Corona virus

Well, I just had to explain to my best man that the planned bach party this weekend is off. That wasn't much fun (the usual 'isn't this just like the flu?' bs) but he was understanding.

They FINALLY cancelled Download Sydney metal/rock festival, and it took the headliners MCR pulling out to do it. Fucking idiot organisers. Greedy AF, borderline criminal at this point.

I'm officially on bunker mode. I'll send the GF out for groceries, and she'll wash thoroughly upon returning. No physical contact with anyone else unless absolutely necessary, which I don't anticipate. The basic reality of asymptomatic carriers makes this decision almost a given.

A shame I don't play PoE anymore. The timing with Delirium would have been great otherwise.

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Boem wrote:

^No offense, but you just explained yourself why taiwan did react fast so i don't see much point in defending my argument.

Most country's that had a virus spread in the last 20 years reacted better then country's that did not, no big surprise there they have countermeasures developed from those events and probably had people go over them to make them more efficient in the future in a post-mortem analysis.

Try doing the same thing in country's that have been at peace for a good 60 years that haven't had a hint of unanounnced discomfort and see the amount of people questioning it and then compare it the amount of disbelief after a few people died.

I was being hyperbolic if thats your main disagreement, but not by a large margin.

Peace,

-Boem-

All those other "at peace" countries still knew better, and still should have taken it more seriously. It's not that those countries you mention couldn't have done anything without infringing on their citizens rights. Quite the opposite. They could have and should have, but didn't.

They may have been unaffected or minimally affected by things like SARS and MERS and bird flu and swine flu. But they've had decades of watching those things happen and how serious they can become in short order. They're well aware of how their interactions and dependence on China in various ways have grown exponentially during those decades. They're also well aware of just how unreliable China is.

Most of those countries stood by and did virtually nothing, even when it became obvious how serious the situation was becoming. Whether the general population of this or that country took it seriously or not isn't even relevant. Governments and health organizations everywhere knew, yet still opted to keep stroking the CCP's innumerably-tentacled cock rather than take action. Good job China, you got this!

Yet millions of mainland Chinese traveled to all corners of the world in the weeks and months before some (but relatively few) places finally started imposing any amount of travel restrictions. The seeds were planted throughout December and January, if not earlier. They started sprouting in February, and now they're really blooming.

Everyday citizens in free and liberal and peaceful societies can be excused for not really knowing or understanding. Their governments though, not so much. And now those same governments are increasingly faced with some dire choices regarding the rights of their citizens precisely because of their inaction. They didn't want to rock the boat with their ever-so-valuable trade, tourism, and financial partner too hard or too soon. It's backfiring pretty spectacularly.

I worry that my original homeland of the US is going to end up the most fucked of all in the long run though. The amount of incompetence at the top national levels there is truly quite impressive. Absurd amounts of money are spent by government agencies, research labs, and think tanks every day to imagine and prepare for these scenarios. That is quite literally the only thing that some of them do. The main takeaway out of all that so far from Team Trump has been...imagine it's not real and it will go away?

The saddest part though is that it really isn't a particularly deadly or dangerous virus by itself, outside of very specific groups of people. It's the fear and panic combined with having done too little too late that's going to bring countries to their knees. It didn't have to be that way, and it shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it's shaping up.

No TP is all I have to say. WTF? Luckily wife buys huge packages so we are not out. Yet.

Good news is there are plenty of paper towels. Worse comes to worse. :(

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aggromagnet wrote:

I worry that my original homeland of the US is going to end up the most fucked of all in the long run though.

I wouldn't be worried about that. Save your worry-energy for things that aren't all but foregone conclusions. It would take a miracle, a genuine miracle, for that not to happen. A divine defiance of pretty much every statistic available.

Should have, could have, would have.

Your not making a compelling argument in light of reality aggro.

Let's make some pointers,

We can't estimate the death toll if liberal society's acted sooner.
This imply's your assuming acting faster would have better results, but this isn't true, so your discounting negative outcomes of pre-emptive state intervention.

If you think people aren't taking it seriously today, imagine how seriously the public would have taken it if states enacted measures a good three weeks ago then imagine a scenario where a state has to declare "state of emergency" multiple times because its citizenry doesn't comply willfully.

