I'll embrace, but whatever, I applaud that then — Hanover

Too easy. :halo:

That’s just untrue. No one has ever said nor implied such an idea, and such a dangerous straw man is an incitement to violence. — NOS4A2

I backup my assertion with explaining a high-profile argument for the pile of dead bodies.

Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, and many on the internet and beyond, are exactly arguing for the pile of dead bodies.

“As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?” And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in. — Dan Patrick

Is an argument for "let's have a pile of dead bodies" in no uncertain terms.

But I'm glad you're not taking such a position, I'm sure you'll go ahead and educate yourself on the science of this issue and realize all the governments are doing the same thing for a reason: the deaths from the pandemic are simply way higher than indirect harm to small business and jobs for a significant amount of time. People who lose their business can survive (likely only with government handouts and free retraining and free health-care, yes) but can survive and go on to do something else; relatively few would actually die from the loss of livelihood (when people lose their livelihood due to "technology disruption" or "triple A junk mortgages blowing up the financial system" it's just "creative destruction", nothing to lament, no reason to keep those jobs around because people "bounce back", and those that don't aren't the general rule). One small business bankruptcy or livelihood gone does not equal one death, whereas one death from the virus does equal one death; this is the basic math you are missing; while "affected individuals" are larger in magnitude in the economic category, they are not equal to deaths.

:lol:

Prove it wrong LOGICALLY rather than just engage in ad hominem attack - if you can. Prove the virus did not originate in the US. I’d love to hear a good argument.


Don’t just claim something is wrong without factually backing it up.

“...Virologist and pharmacologist who performed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus. He spends the first part of the video explaining the various haplotypes (varieties, if you will), and explains how they are related to each other, how one must have come before another, and how one type derived from another....

One of his main points is that the type infecting Taiwan exists only in Australia and the US and, since Taiwan was not infected by Australians, the infection in Taiwan could have come only from the US.

The basic logic is that the geographical location with the greatest diversity of virus strains must be the original source because a single strain cannot emerge from nothing. He demonstrated that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may have originated in the US.”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-coronavirus-shocking-update/5705196

“The study found that 93 samples received contained 58 haplotypes. The haplotypes of patients from the South China seafood market were related to H1, while the more ancient gene types H3, H13, and H38 were from outside the South China seafood market.”
https://cntechpost.com/2020/03/08/behind-the-suspected-mutation-of-covid-19/

He’s arguing he’s willing to take a chance with his own health and survival, and he, like anyone else, can take proactive steps to do just that. This is the spirit of people who aren’t gripped by an incessant need for safety and coddling.

You are unable to peer through the tyranny of uncertainty to any foreseeable future. All you have is your math, which doesn’t even require you to look up from your desk for any given amount of time.

This thread points to some intractable misunderstanding about what's happening. It's the effect of the myth, I think. — frank

Yes, definitely is far gone into myth of American exceptionalism and doesn't understand the situation. I agree with you there.

However, in NOS4A2's defense, it's really difficult to understand the political significance of the virus, that people are unlikely to simply continue as normal as fast as possible. It is the change of psychology, both within the US and how the world views the US during this situation, that is of historic significance.

It is very tempting to have the fallback position of the friendly platitude "we've always had pandemics", which is true, but that is not really a comforting historical parallel, as pandemics have nearly always brought profound social and political change; the very thing the right in America fear most. So it is quite understandable that denial is preferred over inconvenient truths.

He’s arguing he’s willing to take a chance with his own health and survival, and he, like anyone else, can take proactive steps to do just that. This is the spirit of people who aren’t gripped by an incessant need for safety and coddling. — NOS4A2

The logical implication of a large group of people playing Russian roulette, even with a few dozen chambers, is a pile of dead bodies.

You cannot both simultaneously advocate society risk all these people's lives (without a probability of death it is not "taking a chance" as you say) and deny those odds on a large scale won't result in a pile of dead bodies. It is intrinsic to the concept.

You could argue there is no risk and therefore "taking the chance" is not actually taking a chance it's just being strong and not being "gripped by an incessant need for safety and coddling". However, the problem with such an argument is that bodies piling up say otherwise; or, rather, they would say otherwise if their mouths weren't frozen shut lying in the back of a refrigerated truck.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Cuomo totally fucked up too. Except he wasn't the one actively downplaying the issue while being briefed about the severity and Mulvaney was having daily meetings on CV. Gone by April he said. — Benkei

Places with most tourists and business links around the World will be first hit and that has seemed to happen to North Italy and New York. Of course now would be the time to prepare for the places that haven't been hit. But except New Zealand, it's typically that the economy is put into first place.

