It's quite incredible. This chemical appears to have a safety profile comparable with the coronavirus itself, and yet the stock market appears to anticipate a possibility that people will get injected with it en masse.
That's because the one thing certainly Moderna has been good at is hype. Many biologists have been pretty skeptical about an mRNA vaccine and yet Moderna has been riding high.
Classic ad hominem. They write an article, list their sources and you dismiss it out of hand because of which entity wrote the article. Surely you can do better than that?
I disagree. We need less people like him (I mean people wealthier than some countries). Let the government manage social services. Some people depend on charities, that themselves depend only on the good will of those people, and I don't think that's wise.
But this waste is something Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (the beneficiary of both Gates and Buffett wealth) screens for with intense due diligence. The government does not. In fact, the government seems proud of its pork barrel.
I've always wondered about the logistics of 8+ figure donations. Does Buffett call his personal wealth manager and tell him to transfer X BRKa.N shares to Charity LLC? Does the wealth manager then call Charity LLC to ask them their routing numbers, types a few strokes on a keyboard, and that's it? How many layers of approval do operations of this magnitude go through? Also, what software do they use to (1) store these shares in the first place as Buffett's, (2) transfer them over the Internet?
My guess is that it isn't too involved on the tax front. Someone please correct me if the following is bogus...
Donate your lowest cost basis stock and write off at current market value. Donate stock directly to avoid taxes incurred by selling. Lowest cost basis because that removes the largest unrealized capital gains from your personal portfolio. Maybe do so over some number of days to cost average if you are donating oodles like Buffet.
There are a lot of nuances missing here. Estate freezes, transfers, nested partnerships, different HoldCos, etc.
Buffett seems proud of his simplicity, so I doubt his structure is too convoluted (bad for his brand to be trying to avoid taxes this way), for people with a small percentage of his wealth all the way up to other billionaires with his wealth have extremely complicated structures that boggle the mind and keep PwC, EY, and similar employed.
The process itself probably doesn't have to be that complicated (or at least it's well understood) but at least the timing is presumably taking tax effects into account.
Even for much much smaller amounts, donations (of various kinds) of appreciated assets can use tax law to considerable advantage.
it's also kinda cute the idea that shares are stored like computer files. But it's not a stupid question at all. Their existence is regulated by a complicated regulatory complex.
He’s responsible for the propagation of expensive insurance and sugary drinks around the world - he extracts wealth from the poor and middle class, and by never splitting his stock, makes it impossible for anyone but the elites to share in that extraction.
He is nothing like Musk. If Buffet never existed, Geico and Coca Cola would have been mismanaged into the ground and these markets would have never been sparked to become global industries.
The class B shares don’t have the same power as the A shares, it’s still classist.
The expensive insurance thing is a hard thing to prove, it’s definitely an opinion rather than a fact. What I saw was the huge success Geico had with their advertising programs, and then every other insurance company deciding to run expensive ad campaigns. The costs of that marketing is paid for directly by the consumer, we’re paying to watch all these dumb characters and cavemen try to sell us car and home insurance, when it used to be a quiet thing you did at the bank.
> Either in-person classes are safe, and the rules can go back to pre-pandemic, or they aren't, and forcing students and professors to attend them is dangerous and cruel.
Actually, in-person classes are completely safe and this is a gentle nudge from the federal administration to make the universities reconsider their (completely political) decision to not resume normal classes this Fall.
This is an awfully confident statement that is unsupported by available evidence on covid transmission and health risks. On what basis do you say that in person classes are completely safe when reopening of indoor spaces has led to massive upticks in infections across much of the US?
It is certainly confident, but it is also supported -- modulo "completely" -- by our understanding of how effective masks are supposed to be, and infection rates in certain other (mask-wearing) countries.
A fact check would be fine if it led to objective analyses of some sort, or even Wikipedia. But when I clicked it, it displayed some highly partisan sources, including a CNN article with its usual "Trump bad" vitriol. Maybe it was an algorithm's fault, but it didn't work at all.
One way is showing what multiple experts and news sources say about the facts, such as the Washington Post, The Hill, Forbes, the ACLU, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, ABC News, Fortune Magazine, Vox, MSNBC, Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor.
