Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

@Heavyarms55

Yes I realized it wouldn't actually work. But the point was that it's not inherently implausible that countries do try to create such things.

China probably do have a branch of their military dedicated to making chemical weapons, so it's not automatically wrong to suspect that. It's just probably not true in the case of this virus.

@Dezzy Well I imagine every major military force in the world has a department geared toward biological weapons. Both their use and countermeasures. And it's difficult to develop a shield to block a sword you don't have.

I don't buy into the idea that China is an evil nation and America is a just nation. Their players on the board each with their own agendas. I'd bet a month's pay that both have more than one laboratory researching the topic - whether they admit to it or not - whether it's known or secret.

I don't know if @NEStalgia or @Otustephan are correct. I think it's entirely possible that they are both right. It's not a stretch that a Chinese scientist discovered a natural mutation/evolution of an existing strain and was studying it for both offensive and defensive reasons - and someone messed up somehow and the virus got out. I don't think this idea is any less plausible than the whole "bat sh*t" theory. Or simply the idea that an existing strain just mutated on its own somewhere else.

On another note - is it bad that it scares me when people like Mike Pence talk about seeing progress? Because they say it and I fear that people will hear that kind of thing from authority figures and jump to "it's already over and we can go back to normal now" - even if that likely isn't what he meant. And if people go back to normal too early we run the risk of undoing any and all progress we've made...

There are no "just" nations really. But you really can't compare a dictatorship with a democracy in this regard (or a Constitutional Republic, which I guess is technically the correct term for the US political system).
China's "agenda" is entirely decided by its ruling party, who has complete totalitarian control of every single aspect of their country.
America's "agenda" is decided by elections, by three independent branches of government, by business and culture that is driven democratically by the people, without the governments control. Of course some aspects of that are quite corrupt. Especially the US congress. But at least the whole concept of corruption even exists, so people can try to fix it. The idea of corruption doesn't even exist in a dictatorship. They're not even pretending that their job is to serve the people.

@Heavyarms55 i agree the US is worse. My friend in Tokyo could have ended up stuck in Tokyo if they lock things down. His girl friend is here in the US. He was planning on coming back home to the US after the Olympics.

@WoomyNNYes Yeah that's a good point and something I am somewhat worried about myself. My contract here ends at the end of July/start of August. Right now Japan blocks people coming from the USA, but what if the situation shifts by August and it's the USA blocking people coming from Japan?

But it's not so different from what everyone else is going through. At this point, it's hard to plan for 2 weeks from now, let alone 4 months.

China be like... The time has come. Execute order 66!

Well I'll be hiding on tatooine until this thing blows over. 😜

@Zeldafan79
How is your condition today ?

@Dezzy I was joking.

@Anti-Matter
So far so good. Whatever i had a few weeks ago has subsided and i recently got tested. No symptoms yet. I rarely leave my house unless i need food.

@Zeldafan79 Good to hear, dood. My uncle should be getting his result back today. Either way, he still has the double pneumonia to deal with.

I have to rant again on the food situation. Why are we being forced to go food shopping in stores guaranteed to be among infected people, thus getting the disease while pretending to quarantine? What is the point of quarantines if everybody is congregating in the same place anyway? What purpose does any of this actually serve if it's all pretend? The delivery/pickup systems don't/cant accommodate the surge, and the only resort for most everybody is just shopping in store, or paying ridiculous sums of money for super luxury gourmet food in a box services to dine like a restaurant. Why is everyone sacrificing their livelihoods only to go and put themselves at direct risk several times a week, anyway? Gee, I wonder why it's spreading so fast? Gosh, dunno. Durr. The public shouldn't be allowed in grocery stores at ALL - exactly like they're doing with restaurants where it must be delivered outside the building. Instead it's required that EVERYBODY go in the stores. And of course when you get there, they have nothing so you have to scour every shelf and manhandle every item to find sufficient things.

CDC says to keep 2 weeks of food on hand, stockpile, and avoid trips to the store. Reality, inventory, purchase limits, and unavailability of delivery/pickup services says you need to go into the store with everyone else 3-4 times a week. Has CDC looked outside their DC office at all this month? Do they even know what the general behavior patterns of the public are in terms of spread, or are they looking at dreamy theoretical spreadsheet data based on predicted results?

