I would be shocked if we keep it to 2,000/day. Given the situation and what’s in front of us, combined with people’s current attitudes toward the pandemic, I don’t see any cause for optimism.
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Man, take it up with the WHO. I’m not saying anything they and other world health orgs haven’t been saying.
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I’m being grossly misunderstood and it’s probably my fault. My point is that it’s plausible (whereas, I don’t think a just universe is). There are in fact laboratories that employ full time scientists who’s sole job it is to experiment and create biological weaponry. That includes viruses. I don’t see how it’s that big of a leap to think that a test bat/animal escaped or that someone was accidentally exposed
Words like “convinced” may be skewing your meaning.
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Blah blah blah weapon
Blah blah blah China
Blah blah blah wet market
Here is the REAL conspiracy regarding covid. I am being 100% sincere. None of that other shit is even worthy of discussion.
https://twitter.com/zevshalev/status/1320129459136155648?s=21
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Another data point that you guys are so much better at this than me. Bravo!
Some people on this board might as well join the president and start calling it the China virus lol
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I always call it the GYNA WUHAN FLU when in mixed company. Have sniffed so many panties on laundry lines as a result. Dont tread on me!
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Eh. I’m afraid I’m on team anti China here. This is yet another example of my biggest pet peeve… pretending that other people are better than us. They aren’t. Hate to be the bearer of bad news on that.
The Chinese almost certainly could have done a better job and gotten COVID under control. Look we know what it is now… you have everyone wear masks and you stop anyone from doing anything. By the time they did that there were already enough people sick for them to need an awful lot of urns. By that point international travel meant that it was everywhere and not going to slow down.
Is this the US’s fault for unilaterally ending our roll as the global public health agency for stuff like this? Yes obviously. At the same time though, China has the ability to lock down drastically harder than less authoritarian societies. That’s a clear positive that authoritarian societies have over more democratic ones. The initial reaction from their government and healthcare system was to try to cover it up, and that reaction cost the world an awful lot.
And the wet markets have been a problem for a long time. Let’s stop pretending like there are very many other Asians bidding up the price of pangolins to the moon than wealthy Chinese who believe in traditional Chinese medicine. They’ve got a very healthy exotic animal trade in a country with insane population density. It’s dumb and again they don’t have any good excuse to do dumb shit since they are an authoritarian regime.
You want to argue that we suck you’ll get no argument from me. I think the idea of national pride is idiotic and I think the more history you read the more obvious that becomes. Every acre on planet earth that is inhabited by humans has a dark history. How long? When was it cleared?
My point is that in a disaster of this size there is going to be plenty of blame to go around. Don’t worry I’m giving Donald his entire share.
And if Caffeine is Ikes he’s changed an awful lot since the old days. I never even considered that. Seriously if he’s Ikes, you guys should probably let bygones be bygones. He wouldn’t be the only former conservative on this board I’m sure.
EDIT: I also get really irritated when people (usually conservatives) talk about how much better we are than the rest of the world. Takes some balls to tell the Chinese that what they are doing to the Uighurs is wrong. How many First Nations people are left in the USA again? They’re deliberately destroying their culture you say, well I never, we would never do anything like that right?
It’s just gross. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to make the world a better place. Obviously we should. I’m just saying that most of the people I see trying to claim the moral high ground are pretty far down in the valley.
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We are all terrible
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An excellent new nominee
https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/1320190103701065728?s=21
And of course Pence will continue to campaign.
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Jesus, what the hell happened to this thread?
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Absolutely. There are basically no countries, cultures, ethnic groups, or religions with clean hands. Some have dirtier hands than others, but you know what’s interesting? I notice that the amount of bad shit groups of people have done is usually directly proportional to how dominant over a place and time they were. Because all of these are groups of humans, and human brains literally change when they get power.
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My .02: the exotic wet markets were a problem that should have been addressed sooner, but they weren’t and here we are. It’s hard for me to get too mad at China for that aspect given the atrocities our society carries out daily, and our role in climate change. We can give them some blame for the pandemic, but let’s not act like we have the moral high ground to scrutinize their habits with regard to consumption of exotic animals any farther than to try to get them to get it under control for the future.
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Fair enough. Make it highly likely, more likely than not, or even at least plausible. But my money is on it being more than just nature
In other news, had a fun argument at the poker table tonight with a guy who doesn’t understand exponential growth, thinks there is no evidence of any long term effects of covid, and thinks we’re all being huge wusses. He also thinks Trump is a moron, but he’s voting for him.
Also a few people bring food each time. I went out of my way to get subs/sandwiches cut into quarters and individually wrapped. Someone else brought wings, shrimp cocktail, and cookies.
Masks required unless eating or drinking, but one guy kept taking his off to scratch his mouth. He did not use hand sanitizer first. I’m not even worried about the 2 seconds it was down from my standpoint. But holy fuck, scratching your mouth without sanitizing your hands while playing poker during a pandemic?
One other guy kept mentioning how bad winter would be and I’d agree. Then people would look at us like we were nuts.
A couple mentioned going to restaurants indoors. Another is part-owner of a restaurant and says they’re CRUSHING it.
So with this kind of behavior from people being very careful (relative to society), buckle up.
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Human beings are fucking morons. They reliably don’t give a shit about anything until it personally effects them. We may as well be aliens on this board.
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Can we excise this from the thread now?
We have not much different than a climate change denier in here mucking up one of the most important threads on the site.
Take it to another thread.
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Yeah, this is the problem with authoritarian societies, you cannot trust a damn thing they say. They care about optics, not the reality on the ground. The Chinese government’s initial reaction was to lie and try to cover up the whole thing and make a performative display of spraying the streets with disinfectant (as if anyone catches the disease that way!). It astonishes me when people here say they believe the Chinese authorities who claim they’ve got almost a 100% lockdown on a nation with a billion people for months. Man, come on, you know this shit is ripping through Uighur prison camps and everyone is looking the other way.
And I’m calling out authoritarianism in the US, too. Trump’s signature move was to ban travel from China and basically be a racist idiot. Man, this virus had like a 2-4 week head start, it was out the gate before anyone knew what the hell was going on. Banning travel from China was like closing the barn doors after the cows fled, it was already here Same thing with travel within China, they locked down well after the time when that could have done any good. And what about our ICE concentration camps, who the hell knows what the situation is like there. Or our whole prison-industrial complex, COVID is probably ripping through those people also.
Sorry, I give the fascist strongman governments of this world an F- on managing this pandemic. We need honest science and public policy from sources the people can trust, that’s the only way we beat this thing.
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