champagneben

He wanted poorer, minority kids to have a chance at a good education and high standards as well? Wasn't very shocking, though the title was incendiary.

Intellectualism and being a "nerd" is appreciated in black Democratic strongholds?

>The distribution of case fatalities from SARS-CoV-2 is still very much up for debate.

Really? It seems to follow the same pattern everywhere.

>1: about 20% of all patients regardless of age require supplementary oxygen to survive the infection and it'll be straight up the worst experience of their life.

You mean all patients in bad enough state to end up in the hospital? 20% of all patients who have contracted SARS-CoV-2?

>And 2: those who develop pneumonia (again no corr to age) run a pretty high risk of suffering permanent lung damage.

A little googling, and everything seems to corroborate that it is in fact correlated with age and given that smoking seems to be big risk factor, even if age in and of itself wouldn't be, we'd see it a lot more in older people.

Pretending like massive lockdowns aren't having a very negative effect on drug abuse, mental health, domestic violence, and increasingly looking like food production as well, would be disingenuous. Now, maybe all of those negatives are outweighed by whatever would happen if we opened up, but surely it must be okay to at least have the discussion.

This might be a bit provocative, but I'm genuinely curious. Let's assume that suicide hotlines are filled up due to mental health problems from being forced to stay inside. If someone is advocating for a lockdown, should they not have the right to call?

Given that this clamping down came about earlier than any discussion of this matter by the American leadership, I don't think that's a good explanation for this.

*Reading this comment again, perhaps I should have phrased it more carefully - I'm not saying that any clamping down that is happening now has come earlier, but that China started clamping down on this from the very beginning.

>if Foxconn met certain targets

Have they been met? Has it been a net negative from the taxpayers' standpoint?

Could you not make the same argument about many politically divisive questions? Medicare for all, climate change, etc.

From your Wikipedia link:

"In 2005 and in preparation for a predictable pandemic influenza, the Bush administration called for the coordination of domestic production and stockpiling of protective personal equipments.[6] In 2006, the US Congress funded the integration of protective equipment to a Strategic National Stockpile: 52 million surgical masks and 104 million N95 air-filtration masks were acquired and added.[6] During the 2009 flu pandemic, 100 million masks were used, but neither the Obama administration nor the Trump administration renewed the strategic stocks."

"The CDC would not have gone this direction if not for the White House," the senior official told CNN. "We would have tried more to understand about asymptomatic transmission. We would have done more studies if we had more time."

Germany last month implemented export bans on medical equipment that applied to other EU nations as well. I believe many others have as well, but can't remember off the top of my head. Is any country a friend to any other?

> The reason women's shelters exist is because activists in the 60's and 70's decided to build them and gain support, and eventually fought for funding. What is stopping any of you from actually building a movement to help homeless men, instead of complaining about the activists who try to help women in need of housing?

Do you feel this way about institutions built for and by men, that women have demanded (rightfully so) access to, instead of building their own from the ground up?

I'm sure physical violence happens against men as well. Many would never retaliate or really physically defend themselves against a woman. And you can be very vulnerable when you sleep or look away.

How prevalent was mask wearing in Asian cultures before SARS?

> the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education

How much has the US cut its education budgets?

Could you provide a source for that? A quick googling returned nothing for me.

Wow - never knew that!

> Open borders is anti-capitalist because it allows labor to move with the same liberty as capital, so it can help reduce the ability of capitalists to find deals.

What? I seriously don't understand this. Find what deals? How does it make it harder?

> Nations are fake.

In what sense? Surely, given the opportunity, most people would prefer to live in Sweden as opposed to Liberia. Most would pick US citizenship over, say, Vietnamese.

What's the scientific issue with manifest destiny?

From Wikipedia (prior to elected office): advocated for nationalization of major industries, including those in the manufacturing, energy and banking sectors. In 1974, he advocated for a marginal tax rate of 100% on income over one million dollars, saying that "Nobody should earn more than a million dollars"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Bernie_...

I doubt Sanders still advocates for most of these positions, and he is of course a millionaire now.

The same one!

That's what the kids want: classical stuff in the public domain.

One of the interesting questions would be how much a basic income would affect people's willingness to work, and we would not be getting that out of this experiment. In fact, I can't imagine anything useful we'd be getting out of that experiment, except for its effects in similar very dramatic circumstances.

> if the president had just accepted WHO kits instead of refusing them for US profit

I haven't followed this very closely, so my impression was that that was the CDC's decision/regulation - is that not the case?

> Despite significant progress with diversity initiatives, 84% of founders are White\Caucasian.

Europe is much less diverse (if you just count the French and Germans as European) than America is, so I wonder how well represented minorities are given this number?

I don't think that was calmworm's qualm with it. Heh.

I haven't watched the 1999 version (the one linked) of this class, but I have watched Gilbert Strang's newer lectures on this subject and they were absolutely wonderful. The book is great as well.

Don't watch these just because it's from MIT, watch them just because of Strang!

> 2) IMF decisions brought an increase in suicide rate and children mortality rate. Are the lenders allowed to bring death to the borrowers? Is this illegal for the mafia but allowed for IMF/ECB/EC?

How does one make this claim? What would the alternative have looked like? It's not like the IMF just decided to tank a healthy economy.

That list speaks nothing of industriousness. It's about how many hours are spent at work. Most people who have experienced working in different cultures could tell you that that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how productive people are at work or how much actually gets done.

Would the formation of Israel be an expression of nationalism? Can it in that light be seen as the belief that one's country or ethnic group is just as deserving as others'? Or to take a more recent example of Kurdish nationalism.

Johnny Depp came to my mind as well reading that. Perhaps it's not such an opposite conclusion, though? I don't want to suggest most actors have personal problems, but having listened to a lot of the more successful ones it seems like there's often a void that's yearning to be filled by fame and adulation.

You think he knows him personally from the synagogue Jared Kushner and his daughter attend?