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Democratic Governor Newsom excludes his winery from COViD19 closures


https://www.independentsentinel.com/gov ... own-order/


https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/ar ... 505350.php

ant wrote:The US Surgeon General disagrees

I see ant is joining KS in the Pathetic Liars Club. It appears that President Trump has so effectively normalised the ethics of constant lying that his supporters have adopted it as a coping strategy.

The Surgeon General entirely agrees with my comment.

A moment's study shows ant's outdated quote from the Surgeon General was dated 1 March, and was entirely in the context of warning against stockpiling and panic buying at a time when front line supplies for health staff were under strain.

Looking for the current advice, the Surgeon General now says "Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice- but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out. Face coverings lead to less asymptomatic viral spread, leading to more places open, and sooner! Exercise and promote your freedom by choosing to wear a face covering!"

KindaSkolarly wrote:I know you guys are able to read, so why can't you process what you read?

You would like us to believe that anything that can be read, at least if you present it, is to be believed. But you believe Alex Jones, and reprint idiocy regularly, so, no, sorry.

KindaSkolarly wrote: 1) Positive for the common cold = positive for the Wuhan virus.

You should know better than to buy into this. Too much evidence and discussion has been around to take it seriously. If there are some tests that fail in such a systematic way, they will be weeded out fairly quickly. Plenty of checking has taken place with results that really match the experience, and this confounding by the common cold is not a feature of the good tests.

KindaSkolarly wrote: 2) If you test positive, then everybody you have had contact with is given a positive test result, even without testing.

I know of a counterexample from direct knowledge. One source, taken down from its platform for stupidity, does not make this so.

KindaSkolarly wrote:You're falling for fake science.

And I am supposed to take your word for this? It might be interesting to go back and copy in some of the really stupid stuff you have posted about this epidemic just to make it clear why I am not going to take your word. But life is short, and it will make no difference to your understanding, so, no.

KindaSkolarly wrote:The infection numbers are made up. Your insistence that people accept your fake science is unseemly.

I now know people (friends of friends, but not just CNN ciphers) who have died of the virus. I am not going to listen to someone calling it fake. The numbers have bounced around a bit as counting methodologies have changed. But the obvious interpretation, that most policy people are acting in good faith but there are judgement calls involved, matches up well with the actuality of filled hospital wards, exhausted doctors, resurgence when caution slackens, and hot spots whose explanation makes complete sense.

KindaSkolarly wrote:And this virus is 0.1 micron across. Face masks have gaps that range from 20 to 100 microns. Fauci himself said the masks are mainly to relieve anxiety.

The droplets on which the virus is carried are much larger. There are actual tests now, like the one that got Trump so excited about disinfectant, that show masks make a significant difference in transmission (as does distance). Get over your paranoia, the doctors are not out to fool anybody. They are doing their best, we can do our best, and I intend to do my best.

Robert Tulip wrote:

ant wrote:The US Surgeon General disagrees

I see ant is joining KS in the Pathetic Liars Club. It appears that President Trump has so effectively normalised the ethics of constant lying that his supporters have adopted it as a coping strategy.

The Surgeon General entirely agrees with my comment.

A moment's study shows ant's outdated quote from the Surgeon General was dated 1 March, and was entirely in the context of warning against stockpiling and panic buying at a time when front line supplies for health staff were under strain.

Looking for the current advice, the Surgeon General now says "Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice- but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out. Face coverings lead to less asymptomatic viral spread, leading to more places open, and sooner! Exercise and promote your freedom by choosing to wear a face covering!"

Which is why I said the waffling has been real and has been bad. You missed that part because you were in such a hurry to pigeonhole me to keep your fallacious THIS OR THAT B&W world safe.

It is monstrously disingenuous to whitewash the words - Seriously, people. stop buying face masks! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching Coronavirus, the Surgeon General spoke. It should be considered medical malpractice by a doctor in such a high office.

Those words mean now what they first meant back then.
Science didn't magically advance with updated facts about the effectiveness of masks. They've been worn by medical professionals for decades to help stave off infection. That much is undeniable.

