General / Off-Topic The safest place

[Ian Skippy]

Jason, I'm just going to point out that what happened was that someone suggested that by the deteriorating quality of the conspiracies being posted here the 'crisis actor' nonsense would be presented soon. I responded by saying these theories indeed already are floating around online. I did not talk about this topic, never mind attack anyone here specifically. Honestly, the long list of false claims you make about me is getting a bit tiresome; from pretending I lied about my age, credentials, putting all sorts of words in my mouth: I'm not really interested in that. Especially not now. As for this new 'topic'; not even going to bother with it. You are clearly invested in a narrative that I have little interest in discussing with you, so I think that it is better for the longevity of this topic that I put you on ignore. No hard feelings, and I wish you and yours the best in these times. But this is going nowhere.

 

[Gortron]

I mostly just shared the video for a laugh, but I really doubt that all those people coming up with sweet tik tok Brittany Spears inspired dance moves happen to be working in wards and hospitals filled to capacity with people choking to death on their own mucus and needing to be hauled outside to temporary mortuaries because the hospital is at 300% capacity. What those videos show is a bunch of people who are frickin bored out of their skulls. Hours and hours with almost nothing to do, so they're screwing around killing time.

I'm all about the gallows humor, but to honestly think that the healthcare officials having to triage all of the elders in effected areas are out there singing and dancing like that is just a bit too ghastly for me.

It hasn't happened everywhere yet and that is what the world is trying to avoid. Let the people dealing with it do

Even a casual glance at information surrounding lock downs will tell you there is some pretty extreme lag between the beginning of a lockdown and when you'll see the positive health effects of it.

There seems to be somewhere around two to three weeks before you'll notice a change so no a lockdown isnt a magic wand nor does it make you invulnerable but what it does do is limit the transmission from person to person in the long term if they're not out on the streets mingling with others.

So the more people staying at home the better.

Exactly.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I disagree

Soldiers having a laugh in a war zone. I don't see any differnce.

Mate of mine did two tours in Afghanistan. Showed me some stuff. Their sense of 'humor' and ways of coping were far beyond that video. People cope in different ways with the surreal surroundings they can find themselves in. Some videos will be from fake soldiers/doctors, some will be by real people finding a way to deal with real situations. And if you aren't there it can be very hard or impossible to properly contextualize it. In the end none of this matters; they are anecdotes, little personal stories either fake or not. When it comes to the realities of this virus none of that matters anything.

 

[Ian Skippy]

It was me who suggested that the crisis actor trope would soon be deployed. It was deployed almost as soon as twenty children and six adults were murdered in Sandy Hook Elementary School and also used when seventeen people were murdered in the Parkland Florida shooting.

Why were people accused of being crisis actors? Well a certain section of the american right didnt like the idea of gun control (muh freedom) so sought to delegitimize the victims of these awful crimes any way they could.

Now America faces a situation where they're being asked to make some sacrifices for the greater good which will obviously impact the economy and their short term freedoms.

I know (didn't want to appear to direct his attacks to you), and the crisis actor narrative is what I've seen happening the past two weeks. Claims that the hospitals in NYC are empty, the doctors are faking it, the funerals are fake and the relatives are phoning it in. It is disgusting, but it is what it is. I've seen Fauci being slandered in the more extreme corners of US communities since he mildly and politely disagreed with Trump on certain basic medical concepts. He had an interview very recently where he acknowledged that had the US response been more on point a lot of deaths could have been prevented. He phrased it very carefully, emphasizing how complex these decisions are, how many people are involved and how difficult it is to make the right decisions when information is less than optimally available. It wasn't sugar-coated enough and now the conspiracies shift towards him.

The narrative went from 'just a flu'->Chinese bioweapons->crisis actors->deliberate attack by deep state led by mastermind Fauci. It is quite depressing, really.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Seems like the trick is to focus on the practical issues right now and ignore any ideologically-motivated bullpoop until after people stop dying.

