malchior wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:01 pm
The thing about the high death rate outbreaks (like Ebola) is people take them seriously and they usually burn themselves out quickly. This thing is low, slow, and often asymptomatic. It is really bad in a way because it overwhelms systems and drives up all death rates while knocking down economies. That said this has made it into the massive disaster we are experiencing. I'm beginning to think this is a perfect storm middle ground that allowed our moron-in-chief to not take it seriously enough long enough that it crippled our nation. That's why I don't see this as a 'shot across the bow'. I think this hit us below the water line.
Well, to be clear - I was answering El Guapo's question regarding Grifman's comment to Yellowking's optimistic statement.
YellowKing is (I think correctly) pointing out that this could be worse than it is, and that it should help us prepare for worse.
So, yes - perhaps this is more akin to a strike below the water line (I agree with your assessment) ... but it still could have been a direct hit to Ammunition Stores, and we would be REALLY fucked....
I'd be a lot more comfortable with the idea that we aren't really fucked if everything wasn't looking so fucked up. I mean, I understand that I'm alive, so I have that going for me which is nice. But I can't even go out for dinner. I can't go anywhere and do anything with anybody. I feel like I'm a living ghost, I might as well be a zombie...and there's no timetable for when this will be over or even IF it will be over. That's massively fucked.
gameoverman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:27 pm
I'd be a lot more comfortable with the idea that we aren't really fucked if everything wasn't looking so fucked up. I mean, I understand that I'm alive, so I have that going for me which is nice. But I can't even go out for dinner. I can't go anywhere and do anything with anybody. I feel like I'm a living ghost, I might as well be a zombie...and there's no timetable for when this will be over or even IF it will be over. That's massively fucked.
drama man... Put things in some perspective over the hardships other generations have gone through.
If, in the end, what we had to do was 'turn inward' for a few months, and undergo financial strains - but most people will live (and this too shall pass). We have to focus on minimizing the deaths, via keeping the hospitals positioned to handle their workload.
This, IMO, is like 'the easiest' thing to endure (assuming you are not sick, or are close to one that is, or have lost someone, etc.)
You saying this nearly made me jump out of my seat:
"I'd be a lot more comfortable with the idea that we aren't really fucked if everything wasn't looking so fucked up. I mean, I understand that I'm alive, so I have that going for me which is nice. But I can't even go out for dinner."
I mean really. My grandfather (not hyperbole) fought at the Battle of the Bulge in WW2. They were asked to "shelter-in-place" for ~30 days while fighting off the goddamned Nazis in the middle of winter. We're being asked to sit at home and make the best of a shit situation. I am a grown man at the verge of tears daily seeing what my counterparts in the medical field are being asked to do while I watch Netflix and play video games.
Smoove_B wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 2:33 pm
I mean really. My grandfather (not hyperbole) fought at the Battle of the Bulge in WW2. They were asked to "shelter-in-place" for ~30 days while fighting off the goddamned Nazis in the middle of winter. We're being asked to sit at home and make the best of a shit situation. I am a grown man at the verge of tears daily seeing what my counterparts in the medical field are being asked to do while I watch Netflix and play video games.
If all i have end up happening is that I have to chill in the house for a few months I can deal. It's heartbreaking to see all the stuff my daughter is missing out on (School trip, School play where she got a lead role, marching band that will likely cancelled etc..) But at the end of the day it's small potatoes if we all get through this in one piece. Amazingly the wife and I aren't even really driving each other nuts yet.
I do fear for the future of the country as there are so many shitty people, but I guess they have always been around it just wasn't as obvious. Anytime I drive out to the store I pass at least 4 houses proudly waving the Trump 2020 flags. F them... And our county has been mostly spared for now so it's not like they will learn a lesson from this.
Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.
gameoverman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:27 pm
I'd be a lot more comfortable with the idea that we aren't really fucked if everything wasn't looking so fucked up. I mean, I understand that I'm alive, so I have that going for me which is nice. But I can't even go out for dinner. I can't go anywhere and do anything with anybody. I feel like I'm a living ghost, I might as well be a zombie...and there's no timetable for when this will be over or even IF it will be over. That's massively fucked.
