**OFFICIAL Donald J. Trump vs. Joseph (Joe) R. Biden Thread - 2020 Presidential Election**

[Sanlmar]

Why are you grinding on this?

The virus hasn’t been a partisan issue. This was a Trump issue. He ignored and dismissed the health crisis. Combined with his character issue he lost the election.

Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. Until now.

The virus has been a highly partisan issue. Which country were you living in 2020? Doesn't seem like it was the US.

Anyway, we are discussing whether or not a Democrat as President in early 2020 would have prevented a lot of the COVID deaths which happened in the US. I am arguing that they wouldn't have. Trump's bankruptcies and divorces have no bearing on this.

Democrats, when put to the test with COVID, have failed repeatedly.

In February, they were obsessed with xenophobia, and felt that was the more important issue deserving focus.

In April, they were mandating that nursing homes take COVID-positive patients, despite the nursing homes literally begging to let them keep these people out. Many thousands died as a result.

In June, they were repeatedly praising (and in some cases organizing) social protests of 60,000+ people, packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

Sorry if I don't trust this party to "follow the science" and do the responsible thing. They're too busy being woke and walking on eggshells not to offend people.

Trump lacked the ability to lead with empathy during a crisis. Rather than share our concern he dismissed our concern.

That is enough to get you fired.... and he was.

The character issue was a personal beef

Now I’m listening to stuff like dismissing student loans etc. I’m going to have to weather a lot. I do like the troop withdrawals. That’s gotta bug you Druff.

[Dan Druff]

The virus has been a highly partisan issue. Which country were you living in 2020? Doesn't seem like it was the US.

Anyway, we are discussing whether or not a Democrat as President in early 2020 would have prevented a lot of the COVID deaths which happened in the US. I am arguing that they wouldn't have. Trump's bankruptcies and divorces have no bearing on this.

Democrats, when put to the test with COVID, have failed repeatedly.

In February, they were obsessed with xenophobia, and felt that was the more important issue deserving focus.

In April, they were mandating that nursing homes take COVID-positive patients, despite the nursing homes literally begging to let them keep these people out. Many thousands died as a result.

In June, they were repeatedly praising (and in some cases organizing) social protests of 60,000+ people, packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

Sorry if I don't trust this party to "follow the science" and do the responsible thing. They're too busy being woke and walking on eggshells not to offend people.

Trump lacked the ability to lead with empathy during a crisis. Rather than share our concern he dismissed our concern.

That is enough to get you fired.... and he was.

The character issue was a personal beef

Now I’m listening to stuff like dismissing student loans etc. I’m going to have to weather a lot. I do like the troop withdrawals. That’s gotta bug you Druff.

Which part do you think bugs me? The troop withdrawals or the dismissing of the student loans?

The dismissing of the loans bothers me. The troop withdrawals does not.

[Sanlmar]

You know what works in the real world?

Addressing your customers concerns. Demonstrating how you are mitigating them. We sanitize, we mask, we test our employees and maybe our customers. Show them you care.

No one is stopping folks from flying, gambling or eating out. An unfortunate percentage do not.

Do not tell me things are fine Donald. It’s going away. It’s not real. Do not lie to me about cure.

Do not let me hear you have not attended a coronavirus task force meeting for 5 months or read virtually any memos on the subject. That is abjectly irresponsible.

Good luck in court buddy

[gimmick]

That would be where contact tracing comes into play. At some point you either get ahead of the virus or get people to self quarantine. Instead of spreading the virus for 4 days they only do 2 and that all adds up.

Testing also let's you know what Federal/State/County mandates are appropriate. Doing it blind is retarded.

We've been through this few times already. None of this is new.

there's no way to contact trace people who have been out and about with COVID, previously believing themselves to be healthy.

Sure there is. One way is an app that 45% of our population has already downloaded. It alarms you, if you have been within 7 feet for 15 minutes with someone that has been tested positive. Bluetooth. All anonymous and doesn't track your movements, just your relation to other Bluetooth devices.

You also never were one insular bubble. The "early" part of covid isn't the same for the whole country. It likely took something like 4 months to hit everywhere. And every time contact tracing would have had an impact.

