43 replies to this topic

[gcsnelling]

Well here it comes, the grand reopening. As mr. trump pushes the reopening of the country and essentially says we should be prepared to take one for the team and accept martyrdom.  The states are relegated to doing their own thing and it is like a scene from the Keystone cops,(sorry kids a old person reference).  I foresee a scene such as the one at the beginning of Bobs Burgers, grand re re re re re reopening. There is likely to be a surge in cases and although I have the deepest sympathy for those that are going to be infected by the stupidity of those around them ie: family and friends I for one have little sympathy for those that are willing/stupid enough to take one for the team and martyr themselves for his lowness the lord cheesepuff. I  am fortunate or unfortunate enough depending on how you look at it to be in an industry deemed essential so have been working however I am also observing as many of the safety  suggestions as is possible, especially when it comes to social distancing. So if you have at least half a brain do not run out to walmart, kroger, your nearest hair stylist or whatever first thing unless it is really truly necessary. Instead heed the words of the true visionary Samuel L. Jackson and "Stay the  "F" at home".

Edited by gcsnelling, May 10 2020 - 2:16 PM.

[Serafine]

 

 

If you want to stay updated on the numbers:

 

International*:

https://www.worldome...irus/#countries

 

US by individual states*:

https://www.theguard...-state-by-state

 

*Those obviously don't represent the real number of cases, just the ones tested/confirmed (and for the UK not even those because the UK counts patients who died in hospital ONLY, deaths at home and in care homes are ignored).

 

 

Good luck, you're going to need it.

Edited by Serafine, May 9 2020 - 2:01 PM.

[T.C.]

To be completely honest hard to say we shouldn't open this country back up. I watched a friend close his business last week because being shut down ruined him. Took him ten years to get where he was and he lost it all. The barber shop I go to as well closed permanently and i'm watching as things get dangerously slow for my dads business.  I myself have been out of work for 2 months know. Since then I have not seen any income at all from anywhere. This is killing me and a lot of other people I know. I can't continue like this for much longer or I will have to look into alternative living options. 

[Temperateants]

I agree with keeping the country closed for health, but making fun of people who are losing their livelihoods and people who are barely getting by is a pretty privileged thing to do. 

Edited by Temperateants, May 10 2020 - 11:25 AM.

[NickAnter]

Its not privileged. Its downright scummy and unforgiving.

[gcsnelling]

I didn't see anyone making fun of anybody. The fact is it sucks, I have the deepest sympathy for those losing their livelihoods and if we had strong, decent leadership we would not be in this mess to near the degree we are.

Edited by gcsnelling, May 10 2020 - 2:20 PM.

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

Obama even made a statement about how poorly the president is handling it...yikes mate...

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

 

 

If you want to stay updated on the numbers:

 

International*:

https://www.worldome...irus/#countries

 

US by individual states*:

https://www.theguard...-state-by-state

 

*Those obviously don't represent the real number of cases, just the ones tested/confirmed (and for the UK not even those because the UK counts patients who died in hospital ONLY, deaths at home and in care homes are ignored).

 

 

Good luck, you're going to need it.

He should have said fake news in this comic...Would have been funny, but it still works...

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

To be completely honest hard to say we shouldn't open this country back up. I watched a friend close his business last week because being shut down ruined him. Took him ten years to get where he was and he lost it all. The barber shop I go to as well closed permanently and i'm watching as things get dangerously slow for my dads business.  I myself have been out of work for 2 months know. Since then I have not seen any income at all from anywhere. This is killing me and a lot of other people I know. I can't continue like this for much longer or I will have to look into alternative living options. 

I am having to build myself a computer as I have a gut feeling my computer will break in the pandemic...I wish you and your loved ones well, and hope you don't have to stop doing what you love work wise...

[dspdrew]

We have a much bigger problem than businesses reopening, and people going back to work. It's stupid people. I don't blame anyone for wanting to go to work so they can pay their bills and feed their families. We eventually have to or else the problems are going to get even worse.  But there is no excuse for the majority of crap I see people doing during a pandemic like this. When you can minimize the spread of this virus by doing some of the simplest things that require little to no effort and are of no sacrifice at all, but choose not to, you are an idiot.