It seems to me that general media are sanitising Trump speech, go out of way to find coherent meaning or sense where original statement had only a little. One could argue they are making him look better despite disliking him.
> How do you objectively report on trump without it painting him in a bad light?
You are missing the point. Using objective reporting to paint a bad person in a bad light is exactly what "the media" should do.
I went to cnn's homepage and clicked on this article[1]. Lets look at the first paragraph:
> President Donald Trump's use of the bully pulpit to defy his own government's advice on face coverings has turned into the era's latest ideologically motivated assault on science and civility. His noncompliance is a symbol of his refusal to adopt the customary codes of the presidency during a crisis and his habit of turning even a dire national moment to political advantage.
You can't possibly call that objective reporting. The factual content is true, but highly highly subjective and filled with inflammatory language.
Saying "Trump refuses to wear a facemask in defiance of $HealthExpert's advice" is objective. Calling that act "an assault on science and civility" is a heavily inflammatory and subjective stance.
To be clear, I don't disagree with CNN here. Trump is being dumb. But you can't pretend like CNN is objective or unbiased.
CNN, like all news media, is a private, profit seeking corporation who will pander to their audience to generate ad revenue. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But turning around and treating this multi-million dollar corporation as the sole arbiter of absolute, objective truth is plain foolish.
EDIT: Some argue that this is an opinion piece and so my point is invalid. Up in the top left corner, this article is marked as "Analysis by $Author" instead of just "by $Author". They don't label it as an opinion, and they don't place it differently on their home page. It is an analysis on current events, written by a CNN reporter, hosted on the CNN front page. This is an explicit endorsement of the content of the article, and it's crazy to say that CNN is absolved of all journalistic integrity because this article is an "analysis" versus "regular" news. The only difference is the addition of the single word "Analysis" hidden in the top left corner. This article is clearly meant to be treated as any other.
I suppose that is the problem with using examples, though. People would rather pick apart the example rather than face the larger claim. Without examples, of course, the point would be dismissed as unsubstantiated. It's just not possible to change people's minds, I guess.
They disclaim that the article is the authors opinion, they host it in the opinions section, and have opinion in the header, etc. The article I linked is not an opinion piece.
Sure but that does not make it okay necessarily. Did you read what the OP said? The news sources are all opinion with bias and artistic flare for effect, sprinkled with a few dabs of factually correct details to maintain the aura of "legitimate news source".
You are not responding to the content of what you are replying to.
It is irrelevant how many true things CNN says, or how broadly other organizations agree with them. CNN is still not presenting things in an objective way. Which means that those you would like to convince will flip the bozo bit because of the bias, and never even hear the evidence.
Note that we seldom notice bias in others when it matches our own. So CNN's bias is invisible to its core audience. Just as Fox News' bias is invisible to theirs. But it can't be missed by anyone whose biases differ, or who are actively looking for whether things are presented with bias.
>You are not responding to the content of what you are replying to.
That's because the content I am responding to is a red herring to the question of Twitter's actions.
This derailment into "Is CNN biased?" is not relevant when the majority of news organizations are in agreement about the president lying in the tweet.
Further muddying the waters with claims that it's all just an "opinion" anyways is also non-sequitur because there are definitive facts about mail-in voting showing otherwise: https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384
My comment was a direct reply to my parent, who asked a fair question about how media is to deal with Trump. I make no greater claims about this specific situation and I am not derailing a discussion, I am directly answering an interesting question. If anything, you are derailing a discussion about news media bias with the red herring of "but Trump bad".
For you to say that its wrong to discuss media bias because Trump did a bad thing is dishonest at best. Yes, Trump is acting a fool on Twitter as he always is. That does not mean that the news media is beyond reproach and it is wrong to call into question their biases.
It is at a /opinions/ url, it has the word "Opinion" in the header, and it has this disclaimer above the article:
> The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own
Most importantly, it is not posted directly on the CNN home page. You have to click a link to go to the opinions section to see opinion articles.
The article I chose as an example is not an opinion piece. It is presented to the user the same way every other news piece is, just with the word "Analysis" tacked on in the corner. No reasonable person would say "Oh, this is just an analysis, I shouldn't take it seriously".
The word 'Analysis' appears once, under the title (not in it), in a much smaller and greyed out font. Very few people would notice it, IMHO.
