Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

Great Britain, Japan, Australia etc are all islands but still have the virus. New Zealand was to do with early action and effective follow through.

Plus being an Island.

As I've already mentioned but you edited out Great Britain, Japan, Australia etc are all islands but still have the virus. International travel does not stop because it's an island.

It's actually worth noting New Zealand has one of the biggest trading agreements with China (the Sino–New Zealand relations) being the first country to have free trade with them putting them at higher risk than other countries when China first starting showing signs of a pandemic.

Which is exactly why China decided not to attack New Zealand with the vir... *indistinguishable mumbling... Hey, don't Sony fanboys ruin gaming amirite?

@kkslider5552000 Somewhat true, but I like to think of it in a context of what they say about bad marriages: When the when there's more bad than good about it, it's over. There's more bad than good. Absolutely, there's exceptional people who have done exceptional things. For each of them there's 10 total aholes. A species of which 10% deserves to live, isn't much of a species.

@Heavyarms55 I don't think it's as clear cut as a difference in how people react to danger. The difference seems to be a difference in the perception of any danger at all, shielded almost religiously by their politically charged belief that there simply is no problem at all, and never was, as though all the reports from other countries and this one never happened or were somehow "fake news."

Y2K was both a hoax and not, even at the time. Yes there were a lot of problems that would have crashed had people not fixed them. But the problems that would have occurred were no where near what the hype made it out to be. Even if nothing was done, some computer terminals would have crashed, some accounts would have been irretrievable causing inconveniences, though at the time, paper records still existed for almost everything. The panic at the time was that the power grid was going to shut down, nuclear reactors would blow, everyone would lose all of their bank accounts, etc. etc. etc. None of that was ever true. Annoyances, hiccups, and incidents would have happened until it was manually worked around, looked up, or troubleshot. So there was a Y2K series of events that were averted through advance work, but pretty much none of the catastrophe hype that was "Y2K(TM)" was ever valid to begin with. People hoarding things to "prepare" were mostly panicking over false claims because they didn't understand the nature of the problem and listened too much to talking heads that also didn't understand the nature of the problem and make their money by stirring controversey. Not unlike the modern social media driven panics.

This is different. It's real, present, already happened, and you can watch it in real-time.

With the protests (I think I mentioned it in another thread you weren't in), but I think that's really something of an amalgamated pool of grievances all being aired simply as "racism." It's not just about police and race. That's a factor, and a recurring existing source of anger and protest, both from real and perceived causes. But this time it's not really just about that and never would have blown so wide if it were. It's a mix of the latent race and police issues, combined with a more overall anger at "everything". For the black demographic the police issue was just kind of a match to the well stacked powder keg that made it feel personal, and like I compared it to in that other thread, it's like WWI. In WWI, few really cared much about who the heck Ferdinand was. They had been militarizing their borders for years, itching for an excuse to invade their neighbors for a whole host of reasons differing by country. They just needed an excuse to legitimize it so they weren't simply unprovoked hostilities. An assassination gave the first countries that excuse, and the first two fighting gave everyone else the excuse they were waiting for. The powder keg blew open because everyone was standing around waiting for someone to light the match for the decade prior.

This is similar. The racial and police angers have been there and manifest periodically. But a greater anger over sense of the burgeoning caste system (of which race plays a factor but is not the only factor), a longer, related anger over "inequality" and an elimination of any kind of concept of a middle class, even a lower middle class, automation, efficiency, globalism maintaining that system and dropping the value of common labor to near-zero. The total socio-economic unraveling from the former American system to essentially a global caste system where if you're born a day laborer with no money you'll die a day laborer with no money unless you happen to be exceptionally gifted at something. But most people don't follow these things in detail, and for a black population that never felt like a part of even the old system and had to claw into it, and now that system is gone to and there's effectively no hope....that sense has been growing for ages, but without a label and a finger upon it (and guided to become simply a "black" issue because it's actually an "everyone" issue, but as long as you can keep sub-groups fighting each other, the elite are safe from anger.) And covid crystallized all of that so that a slow descent into that pain and reality over years happened all at once in a few months. A lot of population that was barely floating by on the scraps of the old system is permanently hosed now. They're angry, and they have boundless free time now. Unfortunately what should be a mass population uprising overall is being "softened" by corralling it into simple racial anger rather than a moment that could have really changed a lot of things. And that's not by accident.

