Americans killed in the Pearl Harbor attacks 79 years ago: 2,403.
Americans who died of COVID last Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 2,610; 2,885; 2,857; 2,637.
by $8 blue check mistermix| 167 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Americans killed in the Pearl Harbor attacks 79 years ago: 2,403.
Americans who died of COVID last Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 2,610; 2,885; 2,857; 2,637.
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WaterGirl
Perspective.
evodevo
Trump lied…thousands died.
TriassicSands
2020: A year that will live infamy.
The less said the better? I’d say, the more said the better.
Cermet
The less said …uh? This needs to be spread far and wide since dump is only concerned with fighting an election he lost by 7 million votes. These monsters supporting this creature need these facts driven down their throats till they choke.
JPL
My father was on the Nevada, which was able to limp out of the harbor.
randy khan
When my wife and I visited Pearl Harbor, what caught my attention was the number of men who survived the Arizona and had their ashes scattered on the site after they died. (There are plaques for them in the memorial.) It was the seminal moment in their lives, and they decided to spend their eternal rest with the shipmates who perished on December 7. It was incredibly moving.
The Dangerman
Infamy, indeed, 79 years ago.
What will the future infamy be? As in I wonder what the next card or cards the perhaps aptly surnamed Trump plays in his quest to keep the gig; I don’t think he is done yet in shocking us to the core.
Keith P.
We were relatively consistent at around 1k deaths per day for about 7 months. For it to jump up 3x so fast is a bad, bad omen.
Lobo
I always thought the discussion of mortality should be in comparison to 9/11, Vietnam War, etc.
We are now experiencing a 9/11 everyday. More people have died than 5+ Vietnams.
What a tragedy!
BC in Illinois
Thank you for The Less Said, The Better. I had never read that before.
For my parents, Pearl Harbor changed everything. They were both in college, and within a year, my father was in the Army Air Corps (a weatherman) and my mother was a WAC (London, Paris — coming to Jefferson Barrack in St Louis was the first time she had ever left Ohio).
For my family, August 18, 2020 changed everything. That was the day my brother died of COVID. Yes, in a way, all are doing well. But everything has changed. Even our conversations with each other, on different topics, are somehow different.
And you can’t multiply that by two thousand at a time.
You have to add them up, one at a time. One family at a time.
Yeah, don’t multiply the words. If the words lead to actions, good. There are things to do. My sister-in-law’s recent tweet ended with the words
But on a lot of this, the less said the better.
The Moar You Know
Killed in an act of war.
Plus a quarter million more. Killed by a traitorous cabal of their fellow citizens who, likely, will never face justice or even accountability for the murders they committed. Allowing the deaths of those citizens was more convenient than doing anything to prevent them.
ETA: I am so outraged, every day, by this the words don’t come out right. All the deaths were preventable.
Shantanu Saha
COVID has already hit the top five on this list and will eventually push EVERYTHING below #4 off of it.
https://www.toptenz.net/10-deadliest-days-in-american-history.php
Barbara
I saw the movie The Ballad of Nariyama, probably around 1985. The theme is pretty simple: in pre-industrial agrarian Japan, if you reach the age of 70 you are taken to the top of a mountain at the beginning of winter and left to your fate. The movie is “about” two elderly people, one of whom accepts that fate and one of whom doesn’t. I think of that movie every time I hear someone say something like, “the alarming increase in the death rate in South Dakota was no big deal because 80% of the dead were over the age of 80” (as I did recently on Twitter, and I have no idea if that is actually true). We spend an incredible amount of our vast health care budget trying to keep septuagenarians and octogenarians alive. I am having difficulty trying to make any kind of logical connection between these two extreme facts of life and death in the U.S. in 2020.
Ksmiami
@WaterGirl: yes. I was talking to my mom yesterday- a public health nurse and nursing professor that unlike 1918, we can’t let this epidemic disappear down the memory hole. We need commissions and investigations and trials
SFAW
I want the “marshal of the International Criminal Court” to pay the Murderer-in-Chief a visit on 1/21/21. Accompanied by a few friends carrying a large burlap bag, with which to render Scheissegibbon to The Hague, where he’ll be tried for Crimes Against Humanity.
Brantl
10 year’s ago, in (non)-Stump-PTSD LAND, whichever party wasn’t in power would have been howling over casualties like those. Now? It’s another day in the life…..
Felanius Kootea
44 days until a sane response to the pandemic begins. That is such a tragedy.
Steeplejack (phone)
@The Dangerman:
Apparently Trump is planning a socko finish.
Jeffro
@Shantanu Saha:
@Barbara:
I swear, some days I learn more following folks’ links and references here than I did all the previous week. Thanks!
jonas
And yet in state after state, county after county, the communities (esp rural ones) hardest hit by Covid were the most likely to vote for Trump and his Republican enablers. It’s hard to fathom. It’s like someone voting again for a governor who, against everyone’s advice, pardoned a murderer who then killed their loved one right after his release.
