Probably.
General / Off-Topic The safest place
- Thread starter Robin of Spiritwood
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Probably.
My mum lives in rural North Yorkshire - (I was all set to recluse there in event of higher/civilization destroying mortality rates, pleased I didn’t.) - there’s been 1 death in her nearby region but they’ve been in lockdown along with the rest of us.
I’m sure she could say the same as you. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t a highly infectious virus which kills a large number of vulnerable/currently unknown peoples.
@Robin I had some initial difficulties with persuading my 75yo mum to take precautions - one reason I was also tempted to go there, but luckily I have siblings and we all shared the nagging ;-)
Most of the population in her area are old, and they’ve organised some pretty tight systems to make sure everyone is supported and fed. She’s even managed to set up tele-conferencing with us kids and her mates and is having a laugh with various silly backgrounds on zoom now!
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".
Agreed. I was about to write a response to your original 'hindsight is a marvellous thing' post but you've succinctly covered it here.
As I mentioned earlier, you can see h9w quick people are to rail against such measures, even now as the crisis continues to unfold with (for example) the various 'leftist' or 'woke' periodicals and news outlets firing up their readership with articles like that one I shared a few pages back trying to imply that Italys reason for shutting its ports to 'refugees' is down to ulterior right wing motives rather than practical common sense border control in time of a crisis.
Have you ever been in a FOB? You have nothing but time on your hands.
You'd be surprised Morbad.
For example, I've seen articles from certain newspapers and periodicals in a way that portray having a ship on station to deal with disaster relief as signs of a sad English obsession with bygone imperial glory and a sign of a system infested with endemic racism due to patriachially refusing to let these people manage their own affairs, and listening to similar lectures from my soon to be ex-wife and her friends in the pub, who couldn't be more champagne socialist if they tried, spouting all the buzzphrases like a young Lister in that old episode of Red Dwarf.
If theres a way for those with an agenda to square hole-round peg something to make 'the administration' look bad, make them look villains and stoke the fires of victim politics, they will.
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Apologies
I know I promised to refrain until 5/15 but this is just too spot on.
amgreatness.com
I know I promised to refrain until 5/15 but this is just too spot on.
The Thin Façade of Authority › American Greatness
The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom. One, and the most renowned…
amgreatness.com
Apologies
I know I promised to refrain until 5/15 but this is just too spot on.
The Thin Façade of Authority › American Greatness
The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom. One, and the most renowned…
I wonder who will deliver the vaccine: the 'arrogant credentialed elite' or the heroic and humble patriots relying on their 'wealth of diverse existential experiences on the margins'.
If you or a loved one needs to be hospitalized, please do let them know you don't need medical help from those with a 'specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority' but you'll instead rely on the rugged common-sense no-nonsense approach of a random True American Hero. 
By the way, that article was written by Victor David Hanson. Who that is?
But sure. Lets listen to the wise and insightful prof. dr. who writes opinion pieces on his blog about topics he is no expert on, and ignore all the elitist arrogant eggheads who spend their lives studying highly specific topics. I am sure the guy who says what I want to hear is speaking the truth!
It is reassuring to know that if I fall on hard times I can always prostitute my title by pandering to the gullible. Haven't decided the topic yet, but if nothing else there is always good money in the 'climate change is a hoax' and 'science proofs god exist' scenes.
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But I don't remember any of that about the CDC's mission in China, for example. That was on-going, everybody was cool with it, then it got cut. There is not much to spin there other than that was a gamble that paid off rather poorly. Being clear about that is not as much about 'making the administration look bad' but more about making sure that the right decisions are made: both now and in the future. Denying that more things could and should have been done, and that some actions made things worse, is essential. I am not out for the heads of the Dutch or Belgian PM, but I absolutely want us to learn from this and make sure that when the next pandemic comes (and there will be a next one) we can do better than how we initially handled this.
My point was (expressed in a slightly long winded, personal and factious manner) that if people like this (to be clear, I'm not saying you as an individual) can twist something into some strain of victim politics where they can project the image of the other side as a moustache twirling villain tying the poor oppressed to the train tracks, they will.
.That footage of the Hindenberg was just the elitist media trying to make fires look bad. They had an anti-dirigible agenda! And so did all the people who said hydrogen was inflammable!
The people with the agenda are not the ones saying the fire was bad.
Human behaviour:
Rationality has been struggling with belief since the Enlightenment.
Reality always wins. The Universe doesn't care about what we believe. It grinds on.
We can be humble and learn, predict trouble and prep, or we can stay arrogant and ignorant, get surprised, suffer and die.
One of those pathways is better. It starts with the humility of accepting we don't know, and the curiosity to go and learn. That's how we all start off as kids, and it is how we should stay.
The people with the agenda are not the ones saying the fire was bad.
Human behaviour:
Rationality has been struggling with belief since the Enlightenment.
Reality always wins. The Universe doesn't care about what we believe. It grinds on.
We can be humble and learn, predict trouble and prep, or we can stay arrogant and ignorant, get surprised, suffer and die.
One of those pathways is better. It starts with the humility of accepting we don't know, and the curiosity to go and learn. That's how we all start off as kids, and it is how we should stay.