I don't think it's so much, among that situation about seeing "police brutality" as worse than the disease, so much as an overall anger over many things, with race being a common (but not exclusive) theme, forced into immediacy by the disease ruining the last shards of a life they had, most likely forever. I think it's more about anger and despair and a catalyzing on the surface reason for which to lash out.

" I've really come to the conclusion that people just consider the virus to be here to stay and do in fact consider the restrictions worse than the virus. It ties into the mentality among... certain groups... that "if it's not my problem, it's not a problem". Of course those people will never admit to that."

A thousand fancy degrees, and stupidity ends up the governing factor. I think we all know the disease is "here to stay" and have always known that. It COULD have been ended or mitigated but that was squandered. But it can, and should have been contained per-country. People actually following the rules would have contained it. Were you ever going to weed it out of Manhattan after it was likely in free spread since January? No. Thus nobody should have been going to or from Manhattan at all, or at least, if they did, it had to be a one-way trip in or out with a quarantine on either end.

But it's even worse than "if it's not my problem it's not a problem." They're too stupid to recognize it *is[/strong] their problem. That's the amazing thing. They're not just risking everyone else. They're risking themselves and their families too. But they don't think they are because they think they're immune. Their political shield will defend them! And despite them all being well degreed, financially successful people, they've indicated they have less intelligence than Forrest Gump. They're venerable morons who I'm amazed can feed themselves at all. It started with being a political defense of the right that there wasn't a problem. The various early excuses included "it's just a flu, no big deal", and "it's only dangerous for the elderly" (A: As though spreading it doesn't spread it to the elderly, and B: That's not actually the case, it only tilts that way by 10% or so...meaning the imbeciles are only 10% safer than the 100 year olds, statistically....as are their kids.)

But now it's expanded to new ranges of apathetic stupidity. The new prevailing theme is that it's safe because it's summer now! Even though they've said over and over that's not the case, even though basic sense says "hey look at FL and LA - it didn't help at all there!" - but no, people latched onto those 3 "experts" that said it would pause it, and ran with the truth they wanted as the only truth. I know people (from other states) that utterly believe that. It's over now, summer came so the disease is gone. Or "there's only xx cases in my state, so it's safe" (You mean your state that bought, like, no testing supplies?) In some states there was never a "problem" to begin with. Not many cases ever. Just people hopsitalized from unidentified viruses, not covid. Strange, huh? Kinda like NYC in Feb, right? Yeah, weird coincidence, so when's happy hour?

That's just amazing stupidity of believing what you want to believe and finding an "expert" to substantiate it. Simply looking at very available information and making your own conclusion is too hard, apparently. Just trust an expert that tells you what you want to hear.

But around here, in the bad area...it's a different kind of stupid unsubstantiated by summer, or test blindness or anything else. It's a personal arrogance from a crowd that's used to buying their way out of any problem. They simply believe their worldliness is immunity itself. They may believe summer is safer. They may believe they will be fine from it and not care who else is harmed by them. But mostly they think the are incapable of getting the disease at all and that it was never a threat to them to begin with.

The closest comparison to their mentality I can think of is: " I'm sure I won't get HIV from this prostitute, It'll be fine...." Except this is one they give to everyone they encounter before they even know they have it. There's a lot of Tiger Blood around here....

That kind of stupid, honestly, can not be allowed to be free. They must be restrained no matter how many coils of razor wire are needed. The overwhelming first priority here is getting their vacation trips in. Before the restrictions were lifted, there was the sound of parties going an all over.

Living in such a public, I honestly believe I will never see the outside world again. At some point I will be forced to return to enter and exit a workplace, which I will do in a state of utter terror and dread every single day until I am dead, nauseated by every interaction with every person forever. And I will go absolutely nowhere else, ever again. Video games may be the only world I see for the remainder of my life. If a vaccine happens, great, though I had my doubts about if that ever actually happens at all from the beginning, if you recall. No human coronavirus vaccine has ever been successfully produced, and no vaccine has ever been made in less than 4 years. With a public that has decided to go the herd immunity route after all (meaning we should probably never have locked down to begin with and just steamrolled through the death toll in March and this would all be a history lesson only by now, and the economy would have been largely untouched) there's doubtfully any point to a vaccine anyway, in 4 years, everyone will have had it.