Steeplejack
@BC in Illinois:
Condolences on your brother. ?
p.a.
Lock him up.
KenK
@Barbara: @#13
I’ll be 70 in March. Thankfully I don’t live in pre-industrial Japan. “We” do this for the vulnerable because I believe that most Americans are kind, decent and compassionate.
Last weekend, I spoke with my 95 year old stepfather in Ohio. He, understandably, is very cautious about social contact. He told us that he is not afraid of dying. He’s afraid that if he gets sick, he’ll be a burden to his family.
Barbara
@Steeplejack (phone): I think air traffic control should find some safety reason for delaying the flight until 12:30 pm, at which point, AF1 is no longer available. Also, I am not sure AF1 would be available in any event. But yeah, this is what we all have to look forward to — an out of control narcissist holding an endless series of rallies. Other than frustrating the presidential ambitions of various other Republicans by sucking all the oxygen in the Republican political universe, it’s a pretty depressing spectacle.
MisterForkbeard
@Steeplejack (phone): You know what would make this REALLY great TV? If he did all that and was arrested on stage during immediately after Joe’s investiture.
Probably just for obstruction of justice and bribery, but I’ll take whatever.
MisterForkbeard
@Barbara: AF1 is traditionally available to take the ex-president on one final ride.
Though it would be in Biden’s power to order the plane turned around if he really wanted to. :)
hitless
@Barbara: I think the connection is that in both cases people choose a story to believe that they like most, and that story revolves around them. In ordinary times, people want to believe when they are old they will be cared for and no expense will be spared to save them. But now, it’s a more appealing story to believe that the virus is only killing old people or people who were going to die soon anyway. This makes them feel safe (they aren’t old and infirm…so no worries for them) and it also means that they don’t need to inconvenience themselves by following public health recommendations if this isn’t really a big deal.
Obviously this is not true for many, maybe even most, people. Lots of people follow guidelines and are appalled at what is happening.
@Barbara:
JPL
@MisterForkbeard: If you want great TV, all the MSM has to do is call him a sore loser.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Barbara: AF1 was available for Nixon on Auguest 9, 1974 for his flight to California; midway over Missouri, it changed its aircraft ID to the tail number.
(That plane is currently in the Reagan Library.)
Brachiator
Very sobering numbers.
We are into the second week after Thanksgiving. It would be hopeful if the number of hospitalizations and deaths at least stabilized, if not declined. It might be a sign that mitigation efforts are working. Otherwise, things will get worse as we head into Christmas and other December holidays. Especially if significant numbers of people insist on attending church services in person.
Gin & Tonic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Precisely. Trump could take the plane, but once Biden takes the oath, it’s no longer AF1.
trollhattan
@MisterForkbeard:
“Sorry, but Air Force 1 is having its hair done that day.”
In which I read a Dowd article about another woman and does not revert to mean girl: Candice Bergen.
Listened to an interview with a health professional who said based on the trials, the Pfizer vaccine provides COVID antibodies orders of magnitude greater that COVID survivors show. And that’s a Big Biden Deal.
Kent
I’ve spent my whole life split between conservative and liberal parts of this country. I grew up in the 70s and my parents were liberal Christian civil rights and anti-war types from the 1960s. As a kid I can remember my dad having heated discussions with my conservative grandfather about Nixon and the war back in the early 1970s.
But I don’t remember the divide as being anywhere remotely as wide as it is today with Trump, MAGA, Covid, and all the rest. Nixon and the GOP were vile with their racist “southern strategy” but this just feels so much more existential today.
Demographics and economics are both on our side as the country is becoming more diverse and urban with every election. But it is going to be a long, hard, and relentless fight to get through this. We are at a point where people are not going to be convinced or persuaded. They just have to be beaten.
Betty Cracker
@Barbara:
Here’s hoping Papaya Pinochet haunts Republicans like a curse, stepping on every message they try to send, second-guessing every strategy they articulate and knocking anyone who gets too high profile down a few pegs so he can continue to hog the limelight. With any luck, the party will be so embittered and divided by 2022 they’ll lose governorships, statehouses and lots of seats in Congress.
Kent
Turn around? God forbid no. Continue on out over the Atlantic until it gets to Saudi Arabia or Russia or some such place that will have him? Maybe.
Scout211
One thing keeps going through my mind is that blaming Trump, while not wrong, gives a far too easy excuse for every single Republican politician in Washington DC and many of the state governorships. It would have been great for Trump to be the leader but with all of the Republicans in Washington seriously taking steps to control this pandemic, we wouldn’t really need Trump to be the leader. He could have been the crazy president whistling in the wind. But if the Republicans actually took this pandemic seriously and instituted measures to control this pandemic even without his leadership, we would be in a much, much better place today and more lives would have been saved.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: A scenario I devoutly wish to see unfold.
