Boris Johnson tells UK to prepare for Salt & Vinegar crisps Brexit. North Korea throws shade.

[Doomkid]

iirc, some areas that were/are being affected by COVID didn't have to lock down quite such an extreme to still see a decline overall in cases. A full-blown pause of ALL economic and social activity would not have great long term effects of course, but I don't think many countries have had to resort to quite that extreme just to manage to get the spread under control and get the numbers on a decline.

 

Following of the back of my statements about political divisions being so insanely high and yet so insanely arbitrary these days, there are some people who seem to think any sensible precautions like masks, washing hands, or generally trying to be a little more socially distant than we're used to amount to "full blown tyranny", even before it comes to any actual shutdowns of any sort. I'm hopeful that the number of people who think that way is smaller than it can sometimes appear while browsing the net. Of course, there are also people who think attempting to fully "pause" the economy and stay that way until COVID "goes away" is the right approach, but of course that's going too far in the other direction.. Haven't seen that talking point nearly as much, but it still gets floated often enough to bare mention.

The overarching point is both extremes are just one more example of the seemingly irreparable political fracturing that's happening currently. Which sucks because it doesn't make for a path forward, it doesn't result in any sort of solutions. Inability to compromise is going to be the death of the US. (Especially when it's coupled with all the fucking "world war 3 gonna happen" talk I keep seeing everywhere. Some people even seem happy about the prospect, like they're just waiting with baited breath for an excuse to start firing on whatever they perceive to be the other side)

 

What if another, even worse virus shows up? No vaccine found for years, say? What will we do then? It kinda seems like nothing has been learned here and all it's done is expose how fragile we really are. Of course researching a vaccine is "trying to find a solution" but beyond that very explicit pursuit, I feel like no one is saying "hmm, we need to do some serious restructuring to prevent this from fucking us all right up, even if something worse does come along", and the few who do say those sorts of things are called crazy. Oh well, whatchagonnado..

[Grazza]

Just wanted to point out that Antarctica is not the world's smallest continent.

[j4rio]

12 minutes ago, insertwackynamehere said:

This is my point exactly. You don’t have to go with either of those.

 

That's something many countries around here tried the explore and it ended up backfiring horribly. The moment any easing up happened from one extreme, population automatically reverted to the other extreme on its own. There are no middle grounds here when you factor in basic human psychology.

 

7 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

iirc, some areas that were/are being affected by COVID didn't have to lock down quite such an extreme to still see a decline overall in cases. A full-blown pause of ALL economic and social activity would not have great long term effects of course, but I don't think many countries have had to resort to quite that extreme just to manage to get the spread under control and get the numbers on a decline.

 

Heh, we've gone from 100 cases daily to 10000 cases daily over the course of maybe 2 weeks. What's your proposal? People love shitting on governments these days to shift the blame, but no one has a clear solution.

[Doomkid]

My proposal is to stick my thumb up my ass and sit here bitching about it while doing nothing to help.

[insertwackynamehere]

12 minutes ago, j4rio said:

That's something many countries around here tried the explore and it ended up backfiring horribly. The moment any easing up happened from one extreme, population automatically reverted to the other extreme on its own. There are no middle grounds here when you factor in basic human psychology.

I’m in NYC and we have mask wearing, restaurants (outdoors, limited indoors), gyms (with limits).

 

Things are going fine. They aren’t going back to March/April. Not even close. The whole situation is all in all disappointing because I’m not a believer in the “new normal” being a positive thing, only a temporary necessity (some people seem giddy by the situation which disturbs me, like their antisocial tendencies can now wear moral a high-ground mask).

 

On a personal level the number one improvement is clear guidelines on how to hang out with friends in small groups without there just being a screechfest of shut-ins yelling “stay the fuck home” whenever someone asks “so is my future a 500 square foot apartment alone for the next X years or...”

 

Doomkid is right about the politics. I was saying this back in the early DW corona threads here. This was going to become political, it had the potential to cause issues during a US election year including what we are seeing now with Trump acting like voting is no longer trustworthy, and somehow the argument became “masks are evil and covid is made up” versus virtue signaling about how many years one would remain in their apartment if it saved even one life. It’s not possible to express frustration with lockdowns or even criticize the long term viability of lockdowns while acknowledging the situation because everyone assumes it’s politically motivated or has a glib take about how life is more important than economics.

 

The ethical and moral discussions around the topic also seem to mostly be driven by people who never once thought about anything existential and perhaps drifted through life never pondering mortality, and now suddenly they were jolted awake to these things.

 

Discussing the future from here on out doesn’t have to be a political discussion or a discussion of absolutes or a complete embrace or rejection of the temporary measure that must be put in place. And the ethics of moving forward are not as simple as it’s made out to be. I don’t know if people like the WHO or not these days but even they are critical of lockdowns as primary method of control. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo

Edited October 17, 2020 by insertwackynamehere

[j4rio]

4 minutes ago, insertwackynamehere said:

I’m in NYC and we have mask wearing, restaurants (outdoors, limited indoors), gyms (with limits).

 

It's pretty much identical here, but we've gone from "champions" of containing the spread to worst in the world per capita. We weren't hit during the first wave almost at all, so nobody is taking it seriously now. Restrictions barely matter unless everyone is in on it.

[Khorus]

What I don't understand from the people who cry out about our economic structures shutting down due to a "flu" is why they're more comfortable with the idea of a new virus being a part of daily life, with the potential loss of countless lives. As opposed to directing criticism to an economic system (capitalism) that demands we be in a constant state of thriving growth and profit, and a "mere flu" can outright knock everything over.

