Coronavirus

Yeah I don't believe that. Eventually the US will come around and join the rest of the world in having some sort of universal healthcare. Will it be easy? No, but it's going to happen at some point.
I'm not talking about introducing communism to the US, of course not. Not everything has to be equal (And like you said, has been tried and failed).
I'm not a political or economics expert, but I'm pretty sure there is a difference between Soviet Russia and using taxes to pay for everyone having access to proper healthcare.
I'm not saying there can't be private healthcare. Sweden with its universal healthcare still has private doctors and clinics you're free to use if you want to. I'm sure there would be plenty of people and corporations still using those even if universal healthcare in some form was introduced so it's not like that business sector would be destroyed instantly.

 

I think the rational transition step is to start lowering the Medicare eligibility age.
Drop it to 60 now.....then 55 in a few years.
Give people the option of continuing their private insurer coverage or buying into Medicare.
Let people start choosing and see what happens.

 

I'm feeling a little more optimistic than you are.
If you add up the vaccinated population plus those previously infected, I think in most of the country you are reaching numbers that will slow the spread of another wave.

 

I think that depends on where you are. In this SouthEastern part of the United States, we are less than 50% vaccinated and we are resistant to wearing masks or other mitigation methods. We are at case transmission load of approximately 600 / 100k and our other metrics are similarly at or near peak levels. Our hospitals are slammed and we haven't hit Halloween -> Turkey -> Solstice. I think it could be not good down here in a couple of months.

 

Well as my dad used to say, "You can choose to do things the easy way or the hard way."
You folks down in MAGAland have certainly chosen the hard way.

 

Nobody is going to tell us ignorant rednecks what do!

On a positive note a massive thinning of the gene pool in the southeastern USA could raise the overall IQ of the USA.

I am embarrassed to live in a state that is part of the stubborn anti-vaccination group of states. Must mention part of the Covid-19 and Delta problem falls on our stubborn dipshit political leaders.

 

rogue, I'll be honest, i really haven't thought through the numbers on that split and what impact it might have. We've lost 10,000 in SC. I just checked out vote totals in 2020 - the difference here was about 300,000 votes. I guess that does other of magnitude scale to somewhere potentially in the 2-3 % if a majority were Republicans and all of them were voters. I do think there are some disenfranchised Republicans as well who will vote for a guy like Biden because of this. Maybe not on a national stage - maybe not in SC - but we could have a Democratic Governor. Georgia could go Democratic again. North Carolina. Florida.

 

I didn’t agree with Colin Powell on several fronts,
but always respected him.

 

I've seen it reported elsewhere that he was suffering from myeloma.
Myeloma is a cancer of the bone marrow cells that make our antibodies.
Even fully vaccinated he may not have had an adequate enough immune response to protect him.

 

Is Alaska a leader in Covid-19 cases because rural healthcare is inadequate, or is there a higher level of stubbornness and contrarianess? I'm not surprised, given the very high percentage votes for Trump in 2020.

 

When Covid first hit the governor actually followed scientific advice and the Anchorages mayor was a 'liberal' so the same thing happened here.
Outside of Anchorage it was a really mixed bag, in the Mat-Su district the mayor was selling fake Covid cures.
As time went on politics made things a lot worse though.
Anchorage had an election where a right-wing populist Trumper won so now the city assembly and the mayor are fighting about safety policies.
The governor was always a right wing nut job but he is getting closer to re-election now and is afraid of losing his base so has decided to embrace the anti-vaxxers.
He forced us state employees to come back to work without Covid protocols and got rid of Covid leave.
The rural healthcare does suck but they have made vaccination mandatory in some of the villages, something the village corporations can get away with.
It's largely stubborn, stupid white people.

 

I do love a bit of satire. There have been some right leaning commenatators and politicians in the US talking about "freeing" Australia from tyranny. If you agree with them, why not donate for our freedom:
America – please help liberate Australia. Donate now!

 

Dr. Deborah Birx, who was Trump's Coronavirus Response Coordinator, met earlier this month with the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis and an excerpt of her interview was released today.

Highlights

• When asked whether President Trump did everything he could to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, Dr. Birx was unequivocal: “No. And I’ve said that to the White House in general, and I believe I was very clear to the [former] President in specifics of what I needed him to do.”
  
  
• As cases started surging in Fall of 2020, Dr. Birx stated that she repeatedly raised the alarm within the Trump Administration that “more mitigation, more treatment” were needed. Among other things, Dr. Birx advocated for aggressive surveillance testing, increased masking, greater availability of treatments, and a comprehensive communications plan explaining the critical elements of key mitigation measures. Dr. Birx noted that her recommendations were not implemented “at the level that I felt they were needed.”
  
  
• According to Dr. Birx, more than 130,000 American lives could have been saved after the first wave of the pandemic if the Trump Administration and certain states had followed the science and implemented proven mitigation measures. She stated: “I believe if we had fully implemented the mask mandates, the reduction in indoor dining, the getting friends and family to understand the risk of gathering in private homes, and we had increased testing, that we probably could have decreased fatalities into the 30 percent less to 40 percent less range.”

Select Subcommittee Releases Initial Findings from Transcribed Interview of Dr. Deborah Birx

Dr. Birx was initially restricted, then limited, from testifying by Trump while he was in office

 

We will probably never know how many people in the US died (an exact number would be impossible to calculate) because of Conman Trump's incompetence, ego, and contraryiness.