SiubhanDuinne
Re Pearl Harbor.
I guarangoddamtee you that President Joseph R. Biden will participate, with deep knowledge and deeper dignity, in the 80th anniversary observances at Pearl Harbor one year from today.
Ksmiami
@jonas: it reminds me of The Walrus and the Oysters from Lewis Carroll…
leeleeFL
@JPL: All that the Media needs to do is IGNORE HIM! Done and done.
He will lose his shit, but I couldn’t care any less if I made a concerted effort
Gin & Tonic
Just wondering here – has this guy acknowledged Biden’s status as President-Elect?
indycat32
@Steeplejack (phone): And does he think the network/cable channels will switch from the inaugural to his scurrying out of town?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker:
OK, now I know who got efg’s thesaurus.
catclub
@TriassicSands: yeah, it needs more a of a ‘Never again’ treatment.
JPL
@leeleeFL: That would do it. It’s time for all of us to cleanse ourselves of him.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Scout211:
Keep in mind, Republicans believe that “I’m from the government and I here to help” are the nine scariest words in the English language.
Kent
I like “MAGA Mussolini”
My wife is Chilean and Pinochet’s shadow loomed over Chile for far too damned long after he was voted out. In fact they are still trying to shed the right wing Pinochet-era constitution even today.
Mussolini was shot by partisans together with his mistress and his dead body was strung up like a side of beef and left to hang.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, if nothing else, official events will be much more dignified and respectful.
scav
So da orange one wants to play inauguration size-off again? Wants to believe the celebrations scattered about the world are weally about him? Clever widdle reality star.
Ignore him, but that’ll just play into their collective Deep State! Fake News! We Wus Robbed! collective delusion. As for AF 1, he’s been sooooo delicate about maintaining traditional courtesies. (Actually, I’d let him have it, but then have air control keep it in a holding pattern long enough to bollux his schedules. Turn each and every stop light red as his limo approaches.)
Mike in NC
In the book “A Very Stable Genius”, there’s a mention of the time when Trump was riding on the boat out to visit the USS Arizona Memorial. He had to turn to John Kelly, then Chief of Staff, to explain to him exactly what the nature of the visit was all about. He really is totally oblivious about everything that doesn’t have to do with making a quick buck. A shameful chapter in our history is about to end.
Ksmiami
@Kent: I’ve craved a Mussolini ending for Trump since he was inaugurated.
Repatriated
@Barbara
Might be. Average age of death of CoVID-19 victims (nationally) was 79, which is close to average life expectancy.
But, the average additional life expectancy among people age 79 is a bit over 9 years. (If you’ve survived to 79, you’re in the half of the people born 79 years ago that pulled the average down by dying at a younger age.)
Uncle Cosmo
@Kent: I go back & forth among Cheeto Benito, Agolf Twitler, Orangecandyass, Trumplthinskin, Chicken Brittle, Needy Amin, Trumpolini, The Emperor Tang®…
Ramalama
I will admit to hate reading the Melania & Me book, which gave a tick-tock on plans leading up to the Presidential Inauguration (no plans, just chaos), and the plans on staffing Flotus’s East Wing area of the White House (lots of needless back stabbing and chaos coming from the West Wing section). A microscope on the inner workings from a staffer’s perspective that I found interesting. I probably would not have been able to read it had Biden lost.
Maybe not so much hate-reading but gloat reading. Schaden reading? Frusen-gladje reading?
Repatriated
@Repatriated: I left a “not” out. Survivors are the ones not pulling down the average.
jonas
I…I can’t even. Thank God he never tried to visit a concentration camp.
burnspbesq
@SFAW:
I’d like that too, but because Dick Cheney prevailed on Dubya to not submit the Rome Statute to the Senate for ratification, it ain’t happening.
Roger Moore
@Scout211:
Yes and no. It’s true that many of the Republican governors could have done far better than they have; there’s been an utter failure of leadership in places like the Dakotas, and it’s resulted in a lot of unnecessary death.
But at the same time, Trump’s harmful leadership has interfered with state and local attempts to do better. The whole country would be in much better shape if we had used the spring and summer to build a serious national testing infrastructure and accumulate a stockpile of supplies like PPE. Similarly, state and local governments would have an easier time getting people to stay home if we had provided better support for businesses and employees affected by public health shutdowns. Those failures are squarely on Trump.
jonas
@Repatriated: I read somewhere recently that Covid has actually lowered the average LE in the US by something like a year.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Of course, it is a big lie that elderly people who die of Covid-19 were going to die soon anyway. This is why God invented actuarial tables. This is also confirmed by excess death figures, the difference between historical death statistics compared to pandemic period deaths.