While there is always a grey area, in general that is pretty much it. And it is mental to contrast what is happening in the US with what is happening over here in the Netherlands. I just saw the NY Times published an opinion piece by Joe Biden, with his plan of what he would do. It is completely unthinkable here that the opposition would publish an 'alternative approach' in the media. If they have any solid ideas they contact the current administration to offer their insights, or ask questions during the briefings. It is also unthinkable that our Prime Minister contradicts the chief of science on scientific matters, or that the PM silences the CoS when a question is asked during a press meeting. All of this would have been widely denounced by the people on all sides of the political spectrum.

 

[Stealthie]

Very true. When all of this started it was pretty A-pollical and it was sort of nice watching political enemies not fighting for the sake of it (at least here in the UK where all the pot-shots ended and the opposition parties gave constructive criticism and even support). I think relentless criticism from the media (the press in particular really) has forced a return to the norm. The bickering is back and along with it the attempted point scoring.

Might sound like a really trivial thing but I'm getting throw-heavy-things-at-the-television sick of hearing journo's asking pol's "Could more have been done to prevent this?"

The answer is, of course, "Yes".

Doesn't matter if you're talking about hitting your thumb with a hammer, a car accident, a plane crash, a pandemic or a giant asteroid crashing into the Earth.
More could always have been done to prevent it.... with the benefit of hindsight.

In a sane world, when a pol' is asked that question he'd be able to answer "Yes, but obviously we're operating with limited budgets and multiple priorities and we've always provided as much money for health-care and scientific research as was humanly possible" and that'd be an acceptable answer.
Trouble is, that kind of response is always going to lead to headlines which say "POLITICIAN ADMITS NOT ENOUGH MONEY WAS SPENT TO PREVENT C19"
So, instead of being able to be honest and candid, pol's will always resort to weasel-words in an attempt to avoid saying anything which might imply culpability in any way.

The only reason TV pundits ask questions like "Could more have been done to prevent this?" is because they're trying to score cheap points and appeal to a gullible audience.

 

[jasonbarron]

I know (didn't want to appear to direct his attacks to you), and the crisis actor narrative is what I've seen happening the past two weeks. Claims that the hospitals in NYC are empty, the doctors are faking it, the funerals are fake and the relatives are phoning it in. It is disgusting, but it is what it is. I've seen Fauci being slandered in the more extreme corners of US communities since he mildly and politely disagreed with Trump on certain basic medical concepts. He had an interview very recently where he acknowledged that had the US response been more on point a lot of deaths could have been prevented. He phrased it very carefully, emphasizing how complex these decisions are, how many people are involved and how difficult it is to make the right decisions when information is less than optimally available. It wasn't sugar-coated enough and now the conspiracies shift towards him.

The narrative went from 'just a flu'->Chinese bioweapons->crisis actors->deliberate attack by deep state led by mastermind Fauci. It is quite depressing, really.

Yes, play the victim card like I'm "attacking you." As if I haven't had to put up with so many displays from you of eye rolling condescension, patronizing insults and aspersions on my intelligence that I've lost count. Hell, even the first few lines of your post here are ridiculously mis-characterizing things that I've said to be considered considered outright lying.

Look, at the end of the day I don't really care what you do or think. You've attacked just about every point I've ever made, and mostly it's been pretty snide and dismissive. If you don't like getting it back, consider ignoring me. All the people who pick a war with me and wind up losing eventually do, so feel free to join that club.

Oh, and as far as my "narrative" is concerned: when the official narrative is actually weirder and less plausible than "space lizards" or "Bill Gates is trying to fill us with nanites!" then we have a real problem. My narrative has never been about what I believe, because I really don't know what to believe...I just know that the story we're getting and expected to swallow without question is full of holes. Sorry that bothers you on such a foundational level, but as I said a few lines above: consider clicking that button.

 

[Morbad]

It was me who suggested that the crisis actor trope would soon be deployed. It was deployed almost as soon as twenty children and six adults were murdered in Sandy Hook Elementary School and also used when seventeen people were murdered in the Parkland Florida shooting.

