Scientific American endorses Joe Biden

[Brian63]

Speaking for myself---when I read the sentence, I read it as COVID being responsible for the killing of 190,000+ Americans, and Trump mishandled the response. It was not that Trump himself killed 190,000+.

The oh-so controversial sentence for repeat is "“The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives,” the editors wrote."

It is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. The president has lied, misinformed the public about this crisis. That is the essence behind the criticism (among other scientific issues). Let's not lose sight of that by instead focusing on the placement of a comma.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I found the person making this claim:

If only Obama or Clinton were president. The COVID-19 deaths in America would then be zero instead of 190,000.

And it turns out that if you follow the responses and posts (previous and future) to this one you can see that the sarcasm was hyperbole since no one said that in the first place followed by people refuting it in the second place.

The first place:

...and how many people died due to people not wearing masks because Trump and fans are using this instance to support their conspiracy theories.

Clearly, this is an expression that it is too many but not all.

The second place in response to the sarcasm:

They'd be considerably less provided the Reich wing were not creating conspiracy theories to be non-compliant with science-based guidelines and orders.

Essentially this amounts to the following dramatization of the dialogue that didn't occur but is the dialogue in its essence:

• Person1: too many people have died due to conspiracy theories and bad practices pushed by Trump.
• Person2: Yeah, if Obama was President, there wouldn't even be any deaths at all, ZERO DEATHS!!!!111!
• Person1: That's not what I said Mr Sarcasm, they'd be a lot less because of the conspiracy theories would be replaced by sound policy and science.
• Person2: You were implying Trump was responsible for ALL deaths!
• Person1: You are exaggerating.
• Person2: ATTENTION EVERYONE: Multiple people are constantly posting around here that Trump is responsible for ALL the deaths!

I will leave it up to readers to understand and evaluate the communications.

 

[ronburgundy]

OMG, y'all. He's not responsible for every single COVID death!

Scientific American's statement certainly attributes every single death to him. Here is its statement, again:

“The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives,” the editors wrote.

Nope, you just have poor comprehension skills. The "which cost..." phrase immediately follows and refers to the COVID pandemic not Trump's dishonest handling of it. If I say "Joe reached toward the knife, which had a razor sharp blade.", am I claiming that Joe's reach has a razor sharp blade?

The potential error that SA is making in that statement is that his COVID response may not even be the most devastating example of his lies and scientific illiteracy.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I'm guessing you don't hear any early Dylan in the White House.

How many deaths will it take til he knows
That too many people have died?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

OMG, y'all. He's not responsible for every single COVID death!

Scientific American's statement certainly attributes every single death to him. Here is its statement, again:

“The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives,” the editors wrote.

Nope, you just have poor comprehension skills. The "which cost..." phrase immediately follows and refers to the COVID pandemic not Trump's dishonest handling of it. If I say "Joe reached toward the knife, which had a razor sharp blade.", am I claiming that Joe's reach has a razor sharp blade?

The potential error that SA is making in that statement is that his COVID response may not even be the most devastating example of his lies and scientific illiteracy.

There is ambiguity in many sentences when they are taken out of context. I am not using "taken out of context" informally either, ..., I mean literally taking the sentence out of its context. There's a whole magazine publication which no doubt has published multiple articles on covid-19 and likely has portions of the articles include projections on how many excess deaths are due to whatever policies or other factors. The other context is this is a science-lite magazine--they aren't writing or believing such ridiculous things as Trump is responsible for every death.

What does a rational person do when they encounter a sentence like this? They see possible ambiguity and then they decide they should discount the interpretation that makes no common sense. However, this approach can be wrong, but most likely not.

When a person is confused, they need to go to the primary source and look at the full context. Yes, context. Read the article itself and make a decision, if one is truly confused, like Metaphor could be. Allegedly.

Here is the link:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientific-american-endorses-joe-biden/

Here's a relevant section of the article:

The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump's rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S. He was warned many times in January and February about the onrushing disease, yet he did not develop a national strategy to provide protective equipment, coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines. Testing people for the virus, and tracing those they may have infected, is how countries in Europe and Asia have gained control over their outbreaks, saved lives, and successfully reopened businesses and schools. But in the U.S., Trump claimed, falsely, that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That was untrue in March and remained untrue through the summer. Trump opposed $25 billion for increased testing and tracing that was in a pandemic relief bill as late as July. These lapses accelerated the spread of disease through the country—particularly in highly vulnerable communities that include people of color, where deaths climbed disproportionately to those in the rest of the population.