And even if they did, I don't see how that changes anything. This is CNN's analysis of the news, and it has all the problems I outlined in my original comment. This is not disclaimed as the author's own opinion, it is CNN's explanation of the news, and it is filled with subjectivity and inflammatory content.
You would have to be incredibly dishonest with yourself to read that article and not conclude that CNN is biased against Trump.
And I reiterate: I don't think bias in media is inherently bad. But it is foolish to think that private media corporations are unbiased, altruistic arbiters of the complete and objective truth. This is the point I am making, but I suspect you would rather continue to nitpick the examples I have chosen rather than engage in a good faith discussion.
I went to https://www.cnn.com/politics and the article title is right there: "Analysis: Trump takes his war on masks to new lows." The "Analysis" is even in bold font.
> You would have to be incredibly dishonest with yourself to read that article and not conclude that CNN is biased against Trump.
I read it as a non-values neutral piece, and that is not a slant against Trump so much as it's a stance against a pattern of behavior with harmful ramifications for the country's public health. Do you think there's a neutral ground between recklessly endangering public health for political gain versus not doing that?
> But it is foolish to think that private media corporations are unbiased, altruistic arbiters of the complete and objective truth.
I don't know who you're arguing with on this point.
The piece is marked as 'Analysis by Stephen Collinson'. I tend to think that's an opinion piece and treat it appropriately. You call it unfair, non-objective reporting. You fail to identify that it's not reporting at all: it's an opinion piece.
I believe that the unclear identification of an article as 'news' or 'opinion' is a general problem with media. The demarcation was usually clear in the print media, it's often not clear in the digital media. I'd love to see improvement.
I often ask for examples of the press treating Trump unfairly, and I'm always (not sometimes, always) given links to opinion pieces. The public can't seem to discern between the two, which points to a general problem of media illiteracy. This illiteracy is then used to draw false conclusions about the media as a whole, and your post is doing the same.
I'll admit that the piece you linked blurs the line between analysis and opinion. You assert that it's not an opinion piece, but I'd assert that it's absolutely not news, it's not reporting, and the larger points of my parent comment still stand: I don't think it's fair to point poeple to this piece and say "look how unfair CNN is".
> They provide the reader with facts and evidence. They do not include their own opinion. They are similar to professional teachers. The draw conclusions from events, but the conclusions they state are clearly based on evidence.
I think the article could be called 'analysis' based on your definition, but the article definitely is less clinical than this definition would suggest. It reads more like it was written by an "angry teacher" vs a "professional teacher".
> I don't think it's fair to point poeple to this piece and say "look how unfair CNN is".
I would agree with you if this article was clearly marked as something less than factual reporting. You touched on the issue of branding different kinds of articles earlier. If CNN is going to push this article to their front page and not disclaim the author's opinion, then they need to be responsible for its content. I don't think putting the word 'Analysis' in small grey text in the corner releases them from their responsibilities as a news organization.
The content of the article is biased and inflammatory, even if factually sound. CNN put their seal of approval on this biased content, and so I think it is fair to say "look how unfair CNN is".
Whether reporting on Trump objectively makes him look 'bad' obviously depends on the content being reported on. The objective reporting (meaning, nothing but the facts, no insinuations or implications past what we can garner from the facts) on something like Trump tweeting about Joe Scarborough's possible culpability in the death of his intern might make him look bad while reporting of Trump's efforts to pull troops from abroad back home might make him look good.
The problem though, as I think some of the posters above have touched on, is how can Twitter effectively account for media biases in a way that will not make them look biased? I suppose that's just begging the question of: should they care if they appear biased?
One thought I've had is that perhaps, for every tweet that Twitter decides to put a 'fact-check' on, they could link to three different sources of information - one with a well-established left-bias, one with a well-established right-bias, and one without any well-established bias. Just an idea, I'm sure that'll probably present problems as well.
That's a step in the right direction. But both sides of the political media coin are biased in that they don't do fact-based reporting only.
Let's look at the tweet from the linked article and see how reporting should happen:
>"Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices" "We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016."
1. Republicans claim social media platforms silence conservative viewpoints.
2. Donald Trump intends to regulate/close them down if they are engaging in this, or prevent them from doing so with regulation.