Without fixing that, the entire lockdown is just pretend to make it look like we're "doing something." We're still crossing paths with everyone else nonstop. People can't go into the restaurants that fit 30 people, that's risky, but hundreds can all pile into the supermarket....that's fine.

CDC should also recommend only breathing once every 4 hours for maximum prevention while they're sticking with realistic recommendations.

@NEStalgia Your Mileage May Vary

@NEStalgia Where I shop in the UK there are signs everywhere about 'social distancing' and maintaining a 2 metre distance between yourself and others. I was in a smaller grocery shop last week and had to wait while another person moved round an island of products, it gave me an immediate reminder of stealthing through the gardens of Hyrule Castle in Link to the Past.

In my main supermarket, apparently the staff have their temperatures taken every day before beginning work. Which is something at least.

Remember, it's about lowering the curve, trying to eradicate transmission completely is not realistic.

@gcunit Which is a serious problem I have with it. What curve are we lowering if it's still transmitting in the open? We literally annihilated the entire world economy and devastated, probably, billions of lives for the sole purpose of SLOWING, not excising the problem. We pretty much ended the world, to what, buy a few months and still end up in the same place anyway?

@NEStalgia My own primitive reckoning on it all is that, after initially contemplating riding it out, none of the politicians wanted to be seen to be sacrificing swathes of vulnerable people for the sake of economics, so now it's about trying to manage the load until a vaccine can be produced.

@gcunit They do realize they can't quarantine a planet and eliminate all employment for 2+ years, right? The death toll from that will make the virus direct death toll look like a rounding error.

If they SERIOUSLY handled the quarantine, such as not sending everyone into grocery stores, they could have made a real, serious dent to that goal. They thought of it for restaurants but didn't think it important for grocery? Or they know they don't have the ability to really do this seriously so it's all for show? There's a difference between "it can't be totally eliminated" and "oh, of course you're all going to the hospital, were just making sure theres a bed for you when you get there.". At that point that initial body count of riding it out starts looking favorable. It can't continue "slowing it down" for years. People eating people is also a vector.

@NEStalgia I understand your issue with the food thing and think it's valid but... what else can they do? How can food be sold or distributed without people congregating? The only thing I could think of would be to deploy the military and police to carry out food deliveries because no other groups would be large and organized enough to do that.

@Heavyarms55 yes, that's precisely it. We have the national guard for a reason. They do critical personnel tasks for natural disasters, snow storms, etc. Right now the problem is a personnel shortage. They don't have to deliver. It would be optimum, but unnecessary, and the commercial services might still be able to handle that. But what they DO need is to keep people OUT of the store proper. Restaurants, bakeries, best buy, do not allow customers to enter the building. Staff only. Safer that way. Restaurant is by mandate. Grocery, of all things, is 10x worse. Orders should be picked by staff for outside pickup... Just like restaurants and best buy are doing. The problem is insufficient staff. National guard could and should be filling that essential role rather than subjecting grocery store employees to what amounts to front line medical conditions on minimum wage, and forcing the public into that toxic stew.

What were doing right now is pretty much negating most of the benefit of the lockdown by forcing almost the entire population into a large crowded space even more than they used to do before the lockdown. Even in the curve is improving ever do slightly, imagine where it would be weeks into a lockdown if we actually, you know, locked down. It's like reusing a mask from an ER floor.

@NEStalgia Grocery stores here have a limit on the amount of people allowed inside (which varies, depending on square footage), which is enforced by security at the doors and lines to wait are enforced social distanced (if not it's a $700 fine). So, yes some places did take that into consideration.
As @gcunit said, at this point it's about managing the load. Like, I need you carry these 500 bricks. You can either carry them in manageable amounts, or I just dump all 500 on you at one time and hope for the best. That's pretty much what healthcare systems are dealing with right now.

@NEStalgia Is it really negating it though? I just read a story that Gov. Cuomo said the rate of spread is flattening in NY. It seems the social distancing is starting to work in New York at least. Of course I think it's too soon to say for sure. And after that monsterous day of April 4th of 35k new cases in the US, the 5th and 6th both were lower at 25k and 30k.

I'd like to believe that all the isolation is at least slowing the spread. If it's not working then 6 million or more people lost their jobs basically for nothing.