Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

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@Dezzy A wide variety of posts in multiple threads regarding reality in multiple topics. It's frustrating. Obvious reality is very plain and easy to see, yet the overwhelming majority of everyone everywhere seems unable to see it plain as day. It's sad when that's so rare it stands out, but here we are.

As for the UK, things seemed to have gone in the same crazy direction as here before we even fully went there, from what I saw here. Long before UK became American politics via Brexit. Everything there seemed like the inmates had been running the asylum while we were narrowly holding them at the door for one last doomed stand, and you guys had joined up with "new truth" while we still had a resistance to it. Somehow while I wasn't looking, it must have reversed. Or it didn't and you're just one of the last sane ones over there, too.

@HeavyArms55 Bitter sarcasm. Emphasis on the bitter. Everything said in the post is true....the catch is simply that I'm one of those suckers. I'm aware I'm one of the suckers and just can't help it. Thus the bitterness. It's half and half. It's true. Self-serving is rewarded, selflessness is punished heavily, and thus only a sucker would not be self-serving. The bitterness comes in because I'm just inherently on the sucker side. I'm not exactly the "let me just fly to an epicenter and help the sick" level of Paragon....I'm not that altruistic like the many medical personnel who have died doing just that. When you're raised to have a view that everybody is supposed to put themselves last more or less...nobody tells you you're the only one doing that and the result just means committing to always being last in life...

@Spanjard @WoomyNNYes I'd like to take a moment to quote ThanosReXXX (who I won't tag into this thread) who once relayed an expression that is apparently used in the Netherlands "the world has gone diploma-horny." Credit to the Dutch for most accurately stating the sad state of the world. As @Dezzy said earlier there are two kinds of "experts" There's people with degrees, diplomas, and credentials, who work at famous institutions and have titles given to them for their degrees, diplomas, and credentials. They know "too much" for their own good, and have less common sense than you or I to piece data together and understand what they see. Their main skill is "doing school" - they can memorize and repeat information, and acclimate to the academic format of proving the ability to do that. However when it comes to actually DOING things with understanding, the majority are simply inexperienced, incompetent, or both. The reality is it tends to take a certain mind to be able to do things with understanding. And there are too few people in the world that really have understanding, so we have this whole credentialing system to basically give a "good enough, they read and memorized the books" equivalency. But it's not equivalent when a problem is complex. If the problem is simple enough to be already documented in a book, you didn't really need an expert.

Then there's the real experts. The people who can think around the problem, internalize the problem, extrapolate information from the problem ,and have worked with similar problems and thought through them before. There are much fewer of those people.

Most of the "experts" the media puts on the TV are the well-credentialed clueless types. Most of the real experts are too busy solving problems to be put on television and news interviews often. Many of the credentialed "experts" aren't really field workers of any sort but are more or less the business or PR front-ends of some organization or another that happen to have required passing the credentials to work there. But there's plenty of information from the actual experts if you do look for it. Filtering out the "experts" from the experts is the challenge. Usually you can tell because the "experts" give information in absolutes that can't really be given in absolutes and/or give wishy-washy "it is except when it isn't" answers. The experts usually point blank tell you they don't know, and are usually much more grim in their theories and possibilities, because they actually know what directions things tend to go and have thought into that already. You don't need to delve into research science to find that. If you ever even been a patient in the medical system, you probably know easily when you're dealing with a textbook doctor or one that really knows this stuff. And you know how impossible (and expensive, or just plain old luck driven) finding the latter is compared toe the abundance of the former. And that will get worse after this. Fewer will be attracted to the field after seeing an infectious disease ravage the system, and some of the older real expert types have been killed off by it.

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@Heavyarms55 On the one hand there's a thing strain of logic to it. Not from a perspective of dealing with the disease, but from the perspective of dealing with the international/travel/economic and perspective aspect. It is true that if you look for the problems more, you'll find more problems. Originally our failure was not looking (at all), and it's true that now that we look more than most countries (more tests) we find more cases than most countries. I don't think he actually meant that we should test less because the testing causes the increase, i'm pretty sure he really did mean it as he said it: doing extra testing vs. everyone else means we show higher numbers, comparatively to everyone else, while we don't necessarily have higher numbers...

In that respect, it's poorly stated (as usual) but there's a bit of truth in that. We come out looking bad because our numbers look worse, because we're actually doing more tests to find it more. I don't agree that we should test less to make the numbers work for comparison better... and it combines with other statements and actions to make a bad setup. But taken on its own I see what the intended point is, and while accurate, the assessment is still foolish.

That said, I came to a terrifying realization last night while assembling shards of information, some long forgotten. There's all this finger pointing, politically, at Trump's response, by name. He's against mask, he's against closures, his plan is to just go back to business as usual and wish away the disease etc. And I realized....that's merely political rhetoric. Yes, that is his stance. But. It's not just his stance. Or just the "right's stance." That's the leadership's stance. Left and right. And it always has been. In that sense, I think he's right, so much of it has been a staged political gag. Do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

As I thought about the state level response from the very anti-Trump, Dem controlled states/governors, there's a common thread. You have NJ now just opening everything...amusement parks, water parks, the works. Go back to life...disease is done, no worries. You had NY early on with Cuomo sending all the COVID patients back to the nursing homes and PROHIBITING re-testing them (which is part of what lead to the disaster there.) There was an interview back early in March with DeBlasio (NYC Mayor) who more or less directly said they knew the problem was coming, but economically they couldn't afford a shut-down so they chose to wait until it was simply impossible to not do it anymore. All the talk of "flatten the curve" rather than actually stopping spread to a bare trickle. From the national right, one politician's statement of 120,000 dead being acceptable losses.

And that's the terrifying realization. Regardless of all the finger pointing to "Trump did this, Trump said that" that's political rhetoric: He's actually representing bi-partisan policy accurately. Whether they make a show for or against him, when it comes to COVID, quietly, they all agree with him. They are all, hardcore left or hardcore right, Dem or Rep....they are all in agreement and privately saying exactly what he is, but making a "show" of doing the opposite. But when you look at what they've all been doing. All leadership from either side of the aisle has been of the same exact thought from the start, grandstanding aside. They played along with "lockdowns" not until the problem was solved, but only during the economic slow season...while it wasn't as costly to do it....then the moment the economic gains season arrived the lockdowns magically dissolved and we went back to ignoring it. Even with rising cases. Even while cases fall in the old hot spots but are offset by new hotspots, as though resuming travel won't bring it right back. And they justify it by not being at hospital bed capacity. Because sending the citizenry to the hospital single file as a valid solution. Acceptable losses and all that. You've done your duty, soldier!

It's not a "Trump problem" - it's an "America problem." Or at the least an "American corporate-owned leadership problem." If they'd kept the lockdowns going consistently. and enforced them, this thing could have been mostly starved out and well contained. Especially with the additional testing. Instead it's almost by design being maintained to spread. Instead a half-hearted "we hope you'll do this but if you don't, we'll remind you we hope you do it" and then just ending it when that doesn't work and money's needed. Our consumer economy is driven by December. Given the current trajectory....will we be in total lockdown by December....or mostly all hospitalized? How is that better for the economy? Or, cynically....and probably realistically...even if it echoes the thoughts of the most hated politician in the world (that every other politician quietly appears to agree with).....since that's after election day does it not matter?