New Thread! Post Covid WorldFollow

Will we ever hug non-family again?

Will we keep wearing face masks when out in public, how will that social norm play out? (it's hard to drink coffee with a mask on).

Will we again have multiple sit-down restaurants on every city block and be able to support them all?

Will the at-home workers go back to the office or will they just continue to work at home?

Will the US/World/local economy survive?

What about sporting events, concerts, festivals, etc I just heard that Germany cancelled Oktober Fest!

Along with watching people lazily float down the English canals in their long Narrow Boats, I've been watching The Walking Dead. I'm nearly done with Season 2 - Hard not to imagine the Covid dead returning as Undeads. Are you ready?

In order:

I will.

Sometimes, why not?

Fingers crossed

Probably a bit of both

It'll bounce back eventually. Maybe it'll spark change in our economic model.

Festivals will come back eventually.

I'm ready for Covid Zombies.

Anyone tried drinking disinfectant yet?

I still have a gas mask I hadn't turned in yet, so I went grocery shopping with it.

So if you see a news article about a "Man spotted shopping for Lucky Charms in gas mask" I'm legally obligated to point out it totally wasn't me. Movie already made ... though it's like 80% footage from Hell of the Living Dead and Zombies vs Strippers. It is as bad as it sounds, and I enjoyed it.

Edited, Apr 30th 2020 5:28pm by lolgaxe

The Administration of the USA is rewriting the virus to include no deaths to 'regular' people.

I'm sorry? You actually think conservatives were protesting "in favor of covid-19"? Huh? In favor of a virus? Or is that your ridiculous interpretation of events? i suspect the latter.

People aren't protesting "in favor" of the virus. They are protesting "against" absurd and over-reactive executive orders in their states which are not even remotely in line with current statistical understanding of the virus and who is at risk, and the perception that some in these state governments are using the virus as an excuse to destroy the middle class in this country, put more people on wellfare, etc. And that's before even getting into the scary notion of the government determining what businesses are "essential" and which are not.

Let me be very clear on this. I live in one of the first states to issue a statewide stay at home order. I happen to think it was exactly the right thing to do, and have contrasted Newsom's decisive action as a positive compared to Cuomo's decision to wait an extra 3 days or so in NY, and the resulting difference in outcomes in many conversations on the subject. This is not a partisan issue for me. I'm looking objectively at what was known at any given time and which actions I think were the right thing to do. And yes, I have praised Newsom's decision many time and to many people. Actually, a lot of conservatives I talk to also praise him for that decision.

Here's the thing at the time, we still did not have very good statistical data in terms of who was really most at risk, how high the rates of infections were among different risk groups, what the rates of symptoms were in each group, what the rate of hospitalizations were in each group, and what the rate of death was in each group. So it made sense to apply the stay at home orders as broadly as possible, making exceptions only for essential activities. Made total sense.

But today, we do have an abundance of data on these things. We know that if you are not in the at risk categories (elderly and/or with a smallish set of illnesses that amplify the virus' effect), you are unlikely to even show symptoms if you are exposed, if you do show symptoms, they will likely be mild, will have an incredibly small chance of requiring medial assistance, and a statistically as near to zero chance of dying as you might have driving to work on any given day.

It's not unreasonable, now that we do know these things to see that the current approach to open things based on how necessary the business itself is maybe not the correct way do to things. Instead of staying at home based on the work you do, you should stay at home based on your own health risks. This would allow most businesses to open up. Instead of handing out cash to everyone in an industry that isn't on the "can open" list, we could spend a faction of that money and simply pay employers to retain employees who are staying at home due to their own or a household members risk status. That would put only those at risk at home, and cost us only what we need to pay to keep them safe.

The irony is that folks who argue against this argue on the basis that the virus will spread faster, and put those at risk people in danger. I'd argue that the opposite is true. The longer we drag out the virus' spread, the more risk each day that someone who's in that at risk category just randomly gets unlucky and gets exposed. Meanwhile we're keeping people who are not at risk stuck at home. We should actually be encouraging them to go back to work, increase the rate of exposure, and build up herd immunity faster. That would *actually* help protect the at risk group better than just dragging it out. The current approach assumes we can find a treatment or vaccine before the slow spread hits too many of the at risk population. I think that's a poor assumption.





The problem you're having is that you're assuming a motivation for an action you disagree with, rather than listening to that person's reasoning. Are their examples of dumb people doing dumb things? Absolutely. But heaven forbid we allow people to make their own health decisions for themselves. if they infect their own grandmother and she dies, it's their grandmother. Not yours. You make your own decision for your family. Let other's make their decisions for their own. Maybe trust that most people will make the right decision most of the time, and let Darwin handle the rest.

The funny thing is about 6 weeks or so ago, I proposed, totally tongue in cheek at the time, the idea that we should quarantine all the folks in the at risk category, and require that all of the healthy young people go out into public places and cough and sneeze on each other. Basically, an old fashioned chicken pox party concept. Let the healthy people get it. Accept that a small percentage will get sick enough to require medical care, and yeah a small percentage might even die due to unknown illness or random bad luck or something, but we'd spread immunity around within a few weeks, knock the virus out of the park, and be back up and running in no time.