 

Make sure we give handouts to corporations, guys, so they keep thriving! Wait, what's that over there? A universal basic income to help see the poor (and soon to be poor) survive and make sure money can be spent in the local economy? Fucking socialism! /s

[insertwackynamehere]

1 hour ago, Khorus said:

A universal basic income to help see the poor (and soon to be poor) survive and make sure money can be spent in the local economy? Fucking socialism! /s

The irony is that UBI and negative income tax are liberal and capitalist solutions to social and economic infrastructure woes. I agree with them personally, but I also don’t identify as a socialist, nor would people like Milton Friedman or Andrew Yang. My friends who lean much more “abolish property”-left think UBI is a trick to get rid of other social programs.

 

Just another victim of the constant politicization of everything where instead of arguing how to improve society, there is a vague accusation of “socialism” anytime some ideas are pitched to help rebalance society. I know you aren’t saying it to be dismissive but there needs to be a mass deprogramming of people to stop thinking that any opposition to the status quo is an opposition to liberal principles. I’m not far left and I resent all these progressive policy ideas being bucketed under the far left umbrella whether it’s out of endorsement or rebuke.

Edited October 17, 2020 by insertwackynamehere

[Szymanski]

5 hours ago, j4rio said:

Are you comparing a curable and preventable disease with two thirds of all detected cases happening in just 8 countries with what is going on now?

Regarding TB did the government ban travel from India? we aren't vaccinated against TB and India has a large prevalence of the disease. There are incurable strains. Should a TB vaccine be mandatory? Surely if we ban travel to regions with covid we should require proof of health from travellers of other disease hotspots?. Flu mutates and the vaccine has to change every year, do we restrict peoples travel or ability to work if they don't take the jab? the digital immunity passport is being set up for just that. 

I understand that despite humanities best efforts only two diseases have ever been eradicated, how long should we accept cycling in and out of lockdown? Greece was praised for its lockdown but after relaxing restrictions its positive tests are rising. Sooner or later were going to have to face living with covid rather than hide from it.

 

[Pseudonaut]

Here in California, we've been in "some form of lockdown" since mid July. My usual gym is still closed (it had re-opened for a few weeks starting in June, so I tend to think of the current situation as the second lockdown.) My university classes are still all online. I see no indication that our COVID-19 problem is being solved in the long term; we're just cycling in and out of lockdown, as @Szymanski put it. Loosen the restrictions and the numbers will get worse again. On top of that, no one actually knows when a vaccine will be ready for distribution to the public. For all we know, we could be cycling in and out of lockdown for years until herd immunity is achieved (more slowly than it would have otherwise), without a vaccine, and it will turn out that all we've done is delay the spread, having had scarce influence on the final death toll. How long is it going to take before we figure out that this isn't worth it?

[j4rio]

4 hours ago, Szymanski said:

Regarding TB did the government ban travel from India? we aren't vaccinated against TB and India has a large prevalence of the disease. There are incurable strains. Should a TB vaccine be mandatory? Surely if we ban travel to regions with covid we should require proof of health from travellers of other disease hotspots?. Flu mutates and the vaccine has to change every year, do we restrict peoples travel or ability to work if they don't take the jab? the digital immunity passport is being set up for just that.

 

Once your healthcare infrastructure collapses, all other diseases become a threat. TB does simply not have a potential to override healthcare providing capacities. Curability is not the most important factor here, transmissibility is. You don't live in constant fear of contracting rabies, even if you are almost certainly going to die once you happen to contract it. For covid, that is an unmatched factor in just about any disease we've observed so far. The transmission rate, lenght of recovery and post-recovery lingering chronic symptoms are more than sufficient to cause a complete disruption in many societal infrastructures, even if we were to just opt to ignore everything. Healthcare will be the first one to get completely wiped out, with higher viral particle concentration in health institutions, so good luck moving onwards with life when anything even remotely life-threatening becomes terminal. There's also a question of quickly diminishing antibodies in blood of recovered patients, so possibilities of reinfection are definitely not something you can rule out entirely at this point. Advocating for herd immunity now with our knowledge is not only anti-ethical, but unscientifical. Learning to live with it simply doesn't seem feasible, it will still be merely surviving with it.

 

Also, please stop downplaying flu as a non-existant threat. It almost completely wiped us out 100 years ago and it's almost certainly not the last time something like that occurs. People just like to forget things once they are out of sight.

[Szymanski]

8 hours ago, j4rio said:

Also, please stop downplaying flu as a non-existant threat

I'm not, it's a consistent killer that like every other disease we've accepted and live with the risk, however flu jabs aren't mandatory whereas the covid vaccine likely will be (if you want to be part of society).

 

 

[Mordeth]

1 hour ago, Szymanski said:

I'm not, it's a consistent killer that like every other disease we've accepted and live with the risk, however flu jabs aren't mandatory whereas the covid vaccine likely will be (if you want to be part of society). 

 

Stop spreading this kind of nonsense here.

[Szymanski]

5 hours ago, Mordeth said:

 

Stop spreading this kind of nonsense here.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/17/digital-health-passport-trials-commonpass-travel-covid-19

 

Once implemented the track and trace app and immunity passports will determine whether you can access gyms, bars etc this isn't tinfoil hat stuff it's the intended design

Edited October 18, 2020 by Szymanski

[Dark Pulse]

Y'all should've voted for Lord Buckethead. He was, after all, the only sane voice in the room.