COVID-19 in your part of the world

[Sengoku Strider]

Did you know that stuff isn't really grey?



I'm with this guy, I want the Democrats to give me my telekinesis back.

[BulletMagnet]

Another precious moment.

[Sengoku Strider]

Anyone can be a covid denier, but that's just one puny virus. It takes hustle & dedication to take that ball all the way to the end zone.



If you'd like to buy a book on all this rigorous science, Barnes & Noble can get you a hardcover with expedited shipping within couple of days, but because of freedom of speech. Not because late stage capitalism has spiralled into a post-truth dystopia, only dumb people would notice that.

Another precious moment.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be one of those people. I'm quite certain most of them are self aware enough to know they're professional liars day in day out, but probably get through life by telling themselves the greater cause is still good and right, so the ends justify the means. Besides, they're just providing what the market wants, right? If they weren't filling that need, somebody else - potentially even less ethical* - would be.

But sometimes keeping it all repressed has just gotta be messing them up inside. Like when they're forced to take part in a disinfo campaign that's no doubt actively getting thousands of their elderly viewers killed because a walking racist orange stomach was president for a while. That's gotta be one of the worst kinds of headaches.

* The Mutilator, for example.

[vol.2]

Not sure how many of you already read the NYT, but there was an interesting editorial about the sharp drop in life expectancy caused by Covid. Furthermore, life expectancy was already on the decline in the US in a way that it isn't in most other industrialized nations.

It's still relevant that Covid has exacerbated and exposed the disturbing trend though. What do you do when your population's life expectancy is dropping at the same time the birth rate is dropping and only the wealthy have access to the tools promoting a long and happy life? Sucky reminder of the suck.

Spoiler

Taken together, Drugs and Alcohol account for the greatest death delta. I think you could probably just tack suicide onto those as well tbh. Killing yourself slowly or killing yourself quickly as it were.

Spoiler

[Sengoku Strider]

What do you do when your population's life expectancy is dropping at the same time the birth rate is dropping and only the wealthy have access to the tools promoting a long and happy life?

I mean, no need to deviate from the classic playbook. You let a whole lot of migrants cross the border while pretending to be really upset about it. You get to keep wages artificially low while preventing the economy from contracting. Then say something about bootstraps to the 85% of the population who's not you.

The less snarky non-dystopian answer is unions make a comeback.

[BryanM]

Eh, came across mention of this "lie down" movement that got a little buzz in China. It always warms my heart whenever anyone starts quoting Diogenes and taking up the path of the ascetic monk. It's kind of funny doing nothing is the most damage a normal plebian can do to capitalism, and how much it terrifies the powers that be.

The two-child policy wasn't pumping out enough babies, so they amped it up with a three child policy. Internet commentators note the irony they went from mandatory abortions, to some in power seriously considering mandatory pregnancies.

That 996 thing is monstrous.

[BulletMagnet]

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be one of those people. [...] But sometimes keeping it all repressed has just gotta be messing them up inside.

I can guarantee you're giving them too much credit. Starting point is here, add cruelty and spite boners.

[KayBur]

Eh, came across mention of this "lie down" movement that got a little buzz in China. It always warms my heart whenever anyone starts quoting Diogenes and taking up the path of the ascetic monk. It's kind of funny doing nothing is the most damage a normal plebian can do to capitalism, and how much it terrifies the powers that be.

The two-child policy wasn't pumping out enough babies, so they amped it up with a three child policy. Internet commentators note the irony they went from mandatory abortions, to some in power seriously considering mandatory pregnancies.

That 996 thing is monstrous.

Any violence against the will of a person is monstrous. But sometimes it is justified. For example, to avoid mass deaths. Or to protect society from some sociopaths, rapists and other unreliable elements.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Second shot done and over with. It's getting to the point where it's hard to imagine doing group gatherings safely though, with so much of the populace still stubbornly refusing to vaccinate. How do you meet in person safely for group gatherings of like a dozen people at one's house? Do you ask everyone for immunization records first (or as the GOP likes to scaremonger them, VaCcInE pAsSpOrTs)? What's the etiquette here?