 

When I'm at the gas station filling up late at night and I'm the only person there, only an idiot pulls up to the pump just on the other side of me (happened to me twice now). They had every other pump at that gas station to choose from, and they chose that one. The person that brings the entire family of five to the store to pick up a bag of groceries, making it 5 times more likely that they will bring that virus home with them and spread it to the entire family. It's stuff like that that takes no effort at all to do what's smart, and people just don't even care enough to do that. This is why this will continue to spread out of control no matter what. The people in America are just too dumb to stop it.

Edited by dspdrew, May 10 2020 - 2:56 PM.

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

My neighbors think it's fine to go and throw their daughter's (about 10ish) birthday party with all I kid you not, every single f*cking friend she has, so yeah. Great thinking going on by me, just when I was having a good day I get a migraine from worrying about how dumb people are compared to how easily spreadable the virus is. Like, why can't we think. Australlia and New Zealand have no new cases, but we're potatoing this whole social distancing thing. I think to myself, that on the upside, the people stupid enough not to think before they do will get sorted out, but it's just simply wrong how little some people plan, let alone think. Especially in times like this.    

[Da_NewAntOnTheBlock]

There is so many other things as well that are simply illogical and frankly, stupid, but it seems people have also lost their common sense as well. I'll save you the headache, wait that's not the right word, ah, migraine of stupid things that have happened by me and also around the world. 

[RushmoreAnts]

This should be in the Politics, Religion and Culture subforum.

[Reacker]

It was obvious from the start of this that all rent and mortgages, both private and business, needed to be placed on pause for the duration of this. When most places announced a moratorium on evictions I thought that it was just a temporary measure until they instituted the greater regular suspension of payments.

 

I thought the 1200 was supposed to be the first of a much more comprehensive system to take care of even those people who normally work off of the books. 

 

In addition to all of the rest of the incompetence in the handling of this virus, neither of the two things above materialized. And so we are now in the situation where there are millions of people who are dissolving into insolvency that they will take years to recover from if they are able to do so at all. People are losing their small businesses that they have taken years or even a lifetime to build. Criticisms come out that these small business and individuals should have had money in the bank to survive months without income, but here we are bailing out major industries that spent the last 10 years spending the vast majority of their profits on reckless stock buybacks. Once again the public is being told that it is their responsibility to bail out the major industries that have spent the last few decades decreasing worker benefits and pay while themselves being told that they should have been more personally responsible. The expansion of unemployment benefits was supposed to take up the slack on this but estimates are that a large, double digit percentage of people have not received even a week's worth of unemployment despite qualifying. In states such as Florida the widespread failure of their unemployment system appears to be intentional and the rest of the states in the Union seem to fall somewhere along spectrum of insufficient capacity to handle the volume of requests or intentional failure to discourage people from claiming the benefits that they've earned.

 

This situation could have been avoided. The incompetence with which it has been handled seems likely to have been intentional; and similarly the result where tens of millions of people are now faced with the choice of utter destitution or exposure to a potentially deadly virus may have been intentional.

 

We also now know that the virus is not as deadly as was previously believed. The case fatality rate is likely well below 1% and seems to almost exclusively impact the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. This is not to downplay the impact that this will have on those people as this virus is still clearly more deadly than the normal seasonal flu that we have become accustomed to living with. A lot of people will die from this that otherwise could have lived much longer. I have seen suggestions that on average, those people killed by COVID would have on average another 10 years of life expectancy. But most people will not die. Most people will not even become severely ill. It is clear now that for the vast majority of people the consequences of contracting COVID will be unpleasant flu-like symptoms and an unusual degree of tiredness in the worst circumstances.

