An open thread to discuss Trump’s big rally/coronavirus giveaway in Tulsa. And whatever else you want to discuss.
No trolls!
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@ catalpa
You star; thank you!
O/T:
TERF and former cop Fred Sargeant (or someone connected to him) has now created a fake account impersonating Malik Jackson’s aunt. Malik Jackson may have been murdered by Tony McDade shortly before cops killed McDade, so it is a tragedy he was murdered and awful that Fred is using this as an excuse to deadname McDade and farm transphobia from the family’s suffering.
More on it here.
Nor sure of this is O/T or not; but just having a discussion elsewhere about our current relationship with the planet and got reminded of this.
Always seemed prescient, but now it’s almost creepy.
O/T : someone linked me https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/sex-offender-registries-mass-incarceration
I am interested to know the positions of other people about that registry. I tend to dislike the concept, but not being a sexual assault survivor it’s one of the area where more implied voice matter.
@Alan:
Hmm. That’s written to be all about ‘protecting the animals’, but yeah, as you note, it’s really all about protecting the farms. There are exceptions for people authorized to do inspections, of course, but there’s never enough inspectors to actually do spot checks, so a lot of stuff like that only ever gets checked if somebody else reports a problem, which this bill can prevent from happening.
It’s one of those situations of ‘if the regulators were actually able and willing to do their duty, this law wouldn’t be a problem’. (And quite likely wouldn’t be needed.) But it’s exactly the sort of people who do ignore the rules anyway that this could give legal cover to.
Working in computer security can be an interesting entryway into legal analysis, because in both cases one of the first questions to ask is ‘how could somebody who knows the rules use them against us’.
Since this be an open thread … 😛
Rarely make a movie suggestion, since I tend to watch movies uncritically, but if you’ve not seen it and get the chance, give Never Rarely Sometimes Always a go.
It’s good. Very good.
@ jenora
Ag-Gag legislation is always couched in animal protection terms; most of the laws actually use the same template. As you point out though, it’s bollocks. It’s about protecting the industry and shielding the truth from the public.
What is especially egregious is they specifically exclude a ‘public interest’ defence. That’s nearly always available in confidentiality cases.
But note that the law also covers disclosure as to disease outbreaks and contaminated food. Can see why they want to keep that quiet. We’re aware of several really serious ones at the current time. Ironically the COVID-19 lockdowns have helped mitigate those presently. But there’s a new strain of H5N1 that apparently has 60% mortality rate. If that gets into the human population it’ll make C-19 (0.66%) look positively pleasant by comparison.
@Alan Robertshaw
A major difference between H5N1 and coronavirus is that H5N1 is very rare in humans (~700 cases since 2003) mostly due to the fact that it is very rare to be transmitted between humans as it requires prolonged contact unlikely between strangers in public, so it generally stays in family clusters. Previous H5N1 outbreaks have had roughly the same mortality rate yet did not kill nearly as many people due to the lack of person to person transmission, so this probably isn’t something to worry about just yet unless you are spending lots of time handling dead chickens.
Source:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/h5n1-people.htm
@ naglfar
Yeah. We’re quite lucky I guess with viruses. It’s not in their evolutionary interest to be both highly contagious and incredibly deadly. So there’s a sort of built in negative feedback mechanism. Like how ebola kills you before you can get to an airport.
The current coronavirus is probably near the top end of what an epidemic can do : very easy to spread, actually pretty high mortality, and heavy secondary effects. Hard to see a virus happening naturally that would be significantly worse.
Smallpox was worse back in its heyday. Way, way worse. Disfiguring, debilitating, 30% mortality, highly contagious, and caused recurrent epidemics for centuries. And if you include non-viral epidemic-causing pathogens the Black Death easily takes the cake. Basically bacterial Ebola, and much more easily spread.
@Surplus : remember that without solid hospitals, the death rate of COVID would be 30+% too. It’s 0.75% because we litteraly have machine that make people breath ; all the guys who go to the hospital would be dead if it was two century ago.
Basicaly all the diseases you cite are scary, but would not do *that* much more damage than COVID with modern infrastructur.
@ surplus
I went to a lecture once and one of the arguments was that the Black Death was ultimately responsible for the creation of the middle class.
The lecture was about collective employment law. The premise was that with a loss of 30% of the workforce this ended feudalism and fiefdom as serfs just abandoned the land they had been tied to and offered their, suddenly in demand, services to the highest bidder. And that lead to the creation of guilds etc and those evolved into trade unions and also the self employed artisan class. It seemed plausible the way it was presented.
And supposedly that’s also the reason there’s a higher natural resistance to HIV in the countries historically most affected. The Black Death resulting in evolutionary selection pressure for some genetic combination that provides immunity to some modern pathogens.
I was chatting to an archeologist friend about whether the current pandemic will show up in the record. She thinks there might be a noticeable uptick in burials and cremations, but the most obvious feature may be deposits associated with the disposal of PPE.
@Alan Robertshaw
Has anyone thought about making biodegradable/recyclable PPE? I understand there may be other more immediate concerns, but the amount of waste generated is also an issue.
People have thought about it. I am not aware of such effort succeeding however.
The economic effect of the Black Death is hard to overstate.
Court refuses to grant injunction preventing Trump’s niece from publishing her book. He’s not having a lot of luck with courts lately.
@Alan Robertshaw
Hopefully his bad luck with courts continues through the rest of his term.
I don’t expect the book to sway many voters though, as most Trump supporters probably won’t read it and will block out anything which doesn’t correspond to what they think. 40% of the country will vote for him no matter what, it’s about getting the rest of the country to vote.
Republicans are getting very nervous right now, even Tucker Carlson acknowledged that Trump may lose in November.
Seems like it’s not just the courts picking on poor old Donald. He’s now being libelled by that well know bastion of fake lefty media, er, Fox News.
@Alan Robertshaw
How the mighty have fallen…
Where’s he going to go for people to ramble about how great he is and bash anyone to the left of him?
Ohlmann: Covid is far below 30% mortality without hospitals. Only a single-digit percentage get any modern health care in that roughly 1% infection fatality rate (eg in NYC, about 20% of cases hospitalized, but cases were about 10% of all infections).
If there were no hospitals, only that single-digit percentage would suffer worse outcomes.
By far the determining factor in how many people for isn’t health care, it’s infectious disease control. Health care can save some fraction, maybe half or two thirds, of those who would otherwise die. Disease control can give you several orders of magnitude improvement.
Bit more about the Tulsa rally here.
Trump staff removing social distancing stickers in the arena. The irony is, had they left them, they’d have been able to justify all the empty seats.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/politics/9409901/trump-tulsa-rally-removed-coronavirus-distance-stickers