Why were people accused of being crisis actors? Well a certain section of the american right didnt like the idea of gun control (muh freedom) so sought to delegitimize the victims of these awful crimes any way they could.

Now America faces a situation where they're being asked to make some sacrifices for the greater good which will obviously impact the economy and their short term freedoms.

Those who try to objectify intrinsically subjective value assessments then back their opinions with fallacious nonsense irk me like nothing else, even if I agree with their basic opinion.

Anyway, I don't think this 'crisis actor trope' is taken very seriously by anyone who hasn't already made up their minds and is now seeking some counter-factual justification for it.

The narrative went from 'just a flu'->Chinese bioweapons->crisis actors->deliberate attack by deep state led by mastermind Fauci. It is quite depressing, really.

These sorts of narratives are from those whose support is set in stone; their morals will morph so that the object of their idolatry is always on the side of righteousness.

No sense in fussing over what you cannot change.

Doesn't matter if you're talking about hitting your thumb with a hammer, a car accident, a plane crash, a pandemic or a giant asteroid crashing into the Earth.
More could always have been done to prevent it.... with the benefit of hindsight.

The reason people are angry about COVID-19 is that the rough outline of the last several months' events were foreseen. We could have done more, not with hindsight, but with with what we knew a decade ago.

In a sane world, when a pol' is asked that question he'd be able to answer "Yes, but obviously we're operating with limited budgets and multiple priorities and we've always provided as much money for health-care and scientific research as was humanly possible" and that'd be an acceptable answer.

Even without the media there to twist the wording, such a statement would be a bold faced lie for just about every developed nation on the planet.

The only reason TV pundits ask questions like "Could more have been done to prevent this?" is because they're trying to score cheap points and appeal to a gullible audience.

The only reason TV pundits can even ask such rhetorical questions is because we are dealing with the entirely foreseeable and almost certainly avoidable.

 

[jasonbarron]

Even a casual glance at information surrounding lock downs will tell you there is some pretty extreme lag between the beginning of a lockdown and when you'll see the positive health effects of it.

There seems to be somewhere around two to three weeks before you'll notice a change so no a lockdown isnt a magic wand nor does it make you invulnerable but what it does do is limit the transmission from person to person in the long term if they're not out on the streets mingling with others.

So the more people staying at home the better.

You didn't really understand my post. In two weeks of "lock-down" we have seen nothing but an almost literal freeze in the numbers. No new deaths. Less than a hundred new infections. That wouldn't be plausible even if the lock-down put us all in individual hermetically sealed containers where scientists fed us through straws, because even if that were the case there would have been people who already had it but were not symptomatic yet before the lock-down went into effect that started showing up. And the way this thing is supposed to spread, the numbers should be hopping. And by "lock-down" what I really mean is all traffic and economic activity reduced by maybe 30-40%, so still thousands and thousands of people doing their thing with almost no restrictions.

See, when I talked about a magic wand I was being sarcastic. There's simply no way we should be seeing a freeze in numbers just because the governor issued a stay at home order. My opinion all along was that I would reserve judgment until I could see for myself in my own locality whether the hype and hysteria was justified as opposed to leaping to judgment based on stuff I couldn't verify, but we're well past the 4 week mark from first official cases and deaths and lo and behold....nothing is happening.

 

[Stealthie]

The reason people are angry about COVID-19 is that the rough outline of the last several months' events were foreseen. We could have done more, not with hindsight, but with with what we knew a decade ago.

Even without the media there to twist the wording, such a statement would be a bold faced lie for just about every developed nation on the planet.

The only reason TV pundits can even ask such rhetorical questions is because we are dealing with the entirely foreseeable and almost certainly avoidable.

And if you'd asked people, 6 months ago, to make the required sacrifices, they'd have kicked you out of town.

 

[Ian Skippy]

And if you'd asked people, 6 months ago, to make the required sacrifices, they'd have kicked you out of town.

