"We Want Them Infected"

[trenton]

 

I am at a loss for words.  I don't know how to respond to what I just watched.  I am even further stumped on how I would convince somebody that this video is true proof.  The United States is divided to the point that information obtained from the news can instantly be rejected as fake.  

If this is real, then how would you convince somebody this is real?  What would count as proof to somebody thoroughly bought into Trump's ideologies that Trump is not the kind of person who should be President?  What should we do about this?

[trenton]

I think the government would be affected beyond recognition if it were required to be more transparent about its strategies.  This would not pass democratically if people would die needlessly.  This is the opposite of the greatest good for the greatest number.  I have no idea how long this information can be kept secret among politicians.  

[Willie]

I’m not surprised by any of it. That video is entirely playing into my confirmation bias. As far as convincing somebody who’s just as fervent in their belief that Trump is a good president and had his second term stolen? Not interested. If someone hasn’t seen how bad Trump is by now, they aren’t going to. And that’s ok. It’s still a free country where you can believe what you want. It’s not my job to change their minds.

[trenton]

@Willie I have seen this idea on both sides.  The idea that we must convince a significant portion of another group to change their minds.  I hear the phrase "it isn't going to be easy" on both sides.  One question I have is historically how successful has this strategy actually been?  Is it even a realistic goal to sway 10 million Trump supporters into believing Trump was unsuccessful as President?  I doubt these partisan maneuvers would be effective.

[PepperBlossoms]

Pretty sad that they have that viewpoint.

The trump administration in charge of this virus should jailed for life for allowing the virus spread to get to this point.

The government should be doing a stimulus to keep businesses closed/people home to get the virus to go away until we have enough vaccines ready or when the virus is small enough rather than doing stimulus to keep businesses open/keep people working.

The vaccines are going to take too long for everyone to get them and too many people have already died and are yet to die.

We need the nerdy/engineer/artsy/abstract-type people running government, not whatever we have now.

I feel helpless saying this because I feel I, you, any of us - it seems that we have no voice or our voice makes no change.

[Claymoree]

5 hours ago, PepperBlossoms said:

Pretty sad that they have that viewpoint.

The trump administration in charge of this virus should jailed for life for allowing the virus spread to get to this point.

The government should be doing a stimulus to keep businesses closed/people home to get the virus to go away until we have enough vaccines ready or when the virus is small enough rather than doing stimulus to keep businesses open/keep people working.

The vaccines are going to take too long for everyone to get them and too many people have already died and are yet to die.

We need the nerdy/engineer/artsy/abstract-type people running government, not whatever we have now.

I feel helpless saying this because I feel I, you, any of us - it seems that we have no voice or our voice makes no change.

stop giving in to this media bs, USA death tool is not worst and is no worse then many EU top countries.

Why are you all so gullible.

[Consept]

The herd immunity strategy at least at the beginning of the pandemic, wasn't necessarily a terrible strategy in theory, but as its played out it hasn't worked, only Sweden went down that route and now the king of Sweden and the head epidemiologist are saying it might not have been the best move. Plus Sweden people are actually considerate and a lot self isolated and took precautions off their own back. 

In the UK they announced they were gonna do herd immunity at the start but because of the backlash it was abandoned early on. The problem with Trump (amongst many) is that he didn't even inform the public of what was going on, which creates division. He also didn't change course when things started getting worse, essentially he has caused more deaths than there needed to be. 

In terms of convincing a trump supporter, I think at this stage you can manipulate anything to look as you want it to, we're living in a post-truth world currently, hopefully that will change and we'll get some sanity back next year 

[Preety_India]

This seems like sum conspiracy sheet, iz it or iz it nawt? 

 

[Leo Gura]

Trump admin advisors have publicly said months ago that their strategy is herd immunity. Nothing new here.

They must take this approach because they are too incompetent at governance to actually manage the crisis. So they just take a libertarian free-market attitude. It's an every-man-for-himself approach -- which is their entire philosophy.

[Preety_India]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It's an every-man-for-himself approach -- which is their entire philosophy.

Is that a general republican philosophy as well? 

[PepperBlossoms]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Trump admin advisors have publicly said months ago that their strategy is herd immunity. Nothing new here.