These are valid feeling and everyone is going to be experiencing it in their own way. Just because others have/had it worse doesn't mean it can't still be really hard for you. The best you can do is talk about it, try to find things that make it bearable, and if it gets really bad, get help.
That's a fair statement. I'm pretty much fried as my stress meter has been solidly in the red for about a month now. Above and beyond dealing with my own household, I've been wrangling with my parents and their general difficulties in seeming to process just how serious this all is. Everyone is handling the stress associated with being at home differently. I won't judge unless you're out and having corona parties.
Yup. We are clearly living in a historic transition. We can't see where it's going or how long it will last. All we can do is live it one day at a time, and try to be good people/citizens while doing it.
Like gameoverman, I really miss restaurants. Our weekly "date night" was the high point of my week for years and years. When I feel sad about that, I think of all the restaurant owners and workers who are down and out and remember how good I have it. I still want a draft beer and a good burger surrounded by sportsball and bad pop music, though.
I saw someone do a "back to normal" board and post stuff they want to do when this is all in the past and we're no longer social distancing.
While I haven't gone through the trouble of making an actual board, I do take some comfort in making lists in my mind of stuff I'm looking forward to doing in the months ahead. Some of them are big, like vacations, and some are them are very simple like, "Get a big cheeseburger and beer then go to the movies."
This *is* temporary, as hopeless as it may now seem. There will be a day when we all go to concerts and theme parks again. It doesn't mean everything will be exactly the same as it was, but I'm hopeful it's going to be better in more ways than it's worse.
I'm not saying we have it as bad or worse that other people have had it. I'm saying imagine there's a scale, from not fucked at all(0) to totally fucked(10). On this scale 'really fucked' would be an 8. I think we past 8. We might not have hit 9, we might be at 8.3, but 8 is in the rear view mirror.
The key part is this isn't over, this isn't even the peak of the whole mess. That's one reason it's hard for me to guess much about what kind of changes we'll see when this is over. To foresee that implies that I'm seeing enough of the impact now to provide some basis for that guess. Maybe we are seeing enough now, but I have a feeling we aren't. I have a feeling that when people look back on this time they will say something like"...but they had no way of knowing XYZ was going to happen". I'm just hoping that when XYZ happens it's a positive game changer and not a negative one.
YellowKing wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:13 pm
I tend to be an eternal optimist, so I can't help but think that this tragedy is going to be what potentially saves mankind. This virus didn't have to have a 3% mortality rate. It could have been 50%, 75%, 100%. It could have been airborne.
There's no doubt that we will learn lessons from this and be better prepared next time. That doesn't mean perfection, but maybe it means we're not completely caught with our pants around our ankles.
I agree, this is bad, but not as bad of a pandemic as many have been predicting, with death rates between 25% and 50%. But this is bad enough to make us realize how unprepared we really are. It's an expensive, costly lesson, but not as expensive and costly as it could have been.
Has anyone been predicting Coronavirus death rates between 25% and 50%? Or is that just people are fearing that there will be a pandemic with death rates like that eventually?
The deadlier a virus is, the harder it is to spread. Killing its host is not a virus's goal; spreading and reproducing is. Killing the hosts is counterproductive.
That completely depends on the incubation time of the virus and the speed at which it kills. If Coronavirus had a 50% death rate but everything else was the same (i.e. potentially 14 day incubation period where people might be capable of spreading the disease, sickness that takes 5 - 7 days, etc), it would spread just as fast as it does now.
It sounds like the ultimate bio-weapon would be a virus that takes a long time to incubate, but then when it does it's more than 50% fatal. I'm sure it's possible to calculate how long it would take a virus starting in some isolated region to reach every continent. If you created your virus to not activate until longer than that timeframe everyone would be in for a big surprise all at once.
gameoverman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:11 pm
It sounds like the ultimate bio-weapon would be a virus that takes a long time to incubate, but then when it does it's more than 50% fatal. I'm sure it's possible to calculate how long it would take a virus starting in some isolated region to reach every continent. If you created your virus to not activate until longer than that timeframe everyone would be in for a big surprise all at once.
That's how ya win Plague Inc. You thrust fatality onto an already hard to detect sleepy little virus that everyone has, but no one has been cured of yet. (The game is magical, in that it magically lets anyone infected experience the new mutation as if it was a synchronized event across the virus population)
I've been stuck at home and binge-watching PARKS AND RECREATION for the first time, and I've just hit the moment where Leslie Knope wins the election for city council.
