10 ms·

Politics plain and simple. COVID protocols are very unpopular at this point and not every effective. Florida and Texas are having big inflows, california and Ne

Politics plain and simple. COVID protocols are very unpopular at this point and not every effective. Florida and Texas are having big inflows, california and New York huge outflows. Whatever your viewpoint this is the fact politicians see. And yes taxes and cost of living are a huge driving force not only COVID, but as long as remote work goes on people will keep moving to low cost of living and low tax states.

gedy 5y ago
Elections coming up as well
- tharne 5y ago
  > Elections coming up as well This is the big one. Ever since the upset in the Virginia governor's race, the Democrats have been very eager to end COVID restrictions no matter what. The Republicans have never cared about COVID so, at the moment there's a rare bipartisan unity on this issue.
  - birken 5y ago
    So for example, you consider the 3 Democratic Governors of California, Oregon and Washington ending their state's various mask mandates 4+ months after the VA election to be "eager to end COVID restrictions no matter what". Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race?
    - tharne 5y ago
      > Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race? I don't. The case numbers in many, if not most areas, are still higher than they were during the delta wave in the Summer and Fall that led to the lockdowns and restrictions being implemented in the first place. If this were truly just about the data then you'd expect the restrictions to lift once the case counts returned to pre-delta numbers. Edit/Clarification: I say this as someone is/was generally been in favor of a very cautious response to COVID.
      - birken 5y ago
        The peak of the delta wave was 160k cases/day, and the current case levels are ~52k/day. So given that, you think most areas are having higher case loads than the peak of the delta wave? You just aren't look at the data. There is also strong reason to believe that right after a huge wave is over you can expect a relatively smooth period of time to follow since so many people will have extra immunity from having recovered from covid. The people making these decisions are not idiots, they can look at the data and make sane and rational predictions about what might happen in the future, and then adapt if necessary.
        seanp2k2 5y ago
        a source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases_currenthospitaladmissions https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases_...
        tharne 5y ago
        > The people making these decisions are not idiots Most of the world would beg to differ. Particularly in the West, this whole situation was handled abominably and was an embarrassment at all levels. Even most doctors will tell you the CDC bungled this whole thing mightily.
      - gdulli 5y ago
        The current case numbers come with a lower fatality rate so the same case numbers don't suggest the same level of action as before. Also the context of the numbers matters. They're trending down now, not up, and the variant spikes are over. In the middle of delta/omicron we didn't know what was going to happen. And yes, there's fatigue on everyone's part. The relative lower danger of omicron, plus being past the delta spike then the omicron spike, means we're just kind of collectively over it. Citizens have fatigue, they're just not built to stay on guard for a third year. Policy makers are fatigued, they can't force people to stay home for another year to save lives from covid just like they can't force people to stop driving to save lives from car crashes. So admitting there's a political aspect is fine, but it's a lot more nuanced than the election cycle, which is a much more contrived explanation than everyone's response to a dramatic drop in the numbers.
    - pempem 5y ago
      Can it be both? I do feel like this is at a nexus of action in fact. Also sure its 4+months after the VA governors race but here in LA the mayoral election is up and its hot. So is the DA race...which honestly...how many voters can tell me what the DA even does outside of their exposure to law and order? Sheer numbers of cases and deaths don't reflect the need to drop vigilance, esp to a level where no one wears masks regardless of vaccination status. Our president just announced months ago (over the holidays) that people who were unvaxxed were likely to die with a press release the equivalent of a :shrug: emoji. This is definitely due to the wind down of the omicron cases but chance and luck is what will keep us from another wave, not droppings masks and having no vaccination mandates or having them sector by sector driven by industry.
birken 5y ago
You don't think the fact that this country just had the largest ever COVID wave (in terms of cases), which is in the process of ending, is at all related to the decisions? Also of the scant 40 million people remaining in California, who haven't yet moved to Texas or Florida, public support for at least some "COVID protocols" are very high [1]. I'm not sure you are giving an impartial assessment of the facts. 1: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/california-voters-strongly-support-mask-and-vaccine-mandates-in-k-12-schools https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/californ...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- calculatte 5y ago
  The PR Firm Impact Research sent a report to the Democrats on Feb 22, 2022 urging them to lift all restrictions & claim victory for political points. Immediately after, restrictions lifted. Do your own assessment of the facts. Leaked memo https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid-positioning-strategy-memo/ https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid-positioning-strategy-mem...
  - gdulli 5y ago
    With covid numbers falling from the inevitable January spike after the holidays, lifting omicron restrictions was always going to happen sometime this spring. (Barring some new deadly hypothetical variant.) But I don't doubt that both parties factor PR into all of their decisions, down to how they dress. The implication that a PR firm could dictate that the country would remain shut down until November despite covid numbers this low is silly. But I'm sure timing and messaging and other details are informed by PR studies. Whether from fear of losing their jobs or wanting to carry out the will of their constituents, lawmakers have to pay attention to what we think either way.
