i was talking about this a bit last night.

first of all, trump is actually right. sort of. simply adding up the number of cases and dividing out the number of deaths is a facile and naive way to calculate the death toll, and the who shouldn't be doing it like that, and they know it.

trump initially argued that the quarantine measures were working and that's why the number of cases in the united states was so low; this is the ignorant statement. the death toll in the united states is actually alarmingly high - 11/158 = 7%. if the true mortality rate were 7%, this would be a very scary virus! but, the mortality rate is nowhere near that anywhere else....

what the who is doing wrong by just performing a simple division operation is making an apples-oranges comparison across a wide variety of health care scenarios. the bubonic plague killed millions of people in the middle ages; nowadays, it's easily treated with anti-biotics. so, a morality rate is a piece of data that is intrinsically connected to the care systems in place. you should be talking about "the mortality rate, in a specific healthcare delivery system".

so, if you live in western europe, canada or just about any other oecd country with the glaring exception of the united states, which is frequently an oecd outlier in health-related concerns (including infant mortality) due to the overwhelmingly capitalistic nature of the care system, the mortality rate is <0.5%, and actually really is on par with a strong flu. a strong flu, perhaps. but a flu.

on the other hand, if you live in iran, which is suffering under crippling economic sanctions that make it difficult to buy medical supplies and basic medicine, then the death toll is much higher. and, if you live in china, it appears to be in between - which is around 2-4%.

so, what is the true mortality rate? there is not one. but, i'd like to think the american health care system can at least keep up with china's, even if it lags far behind the rest of the oecd. it would follow that the quarantine process is actually not working at all, and there must be hundreds or thousands of unreported cases in the united states. otherwise, you need to accept that america's health care system is so dysfunctional that it's about as useful as the one in iran, when they are under sanctions. 

american capitalism: delivering domestic health care results that are almost as good as the countries it sanctions, since 1993.

the sanctions on iraq are estimated to have killed millions, and were particularly vicious on the children. 

but, when i said this was the best argument for universal healthcare, i actually meant in terms of preventing the spread of the virus. the video mentions reasons why people might not get tested - no sick leave, no insurance, etc. but, what that also means is that there's potentially far fewer checks on the spread of the virus, and that if there really are thousands of cases in the country then it may be acting as an incubation region - viruses are constantly evolving, constantly mutating. if you don't treat people properly, if you make it so difficult to get treatment, if you just let it run wild, you risk making your country the epicenter of mutations, and potentially creating the dangerous pandemic that people are currently irrationally projecting.

so, it's not just the case that america should be embarrassed for lagging so far behind the oecd in it's morality rate. it's also the case that one of the ramifications of america's capitalist health care system is that allowing this to go untreated could allow it to mutate into a more deadly strain.

the cubans used to sarcastically send doctors to the united states on humanitarian missions. they don't do that anymore.

but, the country could legitimately use some help from some ngos, like doctors without borders, to get these tests out there.

this shouldn't be a crisis - the mortality rate in western europe proves that we have the science to beat this. but, capitalism might turn it into one, if we let it.

warren may have been running directly against sanders, but warren herself is not the same thing as her voters. how much of warren's support will go back to bernie?

bernie has been polling poorly with women, and you'll notice that warren realized, herself, that she had a big identity vote bloc behind her - it was a huge part of her messaging over the last few weeks. it could be that warren took a large swath of female voters away from him that would have otherwise supported him, and that's the reason those numbers are noticeably lacking.

so long as they don't end up cynical and stay home, i'd guess that bernie's numbers with women will probably improve. but, there's also reasons to think they may end up cynical and stay home, which would be very bad for the party's chances....

it's been pointed out from day one that her voting coalition was very different than bernie's and, in truth, better resembled an aspect of clinton's - that bourgeois, professional or managerial class type of voter that leans democrat mostly on social and cultural issues. if joe biden were hillary clinton, you might expect most of her voters to move to biden. i previously surmised that biden would be unlikely to hold these voters, but if you take the numbers at face value then he did actually hold them - however fleetingly. 

the thing is that these are the same kinds of voters that have the worst reactions to the haunting spectre of socialism.....because they're wealthy. they'll have other excuses, of course. but, they're on the other side of the class war.

so, they're going to have a hard choice between a candidate that is not very intellectual and they probably mostly don't like, but may align more with them on issues, and a candidate that they may not agree with at all on core issues.

the ones that will go back to bernie are the ones that maybe were a little confused about where warren actually is on the spectrum, but they were the ones that already left, which is why she had to drop in the first place.

so, with the exception of a small group of voters that prioritized voting for a woman at the top of the list of things, i might suspect that we've already watched more or less everybody that was going to go back to sanders go back to him, and that's what left is more inclined to lean towards biden.

but, i think the more foundational issue for the party is how you keep them engaged when the race is between two options they don't like.

i'm home.

it turns out the main show started late after all, so i could have hit the fusion show early. everything else aside, it was a smooth night.

that was my fourth time seeing sunsquabi, who are a lot of fun to dance to. the concerto was great to experience live. beethoven was such a badass....

i didn't get out to the bar to talk, and am not going out again this weekend, as a nasty north wind has blown in. it should clear out nicely by sunday, though.

i need nachos, i need a shower and i need sleep.

i'm going to have to get to writing some of these reviews. soon.