Coronavirus Update 2: This is Bad

The Daily is a high quality information podcast the New York Times produces daily. Yesterday's podcast was an interview with Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science and health reporter for The New York Times. McNeil's comments about the Coronavirus are frightening. If McNeil is correct, this virus is much more dangerous than I realized. A couple of points need to be made.

First, reports that 80% of infections are mild were highly misleading. "Mild" was defined by Chinese officials as symptoms less than anything not requiring oxygen or a ventilator were classified as mild. That means people could have pneumonia just short of requiring oxygen or hospitalization and still be considered to have a mild infection. That is not mild. the other 20% were classified as severe (needing oxygen or a ventilator) or critical (organ failure).

Second, the symptoms are these: first high fever and dry cough, then fatigue. A runny nose is rare (~4%) and those may have been people with a cold or flu at the same time.

Third, McNeil now considers this virus to be on a par with the 1918 influenza outbreak that killed millions of  people. He calls it a "dangerous virus that transmits easily between people." He asked 12 experts about whether warnings about this virus have been overblown in view of the small number of infections so far. Eight said no and this will turn into a pandemic, two said yes warnings were overblown and two refused to take a guess.

Fourth, it isn't known how the infection will play out. Maybe the infection rate will slow or stop in the summer, but maybe not. And, no one can know what the final fatality rate will be. McNeil is taking steps to avoid crowds and touching surfaces in public as much as he can because he is spooked.

The Cleanse

Here's a simple experiment that can improve your mental acuity.

Try eliminating MSM from your life. Cancel your cable and newspaper subscription. Get Netflix.

Do it for 6 months.

Finally, after the cleanse, try turning on the TV again. It will blow your mind how insane it suddenly is. Nothing there will make sense.

TV changes the way you think, and not for the better. It alters your perspective and effectively controls you, no matter how prepared you think you might be.

Turn it off and see for yourself.

ADDRESSING A MAJOR POLITICAL ISSUE

WHERE oh WHERE do we draw the line on Government intervention into our lives?

They want to take away our choices on abortion, or our choice whether to spank or not, but the worst government intervention is:

TELLING US WE CAN'T DECLAW OUR CATS!

Is Declawing Cats Illegal?

Many countries ban declaw surgery in cats.

New York is the only U.S. state to ban the practice of declawing. However, there are cities and towns throughout the country that have passed legislation banning declaw surgery.

https://www.thesprucepets.com/states-where-declawing-is-illegal-554735

Two Canadian Provinces Are Banning The Declawing Of Cats As Of 2019

Next year four Canadian provinces will have officially banned cat declawing.

https://www.narcity.com/news/two-canadian-provinces-are-banning-the-declawing-of-cats-as-of-2019

STOP GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE IN OUR CHOICES - NOW!!

Trump’s character problem

The night before Super Tuesday, Joe Biden spoke fervently about the need to restore decency and dignity to the White House. To some, these words might have sounded like standard politician-speak. But 
a just-released Pew Research Center survey suggests that they could play an important role in the fall, perhaps even determining the outcome of the general election.

Pew finds that only 15% of Americans like the way Donald Trump conducts himself as president, while 51% dislike his conduct, and the remaining 31% express mixed feelings. Strikingly, only 31% of Republicans could bring themselves to say that they like the behavior of the man that most of them support despite, not because of, his departure from ordinary norms of conduct.

Americans have taken their measure of President Trump’s character, and they don’t like what they see. A total of 80% regard him as “self-centered,” and 59% as prejudiced. Only 36% of Americans see him as honest and 32% as morally upstanding.

From the beginning of his campaign, Biden has talked about reaching out to Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents. The Pew data suggest that he has a basis for doing this, because opinions within the Republican Party are divided along lines of age, education, ideology, and partisanship.

Among Republicans under age 30, approval and disapproval of President Trump’s conduct is almost evenly balanced. Among Republicans 65 and older, likes outweigh dislikes by a margin of 4 to 1. Republicans with college degrees or more education are more than twice as likely to express disapproval than are those with no more than a high school diploma. There are similar differences between moderates and conservatives, and between Republican identifiers and leaners.