[vol.2]

I've already done about a half dozen get-together things, but everyone was for sure vaxxed. I can't imagine wanting to go to a group thing where I wasn't sure of it. I'm still masking up when I go into stores for the most part, especially now that the hospitalization rate is going up in Maryland. It's more about protecting the people who can't get vaxxed at this point; it's not their fault that so many people who could get vaxxed refuse to.

[Steamflogger Boss]

[BulletMagnet]

One thing that I really, really hope the media keeps doing is asking politicians who insist that people should have serious reservations about the vaccine whether they themselves are vaccinated; just as Daddy got the shot the nanosecond it became available but very bravely forgot to tell anyone, it's absolutely priceless watching these champions of straight talk and sunlight-as-disinfectant flatly refuse to answer while demanding that reporters ask the Democrats instead (never mind that every Dem lawmaker is already on the record as vaccinated), indignantly claiming that just asking is itself breaking the law (ProTip: it isn't), or just plain berating the press for not talking about Britney Spears enough.

I'll say it yet again: seeing as its voters don't seem the least bit bothered, let alone embarrassed, by any of this, contemporary American conservatism is quite simply home to the most laughable band of utterly insufferable fucking pussies the country has ever seen. If you're going to stand on your principles the minimum you do is fucking own it, and moreover do so without whining that there must be state-sanctioned consequences for anyone who stops following you on Twitter as a result.

[system11]

Haven't posted in this for a while. My prime concern with the situation as things stand is the terrifying expansion of authoritarian tools from a (if yougov is to be believed, which I don't) largely supportive population. It's like they've never read any history. It's also especially bad in the UK now with a government who are ... making shit up as they go along on an hourly basis for reasons I don't believe they even know anymore. They've managed to come up with a passport (that they promised wouldn't happen back in Jan) which will be a requirement for an expanding list of places. Here's the magical punchline - a negative test result which would actually prove someone doesn't have Covid is insufficient. The passport of course proves much less, because vaccination doesn't stop people catching and spreading it as my sister discovered.

At some point everyone is going to just have to accept that this is a thing that exists now, you can get on with life and take a level of rational precautions or be paralyzed with fear of something that you and nobody else can control, unless you genuinely want Covid checkpoints on everything, which is Very East Germany. Speaking of fear I think the psychological damage this has done to some people is going to be irreversable. I saw a man run away from someone without a mask in a supermarket today. For those who didn't know, there was no mask advice of any kind during wave 1, supermarkets remained open with capacity and distancing rules, as the wave rose and ultimately fell to nothing. This suggests they are not especially troublesome places, but he ran from someone who was 15 metres away - he even looked wild eyed and scared. It wasn't even funny, I just felt sorry for him. I thought I must have misread this but it happened a few times. Store wasn't even a quarter as busy as it is during the day.

I did get my 'shot', nothing particularly interesting happened. Had hoped I would be able to attract magnets or something, alas no. Can't even communicate with the internet by pointing my hand at 5G towers.

Meanwhile the lifesaving lockdowns etc have given my father who used to be very active "significant problems with memory and clarity", you can fill in the blanks there. This week was especially bad, mum sick (unrelated to Covid) and that's when we realised just how bad it is. I'd rate it as my worst evening in at least the past 30 years.

To quote a good film:
As for the good news - There is no fucking good news! So let's just play some music!

[vol.2]

The social impact of Covid has been enormous. I started going out again recently and I definitely felt like things were much different. I think it will be awhile for things to get closer to the way they were, but it will happen. I think 2022 will be much closer to business as usual, socially speaking.

About the passport thing. It's true that getting the vaccine doesn't guarantee that you won't get Covid, but it does dramatically reduce your chances of infection, and the lightened viral load further reduces the chances you will pass it to someone if you do happen to get it. It makes perfect mathematical sense that requiring vaccine for travel will have a major impact on slowing infection rates.