If you want a toddler version for how contact tracing works, here's one.

Assume that we have a disease that is asymptomatic for 4 days after 1 day of becoming infected and then contagious. When you're unaware of it, you will infect one person every day.

Subject A gets it on day 1. On day 2 he infects subject B, 3 C, 4 D and then on day 5 subject E. On the night of the 5th day subject A becomes ill. He gets tested on the morning of the 6th. He informs B,C,D,E and they also contact everyone they've spent time with. Because of this B only has time to infect 3 people. C has time for 2. D has time for 1 and E never infects anyone.

The difference for the 1st chain is 10 vs 20 infected in favor of contact tracing. For the second chain, assuming everyone did their job, the difference 4 vs 64. There is no 3rd chain with contact tracing and there is no end without it in this simple example.

That's the base logic. That's how you get ahead of the spread. That's how you kill it.

[Dan Druff]

there's no way to contact trace people who have been out and about with COVID, previously believing themselves to be healthy.

Sure there is. One way is an app that 45% of our population has already downloaded. It alarms you, if you have been within 7 feet for 15 minutes with someone that has been tested positive. Bluetooth. All anonymous and doesn't track your movements, just your relation to other Bluetooth devices.

You also never were one insular bubble. The "early" part of covid isn't the same for the whole country. It likely took something like 4 months to hit everywhere. And every time contact tracing would have had an impact.

If you want a toddler version for how contact tracing works, here's one.

Assume that we have a disease that is asymptomatic for 4 days after 1 day of becoming infected and then contagious. When you're unaware of it, you will infect one person every day.

Subject A gets it on day 1. On day 2 he infects subject B, 3 C, 4 D and then on day 5 subject E. On the night of the 5th day subject A becomes ill. He gets tested on the morning of the 6th. He informs B,C,D,E and they also contact everyone they've spent time with. Because of this B only has time to infect 3 people. C has time for 2. D has time for 1 and E never infects anyone.

The difference for the 1st chain is 10 vs 20 infected in favor of contact tracing. For the second chain, assuming everyone did their job, the difference 4 vs 64. There is no 3rd chain with contact tracing and there is no end without it in this simple example.

That's the base logic. That's how you get ahead of the spread. That's how you kill it.

The problem is that this is indeed the "toddler" version.

If Subject A went to the grocery store or anywhere else visited by the general public, all of a sudden you have a hell of a lot more people than B, C, D, and E to trace -- including many who will be impossible to identify and locate.

In 5 days that's likely to be a number of places, especially in the very early COVID days when everyone was living life normally.

Nice try though.

[gimmick]

Sure there is. One way is an app that 45% of our population has already downloaded. It alarms you, if you have been within 7 feet for 15 minutes with someone that has been tested positive. Bluetooth. All anonymous and doesn't track your movements, just your relation to other Bluetooth devices.

You also never were one insular bubble. The "early" part of covid isn't the same for the whole country. It likely took something like 4 months to hit everywhere. And every time contact tracing would have had an impact.

If you want a toddler version for how contact tracing works, here's one.

Assume that we have a disease that is asymptomatic for 4 days after 1 day of becoming infected and then contagious. When you're unaware of it, you will infect one person every day.

Subject A gets it on day 1. On day 2 he infects subject B, 3 C, 4 D and then on day 5 subject E. On the night of the 5th day subject A becomes ill. He gets tested on the morning of the 6th. He informs B,C,D,E and they also contact everyone they've spent time with. Because of this B only has time to infect 3 people. C has time for 2. D has time for 1 and E never infects anyone.

The difference for the 1st chain is 10 vs 20 infected in favor of contact tracing. For the second chain, assuming everyone did their job, the difference 4 vs 64. There is no 3rd chain with contact tracing and there is no end without it in this simple example.

That's the base logic. That's how you get ahead of the spread. That's how you kill it.

The problem is that this is indeed the "toddler" version.

If Subject A went to the grocery store or anywhere else visited by the general public, all of a sudden you have a hell of a lot more people than B, C, D, and E to trace -- including many who will be impossible to identify and locate.

In 5 days that's likely to be a number of places, especially in the very early COVID days when everyone was living life normally.

