Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[delphonso]

I mean. Still.

[Bumber]

It's wild seeing how the US is faring compared to the civilized world. I'm seeing businesses who could have handled ~3 months of a shutdown needing to close permanently because things are still getting worse instead of better. Hopefully the people who were shouting about reopening quickly to preserve the economy will be remembered for their short-sightedness ruining the economy instead. Jobs won't be coming back here, and the only businesses I've seen prosper are in automation or prison slave labor.

QTF. Its annoying how people dont realize the best way to save the economy is to stop this mess. And that we wont have a normal economy while the pandemic rages

The best way to save the economy was to never have shut down in the first place. Mammon demands sacrifice!

[Maximum Spin]

I mean. Still.

Still what?
Let me be clear about the implications here: this — reopening — is literally benefiting the least populated parts of the country at the extreme expense of cities. It is absolutely an intentional transfer of economic power from cities to thinly populated rural areas, and it's working. If you fail to appreciate this, you will not understand what happens afterward.

[Reelya]

The size of the county isn't the relevant point. The population is.

For example the first no-case example I found was in Alaska, there are three counties listed with no cases. One is Yakutat, population 662.

The borough covers an area about six times the size of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, making it one of the largest counties (or county equivalents) in the United States.

Yes it's quite large. But there are almost no fucking people there, so the population is extremely sparse. That might explain why it has no recorded cases.

[delphonso]

I mean. Still.

Still what?
Let me be clear about the implications here: this — reopening — is literally benefiting the least populated parts of the country at the extreme expense of cities. It is absolutely an intentional transfer of economic power from cities to thinly populated rural areas, and it's working. If you fail to appreciate this, you will not understand what happens afterward.

The other implications are that the US is once again prolonging the virus for the sake of...minor immediate economic growth. Stopping everything is the only way other countries have managed to get the virus under control.

[Maximum Spin]

The other implications are that the US is once again prolonging the virus for the sake of...minor immediate economic growth. Stopping everything is the only way other countries have managed to get the virus under control.

Well, yes, but that's almost missing the point, I feel, which is that the people where the virus isn't don't care. Sacrificing NYC or Atlanta is like sacrificing some African country as far as they're concerned. Maybe even better, since Africa can't vote against them.

[Reelya]

The point about transferring economic power to thinly populated rural areas doesn't make a lot of sense. You can have a downturn in the city, but the cities are always going to be the economic engine. The rural area might temporarily look better off, not because they have economic power but because they have less to lose thus didn't fall as far.

[Frumple]

I mean. Still.

Still what?
Let me be clear about the implications here: this — reopening — is literally benefiting the least populated parts of the country at the extreme expense of cities. It is absolutely an intentional transfer of economic power from cities to thinly populated rural areas, and it's working. If you fail to appreciate this, you will not understand what happens afterward.

Being in one of those thinly populated rural areas, I can absolutely guarantee you that ain't working. Beyond the slow downs related to people still friggin' dying out here, much of our economic activity is reliant on having someone to sell to, and there's sod all out here to sell to. Cities getting econo-fucked doesn't actually benefit these joints much or at all, it just screws rural folks alongside it.

Maybe there's some kind of marginal relative benefit to places like Extreme Bumfuck, Alaska, but there's not exactly going to be some kind of boom during or after the plague for these places. They're still going to be largely empty, generally thoroughly shitty places to be or work, and their economic situation will still reflect that at best. At worst they lose even more of whatever minimal economic activity they had due to it being reliant  for clients et al from places hit harder by the plague, and due to being out of the way shitholes didn't exactly have the resources to weather the hit.

Seriously, if the "plan" is what you're suggesting, it's a tremendous self-own that ain't going to work out very well.

[Bumber]

Well, yes, but that's almost missing the point, I feel, which is that the people where the virus isn't don't care. Sacrificing NYC or Atlanta is like sacrificing some African country as far as they're concerned. Maybe even better, since Africa can't vote against them.

