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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Is anyone pro-china here?
Strawman deluxe and anyone who liked your post should feel bad.
Australia has had some pretty severe restrictions on movement. A few people complained but most people understood the need. We also had a semi competent government/civil service allowing reasonable exceptions etc.
There’s a difference between saying something is over 75% to happen, more than 50%, or greater than zero. I don’t think you can convince me that you are capable of changing your mind on this and you clearly don’t have the ability to argue for your side. You have a narrative in your head and you are going to adjust it to fit any new facts you are exposed to.
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I’ve had people just straight-up say they only care about their taxes being lower, or at least not raised.
All finger foods?
Masks bring required and people abiding with it sounds dreamy. I’d worry that the Republicans are just humoring you and will be less cooperative if Trump loses and it becomes clear that mitigation efforts will continue for a long time.
It pretty much all comes down to whether the story that China stopped travel from Wuhan to other cities but not to other countries is true or not.
In the very early stages of COVID-19, back when it was still the “novel coronavirus,” I recall reading about how in every pandemic in human history, the ruling class/governments/leaders always lied, obfuscated and downplayed the severity of the disease.
Researchers and experts agreed this was not the best approach, and that honesty, transparency and trusting experts was the key to minimizing the loss of life and economic damage.
Welp, here we are. Better luck next time, humanity. Hopefully the human race gets it right the next time around, in about a century
Just kidding this is likely to happen again in our lifetimes, and we’re likely to fuck it up just as bad.
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They won’t “get it right” because their personal EV is negative if they optimize the people’s EV.
Climate change denier? 
You’re right. It IS an important topic, which is why it should at least be addressed. Much better than sticking your thumb in your ears and shouting la-la-la-la-la. Never understood closed minded people who can’t process more than one thing at a time
Also, it’s no sillier than arguing back and forth about China. The virus is here and needs to be dealt with
We, the human race, need anyone anywhere to do better on issues of public health like this regardless of any other issues that we the human race need to do better on too.
Nitpicking over what defines “habits” is kind of pointless. As far as I know we don’t have roadkill markets in major population centers.
I don’t give a flying fuck if they eat pangolins or whether it’s 1% or 90% of them that do. I know it’s a pretty low percentage. I only care if it’s creating an international health risk due to the processing/handling, which it is.
Maybe they’re just running bad with so many pandemics starting there over the last 20 years or so, but I doubt it.
Again this isn’t some kind of judgement of their culture or cuisine, or assumption that some huge percentage partake in this habit. It’s causing an international issue, just like we are with our role in climate change, military pre-emptive intervention, etc, etc.
I think we can walk and chew gum around here and criticize multiple countries/governments for multiple different things without one excusing the other.
I said we don’t have the moral high ground. This is the thread for the pandemic, we can discuss how shitty of a job we’re doing on healthcare, income inequality, etc in the relevant threads. We’re all in relative agreement on that stuff: our country is doing a shitty job and needs to do better.
And it’s not like we don’t spend 24/7 shitting on the American response ITT anyway.
Yeah that’s this guy, and he admits it. My two main thoughts are that it’s selfish and short-sighted. Selfish is obvious, short-sighted in that he owns a business and we’re in a pandemic and the better we manage it the quicker his business gets back to normal. That’s gotta be worth more than a couple percent on his taxes.
He admits Trump has mismanaged the pandemic from the start.
Yeah, depressing. I haven’t eaten either time I’ve played. I go outside to even take a drink, so I’m not messing with foods. I wanted to at least wash my hands of any responsibility for transmission with the food I brought for people, so individually wrapped subs/sandwiches seemed like the way to go. They barely got touched relative to the wings, shrimp, and cookies.
Yeah it’s pretty good and the reason I’m playing. 15-20 hours a month in this game over the next several months vs having to grind 150 hours a month in a casino in the spring seems like an obvious choice.
Apparently one local casino is opening the poker room 6 or 7 handed with plexiglass and masks required. I do have to stop in to cash in some chips in my box now that I can get back into it, so I’m curious to see how that looks. Not curious enough to do more than watch while waiting for my box.
Obviously I’m tapped into that community, so maybe if they go several months with no cases I’ll consider it with an N95, gloves and safety glasses. There I can get needled for it but not turned away.