Nice try though.

You asked how it works with presymptomatic spreaders and i gave you your answer. None of the specifics of the example are even remotely close to any real world scenario with Covid. They ONLY show the underlying logic.

[gimmick]

Also as far as we know Covid-19 doesn't really do drive-by infections. You mostly need enclosed spaces with extended period of time spent in close proximity of someone that's infected.

[Dan Druff]

Also as far as we know Covid-19 doesn't really do drive-by infections. You mostly need enclosed spaces with extended period of time spent in close proximity of someone that's infected.

Enclosed spaces, probably -- unless the person is very close to you outdoors.

However, there is substantial evidence that it spreads through A/C and heating systems indoors. This is why I have avoided all indoor settings other than when absolutely necessary.

This also makes it really hard to trace, because it does seem to spread a lot in public indoor settings -- bars, restaurants, casinos, supermarkets, etc -- even if you don't get particularly close to anyone for any real length of time.

The way America operates, it was destined to spread, no matter who was in charge. Even if we could rewind the clock to February 1 and told this was going to be as bad as it has been, I'm not sure there would be much we could do.

[gimmick]

Also as far as we know Covid-19 doesn't really do drive-by infections. You mostly need enclosed spaces with extended period of time spent in close proximity of someone that's infected.

Enclosed spaces, probably -- unless the person is very close to you outdoors.

However, there is substantial evidence that it spreads through A/C and heating systems indoors. This is why I have avoided all indoor settings other than when absolutely necessary.

This also makes it really hard to trace, because it does seem to spread a lot in public indoor settings -- bars, restaurants, casinos, supermarkets, etc -- even if you don't get particularly close to anyone for any real length of time.

The way America operates, it was destined to spread, no matter who was in charge. Even if we could rewind the clock to February 1 and told this was going to be as bad as it has been, I'm not sure there would be much we could do.

Maybe. But as an example from here, our town got hit with biggest spike of Covid cases in the whole country this fall. Few months ago in a span of 1 month we went from 0 cases to 600 per 100k. In the last 4 weeks i think we've had 30 new cases.

I'm not saying you could it, but this is how we did it.

We closed 2 Health centers and their staff was only doing contact tracing. We closed everything non essential. Mask use was highly advised. Over 2k people self quarantined. Drive trough testing was already in place from spring. We're really good at social distancing. Oh and every public place where infected had been was publicized. And the app i mentioned was doing what it was supposed to do.

And then just like that it was mostly gone.

How we got the initial spike ties into this town being a University town. In August we had 10k people returning from summer leave from all over the country. They had their usual parties among themselves and then they went bar hopping. We also gave zero fucks during the summer and early fall. I think we might be the only country that increased socializing this year. We mostly just act when we need to. We still have the least cases per capita out of all European countries.

[gimmick]

Few of the numbers were off, but scale is roughly correct.

Click Daily cases, Show total active cases and Use 7-day average...

https://coronalevel.com/Finland/Vaasa/

...we went from 62 daily new cases in Oct 14th to 2.8 in Nov 18th. Roughly now should be the peak of our flu season.

[sonatine]

druff spending his morning trying to convince people that the GOP isnt an incompetent clusterfuck of intellectually crippled professional victims:

[BCR]

Democrat fantasy: Under a Dem administration, we would have followed the science, made all the right decisions, and saved mass lives.

Democrat reality: The deadliest mistake by US officials was mandating COVID positive patients be placed in nursing homes -- a mistake made by 3 large Dem-run states (NY, MI, PA), resulting in thousands of deaths. In January and February, Dems were far more concerned with "xenophobia" and insisted that fear was the enemy, not the virus. In June, no high profile Democrats spoke out against the 60,000 person, tightly packed packed protests.

Huge LOL reading these fantasies about how well and responsibly this would've been handled under Hillary.

SCIENCE!!!

Listen, I don’t think anyone started from a bad place of wanting to kill grandma. Ones ability to adapt to changing information quickly is what determines intellect and leadership. Not making the same mistakes twice
As long as you’re all on the same page of we have a major problem and need to address it to the best of our ability, then you do the best you can and make the smartest choices known at the time.