There's a slight optimistic thread that as soon as the numbers start spiking (and they will) it just justifies dropping the iron fist and truly locking everything down for good this time. Or the other optimistic thread that the protestors have so graciously volunteered themselves as an experiment control group: If there's not a mass spike in cases, then maybe "Trump was right (TM)" and there really wasn't much of a threat to begin with and the whole thing was hysteria. I somehow doubt the latter will happen. But we did have mass gatherings of thousands upon thousands....if that doesn't end in catastrophe, it does make me wonder what exactly we've been hiding from this whole time. Though I suspect it ends in catastrophe.

@NEStalgia Nice work, that's got to be biggest wall of text I've seen for some time around here.

You gotta give nihilism a try, it'll work wonders for those stress levels 😎

I'm undecided on how much NEStalgia is right and how much he is a 16 year old Linkin Park fan who has been living under a rock for several years and doesn't understand this isn't LiveJournal. Or maybe a real smart 16 year old Linkin Park already working on some quality philosophy essays.

a little of column a, a little of column b

it sure is interesting

but seriously you do know that millions of people can be awful and thats still the tiniest percentage of actual people, that's more the real problem, as proven by many people in charge of various things who should not be in charge of any things. even 1% being awful or stupid enough can sometimes be a massive disaster. im mildly annoyed at being on-the-nose enough to use the term "1%", i didnt even intend that ohno.

Lol good luck managing that in the US. Both of the main parties are firmly located in the "blatantly evil" camp.

I disagree.

One of them is much less blatant about it.

I don't know what approved database this type of statement was polled from, but definitely falls into the category of among the most strange utterances seen on these forums. Usually this kind of tangible (physical?) vehemency in denouncing one's own background and nation comes from a place of reality detachment. Without knowing you personally I would encourage you to seek some help from whatever is placing this much stress on your psyche. "Beijing" is not a person or entity capable of respecting, acknowledging, or even reciprocating such adoration. Taking this some what into my own terms I would say (of the leadership) that it is a cold, evil, soulless, corrupt instititute that wields power and influence over its citizenry in ways that are far from benign. Again I would seek some internal calm that would allow you to circumvent the influence of propaganda on your arguments. Indeed these are trying times for everybody, breathe and apply basic research before giving yourself over to fits of zeal, especially in decrying your culture and offering pageantry to a foreign governance.

Or maybe I've tripped clumsily into a well setup trolling... in which cases these eggs are best "scrambled" please.

_{...I like Linkin Park.... :;(∩´﹏`∩);:}

People are showing their age with their choice of angsty teen rock, it's not the 00s anymore

At the risk of making trite video game comparisons, these last few pages do play out somewhat like the premise of the Final Splatfest.

Here’s hoping some balance between Order and Chaos can be arrived at. China and the US, being the world’s primary superpowers, tend to get the lion’s share of attention, but I can’t say I feel particularly envious of either in their current state.

The notion of nationhood, and the deeper notions of identity and community, have had quite a harsh light cast on them by the events of the last several months. One theme that repeatedly seems to occur in the American camp is the need to believe that individual liberty is under constant threat, and that the only way to protect it is to rebel against all given advice, even to the detriment of oneself and one’s community.

And to be fair, people appear to have good reason to believe to be suspicious of the wider ‘system’: Americans’ rights to healthcare and decent working conditions are pretty appalling given the country’s status and economic output. But any attempts at reform are seen as giving the government permission to fiddle in areas where it shouldn’t. People are so distrustful of anything they can’t personally verify or grasp that they don’t even begin grappling with the wider structures that might fix things. In many ways, it’s still the Wild West, at least in the minds of many of its inhabitants.