They must that this approach because they are too incompetent at governance to actually manage the crisis. So they just a libertarian free-market attitude. It's an every-man-for-himself approach -- which is their entire philosophy.

@Leo Gura Ah.  Good point.  Sounds right to me... 

Why bother go into a government position when you aren't going to do anything?  If there are lots of people willing and wanting to make a difference, step aside and let those people take over.  Yeah we can have people who don't want to do anything to solve a problem but they don't belong in government.

 

6 hours ago, Preety_India said:

Is that a general republican philosophy as well? 

@Preety_India Yeah sounds right to me.  "If the system worked for me, it should work for you."  Viewpoint ignores the situations when it does not work and why it does not work.

There are all these moving parts to consider and  you want your government to be the most willing to explore, understand, and utilize all of the moving parts to the best of its ability.... As an engineer.. engineering the best outcome - what are the options, variables, constraints, requirements, solutions, options, models, info - we need more "engineers" in government who run all the scenarios and pick what will work the best. 

A new form of engineering other than civil, mechanical, electrical, etc. - it will let us make the most optimal government. 

 

[Preety_India]

2 minutes ago, PepperBlossoms said:

@Leo Gura Ah.  Good point.  Sounds right to me... 

Why bother go into a government position when you aren't going to do anything?  If there are lots of people willing and wanting to make a difference, step aside and let those people take over.  Yeah we can have people who don't want to do anything to solve a problem but they don't belong in government.

 

@Preety_India Yeah sounds right to me.  "If the system worked for me, it should work for you."  Viewpoint ignores the situations when it does not work and why it does not work.

There are all these moving parts to consider and  you want your government to be the most willing to explore, understand, and utilize all of the moving parts to the best of its ability.... As an engineer.. engineering the best outcome - what are the options, variables, constraints, requirements, solutions, options, models, info - we need more "engineers" in government who run all the scenarios and pick what will work the best. 

A new form of engineering other than civil, mechanical, electrical, etc. - it will let us make the most optimal government. 

 

Yea I know 

[Forestluv]

21 hours ago, trenton said:

 I am even further stumped on how I would convince somebody that this video is true proof.  The United States is divided to the point that information obtained from the news can instantly be rejected as fake.  

If this is real, then how would you convince somebody this is real?  What would count as proof to somebody thoroughly bought into Trump's ideologies that Trump is not the kind of person who should be President? 

It depends on who you want to convince. If the goal is to convince weak, persuadable Republicans, this is not the framework to do it. For this goal, the video is framed far too far about intentionality about how Trump intentionally wanted to kill people with the virus. That is not going to convince any somewhat reasonable republicans. For this goal, I would tone down the personal intentionality and focus on how their plan of herd immunity has been disastrous. 

Also, to convince somewhat reasonable republicans, the economic impact of lockdowns must be included. At least acknowledging that lockdowns have a negative impact on the economy. And then showing that the impact of herd immunity would have a worse impact than mitigation and lockdowns.. And showing how giving federal covid support funds would have increased the deficit,, yet would alleviate economic impacts - and give examples like Canada. 

And it’s not fair to say that the U.S. is “the worst”. The U.S. ranks about #11 in the world in per capital deaths - so the U.S. is among the worst. They are in the “worst tier”. Reasonable republicans will notice these types of small misstatements, amplify it and turn off. They are looking for reasons to dismiss it as biased Fake News. If the U.S. ranked 347th out of 358 countries and MSNBC said “The U.S. ranks the worst”, a republican looking to dismiss could say “The U.S. is not the worst! Angola is worse than the U.S. MSNBC are liars!!”

Yet if the goal is to fire up energy on the center-left, then the above video is good framing.

 

[Loving Radiance]

32 minutes ago, Forestluv said:

And it’s not fair to say that the U.S. is “the worst”. The U.S. ranks about #11 in the world in per capital deaths - so the U.S. is among the worst. They are in the “worst tier”. Reasonable republicans will notice these types of small misstatements, amplify it and turn off. They are looking for reasons to dismiss it as biased Fake News. If the U.S. ranked 347th out of 358 countries and MSNBC said “The U.S. ranks the worst”, a republican looking to dismiss could say “The U.S. is not the worst! Angola is worse than the U.S. MSNBC are liars!!”