The problem is you had a leader continuing to downplay it and dismiss it to a group of followers who begin from a place of government skepticism and pure mental illness conspiracy theory thinking. If their idiocy only touched them, so be it, but it’s a virus.

You always handwave away the majority of your party as some backwoods rubes who are a small part. You have been mostly at home, live in LA, and think that’s real America. It is, but it isn’t real red America.

I live on the border of the seventh and eighth most populous states. Not the Dakotas. You don’t grasp the degree to which these people take their marching orders directly from Trump. Professionals, people who appear otherwise normal, not just white power guys.

You don’t see the President tweet or say something stupid and hear three people a day repeat that shit to you verbatim. You and Ben Shapiro aren’t the Republican Party. You’re the part of the party Trump ran right the fuck over beating all your candidates in 2016 and went directly to his people and won easily.

You say he made mistakes in messaging like he was selling shoes or an app. Bad messaging is political speak or business speak. His “bad messaging“ were outright lies that led directly to people killing other people. That’s not bad messaging. That’s not an honest mistake. A honest mistake in February was a sociopathic lie by April, let alone November. The continued and constant lies and mockery of anyone who took it serious. He’d mock reporters and his own staff if they had a mask on. He sent a clear message from the start until the end and it killed more people than necessary.

[Dan Druff]

Democrat fantasy: Under a Dem administration, we would have followed the science, made all the right decisions, and saved mass lives.

Democrat reality: The deadliest mistake by US officials was mandating COVID positive patients be placed in nursing homes -- a mistake made by 3 large Dem-run states (NY, MI, PA), resulting in thousands of deaths. In January and February, Dems were far more concerned with "xenophobia" and insisted that fear was the enemy, not the virus. In June, no high profile Democrats spoke out against the 60,000 person, tightly packed packed protests.

Huge LOL reading these fantasies about how well and responsibly this would've been handled under Hillary.

SCIENCE!!!

Listen, I don’t think anyone started from a bad place of wanting to kill grandma. Ones ability to adapt to changing information quickly is what determines intellect and leadership. Not making the same mistakes twice
As long as you’re all on the same page of we have a major problem and need to address it to the best of our ability, then you do the best you can and make the smartest choices known at the time.

The problem is you had a leader continuing to downplay it and dismiss it to a group of followers who begin from a place of government skepticism and pure mental illness conspiracy theory thinking. If their idiocy only touched them, so be it, but it’s a virus.

You always handwave away the majority of your party as some backwoods rubes who are a small part. You have been mostly at home, live in LA, and think that’s real America. It is, but it isn’t real red America.

I live on the border of the seventh and eighth most populous states. Not the Dakotas. You don’t grasp the degree to which these people take their marching orders directly from Trump. Professionals, people who appear otherwise normal, not just white power guys.

You don’t see the President tweet or say something stupid and hear three people a day repeat that shit to you verbatim. You and Ben Shapiro aren’t the Republican Party. You’re the part of the party Trump ran right the fuck over beating all your candidates in 2016 and went directly to his people and won easily.

You say he made mistakes in messaging like he was selling shoes or an app. Bad messaging is political speak or business speak. His “bad messaging“ were outright lies that led directly to people killing other people. That’s not bad messaging. That’s not an honest mistake. A honest mistake in February was a sociopathic lie by April, let alone November. The continued and constant lies and mockery of anyone who took it serious. He’d mock reporters and his own staff if they had a mask on. He sent a clear message from the start until the end and it killed more people than necessary.

I have contact with a lot of people on the right whom I consider unreasonable and/or conspiracy prone. These are the people who believe Trump really won this election, and that a lot of COVID was a hoax. I've talked to them. I can't get through to them.

However, it's not because of what Trump said or did. It's the opposite. Trump didn't come out strongly for masking because his most dedicated supporters decided they hated both masks and lockdowns, and that it was an affront to their freedom. Had Trump come out strongly for masking, these people would have ignored him and not done it anyway. Trump wanted his base to still be supportive during the election year, so he didn't strongly oppose them on the masking thing. Sad but true. I wish that wasn't his approach, but I disagree that he brainwashed followers into not masking.