 

So now we find ourselves in a place we have two groups on offer as sacrifice for the other.. One group is the millions of people with pre-existing conditions (including age). The other group are the millions of people who are having their livelihoods obliterated. Those who can't work remotely, whose small businesses have been made effectively illegal while the largest essential industries are allowed to operate in often unsafe conditions. I have seen very little social distancing in grocery stores for instance, and certainly slaughter houses have been shown to be an excellent place to contract COVID.

 

And what is the point of the lockdown anyways? To keep everyone shut indoors until the virus disappears entirely? That was never going to happen and it certainly was not stated as the original purpose of the lockdown. It was to "flatten the curve"; to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. Well this has largely been accomplished; healthcare systems across the country are, in most places not overwhelmed. Another purpose of the shutdown was to buy additional time for our healthcare system and society to adapt to living with coronavirus; to build up supplies, training, case tracking teams, etc to ensure that the virus will not explode again once the restrictions are lifted. Has this happened? Are we now better prepared to handle something close to normal operations while also controlling the spread of corona? I would say largely no. We are in a much better place but reports coming out on the state of our testing capacity seem to largely show that we are unprepared. What about the PPE shortages? The federal government has undertaken a strategy of telling states that it is their responsibility to procure these supplies while simultaneously confiscating supplies purchased by these states without any stated reason or cause. The speculation on the reason for this is that these stolen supplies will be diverted to business partners of members of the current administration in another display of the corruption that has become routine in the Trump era.

 

What has two months of lockdown bought us? We are still not prepared to reopen society and likely never will be given the malicious degree of incompetence at the top. Our true unemployment rate is at Great Depression levels and will likely become worse as those workers who were previously able to work from home find themselves unnecessary due to decreased demand. Those in the most at-risk demographics may have been spared for now but estimates are that we will not see the end of COVID pandemic until 2021 which aligns with the most likely timetable for a vaccine. The majority of people will contract COVID over the next couple of years.

 

 

So what does further lockdown get us? Better preparedness for widespread coronavirus in society? Clearly there is no political will at the federal level to accomplish this, and they are actively sabotaging state efforts. Does it give us a vaccine? No, that is likely many months or years away. Does it make the virus disappear? No! Does it cause millions of Americans, the overwhelming majority of which would be essentially unharmed by Coronavirus, to become destitute? Yes! Does it destroy small businesses that have taken years or decades to build while the federal government rushes to hand tax payer money to major industries as fast as they can hoover it up? Yes!

 

In a better world with more competent leadership we would not be in this situation. We would have contact tracing and sufficient quantities of PPE and tests. But we don't live in that world and as much as I would like to live it in, the powers that be have shown that they are unwilling to make it happen. We may be able to resolve this in the next election cycle but that's too far into the future to matter now.

 

So given that we will never be prepared for widespread COVID in our society thanks to the lack of political will/competence, the incredible economic devastation being caused by the shutdown and again the maliciousness and lack of political will/competence necessary to provide a sufficient safety net to compensate for this, and finally that the overall level of threat to the vast majority of people is in actuality fairly low, does it make sense to continue the lockdown with the associated costs? Keep in mind that the economy and employment is not just about income; it is directly related to health and well being of regular working people. We are sacrificing the health and well being of a huge portion of society for the dubious long-term benefit of another somewhat overlapping portion of society. How did we decide that one group's welfare is expendable to protect another's? It's plainly obvious that we've been manipulated into this situation by the malicious incompetence of our political leaders, but I also don't see that we have an alternative.

 

Opening up with the lack of care and preparedness that we are going to be exercising is a bad option. But it's also the best option realistically available to us. We will have coronavirus regardless of how much longer we maintain the lockdowns, and we will also clearly not be any better prepared. Working people have already sacrificed months of lost income without recompense in many instances, and in return all of us get to experience a second Great Depression that is likely to be similarly mishandled by our leadership.

 

I can only hope that people will remember in November both the incompetence and malicious corruption that the current Administration and political party in office have displayed in bringing us to this point, but I really doubt it. Some demographics really enjoy voting for politicians that consider their constituents to be expendable. Ironically that group seems likely to be disproportionately impacted by the mishandling of this crisis.