Americans’ disapproval of President Trump’s personal conduct is deeply entrenched and unlikely to change between now and election day. Surveys in mid-2017 and 2018 yielded similar findings. The key question is how large they will loom in voters’ minds as they stride to the polling booth. A Democratic nominee who focuses on them and presents a credible contrast between his character and the president’s could strike political gold.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/03/05/trumps-character-problem/

Talking About a New Political Party

I've made it clear that I'm no fan of the democratic party and really, really no fan of the Trump Party (formerly the GOP or republican party). These days, Trump Party folks are RINOs, not RRIROs (real republicans in reality only).

From what I can tell from the rhetoric of all kinds of Americans, there appear to be four main blocks of mindsets out there; left of dems (~Berners), mainstream dems, Trump Party minds and the old GOP minds. The Greens seem to overlap a lot with the left of dems group and the libertarians are so incoherent and radical that it's not clear to me what they are or what mindsets they significantly overlap with.

I am aware of a few folks (maybe ~ 3% of the population?) who appear to have mindsets that don't fit any of those very well, especially the libertarians and Trump Party party. One might call that small group pragmatic rationalists, common sense people or something like that. The pragmatists tend to downplay rigid ideology and blind tribe loyalty and look more to trying to see facts and truths with less bias and applying conscious reasoning to the facts and truths they perceive with less bias. One group I am aware of and am working with, the Common Sense Party of California seems to be generally aligned with the common sense[1] or pragmatic mindset.

That said, it seems reasonable to believe that if most people are pressed and are honest about it, about 97% of all Americans would say (1) their politics is firmly grounded in clearly seeing facts and truths with less bias and applying conscious reasoning to the perceived facts and truths with less bias, and (2) the political opposition is mostly or completely the opposite of that. People tend to see a lot of reality-and reason-detached fantasy in people they disagree with. Or, at least it seems to be that way.

This topic seems to be timely now because the political splits described above seem to be crystallizing into more easily identified or well-defined clusters of minds. In my opinion, this crystallization is driven in by a combination of dark free speech[2] (~50%), changing social and economic conditions (~40%), e.g., racial and demographic changes, and other factors (~10%).

Questions: Is the reality described above close enough to how you see reality that it feels more right than wrong? If it feels more wrong than right, then is what American going through at the moment not particularly significant for the long run and my perception just a personal thing? Is there enough discontent to support a third party given how heavily stacked electoral politics is against third parties, or are we stuck with the big two for the foreseeable future, if not forever?


Footnote:
1. Common sense is an essentially contested concept (ECC) and thus people will universally not agree on precise definitions. The intractable disagreement arises because the human mind did not evolve in such a way that there could ever be universal agreement (defined (by me) as, at least ~ 85% agreement) on ECCs.

2. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission),  (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Trying to Count Non-Religiosity

Two massive datasets are increasingly divergent in how many people claim to have no religious affiliation, the ‘nones’. The number of nones has been increasing in both datasets from 2008 to 2018, but the divergence in the datasets has been increasing over time.

The Friendly Atheist writes: “For example, how are the questions asked? On the GSS [General Social Survey], the question looks like this: What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?

The CCES [Cooperative Congressional Election Study] asks: What is your present religion, if any? It then offers 11 options — including atheist, agnostic, and nothing in particular (which you can combine to find a total “no religion” number).

Not surprisingly, the latter question gets a higher response from the Nones. I’m not surprised. It’s far more open-ended. It treats “atheist” and “agnostic” like every other option. Even “nothing in particular” may be less grating to some than “no religion,” which could sound harsh or negative.

Burge also notes another important difference between the two surveys, which I believe also accounts quite a bit for the discrepancies: ‘… the GSS is still conducted by a survey administrator asking questions of respondents, while the CCES is computer-based. People are less likely to lie to a computer than they are to a person.’”