It’s still probably preferable to living under an authoritarian surveillance state. Probably. Although that also likely depends on the position you hold within each system. Even so, in response to a pandemic, countries than can act swiftly, sensibly and cohesively are much better poised to come out with minimal damage than those whose response is firstly inaction followed by an every-man-for-himself-free-for-all. Thankfully, there are countries that have managed to avoid the worst effects of the virus (so far) without being essentially China-lite, but even so, it’s hard to think of anybody as a real winner amongst this.

Anyway, there conclude my edgy, somewhat rambling, and probably very ill-informed nu-metal thoughts on current affairs. Now to go listen to Squarepusher or something equally cool. Or cooler. I’m not sure. The point is I’m going to go somewhere and be very cool in some cutting-edge way. Stay fresh!

I mean, implying teenagers still listen to rock is me showing my age more than anything tbh. :V

@kkslider5552000 No, @Dezzy had it right. They're both pretty blatant about it. Each sweet talks different groups with the words they want to hear to form their respective identity coalitions, but when you actually look at what they do and who they are....it's pretty blatant on both "sides" (that aren't "sides" much at all.)

And come on, I haven't even listened to Linkin Park in much more than 16 years....

@OptometristLime You're reading that definitely not completely, and definite not in full context. I never said I endorse the Chinese state and all it's agendas. In fact I said I'm effectively against both countries. I have noted in the past many times that the greatest problem is that both are very much the same at this point. They like to paint different pictures of themselves. China likes to make a grand display of their abuses as a deterrent against any unrest or resistance. The US likes to work in the shadows, pretend they're not doing such things, and bury it all in in misdirection..pretty window dressing to hide the abuses. But mostly we are them. Same game, different theme. And should it be surprising? Our government is controlled by the market, not the citizenry. And who controls the market? China.

And hair-splitting over referring to "Beijing" as an entity is like correcting grammar on the internet. But worse. Referring to a capital by name to reference it's decision making capacity is common vernacular. Beijing, Washington, Brussels, Sacramento.

However what I actually said is that I've gained an appreciation and respect for their use of authoritarian control over the population as necessity. @status-204 really succinctly conveyed it. We've become a culture where the most common thinking is "it's only wrong if you get caught" - along with "ethics are just opinions and artificial limitations", and "rules are just guidelines" Which is really a circular reference back to "it's only wrong if you get caught." It's now a society where overall, people will do whatever they feel they can get away with without punishment, and will endlessly push every limitation if they know serous repercussions will not hit them. Effectively the adult population now has the ethical and moral capacity of children. And as such, I now realize that in such a population, the need to rule absolutely, like parents, or as status-204 put it, shepherds, becomes clear. The absence of such rulership means unequally applied rule. Those who self govern and self regulate their actions in a civil contract will get to bear all burdons and abuses of those who behave as spoiled children. Eventually those self-regulating individuals have to choose between desiring to just join the unruly, or seek a system of control to enforce regulation upon those who will not do so themselves. Not far from what Plato already determined ages past. That democracy is a path to tyranny. And the above is the reason.

Freedom came with the price tag of having to govern one's own behavior in accordance with the expectations of a societal whole. It's a contract. That's essential for the existence of freedom. We used to be such a place. Japan remains largely such a place. The US, on the other hand, has tilted too far toward "it's only wrong if you get caught" - except they know there's insufficient controls to catch them. Abusing the freedom to get away with anything possible. So it should not be difficult to see where an appreciation of a system that actually implements such controls would come from. I was against their social monitoring "report every non-compliance" credit system at the start. In concept I still am. But in watching everyone just freely do as they please no matter the conditions, here, a problem that's been going on long before the virus, but the virus crystallized that even in the worst of times, the public simply doubles down on that, now. We are a long, long way away from the "Greatest Generation." There is a significant difference between that and an endorsement of the Chinese state itself.

@satus-204 I do appreciate that you actually read and related to the observations in concept!