I'm crying not because it's great TV but because it seems impossible to believe in effective public service as long as Trump and McConnell and their minions up and down the line control the reins of power in the USA. Optimism feels like a tragic lie.
YellowKing wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:13 pm
I tend to be an eternal optimist, so I can't help but think that this tragedy is going to be what potentially saves mankind. This virus didn't have to have a 3% mortality rate. It could have been 50%, 75%, 100%. It could have been airborne.
There's no doubt that we will learn lessons from this and be better prepared next time. That doesn't mean perfection, but maybe it means we're not completely caught with our pants around our ankles.
I agree, this is bad, but not as bad of a pandemic as many have been predicting, with death rates between 25% and 50%. But this is bad enough to make us realize how unprepared we really are. It's an expensive, costly lesson, but not as expensive and costly as it could have been.
Has anyone been predicting Coronavirus death rates between 25% and 50%? Or is that just people are fearing that there will be a pandemic with death rates like that eventually?
The deadlier a virus is, the harder it is to spread. Killing its host is not a virus's goal; spreading and reproducing is. Killing the hosts is counterproductive.
And yet, it is estimated that both Justinian's Plague of the 6th century and the Black Death of the 14th century killed between 25% and 50% of the population of the time. Small pox wiped out perhaps up to 90% of the Native American population of the New World. The Aztec and Inca Empires were brought to their knees by small pox, which made it much easier for the Spanish conquistadors. So yeah, plagues can be very deadly.
Last edited by Grifman on Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
YellowKing wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:13 pm
I tend to be an eternal optimist, so I can't help but think that this tragedy is going to be what potentially saves mankind. This virus didn't have to have a 3% mortality rate. It could have been 50%, 75%, 100%. It could have been airborne.
There's no doubt that we will learn lessons from this and be better prepared next time. That doesn't mean perfection, but maybe it means we're not completely caught with our pants around our ankles.
I agree, this is bad, but not as bad of a pandemic as many have been predicting, with death rates between 25% and 50%. But this is bad enough to make us realize how unprepared we really are. It's an expensive, costly lesson, but not as expensive and costly as it could have been.
Has anyone been predicting Coronavirus death rates between 25% and 50%? Or is that just people are fearing that there will be a pandemic with death rates like that eventually?
No, not the corona virus. But experts have been predicting a flu related virus like SARS, which had a fatality rate of 15%. There is also MERS which had a fatality of rate of about 35% - luckily it just wasn't that contagious. Experts worry about something with a SARS/MERS fatality rate but contagious as the flu, or corona virus for that matter. That is what really keeps them up at night.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
gameoverman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:27 pm
I'd be a lot more comfortable with the idea that we aren't really fucked if everything wasn't looking so fucked up. I mean, I understand that I'm alive, so I have that going for me which is nice. But I can't even go out for dinner. I can't go anywhere and do anything with anybody. I feel like I'm a living ghost, I might as well be a zombie...and there's no timetable for when this will be over or even IF it will be over. That's massively fucked.
You can't imagine worse? Try this. A plague that kills a high percentage of the population, that kills so many doctors and nurses that the health care system collapses. So many dead that grocery stores have trouble being restocked, gasoline has trouble getting to gas stations, the whole distribution network collapses or comes close to it. Not going to dinner or going out is nothing compared to what is possible with a very virulent plague that kills and really puts fear into people.
Serioiusly, a "zombie"?! Just because you can't go to the restaurant or the mall? Go read about the Justinian's Plague or the Black Death and you might consider yourself lucky and only inconvenienced.
Last edited by Grifman on Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
gameoverman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:23 pm
I'm not saying we have it as bad or worse that other people have had it. I'm saying imagine there's a scale, from not fucked at all(0) to totally fucked(10). On this scale 'really fucked' would be an 8. I think we past 8. We might not have hit 9, we might be at 8.3, but 8 is in the rear view mirror.
Man, you have no idea. Both Justinian's Plague and the Black Death killed between 25% and 50% of the population. That is "really fucked" and we are nowhere near to that now. It was reported that up to 10,000 people a day were dying in Constantinople during the former. People were buried in mass graves in the cities. Whole families and even villages were wiped out, bodies left unburied in the rural areas.
