Texas governor repeals mask requirement and OKs businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity

Well... only time will tell. From the 1st day everything opened up and people stopped wearing masks, it will take 14 days to show the effects of this move. Best of luck....

a reply to: ketsuko

I am literally concerned we are heading into another Dark Age. People just do not care to even try to understand science anymore, much less contribute to it. The whole idea behind science today is based not on hard facts, but on faith. Just listen to any poster arguing for the Chinese virus restrictions or Global Warming... they will either make that silly claim that "the science is settled" or they'll refer to a pop sci article somewhere that is nothing more than opinion itself, usually based on yet another article that is more opinion than facts, eventually coming around to some obscure paper. The context by that time is completely lost.

Science, at least pop sci, has become the new religion du jour, based on faith alone and afraid to take a serious look inwards to where its information is coming from. The only real debate left among most people is which "scientist" (and one should really read whereislogic's posts in this context) to have unwavering faith in.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Too many confuse "political" science with science.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: TheRedneck

Too many confuse "political" science with science.

That goes for both sides.

I'm becoming more sick from continously seeing people defending a stance in regards to Covid, based on what a politician or pseudo scientist does or says. I don't give a hoot about what any politician says about infection and so on, I care about the actual scientific evidence behind the choi ces... and yes, sometimes BOTH sides make political calls rather than evidence based calls.

The Danish PM was kind enough to admit this..... We are so done with lock down over here, but we will patiently wait till we get the word.

What the Texas Gov has done here is what is called "symbolic politics". He didn't open up because it was the right thing to do, he opened up because he wants to appease the people. The problem is the people is in no condition to make any such call, because all "people" can do, is REACT.... based on emotions. Which is... well, stupid. Sorry, it just is.

If Fauci had told him to open up... that would be another case.

A good leader knows that sometimes you have to make decisions that goes against what the people want, because it's not what they need.

a reply to: flice

In my opinion, he (Texas governor) opened up about 11 months too late.

We should have just used common sense in the beginning instead of listening to politicians.

a reply to: flice

If Fauci had told him to open up... that would be another case.

And this is exactly what I am talking about.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is not a scientist! He is a politician with a degree. His own decisions and statements have been contradictory since day 1 of this fiasco... masks are ineffective and people should not wear them, then they are absolutely necessary and people should even wear two of them. When asked to explain this discrepancy, his answer was because he wanted medical personnel to get the masks first.

On a baseball pitcher's mound, with no one around him for yards but with cameras rolling, he wears a mask faithfully. Later on, when surrounded by friends and thinking no cameras were trained on him, he took the mask off.

That is not science. That is politics. Once Fauci decided to play politics, he took himself out of the realm of science. One cannot then claim to be a scientist.

I will not deny that Fauci is a smart man, nor that he has much better insight on infectious diseases than the average person. What I will deny is that Fauci is faithfully adhering to scientific principles, and thus he cannot be trusted. In any case, he has been in political office for so long he is pretty isolated from the scientists who should be listened to.

Those I speak of are not well-known. They labor behind closed doors, experimenting and analyzing in quiet secrecy because that suits their benefactors. Their voice is almost never heard, hidden behind mathematical equations and complex analyses of empirical data in some paper in some journal accessible only by those who will pay the high cost of journal access. That's who we need to listen to, but we can't hear their voices except through their handlers... those with some political agenda to force down the people's throats. Like Dr. Anthony Fauci.

TheRedneck

a reply to: DBCowboy

This is going to shock you: we should listen to politicians. We should just also listen to scientists, economists, farmers, workers, retired... one cannot make an informed decision without being informed of all aspects of said decision.

That's the politician's job: not to be a scientist, not even to listen to the scientists faithfully, but to make decisions based on input from all affected parties. That proposal to ban logging might sound great to people in cities who are concerned about deforestation, but out here one cannot count the trees in a single acre of ground. Home costs would soar as lumber came into scarce supply, leading to homelessness and many homes falling into states of disrepair. Those affected by natural forces would just be out of luck, unable to even board up homes to keep them from being totally demolished. It would be a case of the greater good taking priority.

The problem is not that we have politicians, but that we have politicians who are more interested in their own selfish goals than the needs of the people in general. That gets back to the question of why do we elect such people? We do so because we, too, are concerned with our own selfish agendas. And so the cycle repeats ad infinitum until great societies fall and another age of disenlightenment is ushered in for generations to endure.

History teaches us that great and noble societies are rare, and when they do attempt to spring forth from the minds of great thinkers they fall too quickly. War, famine, pestilence, inhumanity, slavery, oppression: these are the norm.

They are the very nature of humanity.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

We should listen to politicians, but our culture has conflated listening to obeying.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Well I hope you all understand that it's not like Fauci sits, looks at a couple of articles online and then says "hmm... I think.... we'll do this".

If it is anything like over here, and I hope that it ATLEAST is, then you have a whole team of experts from various fields who make actual calculations and comes up with different scenarios based on "what happens if we do this".

Then comes the other problem where politicians makes decisions based on what they "like" rather than what makes sense. Which is what Trump did.