Well, sure, that would be october 2019. But, again, there is an area between the extremes of 'all out before anyone ever heard of it' and 'ignoring all the warnings of every agency'. I mean, the US government was warned two months earlier than the Belgian government, and responded one month later. That is not ideal. And this is particularly important given that zoonosis is, and I sound like a skipping record!, not a freak incident. This will happen again, sooner than we'd like, and all our governments need to learn how to respond faster pronto. I don't want to hear about any "it wasnt our fault!" garbage, I want to hear what we learned from this.

 

[jasonbarron]

And if you'd asked people, 6 months ago, to make the required sacrifices, they'd have kicked you out of town.

Including the guy your posting with.

 

[Morbad]

And if you'd asked people, 6 months ago, to make the required sacrifices, they'd have kicked you out of town.

What required sacrifices?

If warnings had been heeded, appropriate measures followed through with instead of being ignored, differed, or abandoned, COVID-19 could very likely have been stopped long before it became a pandemic. It may not even have made it out of China, and if it had, we may already have had effective tests, treatments, or the framework for a vaccine.

Also, six months ago is still fifteen years after we had our first (but far from our last) major, modern, wakeup call (the 2003 SARS outbreak) before SARS-CoV-2.

Stuff like this is 17 years old and reads like deja vu all over again. The world has seen multiple outbreaks with multiple high-profile analyses of coronaviruses over the last several decades. The threat was very clear, and seemed to have been taken seriously by the US, even the current administration...for a while. Shortsightedness is why we are here now, with COVID-19.

 

[jasonbarron]

Too bad you don't work in government, Morbad. So much talent and ability just sitting on the side lines. It's a waste, really.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Might sound like a really trivial thing but I'm getting throw-heavy-things-at-the-television sick of hearing journo's asking pol's "Could more have been done to prevent this?"

The answer is, of course, "Yes".

Doesn't matter if you're talking about hitting your thumb with a hammer, a car accident, a plane crash, a pandemic or a giant asteroid crashing into the Earth.
More could always have been done to prevent it.... with the benefit of hindsight.

In a sane world, when a pol' is asked that question he'd be able to answer "Yes, but obviously we're operating with limited budgets and multiple priorities and we've always provided as much money for health-care and scientific research as was humanly possible" and that'd be an acceptable answer.

The issue in this specific case is that 1) we knew the risks, 2) we had it prioritized, 3) it was funded, 4) but a scientifically illiterate administration backed by scientifically illiterate voters actively removed these safeguards to save pennies that are now bankrupting the economy. And that is causing the scramble for scapegoats: it was lying china, filthy southern Europeans, the deep state, space lizards. The simple truth is that the administration was warned by the CDC, the WHO, the previous administration, intelligence agencies and so forth. There was no lack of knowledge, info or resources. They discarded it all and bet the farm the bulk of the consequences would hit the next administration.

And now we pay the price.

 

[jasonbarron]

What is this "we" crap? Unless you're lumping your country in with all the stuff you were complaining about "illiterate admin backed by illiterate voters." Otherwise it's just another anti-american screed from a stuck up Euro with delusions of self importance and allllll the answers from the sidelines of a nice safe forum where talk is cheap as dirt and action is never to be found.

Edit: and now who's going all in on conspiracies? You know what I think sleuty? I can tell you're furious. And the reason for that (and quite a few on the American left like good 'ol Morbad) is you guys were giddy with excitement that this calamity would be spun up to a point where it result in taking Trump out of office by ruining his reelection chances, and you can tell that that isn't likely to happen now. The virus not spreading fast enough, not causing enough damage. Polls are favorable to the orange one and that's before the stimulus checks start arriving. The mighty engine of the American economy already showing signs of being re-ignited, way way out in front of November. Plans derailed. Hopes dashed. Sorry buddy.

 

[Stealthie]

Well, sure, that would be october 2019. But, again, there is an area between the extremes of 'all out before anyone ever heard of it' and 'ignoring all the warnings of every agency'. I mean, the US government was warned two months earlier than the Belgian government, and responded one month later. That is not ideal. And this is particularly important given that zoonosis is, and I sound like a skipping record!, not a freak incident. This will happen again, sooner than we'd like, and all our governments need to learn how to respond faster pronto. I don't want to hear about any "it wasnt our fault!" garbage, I want to hear what we learned from this.