Also, the effectiveness of masking still isn't known. Norway had 4% of the population masking through late August. They never had a bad COVID problem. The reasons for this are unknown. The only regular Norwegian poster, adamantium, defended it by saying that the country was instructed to use common sense and social distance. That actually would make an interesting study. I've found that people wearing masks almost feel like COVID-immune supermen, because of the left/media's obsession with masking. In an effort to get masking cooperation, the media tried to avoid saying that there's a decent chance you'll get COVID even if you wear a mask, if you're in a risky environment. Our own Master Scalir (and his friend Ryan) got COVID for exactly this reason -- they overestimated the protection masks gave them. This is a common problem.

I don't want to go down a whole mask/no-mask rathole, because I do believe that masks help, and I wear them. However, I also believe that the left turned masking political just as the right did, and this led to the opposite problem of people believing masks are more useful for the wearer than they really are, and thus letting their guard down.

In short, I don't believe Trump caused mass death. I also still stand by my second point -- that the Democrats bungled it badly. Between the COVID-patients-to-the-nursing-home thing (which even baffled my 9-year-old son Benjamin when it was going on), the woke obsession with xenophobia in February (instead of focusing on COVID), and the unwavering support for dangerous massive protests in June, the Dems have shown themselves to be wholly poor leaders during this COVID crisis.

I'm not going to defend everything Trump did, and I would have done a lot differently if I were President. However, to say that the Democrats would have "followed the science" and "listened to the experts" is just insane, given what we saw of how they actually handled things.

[BCR]

However, it's not because of what Trump said or did. It's the opposite. Trump didn't come out strongly for masking because his most dedicated supporters decided they hated both masks and lockdowns, and that it was an affront to their freedom. Had Trump come out strongly for masking, these people would have ignored him and not done it anyway.

This is where we strongly disagree. I watched suburban moms I know go directly from posting memes with a bowl of M&M’s saying if you knew only 3 would kill you, would you eat one? I watched families posting pics in PPE saying be smart and safe.

I watched them morph from that to after months of Trumps lies, posting it was all a hoax. He drove that narrative from beginning to end. They weren’t people who were hoaxers or even generally government skeptics originally. They legit bought into his BS and it drove behavior in a massive way.

[blake]

Listen, I don’t think anyone started from a bad place of wanting to kill grandma. Ones ability to adapt to changing information quickly is what determines intellect and leadership. Not making the same mistakes twice
As long as you’re all on the same page of we have a major problem and need to address it to the best of our ability, then you do the best you can and make the smartest choices known at the time.

The problem is you had a leader continuing to downplay it and dismiss it to a group of followers who begin from a place of government skepticism and pure mental illness conspiracy theory thinking. If their idiocy only touched them, so be it, but it’s a virus.

You always handwave away the majority of your party as some backwoods rubes who are a small part. You have been mostly at home, live in LA, and think that’s real America. It is, but it isn’t real red America.

I live on the border of the seventh and eighth most populous states. Not the Dakotas. You don’t grasp the degree to which these people take their marching orders directly from Trump. Professionals, people who appear otherwise normal, not just white power guys.

You don’t see the President tweet or say something stupid and hear three people a day repeat that shit to you verbatim. You and Ben Shapiro aren’t the Republican Party. You’re the part of the party Trump ran right the fuck over beating all your candidates in 2016 and went directly to his people and won easily.

You say he made mistakes in messaging like he was selling shoes or an app. Bad messaging is political speak or business speak. His “bad messaging“ were outright lies that led directly to people killing other people. That’s not bad messaging. That’s not an honest mistake. A honest mistake in February was a sociopathic lie by April, let alone November. The continued and constant lies and mockery of anyone who took it serious. He’d mock reporters and his own staff if they had a mask on. He sent a clear message from the start until the end and it killed more people than necessary.

I have contact with a lot of people on the right whom I consider unreasonable and/or conspiracy prone. These are the people who believe Trump really won this election, and that a lot of COVID was a hoax. I've talked to them. I can't get through to them.

