 45 years old. It’s also true in dogs: an experiment in South Africa found that dogs that had been vaccinated against rabies had much higher survival rates, beyond what would be expected from their immunity to rabies alone.

Other happy accidents include protecting us from pathogens which are entirely unrelated to their target, reducing the severity of allergies, fighting certain cancers, and helping to prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The tuberculosis vaccine is currently being trialled for its ability to guard against Covid-19, though the microorganisms behind the two diseases are entirely different – one is caused by a bacterium, the other by a virus. And the two are separated by 3.4 billion years of evolution. — The mystery of why some vaccines are doubly beneficial

But but... AUTISM!

Another name for that: Holocaust.

:scream: (blowing my shofar)

what country is that?

what country is that? — Professor Death

Sweden.

Interestingly, wearing a mask and locking down stuff has been a right wing thing in my country. Approx the same death rate as in US and Brazil. The social democrat government said few restrictions, no masks, schools open. Right or wrong? Fuck knows... — Ansiktsburk

Actually the US has now more deaths per million people than Sweden.

Correct to notice that it was the right wing that in Sweden demanded a lockdown, which the government didn't do.

Here it was the right-wing that demanded also tough quarantine measures... and the ruling women from the left-centrist administration agreed. At start of the pandemic, the administration and the opposition reached a consensus on this and now Finland has the lowest amount of corona cases and deaths per million of the Nordic countries. But who knows, maybe it will become worse.

So basically the argument that the lock-down or no-lock-down argument is inherently politically or ideologically motivated is simply nonsense. It really isn't.

what country is that? — Professor Death

Sweden

Actually the US has now more deaths per million people than Sweden.

Correct to notice that it was the right wing that in Sweden demanded a lockdown, which the government didn't do.

Here it was the right-wing that demanded also tough quarantine measures... and the ruling women from the left-centrist administration agreed. At start of the pandemic, the administration and the opposition reached a consensus on this and now Finland has the lowest amount of corona cases and deaths per million of the Nordic countries. But who knows, maybe it will become worse.

So basically the argument that the lock-down or no-lock-down argument is inherently politically or ideologically motivated is simply nonsense. It really isn't. — ssu

About right. The dicussions nere has been as intense as everywhere. But generally out chief epidemiologist said from the beginning No lockdown. And the government listened to his department. Covid has been severe in homes for elderly people, and more people died here under 70 yo, than the total number of fatalities in our neighbouring countries Norway and Finland. They did the lockdown. Abou 5000 died here about 400 there each. But can one say whats right or wrong?

Now for US, well, we have never had masks here, and now very few people die. The most important thing seem not to be government policies but how well people really follow the rules in the country. Have had pretty extensive communication with people in lock down countries and thats no walk in the park, unemployed and stuck in a small apartment alone. The situation is above all difficult, the virus behaves unpredictable, and hunting wrongdoers is maybe not the best thing to do. Do you keep the distance yourself?

The 2020 IgNobels are in.

MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE [BRAZIL, UK, INDIA, MEXICO, BELARUS, USA, TURKEY, RUSSIA, TURKMENISTAN]
Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.

REFERENCE: Numerous news reports. — Improbable Research

↪Pro Hominem How could then Authoritarian left / Economic left be then also rational? — ssu

It's a measure of what degree any belief is based upon an appeal to reason and evidence as opposed to ideology or magical thinking.

Under the correct circumstances, all sorts of positions could be quite reasonable. In general, the moderate left is most likely to correlate with rationality, although extreme conditions could vary that considerably.

I don't understand what this sentence means: 'I suspect the impact of the deaths & self regulation more than offset the softer shutdown'

A softer shutdown is assumed to lead to less economic impact. The deaths and self regulation are the probable cause for enough economic disruption to offset the benefit of a softer shutdown.

Inadequate information about this virus has had people and governments in a tizzy. Mask on and mask off, is one of the many confused signals being sent. In all this noise a few things are clear:

Herd immunity has to be built.
The vaccine is not around the next corner - we have to turn quite a few corners, before we see light.
There will always be multiple opinions. That is human nature.
Being at loggerheads with nature, gives us no advantage.

Herd immunity has to be built. — zoey

The Cost of Herd Immunity in the U.S.