I guess the problem with disasters is that if you enact sufficient preventative measures, it looks like you were making a fuss over nothing.

And, of course, a lot of the best preventative measures will incur cries of "racism" and "imperialism".

 

[metatheurgist]

Lockdowns working isn't magic, it's basic biology. Viruses grow in humans and need humans to carry them around and spread them; they're not alien monsters that crawl around and face hug people then burst from their chests. If you stop humans moving around and getting close enough to spread the virus it stops, even if a portion of your population are disobeying the orders and pretending it doesn't exist. It's the same premise as herd immunity, if a percentage of your population is immune or doesn't go around trying to spread the virus you protect the rest.

Fun fact: Flu cases are also down, it's like lockdowns stop viruses or something.

Countries that locked down have fewer deaths and cases, countries that don't are basket cases. But of course, you can't believe the numbers because it's all a hoax.

Magic is radio towers transmitting viruses - that's fantasy.

 

[Morbad]

I guess the problem with disasters is that if you enact sufficient preventative measures, it looks like you were making a fuss over nothing.

Does building stronger levies around New Orleans, looking for an alternate source of fresh water (to reduce subsidence from overdrawing the reservoir the city sits on), and trying to restore the wetland buffer that was once provided by the Mississippi river delta, all so that the next large hurricane that comes through doesn't put the city under water again and cost ten times as much to fix as robust preventative measures, sound like making a fuss over nothing?

That's the sort of situation we had before COVID-19. History of a clear problem, known weaknesses in current protective measures, likely serious consequences for letting those weaknesses go unaddressed, and rational plans to address them...then we didn't.

And, of course, a lot of the best preventative measures will incur cries of "racism" and "imperialism".

Improving surveillance of wildlife diseases, funding appropriate research, strengthening communications and logistics channels, while making sure health systems can handle surges in demand, if necessary...none of this sounds racist or imperialist to me.

Some of what was warned about and measures proposed in the months or years before COVID-19:

An Unknown 'Disease X' Could Become an Epidemic. Can We Find It Before It's Too Late?

Experts warn we need to pay more attention to animal health to stop Disease X, a hypothetical epidemic caused by a species-hopping pathogen.

www.livescience.com

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/blue-print/2018-annual-review-of-diseases-prioritized-under-the-research-and-development-blueprint.pdf

https://www.ghsindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2019-Global-Health-Security-Index.pdf

MMWR Recommendations and Reports

Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza ...

www.cdc.gov

Communicating risk and promoting disease mitigation measures in epidemics and emerging disease settings - PMC

This review aims to identify and assess evidence on interventions to communicate risk and promote disease mitigation measures in epidemics and emerging disease outbreak settings. The study focuses on data that are relevant to low and middle-income ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/files/hghi/files/global_monitoring_report.pdf

Pentagon Influenza Response | PDF

USNORTHCOM Branch Plan 3560 Pandemic Influenza and Infectious Disease Response 06 January 2017

www.scribd.com

Even the wildly optimistic October 2019 GHS report identifies several relevant weaknesses in the most well prepared of nations. Regardless, health organizations and epidemiologist have long taken the threat posed seriously and have been providing fact based recommendations that almost certainly would have saved a crapload of money and many lives, if policy makers had taken matters a bit more seriously.

Well, we missed our first half-dozen chances to dodge the bulk of "disease X". All we can do now is continue our belated mitigations and hope COVID-19 serves as a kick in the nuts to remind us that this stuff is real and there are consequences to ignoring it.

 

[Stealthie]

Does building stronger levies around New Orleans, looking for an alternate source of fresh water (to reduce subsidence from overdrawing the reservoir the city sits on), and trying to restore the wetland buffer that was once provided by the Mississippi river delta, all so that the next large hurricane that comes through doesn't put the city under water again and cost ten times as much to fix as robust preventative measures, sound like making a fuss over nothing?

It will if it works.