For New York I think 5th of March was when they lost containment:


When you don't have the connection to travel and cannot make the path of the infection, then only thing is "flattening the curve". Cuomo declared state of Emergency two days later. But I guess shelter-in orders came only later (24th of March).

And it's most definitely in the right thread. An important part of why Corona is as bad as it is, is trump not listening to advisors and in fact communicating the totally opposite of what he should've been doing in order to get Average Joe prepared. — Benkei

Likely even worse was that we didn't learn from the SARS and the Ebola outbreaks that an international effort and coordination in the prevention would have been the best case. Hopefully after this pandemic more resources go into prevention of outbreaks. But then only when people see how bad it can be do they take it seriously.

Nice sarcasm on the Nostradamus BTW. — Benkei

:razz:

Two points to make re: the economy vs. health 'debate'.

First, there isn't a debate. 'Opening for business' before the spread is contained will kill the economy. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no idea how an economy works, and is arguing, more so than those who would see this virus contained, that the economy ought to be shuttered even more than it currently is. You're a fucking idiot by even your own standard.

Second, a declaration by elites that the economy is in fact open in the midst of rising numbers of infection and death will be met by strikes so crippling that again, the precious economy will be murdered anyway. The strikes happening in Italy are but a premonition of what will pass. Nobody not in an armchair is willing to die for the rich - die for the Dow, as they say - and workers will walk off the job long before they begin to serve burritos at your local tex-mex.

Corollary: in light of the above, those who think there really is a debate are, regardless of intention, effectively arguing both that the economy ought to be crippled to the largest possible extent, and that more people ought to die than necessary. The worst possible outcome.

By peeing in a Venitian canal? — frank

I know of no other way to celebrate. We're not all professional party planners like you.

Comrade NYT, surprisingly, has a nice article on how capitalist profit imperatives enabled the world's richest country to lack .75c masks when anyone with the relevant knowledge - including the government - could see the need for it long ago:

"Few in the protective equipment industry are surprised by the shortages, because they’ve been predicted for years. In 2005, the George W. Bush administration called for the coordination of domestic production and stockpiling of protective gear in preparation for pandemic influenza. In 2006, Congress approved funds to add protective gear to a national strategic stockpile — among other things, the stockpile collected 52 million surgical face masks and 104 million N95 respirator masks.

But about 100 million masks in the stockpile were deployed in 2009 in the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic, and the government never bothered to replace them. This month, Alex Azar, secretary of health and human services, testified that there are only about 40 million masks in the stockpile — around 1 percent of the projected national need."

https://nyti.ms/2QKKZn0

I question it too. My general impression of the situation has me seriously worried for the poorest. If my worries are unfounded it would be nice to see evidence.

The poorest live of the refuse of others. They earn a few dollars a day from menial work. That work has already stopped.

9 million now could increase quite easily to over 100 million when you consider the countries I’ve mentioned. 7% unemployed (70+ million). 9 million global in one year could easily turn into 10+ million in one year in India alone. Then there is next year where lockdowns may well still be in effect in some areas and even if they’re not the economy will have taken such a hit that the death toll due to starvation, although receding, will still exceed 9 million.

I think everyone is responsible. We cannot expect less developed countries to deal with this like other countries (where poverty is a far more serious issue).

Some articles are coming out now addressing this issue.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/indias-homeless-shelters-struggle-meet-demand-200325190150342.html

Educate yourself instead of posting crap and then requiring me to refute the nonsense you post. Start here: https://nextstrain.org/

The argument is that we can take precautions—social distancing, hygiene, testing and protecting vulnerable populations—without having to end the livelihoods and enterprises of people throughout the globe. We certainly don’t need to do it based on the speculations and models of people who overestimate their ability to tell the future.

Yes, you pay them the equivalent of a universal income and put the economy into stasis. Then reboot it later.

The important thing is that you maintain social distancing, otherwise you are accepting that pile of bodies in the corner.

Corona. Next stop Brasil. I think the contenders for most deaths in the short term are Brasil and Iran. In the long run it will be India and China but that's once it's become seasonal.