I am not sure that this is entirely correct. About 10 percent of health spending is for end of life care, but in the vast majority of cases, no one knew that the person was going to die soon. A small portion of spending is spent on people who are terminally ill. Most spending is for chronic conditions.
If you really wanted to save money on health spending, you would have mandatory euthanasia for people over age 55. From the Kaiser Foundation Health System Tracker.
But this would be as absurd as putting old people out on a mountain to die.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ramalama:
Shhhh. Me too.
:-)
burnspbesq
People look for comparisons in order to wrap their heads around the COVID deaths. Somebody put this one on my FB feed last week on the first day that the death toll exceeded 2,800.
”That’s the entire student body of Lafayette College. In. One. Day.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Betcha anything Joe knows the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Agree. And aside for actual policy, and while I hate to use this term because of recent sad history, a decent president would have used his “bully pulpit” to minimize the number of people going all “Lord of the
FliesVirus” in their personal behavior.Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: And has probably never tried to hump the American flag.
Faithful Lurker
@SiubhanDuinne: Me, too. Although I only got about halfway through it.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: I read an excerpt that described how the ex-friend author colluded with the Third Lady to block Ivanka from the swearing-in photos. I think they actually called it “Operation Block Ivanka.” I am not above relishing petty details like that. It amuses me to believe they make each other miserable, which they all deserve to be.
J R in WV
To me, every death from Coronavirus-19 at this point in the plague’s progress is one more count of voluntary manslaughter on Trump and his co-conspirators.
Earlier in the course of the plague I would have called the deaths involuntary manslaughter, but after a few months and things speeding up due to the lies about masks, hoax disease, etc, etc, it is no longer involuntary at all.
And the co-conspirators need to be indicted, tried and punished as well. Make them dig graves with a pick and shovel? We sure don’t want them anywhere near victims being treated~!!~ So grave digging sounds right to me.
frosty
@Ramalama: I am thinking of reading some of these books about Trump over the next few months. And like you, I wouldn’t be considering it if Biden had lost.
Gravenstone
@Steeplejack (phone): Screw up the timing so that he’s in the air at 1201 PM. AF1 sets down at the nearest available airport and turfs the trespassing oaf onto the tarmac then flies back to DC.
fade to black…
hueyplong
@Betty Cracker: You’re not the only one willing to consume petty details like “Operation Block Ivanka.” Feel free to pass along any and all you discover.
I’m not going to get Trump hanging unside down in the village square, so I’ll settle for your petty details.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Yep. And it is tragic, but hardly surprising, that Trump has checked out of any interest in the pandemic at all and splits his time between working on his pardon list and ranting about the election.
Scout211
@Roger Moore:
I don’t disagree with this at all. I was just dreaming, I guess, that in a just world, the Republicans could have, should have, passed spending bills and funded everything that the states needed to fight the pandemic, even over Trump’s failure of leadership and probable veto. If they cared about the citizens of this country (I know, I know . . . pie in the sky and all that), things would have been different.
And I am not even saying it would have ever been likely to have happened in this polarizing political climate. I’m just hoping that in the fog of how horrible Trump’s leadership is, that it is not forgotten that they let this happen on their watch. Not only did they allow it, they welcomed it.
They could have done something. They had the power and chose to remain silent for their own benefit.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, yes. That bit was Schadenfreudelicious.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Has Pompeo said thing one about Erdogan or Bolsonaro or Duterte or Moti or MBS or…I’ll stop now.
Ian
@Lobo: Not to nitpick, but thats 5x more Americans have died from Covid than the Vietnam war. Millions of Vietnamese, of communist and capitalist, as well as people who just wanted to be left alone, died as well. We should not forget them when we talk about Vietnam.
Repatriated
@jonas: I saw it too, but didn’t catch where it was sourced from.
geg6
@frosty:
Yeah, I’ve decided to read Mary Trump’s book when I’m done with Obama’s. I was not going to read it, but he’s lost now and I can face reading about him now. I think it’s the book that can give me the most insight.
trollhattan
@Ian:
The COVID Wall designed after the Vietnam Memorial would slice through much of D.C. Install the fucker at Mar a Lago. Trump deserves Bobby Lee treatment.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@BC in Illinois:
My condolences. I’m sorry about your brother
catclub
@Brachiator: I went to the website. I was hoping to find info on health care costs in the final six months of life. … and did not.
My impression was that those costs are often very high. of course, if those are high for the 45 y.o with terminal cancer, that will get conflated into ‘old person being kept alive artificially at great cost’
as well.