Then take into account what i call "from zero to hundred" on the social fabric, infrastructure and economy and the amount of damage this can cause.
(from zero to hundred obviously imply's formulating mass panic instead of a gradual increase in public awareness)

Your giving a discount to the public consiousness of for example european country's because you yourself live in a part of the world where this is perceived as a real and dangerous threat, over here however it's not so the politics is waiting for the consiousness to catch up.(even if they have experts saying all the right things, making a move under the wrong social climate could also prove fatal to many people)

Then about America,
First of all the assumption that America is this united front that rallies under it's president seems a far stretch in the current political climate over there.

Take Seatle for example, an example utilized in the video Charan linked.
It's a sanctuary city that directly opposed a federal mandate and allowed illegal immigrants to take shelter there.
My guess is that in the next months we will see flares of covid in most of the bigger sanctuary city's and that will be on the people that voted to allow a mass influx of people into their city's that doesn't have the wealth or infrastructure to accomodate them.(which will be pushed to its limit under this pressure)

I'm all for playing the blaming game and stuff, but i don't do it lightly and i rather point fingers to initial causes then to people who have to clean up the mess created by others.

I'm not particularly convinced if in a hypothetical scenario trump acted a month ago the democrats would have followed his proposed actions and if individual states wouldn't oppose it.
If they can't even follow federal mandates about written laws why would we assume they would react to a crisis scenario willingly when there are no visible signs yet.

I have sympathy for both the "this is a crisis" and the "keep calm guys" crowd because both are correct in how they behave.
The virus can result in deaths, but so can a social panic that stresses out the infrastructure just before the virus appears.

Beyond that america has it's health service issues to deal with an event like this so i am curious how they will react to that in the comming week etc

All in all people are doing pretty much what you expect them to do and in the expected time-frames relevant to their social and political reality.
Too slow for people with relevant experience and too fast for people without it and stuff moves in the median of both in a positive direction as far as i can tell.

I am in the EU and i would say our level of allertness is around 70% right now, so even with all the current events there is still a big portion of the population that are in the "it's just a flu, free vacation time" mode.(not talking about states and the political levels, but they couldn't reign freely before a 50% rate)
But the panic also seems controllable as a result of that slow boiling of the awareness, shops probably got raided multiple times in the past week instead of all at one spike, which is a good thing.

Pasta, rice and conserves have never been as populair around here though.
The only person i knew that stocked this stuff like today was my grandmother that passed away, she lived firmly with a mindset of "what if tomorrow WWIII erupts!".
Bless her she never had to experience it, but these scenes do remind me of her.

Peace,

-Boem-

Hey C, be safe. Congratulations on your upcoming legal union!

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aggromagnet wrote:

I worry that my original homeland of the US is going to end up the most fucked of all in the long run though.

I wouldn't be worried about that. Save your worry-energy for things that aren't all but foregone conclusions. It would take a miracle, a genuine miracle, for that not to happen. A divine defiance of pretty much every statistic available.

I have to worry a little bit. Most of my immediate family is in the Seattle area, and things aren't looking great around there. Sister is in Chicago, which is a major travel and transportation hub which is bound to be badly affected at some point. Most of my friends are in the Dallas area, where my family spent much of our lives--another major hub. Then the majority of my uncles, aunts, cousins are in the St. Louis area (where I was born and spent my first years as well). But, ehhh, St. Louis is a bit of a shithole and I've had minimal contact with family there for about 35 yrs now. So good luck to them heh.

I've gotten calls and emails from early on asking if I'm okay and how things are going over here. And all along I've been like, uhhh, I'm fine and the situation is being managed well so you don't need to be concerned about me--but you should definitely be concerned about what's to come over there.

Lo and behold...

yeah, I was being grimly facetious. Sorry, probably should have made it clearer. I mean, I'm at the 'if I get this, I might die, so I AM NOT GETTING IT' phase. Friends, family...they are more equipped to handle it than I am. I'm worried about them but I trust they're smart enough to worry for themselves too.

But at a national level? Murika's fucked yo.

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But at a national level? Murika's fucked yo.

Yep, that's for sure lol. One of old my friends suggested now might be a good time for them to come visit me for a few months. I find the suggestion of them coming here to stay safe, right next door to the source, quite amusing.

I think we'll have travel restrictions for Americans pretty soon though, so they better act quickly.

...brief drop of the mask you know and love.

I'm scared here, guys.

Okay, back to your regular scheduled cavorting, fact-dumping and incredulity.