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Originally Posted by KA24DESOneThree
This is not a bad flu, no matter how you want to spin it. Mortality rates and hospitalization rates are entirely different, as are transmission rates. If it was just "a bad flu," it wouldn't have been the third cause of death in the United States last year- although you likely consider that to be an inflated number and incorrect.
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Influenza and coronaviruses are essentially cousins. Covid has roughly 10x the annual mortality rate of the common flu. The spanish flu had nearly a 2% mortality rate. Bubonic plague killed 1/3 of Europe. Argue semantics all you want but both are more deadly than covid. Perhaps I was wrong to describe it as such. "A bad flu" is worse.
Regarding numbers, I don't know how you can inject both a financial, and political incentive into something and not expect the data that you get back out to not be affected. I'm not going to speculate on exactly how, or in what sort of numbers, but it is painfully obvious that this has occurred.
Another important point to consider is, go ahead and google "covid deaths". The graph at the top lets you toggle between deaths and new cases. Look at the peaks in the winter months in late 2020 and early 2021. Look at how the deaths seem to follow the new cases with a 1-2 week delay. Now, look at the current deaths compared to the current spike from 1-2 weeks ago. Deaths are going up but they're not following cases like they did before. Our case rate is pretty high but deaths are not following it. This will really be telling in 2-4 more weeks when deaths continue to rise but not anywhere near the spike in new cases that has occurred. TL/DR: We vaccinated nearly all of the highest risk people and this shit is now even less of an "emergency" than it was to begin with.
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Originally Posted by KA24DESOneThree
California being one of the biggest shitholes in the nation is always something I love to point out as being flat-out wrong in so many ways. GDP, tourist dollars, public lands... the list goes on and on.
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You haven't brought anything up other than things that are a consequence of the beautiful land out there or geopolitical factors like the fact that your state controls most of the ports on the coast closest to the region of the world that most of our goods come from.
The rest of us do travel there, spend money there, and enjoy it. However, we are every bit as much paying to get the fuck out when we are done as we are to enjoy ourselves and enjoy the scenery.
In terms of taxes, laws, cost of living and general quality of life, your state sucks. That's why there is a massive exodus out of it, by both individuals and businesses. Your state sucks for the same reason that places like Dubai suck, despite being some of the wealthiest areas in the world: You only have what you do because you were sitting on it. You erroneously conclude that you built what is great but in reality, most don't want to live there and the ones that do, do so despite all the ass-backward bullshit and the parts that you built.