Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

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@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?

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@Heavyarms55 I think this article summarizes status here the best:
https://www.soundhealthandlastingwealth.com/health-news/the-p...

And as you say, the media that went on about it forever.....the disease isn't even in the headlines anymore. It's as though it's effectively entirely gone. Or never happened at all. The headlines are race war, race war, race war, Bolton's Book, Trump, race war (oh and here's something some healthcare worker did in some sleepy town after some COVID related work.)

There's conflicting data. One source will say how much cases are spiking. Another will show how great it is they're going down down down. One will say that the disease is very hard to spread and really only affects the elderly and ill. Others will go on about how contagious it is. The actual top medical officials are pretty much admitting "we have no idea at all" - it's a chameleon that's constantly behaving different. The media is down to shaping reality for their target audience and it's sowing more confusion and entirely different religious beliefs about how a disease spreads depending on who you are in society. At first it was the country bumpkins unafraid and the urbanites were afraid. But urbanites are fickle, get bored, and are good at rationalizing any whim they want....so now they're joining in. And those that actually understand the threat are forced to play pretend and act as though they're not in absolute terror all the time.

I'm not sure where that leaves those of us who refuse to go anywhere and are even terrified of work, until it's actually been HALTED/treatable/vaccinated, because it doesn't feel safe, because it isn't safe despite that everyone has declared that it's safe based on the hard science of "I don't want to stay indoors anymore."

Hopefully this first batch is a useful guinnea pig. If it really goes away while everyone is being a jerk then maybe there never was a threat....or maybe the science was wrong and it's seasonal like flu and mostly idles in until October after all. Which might be a different crisis. Once everyone gets used to "see it was fine after all" then come October everything collapses worse than March. Hopefully those of us that still don't trust the all clear are allowed to avoid it until the guinnea pigs that just want to have their fun all get sick.

@Zeldafan79 Ahh. So you ARE the people that are the problem. Good to know.

First, do you know you haven't been sick? Did you get tested before making that claim? That's the entire threat of this particular disease is it has a high rate of carriers and asymptomatic spread. You could have had it already, not developed symptoms which occurs much more frequently with this virus than many others, and already spread it to other people, perhaps even killing some. Or you're just lucky.

The absolute jerks such as yourself not wearing masks walking down the sidewalk may indeed not have ever needed one due to not coming into contact with someone. But as I'm reminded every time some walker jogger without a mask comes up out of nowhere while I'm doing yard work, it's a bold statement of "I have no idea who's going to be near me unexpectedly, and I don't care about them so it doesn't matter to me. They can move for ME I won't move for them, because I've decided what their safety threshold is, so long as I'm not on the hook for their medical bills." If you see other people wearing masks....you're within range of being near them unexpectedly or otherwise. You are very possibly in range of you or someone else walking in the trail of respiratory droplets hanging in the air behind someone long after they're gone.

That's great if you are carefree and accept whatever fate whenever someone else decided it for you. But you have no right to decide that for others. It's great you don't want to live in fear and are ok with the risks, but you have no right to decide that for others. You don't live their lives, you don't pay their bills, you don't have their worries, and you don't have their biology. You don't know what straw is the one that is going to break them. It's a disease with little hard science, little proven knowledge of exactly what it does, who it affects, all the methods it spreads. It's not like standing in fear of HIV by breathing it in in 2020 when we have the science that tells us it's direct fluid transfer only. It's a new disease with unknown behaviors, unknown transmission vectors, and unknown reasons for it's severity in some but not all cases. You may not be afraid, you may find the odds acceptable, but you honestly don't know if you, or someone in your family or contacts happens to be someone with the "wrong" chemistry that it becomes bad, just as you don't know if you've been an asymptomatic carrier at any point.

Odds are that you and your family aren't going to die from it even if you're a selfish, reckless jerk. But would you really play at a roulette table in Vegas that said "odds of death: 1:8 odds of immense misery and suffering including potential permanent lung damage: 1:5 odds of causing either of the above to any of the other people in the room: 2:3"? If I placed a big bowl of M&Ms in front of you and said "I only laced 2% of these with cyanide, and another 3% with botulism from which you'll probably survive at the ER and another 2 weeks in ICU" are you seriously going to grab a handful because odds favor it being fine? I mean only 5 of each hundred are going to kill you or send you to the ER....so why not grab some chocolate and hope you don't get one of those 5? That's literally the risk your taking by being cavalier. Only unlike the M&Ms you have an almost certain guarantee of then sharing that risk with everyone else you are in contact with as well....it's like the M&M example except you also choose to stuff a handful in the mouth of everyone you are in contact with, family or stranger.

The only place I'll agree with you here is on the "coined for slogans" term "social distancing" which seems like a soft sell to make avoiding proximity to people friendly and "social"

But that is the only place. "I haven't been wearing a mask and I ain't gonna start now" is a bold statement that only slightly paraphrases "I'm a selfish, arrogant jerk, I care about nobody but myself, and apparently I don't even care about myself very much. I've decided odds are more important than centuries of medical science in infectious disease and that I'll increase my risk of infection, and I've decided that since I don't like being inconvenienced, I'm going to expose you to all risk I've undertaken as well."

Horray for not being afraid. It's like wearing your superhero cape and waving a loaded gun around in the middle of the street.

It's an airborne disease spread through respiratory droplets. You don't need direct contact with people to spread it. You only need to be in contact with microscopic droplets of moisture from their breath that linger in the air, possibly for hours in indoor environments without the air moving. 6 feet is actually not NEARLY far enough as numerous studies have since demonstrated. It's really about not even walking through the same space as someone else that has it until those droplets have been dislodged from the air - which happens faster in the moving outdoor air than stagnant indoor air. And recirculated indoor air simply moves those particles from the air and aerosolizes it through the HVAC. Anyone not wearing a mask, for any minute, is putting those particles in the air. Now they're finding urine may carry it, so public bathrooms are a risk vector as well. You seem awfully confident that you aren't going to get it through many still unknown vectors before you gallantly spread your respiratory droplets in the air for others, masked or not, to inhale. The mask doesn't protect the wearer. It protects everyone else FROM the wearer.

Also, as this is a Nintendo site, you do realize masks have been worn by the sick as a standard practice in Asia since the Spanish Flu, right? Highly dense populations can't even afford the common cold to spread like wildfire, so it's the responsibility of the sick to protect everyone from them as a standard cultural practice. One I fully expect will be adopted here as a standard practice even post-COVID19 as more people will be aware that blatantly spreading germs is just bad decision making. Haven't' you ever seen all the masks worn by E3 attendees from Asia? Because doing so is normal there if you're sick. The problem is, with COVID, ANYONE can be the sick, even the seemingly healthy. So everyone needs to assume they may be a carrier of the disease even when they are healthy. Additionally some research showed the disease is most infectious the 2 days before symptoms begin even in those with symptomatic illness from it. So it's the healthy - not wearing masks - that represent the greatest threat of all.

While I'd like to think you're simply uninformed and thus making seemingly obnoxious choices, the defiance in your tone on this suggest, even fully informed, you are still going to choose selfishness. Yes, the mask doesn't protect you at all. It protects others from you if you have it and don't know it. If you truly only care about your own outcome, and choose to screw everyone else, then indeed, keep skipping the mask. It doesn't improve your own outcome at all. Just don't be surprised when people act with fear, avoidance or anger toward you every time you point your gun at them. They, and even you, have no way of knowing if it's loaded.