101–110 of 200 posts
"Believing people without symptoms didn't spread the virus, the agency limited testing, discouraged masking..." This is false by Fauci's own account (see below interview) in which he states mask wearing was discouraged in order to secure availability for health workers. This is no small distinction as it raises questions about the importance of public trust/credibility during a health crisis. https://m.youtube.com/wa…
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Why should Governments force people into lockdown for a virus with a CFR of 0.26%, marginally more deadly than the Flu at 0.1%? In particular, COVID deaths are concentrated at those aged 70+ with existing health conditions, so broad-scale lockdown and enforced mask wearing doesn't make sense - when targeted support for the elderly and vulnerable would be effective and less disruptive.
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Militaries are reliant on domestic production and labor. (Paying Chinese solider costs the government a fraction as much as an American soldier.) So instead of an exchange rate conversion, you should be doing a purchasing-power conversion. For these three countries, that means multiplying by 2x to 4x. Also, the US is particularly inefficient at capital spending. It costs us a billion dollars to build a mile of subway…
The majority of DoD's budget is not salaries. Only the salaries should be scaled in this way. E.g. many other countries are buying our F-35s at the same price we are. Other countries simply can't get equally effective jet fighters, aircraft carriers, etc., at a third to a quarter of the price.
I did some work with the CDC in 2014. They were organised and sensible and fantastic to work with, especially in comparison to local equivalents here in Australia. It's shocking to see how badly they failed.
FEMA appeared to have their shit together but completely boondoggled every disaster response in some way.
It’s amazing we didn’t see this coming sooner
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adblockers are a non-negotiable necessity nowadays. not due to ads, but due to tracking.
OK, then you don’t get to read the article. It’s a fair trade.
One of my pet peeves is the way nobody in the Government is caring about safety on air travel. I had to fly recently and someone near me was using a CPAP. Study after study shows that CPAP aerosolizes and spreads virus particles much more rapidly than normal respiration. Various Government agencies warn about this. - https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/covid19/wp-content/uploads/sites/197... - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar…
If they are required by law...
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You're correct, personnel costs is not the majority of DoD costs. However, their "pay and benefits" take up 40% of it's budget ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... ) Procurement (the most visible part of the budget we hear about) is 20% of the DoD budget.
Also, one needs to take into account Black Budgets - as they are totally opaque and we have no idea what amount of the budget they consume, assuming they are even accounted for in the 700 billion dollar number the budget claims to be.
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OK, then you don’t get to read the article. It’s a fair trade.
That is fine, I just wanted to give another perspective why people only read the title and not articles.
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I think you'd make a stronger argument by instead of making a military or other things argument, and just make a 'fund other things more' argument. The reason I think you should stay away from pointing fingers, especially at a relatively divisive issue like military or especially aircraft carrier funding is because then you shift a question of "should American be world leading in commercial air travel regulation, pan…
The fact that "military" is a "divisive" issue proves the point of how we got to this point in the first place.
Sitting atop the longest stretch of global stability (largely enforced/maintained by the US military), it’s very hard to think clearly about what variables we can or should fiddle with.
"Believing people without symptoms didn't spread the virus, the agency limited testing, discouraged masking..." This is false by Fauci's own account (see below interview) in which he states mask wearing was discouraged in order to secure availability for health workers. This is no small distinction as it raises questions about the importance of public trust/credibility during a health crisis. https://m.youtube.com/wa…
There are a minimal number of excess deaths now associated with COVID, so what is the problem? Allowing the community to acquire immunity naturally during Summer is a good way to minimise the spread of the virus come Winter. COVID severity seems heavily linked with Vitamin D levels, so lockdown during Summer would possibly have been counter-productive for the general population. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/cov…