Edited by Reacker, May 10 2020 - 5:02 PM.

[NickAnter]

    And, lets not forget the many idiotic, power-loving Governors. Yes, it makes lots of sense to prohibit people from buying gardening seeds, yet let liquor stores be considered essential!!!! That is an utter outrage in my opinion, as these liquor stores are just fueling alcoholism, which will likely increase due to increase in depression.  And, in California, homeless people are being given free drugs! Surely we should not encourage people to kill themselves and turn themselves into psychopaths with drugs?

 

   Also, lets not forget, the people in government have a guaranteed pay-check. Most people don't. That's why you have people like Nancy Pelosi, who can show everyone her massive freezer filled to the brim with ice-cream, while many Americans struggle to feed their families. And of course she, and many other people in congress of both parties, did not want to go back to work, they were perfectly content to just sit around and enjoy the high life without having to exercise an ounce of mental power to solve some issues.  The Executive Branch can't do everything, and is often highly incompetent as we have seen many times(H1N1, as another example.)

 

  A great model in my opinion for most of rural America, is Sweden. They, on the whole did not do too much worse than Norway, and Norway flattened their economy, whole Sweden did not, and kept many jobs.

Of course, this model won't work for extremely high density areas, but would work for pretty much all rural areas. In this way, if the elderly and otherwise compromised are protected, and others become immune, it will become much less of a problem.

 

  Another thing is holding the people responsible. Which country banned every flight within their country, but did not give a damn about flights going out of their country off to infect the world. Who might that country who silenced and disappeared doctors who tired to blow the whistle? Who is it? Maybe China? The Chine Communist Party needs to pay for what they unleashed, and held back, such as the fact that it could spread from human to human.  A lot needs to be done on that front, including making sure that we are not dependent upon China for any medical supplies. If they had wanted to, they could have killed thousands, maybe millions of people by refusing to export these supplies.

 

  Another thing that we see is the issues of high density housing. High density housing, and places in general, are just disease outbreaks waiting to happen. Look at New York City. They are extremely dense, the government mentally, and they were hit extremely hard.  Many cities have hardly any deaths.  They should respond proportionately. The less dense areas less prone to easy spreading should reopen faster, at least those with enough hospital capacity, so that they do not collapse through either a shortage of supplies, or economic breakdown. Many have already been destroyed by the latter.

 

  Also, what was there on the front of malicious corruption? ( this is not rhetorical)

 

  Here is the summary in bullet points:

 

-We need to cut off our dependence on China.

-The federal government is incompetent.

-The "solution" can cause nearly as many problems as the problem.

-The government should not treat all of the American people except themselves like children.

Edited by NickAnter, May 10 2020 - 5:36 PM.

[Serafine]

When you can minimize the spread of this virus by doing some of the simplest things that require little to no effort and are of no sacrifice at all, but choose not to, you are an idiot.

"But mu freedom!!!"

 

That's the problem you get if you tell people over and over and over again that the state shouldn't interfere with anything in a citizens private life and completely leave it's hands off the economy (unless it's time to bail it out with craptons of money because that's totally not corporate socialism at all).

 

The result is a culture where citizens won't listen to their government even if it tries to save their lives because who are they to tell them what to do, then add to this an absolutely disastrous economic response by said government leaving thousands of small businesses to go under in the name of capitalism - we've seen the EXACT same issue in both the UK and the US, two states with VERY libertarian governments that are also considered untrustworthy liars even by their own supporters.

 

The data I've seen says 50% of all small business in the US are in immediate danger of shutting down permanently. Does the government bother about them? No, it doesn't (and neither do the house or the senate). But at least the stock market is fine, because most politicians (from both parties) think the stock market equals the economy.

Problem is the only reason the stock market is still "fine" is because the shareholders are convinced that this will be over soon and that the government will bail them out at all cost, no matter how unsustainable their businesses actually are. They may be about to find out that this crisis won't go away anytime soon, experts are already predicting a second wave (the Spanish Flu came in three waves and it's second one was much worse than the first)

 

The main truth this crisis has revealed is that the US in many aspects is basically the most technologically advanced third world country on the planet.