The thing is the draconian measures you advocate are already in place: liberties suspended, movement restricted, economies ruined. The rule of law has been replaced by the rule of power and authority. You got what you wanted. Any argument about what might have happened had we done otherwise is counterfactual, and so is the “pile of bodies” you try to throw at my feet.

I have nothing to lose by criticizing the authoritarianism and the obsequious conformism we’ve flung over most of the world. If I’m wrong, that’s the end of it. If you’re wrong, on the other hand, history will never forget.

First, there isn't a debate. 'Opening for business' before the spread is contained will kill the economy..

What is the argument here? I'm not saying there isn't one, I'd just like to see its premises laid out.

Dr. Birx of the Coronavirus task force and the Center for Disease Control said in the daily press briefing:
“The predictions of the models don't match the reality on the ground”.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4864096/dr-deborah-birx-modeling

It’s also important from a boy-who-cried wolf standpoint. The more people remember experts and the media emphasizing projections that may not come close to the ultimate reality, the less they may take future warnings seriously.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/26/deborah-birxs-important-reminder-about-coronavirus-worst-case-scenarios/

Dr. Ioannidis was right, “As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”

There will be a reckoning.

Prove it wrong LOGICALLY rather than just engage in ad hominem attack - if you can. Prove the virus did not originate in the US. I’d love to hear a good argument. — Amore

With such types (i.e., head in the sand, ignorance is bliss, fragile psyche, don't confuse me with the facts, snowflake, conspiracy denier, etc.), it's far more entertaining to wait for the branch they are sitting on to snap.
Francis Boyle Interview

From a new report co-authored by Dr. Fauci for the New England Journal of Medicine:

On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

First of all, the operative word in the quote is "ultimately", e.g. once the disease has become endemic. Second, the article is not about what you're suggesting it's about but about "the ongoing challenge of emerging and reemerging infectious pathogens and the need for constant surveillance, prompt diagnosis, and robust research". Second, nobody here has bandied about 150 million but consistently argued, as the facts have borne out in other countries before, that if you don't act early and robustly your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.

From the same article: Community spread in the United States could require a shift from containment to mitigation strategies such as social distancing in order to reduce transmission. Such strategies could include isolating ill persons (including voluntary isolation at home), school closures, and telecommuting where possible.9

He's not arguing against the steps being taken because in the end it's not about the mortality or death rate or the number of people getting infected but the number of people requiring hospital care. So your whole argument for the past two pages is a straw man.

The WaPo article: The point isn’t that people shouldn’t take this lightly; it’s that precautions can work to prevent the country from realizing anything close to the number of infections and deaths that those worst-case forecasts suggest could result.

Do you even read what you post since it doesn't support the point you're making. Or has your point now evolved to the point we shouldn't paint doom scenarios of millions of infected and over a million dead?

I think everyone is responsible. We cannot expect less developed countries to deal with this like other countries (where poverty is a far more serious issue). — I like sushi

Absolutely. But of course the poorest will be hit hardest and fastest and are the most vulnerable to economic disruption. But this is not a reason to continue with the exploitative economy we had until now. UBI and nationalisation of essential assets here now because we can and it it is the least disruptive policy, and spread to other places asap. Vote unenlightened!

Sorry, I'm voting for Gordon Brown.
Former UK Prime Minister Calls For Global Government to Fight Coronavirus

There is a God.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/boris-johnson-positive-coronavirus?origin=shp&ref=hpsplash

Second, a declaration by elites that the economy is in fact open — StreetlightX

Stop right there.

That is Trump and the people that want to lick his ass. And some libertarian weirdos. That isn't the elite. Everybody else understands that the epidemic plays out in roughly about 6 months, even if it can come back then later.

Brown wants international organizations like the WHO and the UN to be given executive powers that would supersede national sovereignty as part of a new system overseen by world leaders and health experts.

Even as the virus was raging through China, the World Health Organization repeatedly insisted that countries should not impose any border controls.

He wants to give more powers to the body of experts that got it so very wrong for so very long.

The senile old fart doesn't get my vote.

Who profits?
Most of us have been played.

Who profits? — Galuchat

I don't know, who profits?

Wait - is it undertakers?

There is a God.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/boris-johnson-positive-coronavirus?origin=shp&ref=hpsplash — unenlightened

A deeply religious notion. God is responsible for all. Nice.