Listen, you went from "we are gonna handle this very well" to be country with both most cases and most deaths.
You can't run from that fact.

I wish someone would stand up and say: "It's ok if you have an opinion about Covid, that is different from the one of your favourite politician or president."
That whole absolute loyalty thing has become a joke. Basically it's like stating "I can't think for myself, I will let this guy do it for me."

And the reason you oppose the scientists that bring the actual data, is because that same guy told you to.

Impossible to recover from, except having the guts to say, that well ok... my guy was wrong.

Learn from this... instead of pitting yourselves against eachother.

Everyone though China would be the big loser in this, then we thought it was going to be Italy, then we thought Spain and England, then the US came and massively proved that you excel at driving a pandemic as well as you did with shorting mortages or shorting fake chinese companies.

At some point, you have to shed that proudness of you in order to recover and regain respect. I promise you, if you managed to do that... then you could become a beacon of light again.

It's not even about admitting to the world you were wrong. It's about admitting it to yourselves and come to the realisation that it was good to admit it and then learn from it.

Words are worth nothing, it's what we do that counts.

Coupled with:

It's ok to make mistakes, just don't do it twice.

Logic dictates that with the daily death counts being higher today, his opening today makes his not opening over the summer 2020 absolutely stupefyingly morose.

a reply to: flice

Fauci ? Listen to dr Fauci ? He’s the most contradictory person out there . Contradicts himself everyday. Who are you ? Churchill ? No you listen to your god damn constituents . Im sick of the constitution being ripped up and I’m sick of your emotions. It’s not about your emotions, it’s about America’s constitution . Make a party based on your emotions and feelings , I’m sure it’ll be great

a reply to: ketsuko

Yeah, my response was definitely meant to be more snarky than "accurate."

I think the issue is that stuff like that gets spread as if its science. When directly confronted with that notion, very few will claim it as actual science.. but it gets treated that way all the same. Kind of similar to how very few will say they trust the media, but they will still believe what is presented in full.

We actually have direct access to sources & data trails now. Yet, we still rely on middlemen to serve us that information in carefully crafted meals. Most of which are designed solely for "headline consumption." I maintain that these middlemen from Fauci to Degrasse-Tyson to the news and sites like worldometer are obsolete, detrimental, & should be made irrelevant. Even if we are going to go Full Send into this idiocracy technocracy thing.

a reply to: Serdgiam

How many people eschew religion only to embrace it when their world falls apart? You can see people still actively telling you they're atheist while saying prayers for their sick kids. Logic is not really part of human thought. Its a learned skill, and unfortunately schools don't really teach it much outside of debate clubs.

a reply to: flice

Well I hope you all understand that it's not like Fauci sits, looks at a couple of articles online and then says "hmm... I think.... we'll do this".

No, he's not looking online. He's also not listening to the actual researchers. He's listening to the guy who has his private phone number because he pays Fauci a lot of money under the table. So Fauci looks at the CDC data, probably realizes what's happening better than most of us, gets the phone call, and decides he would rather have a few million bucks in his pocket tax-free and use an ineffective technique rather than use an effective technique and forgo the few million dollars.

That's just how it works. People are greedy.

Then comes the other problem where politicians makes decisions based on what they "like" rather than what makes sense. Which is what Trump did.

People are also easily manipulated. You are here praising Dr. Fauci for his advice, but in the same breath you denounce Donald Trump for following Dr. Fauci's advice? He did, you know, almost to the letter, admitted by Dr. Fauci himself under oath.

This is what I am talking about. You are being led around by the nose, told who to believe and who to hate and who to praise by people who don't even know you're alive and wouldn't care if they did.

Listen, you went from "we are gonna handle this very well" to be country with both most cases and most deaths.
You can't run from that fact.

I'm not running from facts.

Officially, yes, we have the highest number of deaths attributed to the Chinese virus. That's because we declared the cost of all Chinese virus cases would be covered under a special Federal mandate. So if one is a hospital administrator, is it preferable to list cause of death as the Chinese virus and have the Feds pay the bill, or list what actually killed them and deal with insurance rate caps, uninsured people, and all the red tape that goes along with that?

Most people who died from the Chinese virus actually died from pneumonia. Pneumonia was not covered under that Federal mandate, so you won't be seeing many Americans officially dying from pneumonia in 2020.

Obviously, every death, every hospitalization that can be attributed to the Chinese virus will be attributed to the Chinese virus. Have a car wreck? Test 'em anyway and if they have an asymptomatic case you get paid more. Have the flu? Call it the Chinese virus and get paid or call it the flu and take your chances.

Those are the facts of what has happened here, and as a result we have no actual reliable data on deaths. The best metric we will ever have for that would be to compare the overall death rate in the USA in 2020 to the overall death rate from previous years... that won't be accurate, but it might be indicative. Problem is, we won't have that number until 2022 or later.

Dr. Anthony Fauci supported that.