You have food, water, and power, all the essentials. You can communicate with anyone in the world. You have access to almost unlimited entertainment. We are sustaining huge economic losses but the infrastructure is still there, there is a vaccine on the way, the economy will recover, and the death rate is a lot lower than it could have been of this had been a different strain of virus. We dodged a bullet.
Count yourself lucky and blessed. You are nowhere near being "fucked". Right now you are just inconvenienced. That's nowhere near to "fuckiness".
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
YellowKing wrote: ↑Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:13 pm
I tend to be an eternal optimist, so I can't help but think that this tragedy is going to be what potentially saves mankind. This virus didn't have to have a 3% mortality rate. It could have been 50%, 75%, 100%. It could have been airborne.
There's no doubt that we will learn lessons from this and be better prepared next time. That doesn't mean perfection, but maybe it means we're not completely caught with our pants around our ankles.
I agree, this is bad, but not as bad of a pandemic as many have been predicting, with death rates between 25% and 50%. But this is bad enough to make us realize how unprepared we really are. It's an expensive, costly lesson, but not as expensive and costly as it could have been.
Has anyone been predicting Coronavirus death rates between 25% and 50%? Or is that just people are fearing that there will be a pandemic with death rates like that eventually?
The deadlier a virus is, the harder it is to spread. Killing its host is not a virus's goal; spreading and reproducing is. Killing the hosts is counterproductive.
And yet, it is estimated that both Justinian's Plague of the 6th century and the Black Death of the 14th century killed between 25% and 50% of the population of the time. Small pox wiped out perhaps up to 90% of the Native American population of the New World. The Aztec and Inca Empires were brought to their knees by small pox, which made it much easier for the Spanish conquistadors. So yeah, plagues can be very deadly.
It's true; as bad as Covid is, it's not the Big One. More like a dress rehearsal that we're bungling badly.
High mortality and ease of transmission usually don't come together, but of course they can. When I said that killing the host is counterproductive, I should've said it's irrelevant. After the virus reproduces, it gains nothing from being lethal.
Grifman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:57 pmYou have food, water, and power, all the essentials. You can communicate with anyone in the world. You have access to almost unlimited entertainment. We are sustaining huge economic losses but the infrastructure is still there, there is a vaccine on the way, the economy will recover, and the death rate is a lot lower than it could have been of this had been a different strain of virus. We dodged a bullet.
Count yourself lucky and blessed. You are nowhere near being "fucked". Right now you are just inconvenienced. That's nowhere near to "fuckiness".
You clearly think we are approaching the light at the end of tunnel on this, I hope so. "We dodged a bullet", well what if that bullet is still approaching and we haven't dodged anything yet?
It's not over yet, I don't think he's saying that - this is all still what experts predicted, and that there could be rounds of it, etc - until we get the vaccine, etc... but it will NOT be the Black Death.
One thing we're seeing is the power of technology and modern communications to actually limit a pandemic.
Our news cycles are dominated by talk of ventilators and tests, but imagine a world where none of those things can even exist. Even more, we're able to call for and implement almost civilization-wide protocols for social distancing and other mitigations--something only possible because modern mass communication moves faster than the virus does. How effective even is "virus news" in a world where news moves only with (potentially infected) people themselves?
We might be experiencing something that centuries ago would have ranked with the great plagues, but we enjoy the fruits of science.
I have food, water, shelter, access to health care if necessary, access to public services if necessary, and am able to communicate with friends and family no matter where they are. So, yeah, blessed compared with a 6th of 14th century peasant, or even an early 20th century person who went through a plague, many of whom died alone by the thousands with no hope of decent medical care. That’s not “twisted”, it’s perspective.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
gameoverman wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 5:30 pm
You clearly think we are approaching the light at the end of tunnel on this, I hope so. "We dodged a bullet", well what if that bullet is still approaching and we haven't dodged anything yet?
Nope, never said that. All I am doing is pointing out that it could be much, much worse, and we are lucky that it wasn’t a 21st century Black Death. Some of us will die - far too many due to our unpreparedness and political incompetence - but the vast majority will live, and hopefully our society will learn and not repeat these same mistakes when something more serious and deadly comes along, as it inevitably will. It just could have been so much much worse if one takes the long view and looks at history.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
I don't understand 'the perspective' behind saying one is blessed. I certainly understand the perspective of saying this could be much worse and has been much worse for many people. Additionally, I can also look at the good things we have and be happy we have them.