    - calculatte 5y ago
      And arguably the covid numbers were only high was because of dishonest and inflated counting. Now they are "low" because the risk policy was changed. https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk-formula-the-results-are-stunning/ https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk-form... Thinking PR doesn't dictate politics is what is really silly. If PR didn't matter, we wouldn't be inundated with ridiculous propaganda 24/7. They aren't "paying attention" to us, they are manufacturing consent and telling you what to think through all forms of media. Now, how long until this gets censored?
atlantas 5y ago
Yes, the polling changed and they follow the polls: The message is backed by advice from Biden’s polling firm, Impact Research, which studied voter attitudes to Covid and found that most Americans are "worn out" by the restrictions and "have personally moved out of crisis mode." In a Feb. 16 memo, the firm told Democrats to take "the win" on Covid, warning that by 49 percent to 24 percent, Americans are more concerned about it causing economic harm than infecting them or a family member, and that far more parents and teachers worry about learning loss than illness for their kids. "The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities," Impact Research’s Molly Murphy and Brian Stryker wrote in the memo, which was viewed by NBC News. They warned that if Democrats continue to emphasize Covid precautions over learning to live in a world with the virus, "they risk paying dearly for it in November." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-turn-mask-mandates-covid-landscape-voter-attitudes-shift-rcna18043 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-tur...
majormajor 5y ago
The not-just-poll-driven view of this is that you also should take into account: - for many - not all, but many - of the more vulnerable to hospitalization and death, it's now a matter of choice. - As a result, a bigger spike in cases caused much fewer hospitalizations and deaths than previous spikes, meaning less impact on the rest of the health system. - behavior has changed dramatically in terms of things like event attendance even in areas with more cautious government policy. Compare how many people went to movie theaters in late summer 2020 when they reopened in limited capacity in California with now. The limited capacity isn't the biggest difference, it's the behavior. - we can see that, say, California has fewer cumulative deaths per capita than Texas or Florida despite the urban areas being somewhat denser[0] (which itself seems to play a big role), and Arizona has more than NY or Massachusets despite being far less dense and with much milder winters... but the differences aren't orders of magnitudes. - masks are cheaper and more available than they were earlier, and treatments are becoming more widely available too So this is a reasonable point to say "we aren't able to eliminate this thing, but fortunately, it's much less dangerous to most of us than it used to be." But make no mistakes: the biggest factor there in terms of danger is the vaccines, which have now been available over a year. [0] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-19-cases-and-deaths/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22COVID-19%20Deaths%20per%201,000,000%20Population%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-1...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nomel 5y ago
  > masks are cheaper and more available than they were earlier Where I live (California), nearly everyone is using surgical masks or cloth masks, which have been proven to be almost entirely decorative, or none at all, so I have trouble believing this. Perhaps for the vulnerable population.
  - shadytrees 5y ago
    Counterpoint: I see a lot of (K)N95 masks on the MTA subway. At least 50% during rush hour. I think people here know about how useless the other masks are.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
dpweb 5y ago
People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in the salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in FL TX and NY. Add in weather and TX and FL are actually nice places to live for the most part.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  Texas weather is awful I have no idea where you are getting this from. I lived in multiple Texas cities and they are bad for their own reasons.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  …aside from the flooding in both places that will decrease property values dramatically over the next few decades, I guess. Less of a concern if renting and if you don’t mind the prospect of potentially getting all your belongings destroyed at some point in the future.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in the salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in FL TX and NY. Why hasn't the Biden administration fixed this, by the way? Anyone know? Frankly it's astonishing how few Trump-era policies have been reversed by this administration. When the GOP-dominated Congress acted to remove the SALT deduction, I always assumed it was just a bit of petty electoral revenge that would be reverted almost immediately. That appears to have been wrong. There's no shortage of similar examples, from immigration policy to idiotic "easy to win" trade wars to USPS governance, where Trump policies have survived so long that it's hard to believe that the Democrats don't agree with them.
  - LAC-Tech 5y ago
    I think it's helpful to think of elections as not replacing governments entirely, but swapping out a very small publicly facing segment.
yalogin 5y ago
I get people are skeptical but let's be objective here. Not everything needs to be a conspiracy and an evil scheme. California and NY followed CDC guidance. We are past the Omicron phase and may be the data shows we are in the clear. If losing out people was the issue then did NY just participate in this "scheme" out of solidarity to California?
- KerrAvon 5y ago
  Objectively, the CDC are the dumbfucks who said not to mask up when this thing first started. They may have done that for what they felt were good reasons (they didn't want to run out of masks for frontline workers) or bad ones (the WHO didn't think aerosol transmission of COVID was possible). Their advice should be subject to more scrutiny.