If the Surgeon General and CDC were NOT speaking factually when they discouraged the public to wear facial coverings (FACT) then that it even worse.
Not only was it blatantly wrong to initially instruct the public masks do nothing to help prevent the spread of COVID19 it is downright criminal.
You are living in a self denying reality that no such discouragement ever existed.

Personally speaking, I am not against the wearing of a mask and have consistently done so whenever I have gone out in public. If anything, a mask in this case acts as a good placebo.

Has this entire pandemic been politicized? Of course it has.
Humankind can and does politicize everything at some point.

ant wrote:How about you, Harry? You thanked Robert's post so you much agree with him here.

Pretty much, yes. It's regrettable that public health officials were downplaying the importance of masks at the beginning of the Covid spread, but that was pretty obviously due to the overall shortage of masks, which is almost surely not because of any decisions they made.

One of the unfortunate aspects of public policy is that the leaders have to balance short-term, urgency pressures against longer-term priorities which will reassert themselves. Since about the time of Newtie Gingrich's ascendancy in 1994, and accelerated by the 911 crisis and then the 2008 financial crisis, the governmental process is increasingly being driven by those short-term urgency considerations. Why? Because long-term considerations (keeping Social Security solvent, managing the deficit, keeping the infrastructure in shape, balancing climate costs of fossil fuels against economic costs of limiting them, etc.) have been pushed aside or twisted beyond recognition by emotional, symbolic considerations rather than taking a serious look at the issues.

If we had responded sensibly to previous pandemics, as the Asian countries did who were harder hit by them, we would have had enough masks and enough capacity to make more masks.

ant wrote: Oh, and remember all the media condemnation about Hydroxychloroquin mostly from CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/11/health/h ... index.html
and from Dr Fauci
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/politics ... index.html
Turns out "science says" it does help patients recover - latest tests
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hydroxyc ... 27157.html
Hell, even CNN has to admit it helps (the word "help" made it a little easier to say)
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/02/heal ... index.html

There was nothing wrong with Fauci's reaction. The original study, which generated some excitement for hydroxychloroquine plus AZT, was completely unstructured and offered nothing more than anecdote and the instincts of a (brilliant but erratic) single investigator. Public health officials should not be endorsing that kind of finding - it would be an open invitation to charlatans to claim anything they chose for the sake of a quick buck. So Fauci said, in effect, we don't know until we study it systematically.

The first disciplined, careful trial showed more harm than good. Until the latest, positive, trial is replicated, "science" will have little confidence in either. The investigators who got positive results speculated about a possible basis for their different finding, and no doubt added trials will try to replicate their "better" methodology or follow hunches to try different variations. That's fine. But until you have solid evidence, it isn't the basis for policy and I would say, at this stage, it isn't even a guide to best practice. At best it is a guide to "things to try" like turning the patient on his or her stomach, or whatever.

As I recall, "helps recover" was actually in the reported results of the initial, negative study. (I am just trying to remember a sentence heard on the radio while driving between towns, here - lucky for me I am not an official in charge of this stuff so I don't have to follow these results carefully). So that is not the surprising part of the latest results. Rather the balance being clearly positive - more help than harm - would be the novel result. I think it is consistent with medicine evolving in real time that enough other interventions or positive factors might have been developed to make the negative recede and the positive emerge.

ant wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:Looking for the current advice, the Surgeon General now says "Some feel face coverings infringe on their freedom of choice- but if more wear them, we’ll have MORE freedom to go out. Face coverings lead to less asymptomatic viral spread, leading to more places open, and sooner! Exercise and promote your freedom by choosing to wear a face covering!"

Science didn't magically advance with updated facts about the effectiveness of masks. They've been worn by medical professionals for decades to help stave off infection. That much is undeniable.

And here is a pretty recent result, which if read carefully, supports the efficacy of masks.
https://www.livescience.com/are-face-ma ... pread.html
They are not a panacea, by any means, and if they give a false sense of security they could actually damage public health. But that is not how people seem to use them.

ant wrote:Personally speaking, I am not against the wearing of a mask and have consistently done so whenever I have gone out in public. If anything, a mask in this case acts as a good placebo.