People where the virus is don't care, either, if the alternative is no partying. Risk assessment and all that.

[Reelya]

I think the plan was just that Trump could hold the thing together with sticky tape until Wednesday 4th November and get elected again. He wouldn't in fact have any economic plan for the rural areas beyond that, just duct-taping together some semblance of economic normality, with all the crashing down coming after the election. That was the actual plan.

And of course no matter what illusiory short-term benefit to rural voters there is, that's not what Trump cares about. He'd feed half his own supporters into a woodchipper if it would get him elected again, that's how much he cares about who voted for him.

Apparently they did draft a detailed and comprehensive plan to test and isolate and coordinate the federal response. However, that plan was shelved and suppressed a short while after they got intel that stated that most of the deaths would be in Democrat held areas. They did this whole thing on purpose. But it's not that they give any more of a shit about Rural McBumfuck who voted for Trump. Trump and co despise those people even more than they dislike the inner-city people, since they are in fact inner-city elites.

After the election, if Trump wins, I wouldn't be surprise if he changes tack to 100% ransacking mode and basically exports as much value as he can into private pockets. The first term would have been setting up his cronies in charge of everything, hence why he gutted places like the State Department of long-serving civil servants. Remove the checks and balances. Then, the plan would be to get elected to the second term, and then you switch gears to grabbing as much cash as possible and put that into the hands of you and you allies. Covid was a major upset to this plan, hence why Trump's desperate to game the system just long enough to win the election.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If Trump wins reelection, he will 100% use a combination of unitary executive theorists, SCOTUS influence, and repealing the 22nd amendment to remain President for life.

He'll probably also ransack the government, but slower than you describe.

[Reelya]

I'm not sure about that. I don't think Trump's a sustained effort sort of guy. Four years of ransacking then escaping to an island somewhere to live out his last few years in luxury would be more appealing to him. Becoming a dictator for life doesn't fit his cut-and-run sort of mentality. I can see him trying to weasel the second term for the reasons I outlined, but can't see him coordinating a dictatorship. Yeah, turning the USA into a dictatorship would serve the forces of fascism, and Trump definitely has fascistic tendencies, but the "forces of fascism" don't necessarily benefit Trump, they're a tool to get what he wants.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Dictator of the US? Perhaps not. But dictator of the Executive Branch is something he wants to be (even if only to escape prosecution), and more importantly the work by right-wing judges and politicians to treat Republican Presidents as eternal leaders and Democratic Presidents as powerless figureheads has been in progress for decades. Dubya and co. laid some of those tracks, Cheney especially. That's the whole basis of the unitary executive legal theory.

[wierd]

*Nudges toward Ameripol

While our orange dipshit has been singularly stupid about Corona, challenged only by Bolsanaro and Co for worse response ever, discussions about his dictatorial wet-dreams belong in Ameripol, not the Covid thread.

[Starver]

More on elsewhere, then, with the UK adding France to the mandatory (how?) quarantining period for all arrivals/returnees, with a deadline for it being something like 5AM yesterday morning[1].

In the news was a Cross Channel Swimmer, who (because sue and her support crew would only be on French soil[2] for 10 minutes, they'd be able to have the post-swim party back in Blighty that evening without breaking the rules.

Also a set of people who hired a fishing boat to get them back to Albion at 4:50AM, so they were just Ok...

(Because staying for 11 minutes or arriving at 5:01AM isvastly more unsafe than what they did/planned for. Sounds to me the letter of the law means more to some than the spirit of the law. And I say this fully aware that my approach to posted speed limits could be seen as the same, by some.)


[1] Or whenever it was. I frankly don't personally care, as I didn't immediately book a holiday to Europe the moment it appeared I could, only to find out while I was over there that I might not have complete freedom of movement once I returned unless I allezed pretty rapidement to the nearest port.

[2] Or, rather, rocks. At a fairly inaccessible point of Cap Gris-Nez, where beachgoers would be unlikely to turn up anyway.