gedy 5y ago

Elections coming up as well

tharne 5y ago
> Elections coming up as well This is the big one. Ever since the upset in the Virginia governor's race, the Democrats have been very eager to end COVID restrictions no matter what. The Republicans have never cared about COVID so, at the moment there's a rare bipartisan unity on this issue.
- birken 5y ago
  So for example, you consider the 3 Democratic Governors of California, Oregon and Washington ending their state's various mask mandates 4+ months after the VA election to be "eager to end COVID restrictions no matter what". Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race?
  - tharne 5y ago
    > Do you think the Omicron wave might have had more to do with the COVID restrictions than the VA governor's race? I don't. The case numbers in many, if not most areas, are still higher than they were during the delta wave in the Summer and Fall that led to the lockdowns and restrictions being implemented in the first place. If this were truly just about the data then you'd expect the restrictions to lift once the case counts returned to pre-delta numbers. Edit/Clarification: I say this as someone is/was generally been in favor of a very cautious response to COVID.
    - birken 5y ago
      The peak of the delta wave was 160k cases/day, and the current case levels are ~52k/day. So given that, you think most areas are having higher case loads than the peak of the delta wave? You just aren't look at the data. There is also strong reason to believe that right after a huge wave is over you can expect a relatively smooth period of time to follow since so many people will have extra immunity from having recovered from covid. The people making these decisions are not idiots, they can look at the data and make sane and rational predictions about what might happen in the future, and then adapt if necessary.
      - seanp2k2 5y ago
        a source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases_currenthospitaladmissions https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases_...
      - tharne 5y ago
        > The people making these decisions are not idiots Most of the world would beg to differ. Particularly in the West, this whole situation was handled abominably and was an embarrassment at all levels. Even most doctors will tell you the CDC bungled this whole thing mightily.
    - gdulli 5y ago
      The current case numbers come with a lower fatality rate so the same case numbers don't suggest the same level of action as before. Also the context of the numbers matters. They're trending down now, not up, and the variant spikes are over. In the middle of delta/omicron we didn't know what was going to happen. And yes, there's fatigue on everyone's part. The relative lower danger of omicron, plus being past the delta spike then the omicron spike, means we're just kind of collectively over it. Citizens have fatigue, they're just not built to stay on guard for a third year. Policy makers are fatigued, they can't force people to stay home for another year to save lives from covid just like they can't force people to stop driving to save lives from car crashes. So admitting there's a political aspect is fine, but it's a lot more nuanced than the election cycle, which is a much more contrived explanation than everyone's response to a dramatic drop in the numbers.
  - pempem 5y ago
    Can it be both? I do feel like this is at a nexus of action in fact. Also sure its 4+months after the VA governors race but here in LA the mayoral election is up and its hot. So is the DA race...which honestly...how many voters can tell me what the DA even does outside of their exposure to law and order? Sheer numbers of cases and deaths don't reflect the need to drop vigilance, esp to a level where no one wears masks regardless of vaccination status. Our president just announced months ago (over the holidays) that people who were unvaxxed were likely to die with a press release the equivalent of a :shrug: emoji. This is definitely due to the wind down of the omicron cases but chance and luck is what will keep us from another wave, not droppings masks and having no vaccination mandates or having them sector by sector driven by industry.

birken 5y ago

You don't think the fact that this country just had the largest ever COVID wave (in terms of cases), which is in the process of ending, is at all related to the decisions? Also of the scant 40 million people remaining in California, who haven't yet moved to Texas or Florida, public support for at least some "COVID protocols" are very high [1]. I'm not sure you are giving an impartial assessment of the facts. 1: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/california-voters-strongly-support-mask-and-vaccine-mandates-in-k-12-schools https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-24/californ...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
calculatte 5y ago
The PR Firm Impact Research sent a report to the Democrats on Feb 22, 2022 urging them to lift all restrictions & claim victory for political points. Immediately after, restrictions lifted. Do your own assessment of the facts. Leaked memo https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid-positioning-strategy-memo/ https://punchbowl.news/impact-covid-positioning-strategy-mem...
- gdulli 5y ago
  With covid numbers falling from the inevitable January spike after the holidays, lifting omicron restrictions was always going to happen sometime this spring. (Barring some new deadly hypothetical variant.) But I don't doubt that both parties factor PR into all of their decisions, down to how they dress. The implication that a PR firm could dictate that the country would remain shut down until November despite covid numbers this low is silly. But I'm sure timing and messaging and other details are informed by PR studies. Whether from fear of losing their jobs or wanting to carry out the will of their constituents, lawmakers have to pay attention to what we think either way.
  - calculatte 5y ago
    And arguably the covid numbers were only high was because of dishonest and inflated counting. Now they are "low" because the risk policy was changed. https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk-formula-the-results-are-stunning/ https://fee.org/articles/the-cdc-changed-its-covid-risk-form... Thinking PR doesn't dictate politics is what is really silly. If PR didn't matter, we wouldn't be inundated with ridiculous propaganda 24/7. They aren't "paying attention" to us, they are manufacturing consent and telling you what to think through all forms of media. Now, how long until this gets censored?