Ramalama
@Betty Cracker: The author – best friends kinda sorta of Melania’s – did indeed run massive interference against Ivanka. Rightfully so. The things Ivanka tried usurping (sometimes successful) were not for her. She was not the First Lady. She had no official role in that regard. And yet Melania was due office space and a budget that the West Wing just stole. I enjoyed reading the nuts and bolts of the work, a lot of work made even harder because “the family” consisted of too many grifters, not enough resources to grift.
It was a good read. It was a little weird reading about the devotion of the author towards Melania. Like I never knew why. Maybe she didn’t know why either.
catclub
@trollhattan: 60 ft wall around mar-a-plago
trollhattan
@geg6:
She’s a hell of a good interview. I’ve seen several and she’s able to impart different insights with each. Clearly, there’s lots of material.
ETA, while scholarly bios of DJT will come eventually, I believe we’ll learn more if somebody does a proper one of daddy Fred. In many ways this entire mess is his doing.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
I am finding it a real page-turner. It’s more about her father (so far) than about Drumpf, but nevertheless it’s a fascinating portrait of a horrible family.
M31
top deadliest days in american history
1. Galveston hurricane
2. Antietam
3. SF Earthquake
4. 9/11
5. last Friday, COVID
6. last Thursday, COVID
7. last Wednesday, COVID
8. last Tuesday, COVID
9. Pearl Harbor
FUCK Trump and all his GOP enablers
won’t be long before 9/11 is off the list
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Lobo:
As I said this morning, invoking Vietnam:
Who wants to be the last American to die of COVID?
Barbara
@Repatriated: An average of 79 suggests that it is unlikely that 80% of deaths are people over the age of 80. I mean, there are a higher percentage of 80+ year old people than for any other age cohort, but it would be fewer than 80% of the total, especially since there is a progression of increasing mortality through every cohort over the age of 30.
Soprano2
I heard this morning at work that one of our Assemblies of God megachurches had services last weekend not distanced and not limiting attendance. They are in the county to the south of us that has no restrictions on anything, but a lot of those people live in my city. That’s the big problem, as I guess I don’t need to tell anyone here.
Also, one of my bartenders who got COVID told me she didn’t even get tested, and neither did her 1-year-old – only her live-in BF got tested, because he was the one who got it first (probably at work, she says). Her doctor told her that because she had symptoms she should just assume she had COVID, no test required, same with her child. So, one test but 3 sick people. I bet that’s happening a lot everywhere.
geg6
@trollhattan:
@zhena gogolia:
Thanks for the recommendations. I think seeing how the family worked will tell me a lot about him and those awful kids of his. And I feel if I can start to understand that, I can get past the PTSD the last four years have left on me.
trollhattan
@M31:
That’s eyepopping. It will oddly lose impact once COVID sweeps the list and shoves everything else into the footnotes.
leeleeFL
Is ZergNet a necessary evil?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Barbara:
My lazy-ass, never hit a lick maternal grandmother (who never saw a minority food stamp/EBT recipient she couldn’t sneer at) probably burnt through 300K in medicare money she never contributed a dime to in her last 35 or so years of life in various treatments, procedures and medications.
She did it while unironically looking down her nose at recipients who weren’t white, regardless of their birth circumstances.
LuciaMia
Quotes from a “Christmas Carol” could get a real work-out this December.
“If they be like to die, they had better do so and decrease the surplus population.”
“Oh God!” the ghost growls, “to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
” and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys”
Frank Wilhoit
No date in human history exceeds the infamy of 4 November 1980.
Scout211
Since this thread is open:
Some good news this morning from SCOTUS:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/supreme-court-transgender-bathrooms-oregon/
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Mary Trump does seem unusually insightful. I guess she had to be to survive that fucked-up family. She says Trump probably really does think he was cheated out of reelection because he gaslights himself to protect his fragile ego. That seems plausible to me. I’ve known people who had to lie to themselves to make it through the day (though not anyone as malevolent as Donald Trump).
Aleta
@Steeplejack (phone): That’s so stupid of him, unless what he’s after is greatly reduced coverage of the jeers and thrown tomatoes. I guess the plan right now is frequency of headlines building the mystery of how, where, with whom. Or is Jared trying to quash his ‘whether’ in his excitement about a glorious escorted motorcade and air show.
Brachiator
@catclub:
The link I provided dealt with the myth that huge amounts are spent on people age 80 and older, and that 80 year olds are going to die soon.
There is a whole separate body of literature on the myth of the high cost of end of life care. Some sample reports here, and here.
A fast AARP summary is here.