@Maxz Well said, and I do agree with most of that. The one exception, though, was that initially there was a politically affiliated sense of "rebelling" against all guidelines. And that I can even understand to a point (one of the shock jocks had a rant of "nation of cowards" and not being afraid of just plowing through the risk, deaths and all.....I don't agree with that stance, but I can at least respect that point of view that the sacrifice to endure fully is a valid national stance, if a damaging one. I can at least see the argument for that point and partially nod along with it....if we weren't talking about a pathogen.) But the worst of what I've seen is the child-like pleasure-center focus now. It's not about defying restriction and defending economic life. It's about getting your timeshare in and cashing in on cheap ticket deals.

Wouldn't want to miss the beach this year honey, grab the kids and the malaria pills and head into the hazmat tent! It'll be fine! We'll squeeze it in before we head back to the office next week and breathe over our employees shoulders. Can't wait to return to micromanaging them! There's only 30 people in my division so we don't need distancing or masks, nobody's going to get it, people are just paranoid! Oh, hey , let's go book a table at that favorite restaurant at the beach this weekend while we're there! Then Bob and the guys can come over and we'll have some beer and play some beach vball. The roads are empty so if we just shoot over at 100mph it'll only take 35 minutes! Thank goodness the kids can go back to daycare & camp in a week!

I want to see that guy I just invented that's a Gump-like amalgamation of multiple real figures rotting in a cell. Of course during the virus he'd just be a threat to all the other well meaning thieves and arsonists.

If the disease were more deadly, it could be a win-win. Those gifted with the combined perk of selfish and stupid could all go eliminate themselves from the world. But instead they mostly survive and get others killed. Or financially ruined, which might be worse.

And it's those people that have made it so problematic to encourage opening the economic world. How can we open an economic world when a significant percentage of would-be-attendees have been doing all they can to maximize risk simply because it satisfied their impulse?

As a weirdo who largely stays indoors, the obsession with needing to go to the most public places possible for what seems to be a mediocre time is very baffling to me.

As a sad weirdo who has spent the majority of the past decade not hanging out with friends despite desperately wanting to, it also makes the breakdown people had from a whole...month+ into not being able to be hang out with friends by comparison make me feel like a superhuman, going beyond the limits of a mere mortal! Ah you cute humans, dealing with a mere month or two of loneliness. Adorable.

I took that paragraph to be the summation of earlier statements; it's a bit hyperbolic to dismiss me for not delving into your doctoral thesis when I at least took the time to engage with some of your musings. The ease with which you conflate the terminology speaks to how readily you would entertain a wide range of attractive doctrines. Rather than aggrieve the point I would just say replace the word 'Beijing' with China in my response, and erase that strawman. Whether we are speaking of the country in whole or the ruling seat the effect is the same, as the one has freely imposed will upon the members.

You must know there is an errant stench of hypocrisy to those who castigate their fellow citizenry: over their desire to go outside. Really it is only in our current online obsession for choose your spigot at the koolaid factory politics, that anyone would seek to amalgamate over the notion of captivity. I know that it's easily decried as some manifestation of our indulgence that we could be weaned from some freedoms, but it's more the case of a mass surrender ideologically that has already taken place. Warmth, sun, and air have already been distilled into whatever potpourri reverberates with your soul on the Internet. You've been taken and are comfortable and unafraid; the manifestation of every cybertech notion but without violence or even a sense of disruption.

Edit-
I am left trying to interpret these comments as a form of very intense satire which is probable.

English language media is showing its usual bias. I've still been keeping an eye on virus numbers and Brazil is currently experiencing a massive explosion of virus cases and deaths. They've shot way up to becoming the second most infected country and are seeing numbers as bad as America did at its worst. 30K a day! Russia and India are both seeing significant uptakes in cases as well, though not as bad as Brazil or America.

Yet hardly a peep from most English language news outlets I skim. If they are talking about it, it's buried under lots of other stories.

And the virus never stopped in America either, still seeing 20k a day pretty much every day, with near 1k dead daily.

I know there's a lot of other news and very serious problems in America and Hong Kong right now, but it's like ignoring the fact that the house is on fire because there's also someone shooting at you. Like, both of those things are pretty bad.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-masks-s...

Well some studies seems to show that widespread use of masks can help for the pandemic. Hope that more countries/people won't be looking at wearing at masks, even homemade ones with derisive look.. (o_o

If they wear it wrong maybe we should educate them?