atlantas 5y ago

Yes, the polling changed and they follow the polls: The message is backed by advice from Biden’s polling firm, Impact Research, which studied voter attitudes to Covid and found that most Americans are "worn out" by the restrictions and "have personally moved out of crisis mode." In a Feb. 16 memo, the firm told Democrats to take "the win" on Covid, warning that by 49 percent to 24 percent, Americans are more concerned about it causing economic harm than infecting them or a family member, and that far more parents and teachers worry about learning loss than illness for their kids. "The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities," Impact Research’s Molly Murphy and Brian Stryker wrote in the memo, which was viewed by NBC News. They warned that if Democrats continue to emphasize Covid precautions over learning to live in a world with the virus, "they risk paying dearly for it in November." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-turn-mask-mandates-covid-landscape-voter-attitudes-shift-rcna18043 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/democrats-tur...

majormajor 5y ago

The not-just-poll-driven view of this is that you also should take into account: - for many - not all, but many - of the more vulnerable to hospitalization and death, it's now a matter of choice. - As a result, a bigger spike in cases caused much fewer hospitalizations and deaths than previous spikes, meaning less impact on the rest of the health system. - behavior has changed dramatically in terms of things like event attendance even in areas with more cautious government policy. Compare how many people went to movie theaters in late summer 2020 when they reopened in limited capacity in California with now. The limited capacity isn't the biggest difference, it's the behavior. - we can see that, say, California has fewer cumulative deaths per capita than Texas or Florida despite the urban areas being somewhat denser[0] (which itself seems to play a big role), and Arizona has more than NY or Massachusets despite being far less dense and with much milder winters... but the differences aren't orders of magnitudes. - masks are cheaper and more available than they were earlier, and treatments are becoming more widely available too So this is a reasonable point to say "we aren't able to eliminate this thing, but fortunately, it's much less dangerous to most of us than it used to be." But make no mistakes: the biggest factor there in terms of danger is the vaccines, which have now been available over a year. [0] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-19-cases-and-deaths/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22COVID-19%20Deaths%20per%201,000,000%20Population%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/cumulative-covid-1...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nomel 5y ago
> masks are cheaper and more available than they were earlier Where I live (California), nearly everyone is using surgical masks or cloth masks, which have been proven to be almost entirely decorative, or none at all, so I have trouble believing this. Perhaps for the vulnerable population.
- shadytrees 5y ago
  Counterpoint: I see a lot of (K)N95 masks on the MTA subway. At least 50% during rush hour. I think people here know about how useless the other masks are.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

dpweb 5y ago

People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in the salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in FL TX and NY. Add in weather and TX and FL are actually nice places to live for the most part.

birdyrooster 5y ago
Texas weather is awful I have no idea where you are getting this from. I lived in multiple Texas cities and they are bad for their own reasons.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
seanp2k2 5y ago
…aside from the flooding in both places that will decrease property values dramatically over the next few decades, I guess. Less of a concern if renting and if you don’t mind the prospect of potentially getting all your belongings destroyed at some point in the future.
CamperBob2 5y ago
People are leaving for FL and TX cause taxes you add in the salt deduction change its considerable. Have lived in FL TX and NY. Why hasn't the Biden administration fixed this, by the way? Anyone know? Frankly it's astonishing how few Trump-era policies have been reversed by this administration. When the GOP-dominated Congress acted to remove the SALT deduction, I always assumed it was just a bit of petty electoral revenge that would be reverted almost immediately. That appears to have been wrong. There's no shortage of similar examples, from immigration policy to idiotic "easy to win" trade wars to USPS governance, where Trump policies have survived so long that it's hard to believe that the Democrats don't agree with them.
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  I think it's helpful to think of elections as not replacing governments entirely, but swapping out a very small publicly facing segment.

yalogin 5y ago

I get people are skeptical but let's be objective here. Not everything needs to be a conspiracy and an evil scheme. California and NY followed CDC guidance. We are past the Omicron phase and may be the data shows we are in the clear. If losing out people was the issue then did NY just participate in this "scheme" out of solidarity to California?

KerrAvon 5y ago
Objectively, the CDC are the dumbfucks who said not to mask up when this thing first started. They may have done that for what they felt were good reasons (they didn't want to run out of masks for frontline workers) or bad ones (the WHO didn't think aerosol transmission of COVID was possible). Their advice should be subject to more scrutiny.