Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

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@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.