As for cases, I do not care how many cases we have. It does not matter in the least. The Chinese virus has a 50% or so rate of asymptomatic cases... that's approximately half that contract it and have no symptoms whatsoever. A high percentage of the half that do present symptoms never need hospitalization... it's like a bad cold or flu. Hospitalizations do matter, as do deaths obviously, but as I explained above those numbers are more than simply suspect; they are purposely tainted and skewed so badly that they are worthless at this point.

What we have done quite successfully is to prevent people from getting health care at all. Anyone entering a medical facility now is subject to such a battery of requirements that I literally had to have a blood sample drawn sitting in the parking lot of the hospital. Understand that. I had to call in to the lab, explained my condition that prevents me from wearing a mask, a nurse came to my car carrying the equipment, and she took the sample right there. Now, what would happen if I were injured in a car wreck or had another heart attack? Would they mask me while I was unconscious and thereby force me into a coma, vastly increasing my chances of dying before they could help me?

Another example of what I am trying (obviously in vain) to get you to understand: your position is based on pure propaganda with zero understanding of how those numbers you are so quick to quote were obtained or the actual consequences to actual people.

There will be more deaths in America from this virus of people who do not have it than of people who do have it.

Words are worth nothing, it's what we do that counts.

Words seem to be the only thing that people pay attention to... as long as they are spoken by someone on TV wearing a suit.

It's ok to make mistakes, just don't do it twice.

it's also not OK to make a mistake and then continue making it indefinitely. We made a mistake by trying to quarantine all of society from one another when we should have been quarantining the high risk groups. It's too late to fix that, but we can at least deviate from what is obviously not working, rather than continue the status quo and wonder why it isn't working.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

I will not claim to have looked into the dude. What i will claim is I am aware he was involved in Coronavirus research as early as 2003 when he studied its emergent potential and the treatments. We've all seen this...he recommended hydroxycloroquine as a treatment in some of the studies he had submitted. So i can say that it makes sense he would be tapped for this gig. Both if i am seeing it as on the up and up, as well as if i am seeing it through CT eyes.

What I know is its hard for me to make sense of claims of "following the data" when the data has R2 values that render it almost useless beyond massaging out potential values from the mayhem.

a reply to: whereislogic

The issue is:

1) We are dealing with a human system
2) We have moved to science by consensus rather than through experiment

The scientific method, at its core, is meant to mitigate some of the issues inherent to human systems. Of course, for those of us that learned the scientific method years ago.. A quick examination will reveal there have been some "interesting" additions.

Either way, this year we have seen outright Bad science being presented as an indicator of its self-correcting attributes. Its nonsensical at absolute best.

I believe this single facet will be at the foundation of what Redneck is calling a new "Dark Age." At least, if we dont correct course.

Its not some obscure notion either.. Its the same theme and cycle we have seen throughout history. The specifics and context change juuust enough that the general population falls for it every time.

Intentional or not, all that needs to happen is the introduction of a non-falsifiable paradigm and marketing that is effective enough to get people to buy into the scheme. Historically, this is usually accomplished through an inculcated appeal to authority, diminished personal agency, and the establishment of a Monolithic entity like a church or governmental system.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

I looked only far enough to realize he has a bunch of conflicting interests. He was involved with the exact laboratory where this thing is supposed to have emerged in Wuhan China. He has multiple ties to the CCP. He hasn't worked in actual research in decades.

Perhaps when he was tapped for the position, he looked like a good choice; I won't dispute that. But the truth is that he has become a politician instead of a scientist... the degree just got him the job and he went full political after that.

A smart honest man is an asset to everyone he comes into contact with. A smart dishonest man is a danger to everyone he comes into contact with. Honesty is the sole dividing line between Albert Einstein and Charles Manson.

TheRedneck

no point in quoting 1/10 of an article. Never mind then.

For those interested, you can read the following articles in the correct order:

Fraud in Science: Bad Apples in the Barrel? (1984)
Fraud in Science: A Look Behind the Scenes (1984)
Fraud in Science​—Why It’s on the Increase (1990)
Fraud in Science​—A Greater Fraud (1990)

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

One aspect that I feel might be unique to this go-round is the staggering lack of self awareness. It has little connection to intelligence that I can see, which is a concerning attribute.

If the Monolith told people to punch themselves in the face because "science," they would do it. Not only that, they would tell everyone else they werent doing it (and honestly believe it), all the while claiming that anyone who isnt punching themselves in the face are "conspiracy theorists," "a danger to our democracy," "want people to die," etc. In other words, anyone who isnt punching is the cause of all the pain and problems.

I genuinely believe peoples minds are being raped and Im not using that word lightly. Its modern warfare, but instead of being a more "sophisticated" form of conflict (as folks like Aquino seemed to insinuate), it may end up with traditonal conflict anyway.. Just with a lot more crazy.

Have you seen what passes for "debates" in colleges nowadays?

MSM is hoping for a Texas Spring Break "SuperSpreader" event just like they did for Florida and Texas last Spring.

Didn't happen then. Won't happen now.

The Mainstream Media is our #1 Enemy.

Thankfully, more people are figuring this out, and ignoring them.