It wasn't just a testing problem: if almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances. Trump has openly supported people who ignored governors in Michigan and California and elsewhere as they tried to impose social distancing and restrict public activities to control the virus. He encouraged governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas who resisted these public health measures, saying in April—again, falsely—that “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us” and ignoring infectious disease experts who warned at the time of a dangerous rebound if safety measures were loosened.

And of course, the rebound came, with cases across the nation rising by 46 percent and deaths increasing by 21 percent in June. The states that followed Trump's misguidance posted new daily highs and higher percentages of positive tests than those that did not. By early July several hospitals in Texas were full of COVID-19 patients. States had to close up again, at tremendous economic cost. About 31 percent of workers were laid off a second time, following the giant wave of unemployment—more than 30 million people and countless shuttered businesses—that had already decimated the country. At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery.

Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease, saying it was not a serious concern and “this is like a flu​” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible, according to his taped statements to journalist Bob Woodward. His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods. The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation's leading infectious disease physician, Anthony Fauci, in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust.

There are some 10 ideas and some 10 phrases present in all this that all show independently that the author whose one sentence summary has so far been analyzed did not intend any meaning being ascribed by Metaphor. For example, comparison to countries with other policies but still that have death counts....and outright admission at the start "[t]he pandemic would strain any nation and system..." and specific projections of how many deaths could be different by December. These are all relative things not meaning any absolute abolishment of a death count in a summary conclusion.

 

[Elixir]

Sheesh. Ever hear of compromise? Let's leave it at 70%, as estimated by actual epidemiologists. Maybe Trump isn't responsible for 190,000 deaths yet, but the total will reach 271,000 and at that point he will be.

 

[Metaphor]

You don't know the counterfactual nor has anyone even tried to make a case for a counterfactual. Indeed, Trump created a coronavirus task force in January and put in a travel ban in January.

We'll ignore the ban was BINO, "ban in name only". In early February the Admin was moving forward on vaccine stuff. In general, the Trump Admin hasn't fucked up the vaccine route (yet). Otherwise, he did shit about the virus he said was dangerous on Feb 7 to Woodward. US states of Ohio and Maryland (Republican led) announced closures of schools. It would be after that that Trump says people should stay distanced and the CDC enacted hospital protocols regarding visitors and patients. Trump ignored the virus coming from Europe, closed the door way too late... and also way too out the blue leading to who knows how much transmission on flights and the long lines at Kennedy to get back into the US. Nothing in January or February or March regarding PPE stockpiling or ramping up mask production. And Trump's public statements spoke to a narrative that the virus wasn't a big deal and repeatedly stoked flames of people that wanted to go to bars, and propagated bullshit claims about a pair of drugs with dubious records on Covid-19.

Trump's call to reopen too early cost ten thousand plus American lives directly in the South and even limited hospital access for people who didn't have Covid in several US Cities in the south.

So, how many people would be dead from COVID right now if Biden had been president?

 

[Metaphor]

Nope, you just have poor comprehension skills. The "which cost..." phrase immediately follows and refers to the COVID pandemic not Trump's dishonest handling of it. If I say "Joe reached toward the knife, which had a razor sharp blade.", am I claiming that Joe's reach has a razor sharp blade?

No, you are not saying Joe's reach has a razor sharp blade, because Joe's reach (a noun) is nowhere in the sentence. "Joe reached" is not a noun. The subject of the sentence is the knife.

On the other hand, "Trump's dishonest and inept response to COVID-19" is a noun, and caused 190,000 deaths is the predicate.

 

[Metaphor]

There is ambiguity in many sentences when they are taken out of context. I am not using "taken out of context" informally either, ..., I mean literally taking the sentence out of its context. There's a whole magazine publication which no doubt has published multiple articles on covid-19 and likely has portions of the articles include projections on how many excess deaths are due to whatever policies or other factors.

That makes the sentence worse, not better. If it's a number they've already figured out, they could have said 'Trump's dishonest and inept response to COVID-19 means that xxx deaths of the 190,000 from COVID-19 in America could have been avoided.'

Do you not think my suggested construction is more honest and ept than SA's?

The other context is this is a science-lite magazine--they aren't writing or believing such ridiculous things as Trump is responsible for every death.

Well, they are writing such things. They already wrote it.

I doubt they believe such things, which is why I offered alternative explanations for why they wrote it, other than their literal belief in the sentence's implication.

When a person is confused, they need to go to the primary source and look at the full context. Yes, context. Read the article itself and make a decision, if one is truly confused, like Metaphor could be. Allegedly.