Soprano2
I heard a story about a city somewhere in Michigan (I think that’s right, it could have been Wisconsin) where almost everyone has an end-of-life directive. They said that saves more health care dollars than a lot of other things, because most people don’t want heroic efforts made for them at the end of their lives, but it happens because they haven’t made anything official and no one knows what to do, so children or other relatives often say “do everything you can” whether that’s practical or not. Just getting most people to have these would help reduce the cost of health care. I’m sure if this is wrong someone will be along eventually to correct me. LOL
schrodingers_cat
What does the BJ hive mind think of Tufecki now that she is veering far from her academic expertise, writing on everything from the pandemic to politics
I am seeing her latest in the Atlantic retweeted many times on my timeline. It is Friedmanesque and even more unreadable. My eyes glazed over after reading two paragraphs. What is Turkish for word salad? Tautological tabouli?
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
Fred was a monster.
bluefoot
@J R in WV: I think all those who have been complicit in minimizing the pandemic and actively sabotaging efforts to slow/stop the spread should all be denied COVID-related healthcare, tasked with digging graves paid at the same rates prisoners are paid for their work. Then after the pandemic tried for homocide and/or crimes against humanity. And work they do between now and then digging graves can be counted as time served. If I could find a way to include asset forfeiture with the money to go to COVID relief and mask and vaccine distribution, I would. But alas, I am not God Emperor or even Grand Poobah of the United States.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
The key thing is not that end of life expenses are very high; it’s the interpretation of those high end-of-life expenses. There’s a tendency to treat this as doctors wasting money on lost causes, like giving cancer patients expensive medicines that give them a few extra months, but that’s not that common. A lot of that expense in the last 6 months is from people who had an acute crisis- a car crash, heart attack, etc.- where they would have had a reasonably long life ahead of them if they had pulled through.
bluefoot
@Soprano2: My mother literally had her advanced directive on her refrigerator. She knew from experience with my father that EMS will try heroic efforts until/unless they can see a copy of the directive. So no fumbling around in file cabinets for her, just pull the thing off the refrigerator.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat:
The research does not affirm that
ETA: Anyone who uses that argument can safely be ignored on any subject.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@bluefoot: Related, I see folks protesting that we should take no joy in Giuliani testing positive for COVID. I think that misses a point. Those of us who observe quarantine and wear masks are making big and small sacrifices that benefit those who run around staging rallies. I think it’s normal we should feel some kind of justice is served when they suffer a predictable consequence of their carelessness. They’ve made the pandemic worse and more long lasting for the rest of us.
Edmund Dantes
@Scout211: they could have guaranteed his re-election simply by passing stimulus and having him take all the credit. It would have cemented all of their fascist wet dreams. But nope. Can’t help people unless we are getting the corporate ones freedom to kill people (which could have been solidified by courts even more packed).
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: I read that piece in The Atlantic earlier today and had the opposite reaction; I found it clear and insightful — not at all Friedmanesque, in other words.
cain
@Lobo:
Swear to God, if the GOP brings up Benghazi – I am going to blow a gasket. I hope they realize that none of those damn tropes are going to work anymore.
We will be having real hearings around this pandemic and the response given how much death. There should be a damn memorial or something.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@KenK:
Only to:
– Saintly white granny in her house behind the white picket fence, staring suspiciously at the colored deliveryman bringing appliances next door;
– Saintly white grandpa who took you out to plink at squirrels with a .22 rimfire when you were 7, and who formed his political beliefs from John Birch Society tracts;
– That rogueish Uncle Larry, who churned through 5 wives and a brief stint in rehab (and hasn’t found an AA meeting whose people he actually likes), but who knows the best, funniest non-PC jokes that 4-Chan has to offer.
Repatriated
@Barbara: Nursing home hotspots drove the average age of death up. If they were the majority of fatalities (haven’t checked), it could even have driven the median age up as well.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: Oh I think she is full of it. After Columbusing about American politics, she ends the essay with a both sidery flourish.
cain
@The Moar You Know:
They might not go to jail, but for people like McConnell, the flag will not fly at half-mast. He man with no honor deserves none.
If the indignant want to have a conversation about McConnell, I’m here for that. Fuck that man.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: She is now an expert on everything from political science to epidemiology? I find her smug know-it-all ness is grating.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: Are the linguists quoted in the linked WaPo article mistaken then?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@MisterForkbeard:
Drop him off in Guatemala City, Tegucigalpa or Mexico City and let him figure out how to thumb a ride from there.
lowtechcyclist
I’d been saying ‘every day, a Jonestown’ because for much of the year, the numbers had been in that ballpark. But now we’re way past Jonestown, even past a Pearl Harbor each day, and gaining on 9/11.
Nearly 20 years later, we still go through a major security rigamarole at airports due to 9/11, but a good chunk of the country is bitterly opposed to the imposition on their freedumbs represented by wearing a mask, even though Covid-19 has been like a hundred 9/11’s in America alone.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: I don’t know that all the deaths would have been preventable, but the vast majority would have been.