Don't know if that placebo will boost your immune response. I will wait for more careful investigators. But like you, I wear one when I go out in public. A pain, sometimes, but if nothing else it reminds me to be careful in other ways.

ant wrote:Has this entire pandemic been politicized? Of course it has.
Humankind can and does politicize everything at some point.

I see the point, but I don't think it is a good thing. I would like to see less politicization, especially of factual issues. The country should take seriously some accountability for people in the press. A scorecard does not have to be considered censorship. I am fairly confident CNN would score higher than Fox, but both have huge room for improvement.

Harry wrote:

And here is a pretty recent result, which if read carefully, supports the efficacy of masks.

You are closer to understanding my point than Robert who is more fixed on demonizing than truth finding.

It isn't contested what the Surgeon General initially stated DESPITE the science of mask wearing being contentious for many years BUT THE PREFERENCE being "safe than sorry" or "it does help a little bit"

The SG was intentionally deceiving, not certain of the science, or chose not to error on the side of caution from the very beginning. Same for the CDC.

The smart thing to say at the beginning of all this should have been "you should wear a face mask, even if it is a makeshift mask from home." That's what I thought despite their initial discouragement of wearing one.
Did he say that? If he did, show me where.. I might have missed it.

Fauci also said at the start mask wearing was not effective.

Were they speaking before knowing the facts? That's alarming.
Perhaps you could have helped them if you had googled the question for them.

Ps

You can all stop sharing links about the latest findings. i've googled it all myself.
And again, that's not the point I am making here.

I am not lying about what the SG and Fauci said themselves. it is on record. I did't just forget what was said with a tone of certainty at the very beginning. i am not senile - yet.

ant wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:

ant wrote:The US Surgeon General disagrees

...The Surgeon General entirely agrees with my comment...

...Which is why I said the waffling has been real and has been bad. You missed that part because you were in such a hurry to pigeonhole me to keep your fallacious THIS OR THAT B&W world safe. It is monstrously disingenuous to whitewash the words...

You missed my point ant. You stated the SG "disagrees". That is present tense, suggesting you are quoting his current view. Yet you fully knew he has changed his early wrong view. For your own political reasons, you chose to lie in order to pretend the health officials are continuing to misinform the public.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/surge ... nst-masks/

ant wrote:. . . Not only was it blatantly wrong to initially instruct the public masks do nothing to help prevent the spread of COVID19 it is downright criminal.

I think you are misinterpreting this situation, Ant. There were a lot of unknowns when the coronavirus first hit our shores. It's not very surprising that the agencies in charge of public safety waffled a bit. We had shortages of N-95 masks at hospitals and in nursing homes where they were desperately needed. The effectiveness of other types of face coverings was not well understood and still isn't really. More importantly it was not believed initially that people could transmit the virus without showing symptoms. The CDC eventually revised its advice based on new evidence, which is exactly what you would expect them to do.

We are seeing now some people on the right alleging that the CDC is changing its position on facemasks for nefarious political reasons, but of course this is just the usual paranoid right-wing nonsense.

The combination of social distancing (six feet) and wearing facemasks has proven to be very effective in stopping the spread of the coronoavirus. Just look at the data state by state and you'll see that states that encouraged facemasks and social distancing early on did much better at flattening the curve than those states that did not. Even Texas has finally come around to recommending wearing facemasks. What's downright criminal is the political resistance to recommendations by qualified health officials.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... -heres-why

In late January, Anthony Fauci told the media that coronavirus was nothing the U.S. public needed to worry about--right then, that is. Fauci said the situation could change. Then, On Jan. 31, Trump placed the ban on travel from China. At that point, one could say that Trump was ahead of his top infectious disease advisor. What happened to derail the president from an initial strong response? There seems to be no question that strong federal government actions during February and March would have resulted in fewer victims of the disease. Was Trump resting on the laurels of one of his only decisive acst against the virus? Or did he simply fall prey to magical thinking?

I think geo is right that the ability to change one's position based on evidence coming in is essential. To be wrong in January is perhaps understandable given the unknowns. To persist in wrongness through the next two months shows that other factors are getting in the way of clear thinking.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200429 ... aboutrsquo