And likely have far fewer total deaths in the process. I was joking at the time. It's looking more and more like that's *exactly* what we should have done. As long as we don't overwhelm our medical resources, we really do want the virus to spread as fast as possible through the most resistant parts of our population. Otherwise, we're still looking at the same total number of infections, with the same risk factors, except it'll drag out long, and be more likely to hit the at risk population. Flattening the curve was only about preventing overwhelming our health care system. We did that too much IMO, to the point where health care workers are being laid off because there's no work for them to do. We should be thinking in terms of accelerating the rate of exposure to just below what our system can handle, not try to keep it as slow as possible. Faster is literally better in this case.

And less harmful to the economy. Which is not unimportant, right?

They are. I don't care how they describe themselves. That's what they are doing.

Trump is a mass murderer through gross negligence, and these drones are his accomplices. COVID-19 in the U.S. isn't some unfortunate accident. It was an entirely foreseeable and preventable problem. It was massive ******* and the denial of that ****** speaks volumes to the insanity of conservatives.

I don't care what their motives are. I'm describing the effects of their actions. I'm responding to your post, but I'm not really talking to you. I used to stand up for you gbaji, and you didn't often see it, but I did it a lot. I used to want to believe in you. Not that you would change your mind, but that you were something more than just another part of the problem. This isn't a conversation. Conservatives are not to be negotiated with, they are to be managed. Conservatives are not political opponents, they are obstacles.

Listening with empathy, sincerity, and openness to actual conservatives is what has led to such a low opinion of them. Liberal propaganda speaks more positively of conservatives than they speak for themselves.

I don't know if you and your suicide cult will ultimately succeed, but I am not going to assist you.

So you're ignoring what they are actually saying they are protesting against, and instead just inventing a reason that fits what you want to believe instead. It's funny because you speak about not being able to have a conversation with someone, but what really makes conversation impossible is when you ignore what the other person is actually saying and claim they're saying something entirely different.

No one is protesting "in favor of covid-19". Claiming they are, when they say they aren't, and are more than willing to spend any amount of time telling you exactly what they are protesting and why, but you just refuse to believe them or even listen to them is entirely on you.



WTF? How do you get there? What exact action did Trump do that you believe resulted in mass deaths? Not just deaths, but "murder" (ie: he intended for people to die when performing the action, which is, you know, what makes something murder)? Hyperbole much?



Huh? It was so forseeable and preventable that when Trump was first raising the alarm about this in mid January, every single politician in the Democratic party dismissed his concerns as either alarmist, or an attempt to distract the media attention from the impeachment fiasco they were in the middle of. Trump was the one who was trying to get people to take this seriously. Long before any other politicians in the US where. So if you want to place blame, or make claims of "mass murder", maybe point that finger at the Dems who chose the political value of impeachment over actually paying attention to the stuff going on in Wuhan back in early January. Want to know what wasn't happening while the impeachment was going on? All the committees who meet and receive briefings on things like foreign affairs, who might have made decisions and taken action during that time period, but couldn't because congress was 100% involved with an impeachment,which requires that all other business be derailed until it's over.

Imagine how much worse things would have been if the Dems had had their way and been able to call tons of witnesses and dragged it out for months more as they had argued. We'd not have been able to pass any of the relief acts we've passed. All because of their obsession to get Trump back for the horrible crime of winning an election.

You have this so completely backwards. it's like facts just don't matter here.



No, you're not. If you were you would have worded it like this: "Conservatives are protesting against policies that are necessary for slowing the spread of covid-19 and if they are successful they will increase the hospitalizations and deaths from covid-19 as a result".

See. If you phrase it that way, you're actually speaking about the "effects of their actions". And then we can actually have a discussion about what those effects actually are likely to be, what the probabilities are, risks versus rewards, etc. But when you just say "They're protesting for covid-19", you are arguing what they "want', not what the outcome will be. And in the process you shut down any possibility of honest communication. It's hard to talk to someone when they ignore what you are actually saying and doing, refuse to discuss the actions and choices at hand, the the possible outcomes that may result, but instead just declare that you want to do horrible things and get people killed.

I get it. You disagree with Conservatives on this. But it works the other way too. Conservatives disagree with your assessment of the outcomes of their actions (and with the outcomes of actions you support). They don't want more people to die from covid-19, they simply disagree with your assumptions about the death rates and results from various actions that may occur (which interesting I spent quite a bit of time explaining, yet you didn't bother to provide any counter argument). They don't believe that we'll have mass fatalities if we open up more businesses. As I mentioned earlier, they believe that instead of having people stay at home not work based on the jobs they do, they should do so based on their own health risks and those of their households. They believe that their method would result in far less economic damage from this, and no increase (and possibly even a decrease) in the number of people who will get sick or die from covid-19. Ignoring their arguments is your problem. They have valid points. If you can't counter them, but instead just insist that they are "protesting for covid-19", one can only conclude that you are either a complete idiot, or that you actually realize that they are correct, but don't want anyone to listen to them because you have your own political motivation driving you that has nothing at all to do with saving lives.

like maybe the idea that the more people out of work, the more the economy is damaged, the more you can blame Trump for that, and then hope you can get him out of office in November. Again, I can't assume you have purely political motivations for wanting people to suffer such economic calamity, but when you refuse to actually support your position, nor are willing to engage with or counter an opposing position, you don't give me much reason to know why you would do such a thing other than pure partisan politics. And yeah, saying things like "Trump is a mass murderer" kinda helps to lead to that same conclusion. Anyone who would say that isn't thinking logically and rationally.