Christ. I got the flu shot the other day, which caused weird chest muscle pains, and then a mild stomach bug last night (no correlation as far as I can tell), and I have been scared stiff thinking, “is this the ‘rona? Do I need to get tested? Am I a danger to others?”
FUCK this bullshit. This so, so did not have to go down like this!
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I continue to be astounded that so many conservatives are willing to risk their lives for Trump and his empty ravings about the pandemic and other matters. I don’t take joy in Rudy’s foolishness, but I have to note that it was just that, foolish.
Absolutely agree with you on this point.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
It’s an old linguistics canard. I think Sapir started it.
OzarkHillbilly
Lola the dog reunited with her owners after three years missing
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Yes.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Interestingly, the Inuit actually only have one word for everything, but use tones to provide different meanings. Kind of like Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Bill Arnold
@Gin & Tonic:
Not what you’re asking, but Maduro has:
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2020/11/9/maduro-hopes-to-resume-decent-dialogue-with-us-after-biden-win
Lyrebird
@Betty Cracker:
uh-oh, pedants gonna pedant:
I can’t get past the paywall, but I see that the headline talks about yes there are 50 words for snow… Here are some of the difficulties in comparing word count:
1. Inuit has lots and lots of endings, prefixes, etc, that make different declensions (roughly) of the same word look like different words to a speaker of something like English with very little of that. Think of how Fahrfegnuggen or whatever was a joke here.
2. English has about 50 words for snow, too, if you talk to a skier. Hard pack, slush, flurry, etc.
3. English retains a whole heap of terms of little freshwater fish even when most of the people I meet couldn’t tell a rainbow trout from any other kind, so it’s not a good measure of how important something is.
Anyhow, even if people don’t have time for the whole Pullum article Gin & Tonic linked, read the last two pages, 279-280, it’s quite funny, starts with:
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
There’s a long political tradition in the U.S. of pretending that Democrats aren’t talking about things that Democrats are talking about.
Lyrebird
@Gin & Tonic: See my comment above. Thanks for finding online Pullum.
Kent
I think AF1 has enough fuel to take him straight across the Atlantic and drop him right off at the Hague.
Baud
@Kent:
Gin & Tonic
@Lyrebird: His takedown of that Robson piece quoted in the WaPo is epic as well (linked in my #123.)
People who argue that the whatever people have however many words for something or other invariably have nothing of importance to say and are just filling space with that argument.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
“We flew him to the general vicinity of Manaus and shrink-wrapped him to a pallet before airdropping him into the Amazonian rainforest at night. It was warm, and we provided him with a bottle of water and a pocketknife to cut himself out of the wrap. He was suitably clothed as always, blue suit, white shirt, 5 foot long red tie. We also left him his iPhone, but I can’t speak to cell coverage…”
bluefoot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If they only infected themselves, it would be less intolerable – even though they are/will demand health care and financial resources despite the fact their actions are prolonging the pandemic. They are so wedded to their ideology, I do not think even getting COVID will change their minds. Making everyone else suffer and die appears to be their highest motivation.
Cheryl Rofer
@schrodingers_cat:
lowtechcyclist
@Baud: You are too kind. I want Trump to live a long, long time – in a prison cell.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Ksmiami:
I tend to lean more toward the Ceaucescu end, myself.
Repatriated
@Scout211:
Doing something might not have helped them.
The entire enterprise was to convince as many people as possible that nothing could be done (masks don’t work, etc.) and because of that that nothing should be done (economic impact claims, “liberty” assertions, “natural herd immunity,” suicide/domestic violence claims against shutdowns).
If nothing could or should have been done, then none of the deaths (particularly the ones after community spread was known) would have been their fault.
If they actually did something after the initial reaction (stimulus spending, mask mandates, etc.) they’d be showing that something should have been and could have been done. And that would raise the questions of whether it was enough, and why they didn’t do it earlier. That’s a fight they’d lose.
“Doing nothing” limited the debate to the question “Should we?” instead of “Are we doing it effectively?” That could be fought to a draw, and almost was in the Electoral College numbers.
Plus it prevented government spending which might have needed to be made up for with eventual taxes, a long-term threat to them if they’d won 2020.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Let’s compromise and exile him to St. Helena like Napoleon.
RSA
@Betty Cracker:
See Krupnik, 2010, for an overview of the controversy. He writes,
Maybe there’s something more recent, though.
Kent
Well, strictly speaking, 195,000 Americans died in October 1918 from the Spanish flu which averages out to 6,290 per day for the entire month of October. We aren’t quite there yet.
dww44
@Shantanu Saha: I don’t know if the linked site leans left or right, but very obviously the ads on the right side are straight out of the conservative grifting and conspiracizing landscape.. The very first one, which has cartoonishly exaggerated Biden and Harris visages, has this teaser:
“This Leaked Video could permanently shut down the entire Democratic Party”. I refused to click.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Soprano2: Obama tried to do just that…DEATH PANELS!