But I'm not confused. The sentence means something according to the rules of English grammar.

 

[Metaphor]

And it turns out that if you follow the responses and posts (previous and future) to this one you can see that the sarcasm was hyperbole since no one said that in the first place followed by people refuting it in the second place.

It was in response to ideologyhunter saying:

Nooooooo!!! Do not look at 190,000 deaths!!! They're dead!! You can't help them!! It's done!! Look away!! Look at older skinny lady headed for wash and set!!
She has no mask!! Look!! Look!!! Direct your righteous anger at HER!!!! Begin to rage NOW!!

Essentially this amounts to the following dramatization of the dialogue that didn't occur but is the dialogue in its essence:

Don2, you don't need a disclaimer saying it isn't actual quoted dialogue. Toni is on your side, so she isn't going to quote your post and then say 'that's a lie', as if you had deliberately implied it was actual dialogue in order to deceive people. No doubt nobody would have taken your imagined conversation and mistaken it for a real one. Enjoy that privilege of not being dishonestly targeted by charlatans!

Overall, we all agree that blaming every single COVID death in America on Trump is wrong, even though many people construct sentences so casually that that's what they are implying. But I quote below some poster who claimed that I am a pawn and patsy in enabling unnecessary COVID deaths in America because I found Pelosi's self-serving cowardice annoying:

...and how many people died due to people not wearing masks because Trump and fans are using this instance to support their conspiracy theories. Metaphor's distraction indirectly and unwittingly participates in a smokescreen that enables these unnecessary deaths.

 

[Metaphor]

Cool story. Totally irrelevant to my response to your absurd allegation.

It isn't a lack of absolute clarity. Its meaning is plain. If, however, an English linguistics expert could explain to me how the meaning could be something else, I'd welcome that explanation.

It has been explained to you. Either you refuse to entertain the notion that there is more than one legitimate interpretation or you are incapable of comprehending that there is more than one legitimate interpretation,

What I find interesting is that you are claiming the statement is "inept and dishonest". If it statement is inept is not likely it is also dishonest . Dishonesty is usually associated with an intent to deceive. If SA meant that Trump is responsible for all the covid-19 deaths, then the statement is not dishonest but inept.

Coming from such rigorous pedant as yourself, your claim of "inept and dishonest" is either incredibly sloppy (inept) or dishonest. After all, if you meant "inept OR dishonest", you should have written it that way.

No, something can be inept and dishonest at the same time. In this case, it's an ineptly constructed sentence that does not convey what the writer actually believes, because the sentence writer was recklessly indifferent to evaluating the sentence for truth-value. For the sentence writer, it was better to associate Trump with 190,000 deaths than some more accurate number, or simply with an unspecified number of deaths.

 

[Angry Floof]

Jesus, get a grip, Metaphor. Scientific American hates your dear leader. Die mad about it. Who fucking cares about one small possibly ambiguous sentence? Who fucking cares? It makes NO difference to the level of shitty that Trump is. It has zero bearing on SA's overall assessment of said shitty Trump. What exactly are you trying to do here? We get the fine details of the statement, and it makes no difference to the reality of the situation. For fuck's sake.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Nope, you just have poor comprehension skills. The "which cost..." phrase immediately follows and refers to the COVID pandemic not Trump's dishonest handling of it. If I say "Joe reached toward the knife, which had a razor sharp blade.", am I claiming that Joe's reach has a razor sharp blade?

No, you are not saying Joe's reach has a razor sharp blade, because Joe's reach (a noun) is nowhere in the sentence. "Joe reached" is not a noun. The subject of the sentence is the knife.

On the other hand, "Trump's dishonest and inept response to COVID-19" is a noun, and caused 190,000 deaths is the predicate.

Jebus, let's not bicker and argue over who killed who...

Trump is responsible for more US deaths than killed in any single war time mobilization since the Civil War. He is likely responsible for over 100,000 deaths. Whether we want to say 125k, 150k, 200k, it seems stupid to ignore that being responsible for 50,000 deaths is a fucking high number.

 

[Metaphor]

Jesus, get a grip, Metaphor. Scientific American hates your dear leader.

He isn't my dear leader, darling. He's yours.

Die mad about it.

I am not mad that SA hates Trump.

Who fucking cares about one small possibly ambiguous sentence? Who fucking cares?

It isn't possibly ambiguous. It has a specific meaning in English, and the meaning is that Trump is responsible for 190,000 COVID deaths.