Is misconstruing nuance through binary thinking the same as strawmanning (strawmanning being like a form of self-deception)? Or aren't you self-deceiving yourself here because binary thinking is the only thinking you are currently capable of?

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Loving Radiance said:

Is misconstruing nuance through binary thinking the same as strawmanning (strawmanning being like a form of self-deception)? Or aren't you self-deceiving yourself here because binary thinking is the only thinking you are currently capable of?

I’m not sure I clearly understand this framing, yet here are some thoughts that pop up. . . 

I think absolute statements can be useful in some contexts. For example, if I’m teaching freshman level genetics I may say that alleles are either recessive or dominant. That statement is not technically precise, yet it is appropriate for the level of learning. I can’t start off describing cases of incomplete dominance and co-dominance before someone understands simple recessiveness and dominance. 

In other contexts, absolute statements are used to strengthen an argument. Yelling “Our sports team has the worst record in the league. Fire the coach!!!” has more intensity than “Our sports team has one of the worst records in the league. Fire the coach!!!”. The “usefulness” is dependent on the intention. If the goal is to get rid of a shitty coach and move in a new direction, saying “We have the worst record!” will energize everyone that already wants to get rid of the coach. Increasing that intensity has value for that goal. . . Yet if the goal is to convince somewhat reasonable republicans - hyperbolic statements are way too easy to dismiss into polarized categories. 

If the goal is to show somewhat reasonable republicans that Trump’s covid policies have been bad, I don’t think framing it is as “Trump is 100% at fault for everything” is best. Yet I could be wrong. 

[Loving Radiance]

@Forestluv @neutralempty That cleared things up. Thanks.

[trenton]

There are a couple of things I am confused about in this thread.

First of all, I want to make sure I am interpreting the statistics correctly.  When saying "the United States is the worst" it looks like news outlets and politicians are referring to the total deaths.  The conclusion I am reaching from this forum is that I am supposed to look at deaths per million instead.  I found that the United States has 979 deaths per million, but some countries have over 1000 deaths per million.  The UK could be interpreted as worse because it has 990 deaths per million.  The United States is the 12th worst country.  Am I looking at reliable stats?

https://epidemic-stats.com

Secondly, I see multiple people agreeing that this news is misleading.  How do you sort misleading news from a reliable interpretation of what is happening with COVID-19?  What sources should I use for reliable information?  So far the most reliable information I found about politics would be in books, but this does not work for current events.

Thank you for clarifying that this news is misleading.

[Consept]

4 hours ago, trenton said:

There are a couple of things I am confused about in this thread.

First of all, I want to make sure I am interpreting the statistics correctly.  When saying "the United States is the worst" it looks like news outlets and politicians are referring to the total deaths.  The conclusion I am reaching from this forum is that I am supposed to look at deaths per million instead.  I found that the United States has 979 deaths per million, but some countries have over 1000 deaths per million.  The UK could be interpreted as worse because it has 990 deaths per million.  The United States is the 12th worst country.  Am I looking at reliable stats?

https://epidemic-stats.com

Secondly, I see multiple people agreeing that this news is misleading.  How do you sort misleading news from a reliable interpretation of what is happening with COVID-19?  What sources should I use for reliable information?  So far the most reliable information I found about politics would be in books, but this does not work for current events.

Thank you for clarifying that this news is misleading.

Its misleading in that it has bias, but its not necessarily wrong on everything. Its quite clear that Trump and his team did have seem kind of herd immunity strategy, its also clear this wasnt really explained to the public at large. A herd immunity strategy is not necessarily terrible, obviously Sweden have undertaken that and no one wouldve reported on it the way its been reported in the news report. Ultimately its still terrible leadership from Trump, he also didnt pivot from this strategy when it wasnt going well, but the report is biased and obviously hates Trump, so its more the framing.

It will be hard to find somewhere completely free of bias, what you can do is just be aware of the bias and look at different sources. You want to be able to build up a skill where you can see a bit of content and extract what you think is the relative truth, how its being framed and what the incentive is behind it. Then of course also watch your own bias.