Actually scratch that, I doubt any third world country has it's unemployment infrastructure running on COBOL.

 

What we're seeing here is nothing less than the slow death of a global superpower - if the United States don't get their crap together and start fixing their healthcare, education, student loan debt, rampant nepotistic capitalism and this epic disaster Trump calls his foreign policy the Soviet Union won't be the last powerhouse we see crash and burn in our lifetime.

 

Trump has paved a nice downwards slope by putting off US allies in the middle east (to a point were the parliament of Iraq has voted to throw US troops out of their country and several middle-eastern and african countries have banned the US military from conducting operations within their borders, also let's not forget how he threw the kurds - one of the closest and most reliable US allies for DECADES - under the bus after a single phone call with the turkish president, totally not suspicious at all, and basically handed Syria over to the russians),

picking a dumb trade war with China that did nothing but devastate US farmers to a point where he needed to bail them out (he sold the return to pre trade war conditions as a victory and some people were even dumb enough to believe it - well, at least Ivanka got all her chinese trademarks so there's that),

trying to pick an even dumber trade war with the EU (he quickly stepped down from that when the EU threatened to target products made in red states, specifically those with house delegates and senators facing reelection),

making the US utterly irrelevant in anything related to environment protection,

constantly insulting and opposing all of his western allies and making such a joke out of the american presidency that the title "leader of the western world" - a title that since WW2 has always been carried by a US president - went to german chancellor Angela Merkel (also thanks for encouraging europeans to finally get their crap together and move one step closer to an actual pan-european army).

 

What Trump is really achieving by pulling the US out of everything (latest on the list was the WHO) is teaching the world, particularly the other western countries, that they don't need America and can (necesarilly) get stuff down without it.

Do you really think if some future US president comes along telling them "follow me, I'll lead the the way!" the western world will follow? After they've had to endure all this mess? When European Union regulations are already the worldwide gold standard? When even the US chamber of commerce tells the UK not to move away from EU regulations and closer to US regulations because this will actually make it harder for US corporations to conduct business with the UK? When the US has proven utterly unreliable by backing out of international commitments and treaties because they were negotiated by previous governments (Iran nuclear treaty, Paris climate treaty) or some president needs to project it's own failures on someone else (like blaming the WHO for the Corona pandemic response he botched)?

No way. This loss of reputation and influence is unrecoverable and will change the US' place in the world to a lesser one forever.

Edited by Serafine, May 10 2020 - 6:22 PM.

[BugFinder]

The shelter in place was started for one reason only:  to prevent our healthcare system from being over run.  Now that we have reached the peak of the first wave, and our hospitals are way below capacity, it's time to reopen the economy.   

[dspdrew]

The shelter in place was started for one reason only:  to prevent our healthcare system from being over run.  Now that we have reached the peak of the first wave, and our hospitals are way below capacity, it's time to reopen the economy.   

 

Yeah, just like a fat guy on a diet. Now that he lost enough weight to keep himself from dying, it's time to hit McDonalds again...

[Serafine]

"Hey, I already feel a bit better, I don't need to take the rest of my antibiotics..."

 

There is only one place in the US that is likely to be over the peak permanently, that's the state of New York and they paid their price - 25.000 people died, almost a third of all Corona deaths in the US so far.

Any other place should brace for a second wave, which most experts are sure is going to come.

 

Thunderf00t made this nice graphic a few days ago, it really says it all (blue is old data that was used to predict the pink line, orange is new data showing a different reality):

[BugFinder]

If you don't want to work, don't go.    I don't think anyone is forcing you to leave your home.  We are all going to get this virus, it's not going away.  The goal was never to stop the virus from killing people, it was always to prevent people from dying due to lack of care becuase our hospitals were over capacity.    Many of our hospitals are so under capacity now doctors are being furlouged, and we are sending excess ventilators over seas because we have many more than we need.