Chyron HR
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, I can’t speak for anyone else but I still think you’re an asshole.
Betty Cracker
@Lyrebird: Here’s the salient part of the WaPo article:
I don’t have the expertise to suss out who’s correct here. But it would not surprise me to learn that Inuit people’s language would contain more words for snow than the language of, say, Florida’s Seminole tribe.
Ironically, Tufekci’s point was that we shouldn’t get so bogged down in semantic squabbles over an unfamiliar state of affairs that we miss the very real danger this moment represents. I thought it was an interesting point, but opinions, as always, vary.
tybee
ftfy
damn you, baud.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
With respect to Giuliani, this video burns me up. The unbelievable arrogance and stupidity of this asshole is off the charts. If COVID took Giuliani’s life, I’d have no problem at all with that.
After the final idiotic lawsuit has been settled, Rudy and all the other morons on Trump’s legal team should be disbarred. They’re a fucking disgrace to the legal profession and should be forced to find some other line of work.
h/t https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/12/06/giuliani-coronavirus-atlanta-georgia-dec-3-ranney-sot-vpx.cnn
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: From the reaction to that piece, as I linked above
Ksmiami
@Baud: you say St. Helena – I say drop him into the crater at Mount Saint Helens… Tomayto/Tomahto
Ksmiami
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: but he was done In by close military officers… Mussolini’s final moment was much more hands on ya know?
TriassicSands
I think one of the big differences exists because today the argument is with Trump cultists, which include virtually the entire GOP.
We’re not arguing about issues, but reality itself. Issues exist on a spectrum, but the delusional thinking of today’s Right is divorced entirely from reality.
Roger Moore
@Repatriated:
This is an interesting analysis, but I think it ignores a lot of history. Experience shows that politicians faced with an external disaster like COVID get a lot of credit for showing up and trying to do something about it, even if they make serious mistakes. Most leaders across the globe got a popularity boost from the pandemic, even ones like Cuomo who had objectively terrible outcomes. As long as they were visibly trying hard to fix things, people gave them credit. Even Trump got a popularity spike when he was showing up every day for COVID press conferences.
rikyrah
@J R in WV:
From the beginning, it was manslaughter.
Remember the Woodward tapes.
We know that every COVID-19 response was deliberate. It wasn’t wrapped in ignorance about the science. They knew and acknowledged the science. They CHOSE MALICE.?
bluefoot
@rikyrah: Yep. The president knew as soon as early January that this was a potential disaster and he chose to say and do nothing. Then chose to take resources away from blue states. Then chose to lie about the pandemic. Then chose to encourage actions that would spread the virus further and faster. Then spread more lies about COVID and treatments and hamstrung experts within the administration. etc etc. It started as manslaughter and has moved its way toward genocide.
sab
@bluefoot: Mine did too.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Yep. Trump’s immediate thought was “How does this help me?”
An empty man with an empty soul.
Patricia Kayden
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic:
It is interesting how some notions resist refutation. I suspect it relates to things that are easy to remember, and seem to be fun, or cool.
H-Bob
With respect to the 9-11/Covid comparison:
–Where is the MASK Act equivalent to the PATRIOT Act restrictions on freedom?
–Where is the infectious profiling of the maskless?
–Why aren’t there restrictions on church services, which literally are breeding grounds for infections ?
Barry
@Kent: “But I don’t remember the divide as being anywhere remotely as wide as it is today with Trump, MAGA, Covid, and all the rest. Nixon and the GOP were vile with their racist “southern strategy” but this just feels so much more existential today.”
I believe that it was, but the losers had to lie for a while.
Sm*t Cl*de
@schrodingers_cat:
This will come as a surprise to linguists.
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=37
TS (the original)
@H-Bob:
This one is easy – SCOTUS ruled for the churches against Gov Cuomo.
debbie
Make him take AF2.
schrodingers_cat
@Sm*t Cl*de: Take it up with Zeynep and the Atlantic. I was just quoting her.
Shantanu Saha
@dww44:
I think I’ve developed a mind filter that prevents me from seeing ads on web pages. Helps when navigating wingnut central.
Shantanu Saha
@Ksmiami:
Kilauea or GTFO.
Shantanu Saha
@debbie:
As soon as Biden is sworn in, no aircraft not carrying Biden will be designated as AF1. Trump will be flying on Air Force VC-25A #28000 (or #29000), and the Secret Service might even prevent him from occupying the President’s quarters and make him sit in the rear.
TruthOfAngels
@debbie: Nah, make him take the bus. Kamala don’t need his cooties.