But to say we are blessed? This ignores that the god doing the blessing isn't behind the hardship?, and it also seem really self congratulatory to think of our relatively good position to be the result of a 'blessing' where the implication is that those that currently (this day) that do not have those things are not blessed. I can't stomach that.
Unagi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 6:25 pm
I don't understand 'the perspective' behind saying one is blessed. I certainly understand the perspective of saying this could be much worse and has been much worse for many people. Additionally, I can also look at the good things we have and be happy we have them.
But to say we are blessed? This ignores that the god doing the blessing isn't behind the hardship?, and it also seem really self congratulatory to think of our relatively good position to be the result of a 'blessing' where the implication is that those that currently (this day) that do not have those things are not blessed. I can't stomach that.
Would you be happier if he had said "fortunate"?
I don't think Grifman's theology is the sort that imagines God pulling the trigger on every victim of hardship. Only the most primitive believers see human life in those terms.
Unagi wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 6:25 pm
I don't understand 'the perspective' behind saying one is blessed. I certainly understand the perspective of saying this could be much worse and has been much worse for many people. Additionally, I can also look at the good things we have and be happy we have them.
But to say we are blessed? This ignores that the god doing the blessing isn't behind the hardship?, and it also seem really self congratulatory to think of our relatively good position to be the result of a 'blessing' where the implication is that those that currently (this day) that do not have those things are not blessed. I can't stomach that.
I'm not a religious person and I use blessed all of the time. I use to convey forces outside of my understanding causing things that are good from where I sit. At least I think I do. I might just be lazy in my lexicon.
To be clear.
When someone says Lucky and Blessed, I assume they mean lucky in the ‘dodged a bullet’ sense , and ‘blessed’ in a “and you know who to thank” sense.
Not: Lucky and ‘Really’ Lucky
And. Yes. I also use the term colloquially all the time too.
We're friends. We're variously stressed, exhausted, and scared. When that happens friends vent to friends. They get hyperbolic and let things out. It's healthy.
Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:12 pm
We're friends. We're variously stressed, exhausted, and scared. When that happens friends vent to friends. They get hyperbolic and let things out. It's healthy.
Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:12 pm
We're friends. We're variously stressed, exhausted, and scared. When that happens friends vent to friends. They get hyperbolic and let things out. It's healthy.
Blackhawk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:12 pm
We're friends. We're variously stressed, exhausted, and scared. When that happens friends vent to friends. They get hyperbolic and let things out. It's healthy.
Let your friends vent.
Along those lines, I think we broke Daehawk.
Maybe, but I don't think the situations were entirely comparable. Some things have to be spoken against.
I used to vent my frustrations on Facebook, taking on friends and family who were spreading false information about the coronavirus or about how well the Federal government is responding to it. It was concerning my wife and a few friends who noticed my change in behavior and that I was becoming more angry on Facebook. I eventually stopped going to Facebook and am more or less throwing myself into my work and video games.
I wish there was more I could do to fight this administration and lend my efforts to make sure it doesn't win again, but man the damage that is being done on a daily basis makes me wish Trump and Pence would just get COVID-19 and drop dead so we can have someone more competent in charge.
raydude wrote: ↑Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:07 am
I used to vent my frustrations on Facebook, taking on friends and family who were spreading false information about the coronavirus or about how well the Federal government is responding to it. It was concerning my wife and a few friends who noticed my change in behavior and that I was becoming more angry on Facebook. I eventually stopped going to Facebook and am more or less throwing myself into my work and video games.
I wish there was more I could do to fight this administration and lend my efforts to make sure it doesn't win again, but man the damage that is being done on a daily basis makes me wish Trump and Pence would just get COVID-19 and drop dead so we can have someone more competent in charge.
I take it out on twitter randos.
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
Here's a long, methodical look at how the next two years might unfold. If I had the attention span I'd come back then and see how they did. Myself, I wouldn't want to be in the Nostradamus business while everything is still upside down. Anyway, it's all plausible from where we sit in the innocent days of 4/20.