[GaijinPunch]

a negative test result which would actually prove someone doesn't have Covid is insufficient.

It would only prove you don't have symptoms. You could very likely be infected and in the incubation period.

About the passport thing. It's true that getting the vaccine doesn't guarantee that you won't get Covid, but it does dramatically reduce your chances of infection, and the lightened viral load further reduces the chances you will pass it to someone if you do happen to get it. It makes perfect mathematical sense that requiring vaccine for travel will have a major impact on slowing infection rates.

One Jack hole on FB was arguing that you can still get covid which made the vaccine useless. The sad thing is he has already procreated, twice.

[ZacharyB]

The most glaring benefit of the vaccine, in the US at least, is the greatly reduced hospitalization rate. Just considering a single healthy person, CoViD-19 has like a ~3% chance of death, but a 33% hospitalization rate. Here in the world of privatized medicine, that's a bill of at least $10,000 if you need intubation.

Don't play around with an event that has a low-medium chance of taking a gigantic chunk from your bank account (and/or credit score). The majority of the people in this country live paycheck-to-paycheck.

[system11]

a negative test result which would actually prove someone doesn't have Covid is insufficient.

It would only prove you don't have symptoms. You could very likely be infected and in the incubation period.

It's still better than a vaccine passport where you don't even bother checking at all, despite knowing that the actual resistance to catching and carrying it around from them is 'somewhat middling'. It should be considered 'at least as good'. The fact that it isn't and the many (changing daily) suggestions about what the rules will be actually shows the real purpose of it is to force vaccination (and the carrying of state ID as a by-product). I find that impossibly distasteful and an incredibly dangerous road long term, while also being in favour of people getting their shots. It would actually be better if they just paid people to get it.

I can't accept a world where you need to carry papers and proof of medical status. Imagine the shit-show when this turns inevitably into annual boosters.

[Mischief Maker]

The response has been a shit-show because the response has been a David Cronenberg's The Fly-style amalgamation of medical expertise and political grandstanding.

All because Trump didn't want this to cause a panic in the stock market. I can't believe that phonecall was brushed under the rug.

Oh wait, yes I can.

[GaijinPunch]

a negative test result which would actually prove someone doesn't have Covid is insufficient.

It would only prove you don't have symptoms. You could very likely be infected and in the incubation period.

It's still better than a vaccine passport where you don't even bother checking at all, despite knowing that the actual resistance to catching and carrying it around from them is 'somewhat middling'.

If people are ignoring the passport so they could just as easily ignore the negative test. I'm not saying a negative test is useless -- the vaccinated can indeed still be carriers. However their risk of hospitalization is substantially mitigated, which is where the crux of the issue arises. You can call it a nanny state all you want (and that's a topic for another thread I think) but if places of business are requiring proof of vaccine, and sticking to their guns, who cares if those thousands of people pass it around. As far as we know now, those numbers cannot overwhelm the medical system. Of course that can change, but the main vaccines used in the US are shown to be very effective against the Delta variant.

It would actually be better if they just paid people to get it.

They've kind of been doing that here -- in the form of lotteries and whatnot.

I can't accept a world where you need to carry papers and proof of medical status. Imagine the shit-show when this turns inevitably into annual boosters.

I agree that it is not ideal but I think it's quite obvious we're not in normal times.

[vol.2]

However their risk of hospitalization is substantially mitigated, which is where the crux of the issue arises.

The vaccinated are orders of magnitude less likely to pass on the virus if they have it due to the significantly lighter viral load. It's pretty simple math here. If you have to be vaccinated to travel, the spread of Covid will be dramatically slowed. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... cases.html

[Mischief Maker]

I did get my 'shot', nothing particularly interesting happened. Had hoped I would be able to attract magnets or something, alas no. Can't even communicate with the internet by pointing my hand at 5G towers.