It is evident to me that almost nobody on this board cares that SA wrote that sentence, because almost everybody wholeheartedly agrees with SA's general sentiment. People on this board consistently overlook, downplay, ignore, and deny statements that are dishonest or wrong as long as it fits their worldview to do so.

You imply, with your 'who fucking cares', that it's a small thing to be worried about. But if it were a small thing to be worried about, why the wholesale denial that it happened at all? Can nobody on this board concede any point, no matter how minor, simply because I was the one to make it?

I hardly think myself a narcissist but it's difficult to be so relentlessly attacked on this board for posing what I consider to be mild questions, or posting on topics I find to be noteworthy. Where is the free thought? Do you want to drive everybody off these boards who questions or disagrees with you? Is that the kind of safe space you need, where no thought of yours is ever challenged, where you all write thread after thread talking about how stupid and evil everyone else is?

When Don2 inserts himself into a large percentage of my threads, only to say 'fuck off crybaby, your concerns are stupid and you are a whingeing nutjob, and I'm leaving this thread'*, do you think that adds to the dialogue?

*For Toni's benefit and for the avoidance of doubt, Don2 did not utter these words, despite my putting them in inverted commas.

When Toni misrepresents and lies about my position on a certain issue for year after year after year, despite being corrected dozens of times, or calls 47% of Americans morally bankrupt, do you think that adds to the dialogue?

When Jarhyn outright lies constantly by saying I demand to know about people's genitals, do you think that adds to the dialogue?

When your every response to my posts is filled with 'die mad about it' and high-school level mean-girl vituperative, do you think that adds to the dialogue?

 

[ZiprHead]

So, how many people would be dead from COVID right now if Biden had been president?

How many dead would it takes for the SA sentence that got your underwear in a bunch to be accurate?

 

[Elixir]

You don't know the counterfactual nor has anyone even tried to make a case for a counterfactual. Indeed, Trump created a coronavirus task force in January and put in a travel ban in January.

We'll ignore the ban was BINO, "ban in name only". In early February the Admin was moving forward on vaccine stuff. In general, the Trump Admin hasn't fucked up the vaccine route (yet). Otherwise, he did shit about the virus he said was dangerous on Feb 7 to Woodward. US states of Ohio and Maryland (Republican led) announced closures of schools. It would be after that that Trump says people should stay distanced and the CDC enacted hospital protocols regarding visitors and patients. Trump ignored the virus coming from Europe, closed the door way too late... and also way too out the blue leading to who knows how much transmission on flights and the long lines at Kennedy to get back into the US. Nothing in January or February or March regarding PPE stockpiling or ramping up mask production. And Trump's public statements spoke to a narrative that the virus wasn't a big deal and repeatedly stoked flames of people that wanted to go to bars, and propagated bullshit claims about a pair of drugs with dubious records on Covid-19.

Trump's call to reopen too early cost ten thousand plus American lives directly in the South and even limited hospital access for people who didn't have Covid in several US Cities in the south.

So, how many people would be dead from COVID right now if Biden had been president?

Seriously? Maybe 10,000, maybe less.
There would have been a national mask mandate by the end of February. By mid April the economy would be opening up. By now, school would be in full live session, small businesses would be thriving again and Republicans would be screaming bloody murder over the 10,000 dead and demanding that Biden resign from office. If they had a House majority he'd be impeached.

 

[TV and credit cards]

So, how many people would be dead from COVID right now if Biden had been president?

By Biden do you mean if any functioning adult were president? Can this not be determined by looking at an average of deaths of other countries?

 

[Angry Floof]

He isn't my dear leader, darling. He's yours.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

I am not mad that SA hates Trump.

What are you defending here then? That microscopic issue is not worth all this.

Who fucking cares about one small possibly ambiguous sentence? Who fucking cares?

>snip pointless tirade<

 

[Metaphor]

So, how many people would be dead from COVID right now if Biden had been president?

How many dead would it takes for the SA sentence that got your underwear in a bunch to be accurate?

In one sense, it would take 190,000 deaths that occurred solely due to Trump's dishonesty and ineptness (compared with some counterfactual 'honest' and 'ept' response death toll). But the sentence would not actually be true at the time that SA wrote it, since there have been 190,000 deaths in total, not 190,000 extra deaths due to ineptness and dishonesty.

In another sense, it could never be true, since the '190,000' in the sentence refers to every COVID-19 death in America, and there is no meaningful way to ascribe every COVID-19 death in America to one person's incompetence or ineptness or dishonesty.

 

[Elixir]

What are you defending here then?

Cue "I'm not a Trumpsucker, but ..."

Kinda like "I'm not saying it's aliens, but ... aliens".