Coronavirus: Body-bag stocks 'in danger of running out'
Health workers have had to wrap bodies in sheets and polythene bags, according to reports.
www.bbc.com
What kind of thought process inspires individual citizens to hoard body bags?
Coronavirus: Body-bag stocks 'in danger of running out'
Health workers have had to wrap bodies in sheets and polythene bags, according to reports.
What kind of thought process inspires individual citizens to hoard body bags?
I refuse to divulge my plans.
Chloroquine diphosphate in two different dosages as adjunctive therapy of hospitalized patients with severe respiratory syndrome in the context of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection: Preliminary safety results of a randomized, double-blinded, phase I
Background There is no specific antiviral therapy recommended for the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Recent publications have drawn attention to the possible benefit of chloroquine (CQ). Our study aimed to comprehensively evaluate the safety and efficacy of two different CQ dosages in...
www.medrxiv.org
Hydroxychloroquine trial halted, problems with heartbeats at high doses, increased death rate.
We could accept a higher cardiac risk if it cured COVID, as more would survive. But that didn't happen. So it seems that general use might end up causing more deaths at this dose, and certainly if no monitoring of hearts is done.
I still think that hydroxychloroquine could be used in selected cases with monitoring, but we need to see some definite benefit to doing so.
I'm not sure arrogance or ignorance need to be involved.
Try explaining to somebody that you need the money to prepare for the next epidemic, as you raise their taxes or make cuts to the welfare state, and see what happens.
Ah but if the globalist elites would only pay their fair share, countries would have piles of extra money, right?
Well, maybe.
Either that or those globalist elites would take themselves, and their businesses, elsewhere and then the country would lose out on not only any tax money they do pay but also the huge pile of money that all their employees definitely do pay.
If everything a government can do is on a scale, the stuff that's tolerable for them to do is a small window in the middle of that scale somewhere.
All that choosing different democratic governments does is move around within that small window.
If you plan to change things significantly you need to move outside that small window - into the realms of the intolerable - and, in doing so, you turn a country into China or North Korea.
And that rarely goes well for the general population, or ends well for the government.
What kind of thought process inspires individual citizens to hoard body bags?
I didn't see anything in that article suggesting individuals were hoarding body bags.
Seems more likely that it's government organisations buying up larger quantities based on the projected outcome of this epidemic, which is fairly reasonable IMO.
If there's one thing this crisis should be teaching us, it's how close to maximum capacity various businesses and organistions are running.
Neither individuals, cities or entire countries can be expected to have the unlimited funds required to prepare optimally for a worst-case scenario.
They already did that, and nobody was complaining about it. There was an infrastructure in place, there were departments and teams dedicated to it. It costs absolute peanuts. The idea that you have to make cuts to the welfare state or raise taxes to re-introduce these measures is silly.
That is always the scary scenario presented. But when taxes were far, far higher in the 50s and 60s the US economy did great and none of the major corps left. When in Europe the same corps who threaten to leave the US if they have to pay anything are taxed they just shrug and pay in. Or at least the part of it they can't evade.
As long as they are able to make a seizable profit they simply don't leave.That is always the scary scenario presented. But when taxes were far, far higher in the 50s and 60s the US economy did great and none of the major corps left. When in Europe the same corps who threaten to leave the US if they have to pay anything are taxed they just shrug and pay in. Or at least the part of it they can't evade.
It was a vastly different world back then.
Most western countries still had a viable manufacturing industry back then, and companies chose to make use of it by choice, rarely even considering whether a cheaper source of a product could be found elsewhere.
With respect to learning, it is the central problem.
Everybody starts out ignorant, and there is nothing wrong with that. The amount we are driven to learn tends to drop to zero as soon as we become confident in our abilities.
Only the ones that accept their own lack of knowledge will try to improve, or accept the guidance from actual experts.
The balance of your post was particularly well written, IMHO. +1
Random anecdote; I once got banned from a forum for saying somebody was "ignorant" - despite the fact that I meant it in a literal way and not as a pejorative.
I guess it's true to say that people can be "ignorant" (in the non-pejorative sense) but, honestly, I still don't think that's the issue.
The issue is, as I said in my previous post, that our society is generally close to "maximum capacity" in a variety of different ways.
It's not that people (governments included) are ignorant or arrogant about the possibility of bad things happening.
It's simply that there's always a heap of more mundane things that definitely are happening which require their time, effort and money to deal with.
+EDIT+
I don't mean to take this deeply into the realms of political discussion but here's a great example...
It's only a few months ago, here in the UK, that the Labour party was promising that, if they got into government, they'd provide free internet to everybody in the country and buy a 10% stake in every large company in the country.
As a bit of a leftie, at heart, I can see the benefit of those policies and I might have found them to be a good idea.
Fast forward to the next worst-case scenario and it's likely there'd be huge criticism over all the money that was spent on those policies instead of stockpiling whatever was required to deal with the emergency.
Stuff that seems like a good idea at one time can seem like huge blunder with hindsight.
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We really need to get our communication sorted asap. :/
?llew sa moor latipsoh ekaf a ot 6 oidutS gninoitisnart ew era ro gnidnal sram ekaf eht eraperp ot desoppus llits I ma ,yaw eht yB
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