However, it's not because of what Trump said or did. It's the opposite. Trump didn't come out strongly for masking because his most dedicated supporters decided they hated both masks and lockdowns, and that it was an affront to their freedom. Had Trump come out strongly for masking, these people would have ignored him and not done it anyway. Trump wanted his base to still be supportive during the election year, so he didn't strongly oppose them on the masking thing. Sad but true. I wish that wasn't his approach, but I disagree that he brainwashed followers into not masking.

Also, the effectiveness of masking still isn't known. Norway had 4% of the population masking through late August. They never had a bad COVID problem. The reasons for this are unknown. The only regular Norwegian poster, adamantium, defended it by saying that the country was instructed to use common sense and social distance. That actually would make an interesting study. I've found that people wearing masks almost feel like COVID-immune supermen, because of the left/media's obsession with masking. In an effort to get masking cooperation, the media tried to avoid saying that there's a decent chance you'll get COVID even if you wear a mask, if you're in a risky environment. Our own Master Scalir (and his friend Ryan) got COVID for exactly this reason -- they overestimated the protection masks gave them. This is a common problem.

I don't want to go down a whole mask/no-mask rathole, because I do believe that masks help, and I wear them. However, I also believe that the left turned masking political just as the right did, and this led to the opposite problem of people believing masks are more useful for the wearer than they really are, and thus letting their guard down.

In short, I don't believe Trump caused mass death. I also still stand by my second point -- that the Democrats bungled it badly. Between the COVID-patients-to-the-nursing-home thing (which even baffled my 9-year-old son Benjamin when it was going on), the woke obsession with xenophobia in February (instead of focusing on COVID), and the unwavering support for dangerous massive protests in June, the Dems have shown themselves to be wholly poor leaders during this COVID crisis.

I'm not going to defend everything Trump did, and I would have done a lot differently if I were President. However, to say that the Democrats would have "followed the science" and "listened to the experts" is just insane, given what we saw of how they actually handled things.

by saying "mass" death, it sounds like you agree that trump probably caused "some" death.

how could this not be the case?

trump held tons of giant indoor rallies and encouraged his followers to not wear masks.

he attacked dr. fauci endlessly, called the virus the "democrats' new hoax," and bashed governors that imposed restrictions in an attempt to stop the virus.

the end result of all of this is that team retard simply does not believe that covid is real, which surely led to the virus spreading and people dying.

and i totally disagree that team retard would have disregarded what trump said. they don't just support him. they worship him. have you ever seen a politician with this kind of hold on his followers?

trump will go down as the absolute worst president of all time, in large part because of his failure to lead on this, and it's well deserved.

that being said, i am not arguing that another president would have completely protected us from covid. however, no other president would have actively tried to convince his supporters there was nothing to fear, and even hosted giant indoor rallies for god's sake, which 100% led to the virus spreading.

[RichardBrodiesCombover.]

Building a Embassy in Jerusalem and recognition of the Golan Heights is why Druff won't let go of Trump. You see, Druff, is a jew

[dwai]

I have contact with a lot of people on the right whom I consider unreasonable and/or conspiracy prone. These are the people who believe Trump really won this election, and that a lot of COVID was a hoax. I've talked to them. I can't get through to them.

However, it's not because of what Trump said or did. It's the opposite. Trump didn't come out strongly for masking because his most dedicated supporters decided they hated both masks and lockdowns, and that it was an affront to their freedom. Had Trump come out strongly for masking, these people would have ignored him and not done it anyway. Trump wanted his base to still be supportive during the election year, so he didn't strongly oppose them on the masking thing. Sad but true. I wish that wasn't his approach, but I disagree that he brainwashed followers into not masking.

Also, the effectiveness of masking still isn't known. Norway had 4% of the population masking through late August. They never had a bad COVID problem. The reasons for this are unknown. The only regular Norwegian poster, adamantium, defended it by saying that the country was instructed to use common sense and social distance. That actually would make an interesting study. I've found that people wearing masks almost feel like COVID-immune supermen, because of the left/media's obsession with masking. In an effort to get masking cooperation, the media tried to avoid saying that there's a decent chance you'll get COVID even if you wear a mask, if you're in a risky environment. Our own Master Scalir (and his friend Ryan) got COVID for exactly this reason -- they overestimated the protection masks gave them. This is a common problem.