That's your problem. You're not talking "to" anyone. You're talking "at" people you disagree with, and just parroting what folks in your own echo chamber are saying. You also aren't listening "to" anyone outside that chamber either. I suppose it's easy to be sure of yourself and your positions when you don't listen to what anyone else says. I guess.




That's your choice and your fault though. I've shown every willingness to express my positions, and give clear detailed arguments in support of those positions. You have done nothing but declare conservatives to be wrong and evil. over and over. No argument. No facts to support your claims. Just repetition. Seriously. Look at your post. You didn't actually make a single argument. Nothing. Just wild allegations. That's not communicating. That's certainly not a conversation.

And again, that's 100% your choice. You are choosing to remain ignorant of other people's positions and reasons, preferring to just apply angry labels to them. That's your choice. I think it's a bad choice, but there you have it. You can grow up and be an adult, and participate in a discussion, or you can remain a child and throw a tantrum when you don't get your way. Choice is up to you.



Obstacles to what? Seriously. Do you even know what you are fighting "for" that conservatives are obstacles to and thus must be attacked so viciously and constantly? I suspect you really don't know. You're just being used to support a political ideology that you don't know of nor understand, and convinced to do so by simply being told "those people over there are enemies. Fight them. Don't listen to them. Ever". Um... What if the folks telling you that are doing so because they're afraid that if you stop fighting and start listening, and perhaps even engaging in communication with them, you might just discover that they have some good ideas and good points and it's the folks telling you to blindly hate them that are the real enemy?

But that would require self reflection. Right? Again, it's pretty obvious when one side can lay out clear arguments for their positions and the other just repeats the equivalent of "you're wrong" over and over, which side is likely actually in the right.



If your interpretation of conservative protests is that they are protesting "for covid-19", then you haven't actually been listening, much less with empathy or sincerity. Heck. The fact that you didn't respond to a single argument I made in my previous post, but rather just bashed conservatives speaks volumes to your lack of actually listening.




Again. it's not a suicide cult. I laid out the argument quite clearly. We believe that there will be fewer deaths if we do it our way instead of the current method, which says that some 60 year old guy with diabetes should continue working because he works in a grocery store, but a 25 year old in perfect health should stay at home and not work (and not earn a paycheck) because he works in a t-shirt shop. That's totally illogical. And if you'd stop angrily emoting for a short period of time and actually stop and think about it, you'd see what we're saying is true.


I'll just leave you with this totally crazy quote that seems somewhat relevant to this discussion:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."


You are allowing yourself to be so terrified of this virus that in order to gain some small increase in apparent safety (and yes, I think it's just apparent, not real), you are willing to give up massive amounts of liberty. Things like free assembly (that pesky first amendment), property rights (being able to actually operate a business you own, which is kinda protected in the fifth and 14th amendments), and then the general "you can't tell us what to do just because you say so" stuff that's wedged into the 9th and 10th amendments.

But hey. That's what actual argument in support of a position looks like. What you posted? Not even in the same ballpark. I'll point out again, that if you have a hard time having a conversation with conservatives, the problem is on your end. Not theirs.

I bought a tinted bike helmet and am installing spikes on the car. I am totally excited that people losing their **** over sitting in one place for too long. Shoulda been a gamer. Who is a deadbeat loser now.

Edited, May 15th 2020 3:14pm by angrymnk

If you and I are SCUBA diving and I disable your gear on accident and I can fix it but I choose not to and you die...that's murder. If I steal PPE material in large quantities when I know it is needed immediately...that's murder, too. The second one is what we call "depraved indifference"...a MURDER charge.

The horrible crimes committed to win the election.

Yep.

Goddamn, Bijou is on a tear! You go, girl!

two rate ups for you

You're stupid Demea.

You're stupid because you hang around above median intelligence people with some sense of dignity who find humor or shame in wit. Shame is voluntary. You can't shame someone who has no integrity. You especially can't shame someone who is too dense to understand your remark. You're stupid because you're clever and have wrongly concluded that cleverness matters.

This is a hit and run on you. I'm not going to follow up. I'm not going to engage. I hope if you had any respect for me that you lost it. I hope you see that politics is currently a game of chicken, and being the most obstinate petulant moron is actually the winning strategy. Hopefully if it becomes incredibly obvious what the game is, then maybe we can stop playing it.