We've been butting heads a bit in this thread, but if I can break character a moment, I had a death in the family very recently and it was horrible for everyone involved. It did not involve Covid, but it did involve the deceased being hesitant to go to the hospital about what eventually killed them. That did leave all of us with a lot of guilt, I certainly have been running "what if?" scenarios in my head over and over about putting my foot down and demanding they go straight to the emergency room.

So yes, I am "getting triggered" by all these news stories about surviving family members of anti-vaxxers who died of the delta variant telling tearful guilt-filled stories about how their loved one would still be alive today if they disregarded the lies told to them by Murdoch media and just got the damn shot.

So I'm very happy you got the vaccine. Not just for you but for your family.



Oh, and speaking of vaccine passports and Murdoch media, have you heard of the Fox Clear Pass?

[Sengoku Strider]

This kinda falls apart in the chorus.

[GaijinPunch]

Mask mandates in the SF Bay Area starting tomorrow.

[Randorama]

Wuhan's population to be tested within the next 2 weeks or so (all 11 millions of it, including yourself truly).
This because of 7 cases of Delta variant registered near a shopping street in the city centre (yes, the number is correct).

Considering that I am fully vaccinated and anyway I always wear a mask, always clean my hands, etc. etc., this is somewhat slightly annoying (I was supposed to go on holiday...).
The test does take 5 minutes or so and I need to walk a 5 minutes to get to the campus hospital, anyway.

[GaijinPunch]

I would rather do that than go back to wearing masks b/c (the majority) of the people fucking this up won't get vaccinated. Of course, it's America though.

[Randorama]

I had my test at 1:40 am tonight: the medical staff worked all night to test everyone ASAP.
I inquired and the medical staff told me that they were getting paid extra time and getting extra holiday days for the service (but I guess that they would have done for free without batting an eyelid).
Masks are mandatory again anyway, to avoid any risks and so on.

I am slightly annoyed because I cannot leave the city (luckily I didn't even book the holidays) for 2-3 weeks, but precautions are precautions, and I should be able push my holidays to a later period.

It does help that if a health check is blazing fast, immediately available as a proof on your town hall services app, and virtually innocuous (it feels like they checked my boogers, honestly), it hardly registers as...anything, really, and certainly not an invasion of privacy (but maybe they are checking my posts on shmups.com via the remote cam installed in my boogers? Let me blow my nose...).

Just in case: the "town hall services app" is an app that offers all town hall services online, so I don't need to visit an office (and throw away a working day) to, say, get a residence certificate, health certificate, or any piece of red tape. Most if not all cities have their own app/platform, by now.

Anyway, people in the province West of Hubei, Henan, are still fighting with floods and the aftermath of 10 days of heavy rain (e.g., 2 metres of water everywhere).
That's quite the predicament, I guess...

...and off to work out I go, so all is well.

EDIT: Oh, temperature checks at restaurants and other public spaces, including swimming pools and gyms (yes, they are open). Because we all know that sharing temperature info with other human beings is the death toll of freedom, of course. I need to show my test proof when entering and leaving the campus I live in.

[GaijinPunch]

Plenty of bars and restauarants in San Francsico are requiring proof of vaccination to enter. NYC is moving in that direction as well. These are the bluest of blue cities though so nobody will care.

[BulletMagnet]

Aaaand whoopsie-doodle!

but maybe they are checking my posts on shmups.com via the remote cam installed in my boogers? Let me blow my nose...)

Well, if your snot is red then you've contracted the "wide shot" variant; a blue discharge indicates the "laser" strain.

[vol.2]

nobody will care.

Hahaha. There's always going to be people who are going to make a fuss. I can imagine in NY, the bridge and tunnel crowd is going to raise a hissy fit over the weekend dinner/bar crawl. The real new yorkers don't go out on the weekend though, so they won't catch the rona-hooch from those scum.

[Randorama]

Well, if your snot is red then you've contracted the "wide shot" variant; a blue discharge indicates the "laser" strain.

Uh, OK, orange, and I hear a voice in my head saying "check the Strategy section as we don't know how to chain stage 2-5 in DDP: DOJ"