It's not certain what percentage of the U.S. population of about 328 million would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity. Given its transmissibility, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 65% to 70% of a population would need to be immune to the virus before it would burn itself out -- though in some recent reports, experts have argued that the number may be closer to 40% or 50%.

Currently, the U.S. has a case fatality rate of about 3%, based on 187,000 deaths and 6.2 million infections; however, the infection fatality rate is likely lower since most asymptomatic infections probably aren't detected. The CDC uses 0.65% in its pandemic planning scenarios.

Using the WHO (65%) and CDC (0.65%) figures, 213 million people in the U.S. would need to be infected to achieve herd immunity, leaving 1,385,800 Americans dead.

Stress on the nation's hospitals could also be tremendous. Thus far, about 370,000 Americans have been hospitalized with COVID-19. If we assume that, for each case diagnosed so far, five cases occurred without symptoms or diagnoses, that leads to a hospitalization rate of about 1%. With 213 million infections, then, about 2.3 million could be expected to end up hospitalized.

Those hospitalizations come with a cost, of course. Studies have yielded a wide range of median or average costs, from just over $10,000 to more than $70,000. If for simplicity we assume it averages $30,000, the total hospital bill to achieve herd immunity is about $80 billion.

And herd immunity works only if people can't get re-infected with the virus, which isn't a certainty, according to Leana Wen, MD, of George Washington University.

"We don't even know if we can achieve lasting immunity -- most likely, we can't," Wen tweeted. "And even if we could, it would take hundreds of millions more #covid19 infections & millions of preventable deaths. That cannot be our price."

Yes, the quest for herd immunity is likely to take years and a vaccine may never be created. If more and more restrictions are placed on people indefinitely so many are going to suffer despair through severe poverty and mental illness. The whole emphasis is on protecting the vulnerable but endless more people are going to be made vulnerable, including many people under 50, and are likely to be vulnerable for the rest of their lives.
The government is giving endless guilt messages and threats as well threats of more threats. Surely, it would be more empowering if we were just told of risks and given the freedom to make informed choices about our own health and about protecting others. It might enable people to care more than imposing endless rules which are likely to create anger and a desire to break restrictions as far as they can without being fined.
It will be interesting to see what historians make of all the mess when they can view from hindsight. Will they think that people were too selfish for wanting to go about their daily lives or that the government chose to allow civilisation to collapse?

. But generally out chief epidemiologist said from the beginning No lockdown. And the government listened to his department. — Ansiktsburk

Swedes here made a decision and didn't flinch as the British government did. And the Swedish went with that.

But can one say whats right or wrong? — Ansiktsburk

After the pandemic we know.

We are here having the second wave and both people and especially officials are getting really jumpy. Guidance and even possible regulations about using masks are getting more common. Until now, the Finnish street has looked a lot like the Swedish street. Yet the pandemic ought to blow out of proportions here if Finland should catch up the death toll of Sweden.

Cities like Helsinki have now ordered the use of masks in public transports. Likely using masks will get to be as in the US here too.

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the white privilege thread.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54248507

As the article pointed out, fighting Ebola etc. got them better prepared.

I've noticed this being very important: the success stories have usually been countries that before have had a lousy response earlier epidemics, which put their politicians into a bad light and hence made them to take these issues more seriously.

Perhaps in the US case one issue here was that the CDC did succeed containing earlier pandemics like the Ebola outbreak.

We can now posit the theory: privilige makes stupid.

Not a new theory.

Lol, one of my favourites!

Just what I needed over in the Brexit thread.

Interesting report today in the UK (02/10/2020). 770 students have just been found to have Covid in a university dormitory. But only about 70 of them have any symptoms. Meaning only about 1 in 11 people of that demographic exhibit any symptoms at all. Meanwhile only people with symptoms are tested in the UK. So we really have little idea who is infected and certainly aren't doing any kind of effective test and trace. The R number is estimated to be between 1.3 and 1.6even though at least a third of the population is locked down at the moment ( lockdown in the UK is only a partial lockdown). The prognosis is not good.

P.S. Trump has just been taken into hospital.

Meanwhile only people with symptoms are tested in the UK. So we really have little idea who is infected and certainly aren't doing any kind of effective test and trace. — Punshhh

That's the knowledge that grounds a shutdown and widespread testing and quarantine. That knowledge has not been utilized in the UK or the States...