I don't want to go down a whole mask/no-mask rathole, because I do believe that masks help, and I wear them. However, I also believe that the left turned masking political just as the right did, and this led to the opposite problem of people believing masks are more useful for the wearer than they really are, and thus letting their guard down.

In short, I don't believe Trump caused mass death. I also still stand by my second point -- that the Democrats bungled it badly. Between the COVID-patients-to-the-nursing-home thing (which even baffled my 9-year-old son Benjamin when it was going on), the woke obsession with xenophobia in February (instead of focusing on COVID), and the unwavering support for dangerous massive protests in June, the Dems have shown themselves to be wholly poor leaders during this COVID crisis.

I'm not going to defend everything Trump did, and I would have done a lot differently if I were President. However, to say that the Democrats would have "followed the science" and "listened to the experts" is just insane, given what we saw of how they actually handled things.

by saying "mass" death, it sounds like you agree that trump probably caused "some" death.

how could this not be the case?

trump held tons of giant indoor rallies and encouraged his followers to not wear masks.

he attacked dr. fauci endlessly, called the virus the "democrats' new hoax," and bashed governors that imposed restrictions in an attempt to stop the virus.

the end result of all of this is that team retard simply does not believe that covid is real, which surely led to the virus spreading and people dying.

and i totally disagree that team retard would have disregarded what trump said. they don't just support him. they worship him. have you ever seen a politician with this kind of hold on his followers?

trump will go down as the absolute worst president of all time, in large part because of his failure to lead on this, and it's well deserved.

that being said, i am not arguing that another president would have completely protected us from covid. however, no other president would have actively tried to convince his supporters there was nothing to fear, and even hosted giant indoor rallies for god's sake, which 100% led to the virus spreading.

it is nothing to fear though....

[blake]

by saying "mass" death, it sounds like you agree that trump probably caused "some" death.

how could this not be the case?

trump held tons of giant indoor rallies and encouraged his followers to not wear masks.

he attacked dr. fauci endlessly, called the virus the "democrats' new hoax," and bashed governors that imposed restrictions in an attempt to stop the virus.

the end result of all of this is that team retard simply does not believe that covid is real, which surely led to the virus spreading and people dying.

and i totally disagree that team retard would have disregarded what trump said. they don't just support him. they worship him. have you ever seen a politician with this kind of hold on his followers?

trump will go down as the absolute worst president of all time, in large part because of his failure to lead on this, and it's well deserved.

that being said, i am not arguing that another president would have completely protected us from covid. however, no other president would have actively tried to convince his supporters there was nothing to fear, and even hosted giant indoor rallies for god's sake, which 100% led to the virus spreading.

it is nothing to fear though....

[sonatine]

They legit bought into his BS and it drove behavior in a massive way.

and continues to do so.

[nightmarefish]

Enclosed spaces, probably -- unless the person is very close to you outdoors.

However, there is substantial evidence that it spreads through A/C and heating systems indoors. This is why I have avoided all indoor settings other than when absolutely necessary.

This also makes it really hard to trace, because it does seem to spread a lot in public indoor settings -- bars, restaurants, casinos, supermarkets, etc -- even if you don't get particularly close to anyone for any real length of time.

The way America operates, it was destined to spread, no matter who was in charge. Even if we could rewind the clock to February 1 and told this was going to be as bad as it has been, I'm not sure there would be much we could do.

We closed 2 Health centers and their staff was only doing contact tracing. We closed everything non essential. Mask use was highly advised. Over 2k people self quarantined. Drive trough testing was already in place from spring. We're really good at social distancing. Oh and every public place where infected had been was publicized. And the app i mentioned was doing what it was supposed to do.

We have done all this and more in California and the virus eventually spreads anyway. Today the entire state is basically completely locked down again because the spread is out of control. Can’t stop this virus, can only slow it down until a vaccine. 200k cases a day and still tens of millions want to open the country completely back up. So many people with that mindset that this virus can’t lose. China can stop the spread because if people don’t listen they can just shoot them in the street. Communism is very effective in situations like this.