3. Donald Trump claims that social-media platforms tried to do something in 2016 (insinuating that they meddled with the election).
I don't know about you but I would love actual investigative journalism to look at the above points as it's so loaded and could practically swing elections if confirmed and people decided to act on it.
So the items they need to do for the above facts:
1. Track down some legitimate poll of how Republicans feel about this. Find peer-reviewed studies that look at data-dumps or reports by the media companies. Send emails to social-media companies with details, request data about the makeup of account actions or bans, etc. If < 50% of republicans feel this way, call him out on it. <-- that sort of thing is fact-checkable for Twitter.
2. Talk about the options that Donald Trump has. Investigate the legality about it, consult some lawyers, showcase a poll on the matter, investigate how Common-Carrier laws might apply to this, etc. The media should assume he is right and play that out. What if Donald Trump is on to something and the statistical facts are being hidden. Investigate. Make a note of this and write an article in half a year about how it disappeared from his campaign so he broke his promise/commitment. Hold him accountable, help people see the things that they may have forgotten, be the voice of clear-headed reason and good outcomes for all involved.
3. Really, same as the above on some level. It's been almost 4 years, there is bound to be a plethora of peer-reviewed sources and concluded outcomes. Mention the outcomes of some of the claims during the 2016 election, track down some polls and tie it all together. They're supposed to provide insight and a big-picture view of it all.
I thought Wikipedia was built on user contributions and user provided citations? Do you have any sources that would indicate that the Wikimedia Foundation is far left?
If it truly was far left, why doesn't Wikipedia host pages of Pol Pot and Stalin filled with praise? Or, in lieu of praise, at least apologism?
Interesting predictions. However, they do not fit the facts on the ground, at least here in Poland, which is some weeks ahead of the US with respect to the development of the epidemic.
(I'm relieved that) people have gotten sick and tired of the restrictions, about 50% (and growing every day) are not wearing the masks inside anymore, or bother with the distancing, despite official requirements. All restaurants and bars are opening up on Monday, my favourite one described the prior atmosphere as a "psychosis of fear".
It's interesting what happens when the second wave of infections occurs, which is becoming more and more likely. It's hard to imagine the population will be as fearful and obedient as the first time, should the government try to impose another lockdown.
If, as Nassim Taleb believes, the lockdown was bottom-up, demanded by the people rather than imposed by the government, a repeat seems unlikely. Perhaps that's why the stock market is surging?
Poland locked down hard very early on and stopped the pandemic in its tracks. If you completely stop the lock down now, it'll spread rapidly and overwhelm your hospitals. But I doubt it'll happen that way. Presumably, you'll ease up on the restrictions, restaurants will be open but with fewer tables, there will be very few if any large events. Most people will be wary. This may be enough to keep R at or below 1.
Addendum: In no meaningful way is Poland some weeks ahead of the US. Poland is on around day 45 since the first people started dying, the US are on day 55. Throughout, around 10 times as many people (per capita; ie. 883 have died in Poland overall, if the statistics can be trusted) have died in the US each day from the disease, which presumably means that around 10 times as many people were infected. Like I said above, Poland has stopped the disease in its tracks, which is good! But it doesn't confer some sort of societal immunity.
I fund it fascinating that in "developed" or "fully western" countries it is the youth that is disregarding the lockdown measures. In Kosovo/Albania it is the precise opposite. An acquaintance of mine in China told me that it is the genX and older generation there too that seems to not understand the gravity. How come this big difference?
It's evident by this point that you can avoid total lockdowns and still control infections. Permanent lockdown is simply not a realistic solution, so I expect we'll all start tending towards the Swedish model, regardless of how much gnashing of teeth and fiery twitter rhetoric such decisions will generate.
As for the apocalyptic atmosphere - it doesn't seem possible to really predict how bad/good things will get. How many predicted during WW2 that upon its exit would be a period of unprecedented social progress & economic equality?
It's just too contagious and countries are opening up that still have quite a large number of infections. Seems like a very tricky balancing act to keep R under 1.
Poland and the rest of the world is just slower to change culturally. If what he describes happens in the usa, it will happen elsewhere just takes 10 years longer, but maybe less.
Yeah, it only takes into account whether one has preconditions or not, at the moment. The plan was to produce more detailed calculations, but it is difficult.
