Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Felya]

All proceeds go to Covid relief fund... See link in description for details:

[PACOX]

It's crazy how even the countries that have done great work against this still cannot control it.
Slight lapse in South Korea ends with new outbreak that can fuck everything up for them

New Zealand, probably one of the best examples of a good lockdown and strict policy gets an outbreak and no one can even figure out how

Seriously, fuck Corona.

If Korea and NZ screwed up...damn.

How about that Russian vaccine (that's a joke, stay away from that thing).

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I'm not convinced. To me it also seems possible that someone broke quarantine and is hiding it.

I'm with you. Catching an airborne virus from food, nonetheless frozen food is weird. It would put COVID19 on a whole different level or infectious diseases.

[Edge-]

I'm with you. Catching an airborne virus from food, nonetheless frozen food is weird. It would put COVID19 on a whole different level or infectious diseases.

Also, should have happened earlier if it was possible, no? I don't know how long it takes to go from animal/plant to the supermarket freezer section, but it can't be 6+ months, so if it was truly a case of transmission via frozen foods we should be seeing this more often.

Hell, given the fact that we know slaughterhouses in the US are hotbeds of the virus to the point where Trump had to use the DPA to give meatpackers legal immunity from liability (that's all it did) it should have DEFINITELY happened by now.

[PhaelixWW]

Except I don't see any real evidence for that, no graphs, and not even the real record number. If you look at the WHO dashboard it's not the highest daily number.

I think CNN keeps tabs on the WHO logs, not the tracker, and those logs may show increases by report time, not by date of incident, so you're likely to get some clusters of days reported together, but tabulated to their incident date before they get to the tracker. IIRC, this is always how CNN has reported the numbers, going back to the beginning. As long as they're being consistent, then it's still somewhat meaningful. After all, even the WHO tracker lists Saturday as the second highest daily total, and only by about 700 cases.

In other news, worldometers just loaded in a bunch of backfill, and added 19k total cases to the last week since 8/10, a few thousand per day, with over 6k added to Saturday. Most of this was catching back up with Spain, which as I mentioned a week ago doesn't seem to report anything over the weekend and which is experiencing a very major resurgence of infection.

[Corvus]

The large scale lockdown in Melbourne seems to be doing its job. Daily numbers have dropped a long way from their peak (though there are still too many.) Sadly plenty of deaths during the period, mostly elderly, but they did include some in their 20s and 30s.

The problem is that by far the largest spreaders of the virus and those in their 20s and 30s who are a little more lax in their attitudes to it.

In a piece of slightly good news, after a bad flu season last year, there hasn't been a singe flu death all winter, partly due to social distancing but mostly due to a mass flu immunisation roll out when covid hit. Take that anti-vaxers.

[Cynep]

Cynep is the most dishonest poster in this thread.

Ad hominem indicates you have no other argument; also nope, disagreeing with your beliefs does not make me a sinner.

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I would like to understand what is his rationale for denying that virus is more and more widespread in the first place.

I'll take this question. First of all, no, what I'm saying is, daily cases have stopped growing, not whatever you ascribed to me. (I'll discuss whether or not my statement is correct, in a week)

Second, it would be stupid to "deny that virus is more and more widespread", actually virus will be spreading for many more months. Declining daily cases would mean the virus is still growing, but growing more slowly than it was before. (which is good news for everyone except doomsayers and fearmongers)

To summarize, gaslighting is bad, attention when reading is good.

[MCMLXXXII]

Ad hominem indicates you have no other argument; also nope, disagreeing with your beliefs does not make me a sinner

I have no other arguments then Phaelix, which you just don't seem to/want to understand. I won't put anymore energy in this discussion with you.

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Sure...

CNN: WHO reports record global Covid-19 increase over 24 hours

WHO: New weekly record of 1,825,621:

See that last bar, it's declining! /s

[xenogear3]

If you take a vaccine and die, it doesn't count as COVID-19 death.

It counts as a medical accident.

[Easo]

I'll take this question. First of all, no, what I'm saying is, daily cases have stopped growing, not whatever you ascribed to me. (I'll discuss whether or not my statement is correct, in a week)

Second, it would be stupid to "deny that virus is more and more widespread", actually virus will be spreading for many more months. Declining daily cases would mean the virus is still growing, but growing more slowly than it was before. (which is good news for everyone except doomsayers and fearmongers)

To summarize, gaslighting is bad, attention when reading is good.

So let me ask you again - the recent WHO announcement about record daily cases was what? Virus slowdown?

[Zantos]

You'd be surprised just how many people expect SARS-CoV-2 to just... go away. They see any decline in the virus as a sign of the impending disappearance. These are often the same exact people who complain about the continued measures which are the reason for whatever localized declining that does actually occur.

I guess if you don't think the measures are actually doing anything, then it's easy to think that any decline must therefore be permanent...

People seem to be hopeful that we can get herd immunity and just sorta make it vanish that way. But, we have too many who can get infected to every actually hit herd immunity. I know someone whose sister got reinfected within 1 month of having just got over it. We would need a wide scale, proven, vaccine to reach any type of immunity. We can decline all we want, we still have no evidence of if or for how long one would be immune after getting over it.

[unfilteredJW]

To summarize, gaslighting is bad, attention when reading is good.

Tell us about that peak again.

[Simca]

Slightly off-topic, but relevant to the discussion 2 pages ago:
The annoying thing about American politics is that if the voters could actually vote on the issues, most of the current crises in policy would be solved.

• Most people support tighter border security (not necessarily a wall lol) and tougher enforcement of deportation rules (a majority of republicans and a minority of democrats, but it adds up to well over half).
• Most people support government healthcare for all plans (a majority of democrats and a minority of republicans, but it adds up to well over half).
• Most people support reducing military spending (a majority of democrats and a minority of republicans, but it adds up to well over half - neither party supports this btw, despite the population supporting it).
• Most people supported the extension of legal protections in the Civil Rights Act to cover LGBT groups (like a huge percentage of the population), but Congress failed to legislate the issue for over a decade and a half. The Supreme Court had to step in (and reprimanded Congress for not doing their fucking jobs).

Politicians and political parties these days don't really give a flying fuck what their voters want. Politicians only care about toeing the party line, not standing as a reflection of the views of the people who elected them. Oh well, it's not like that is LITERALLY THEIR FUCKING JOB.

However, we can't make any headway despite how the country's population feels because there's only 2 parties and they have to take opposite stances on every single issue, even if they really don't give much a shit about the issue. The population only gets one real vote, and that vote elects a ridiculously broad range of policies in the form of a president that they only agree with mostly.

I don't really see any solution to fix it. The smart thing to do would just be to rewrite parts of the constitution in a better and more modern way to decentralize power, that gives more power directly to voters and reduces the power placed in the executive branch and legislative branch by locking them to policies mandated by voters (or something similar to that). But that would never happen. Nobody would even suggest that. There's a die-hard fanatical element to American culture that glorifies the revolution and holds up the constitution as perfect and infallible (ignoring the number of times it has had to be amended).

Later European democracies were usually done better because they took the framework provided by the American constitution and then iterated on it, usually decentralizing power further. Hell, most of the U.S. state constitutions are better too.

[Cynep]

I have no other arguments then Phaelix, which you just don't seem to/want to understand. I won't put anymore energy in this discussion with you.

Phaelix calls me wrong, because we disagree on facts. A discussion worth having, despite PhaelixWW's overly emotional style. Time will tell who's wrong who's right, but wrongfully accusing someone in being wrong doesn't make the accuser bad, just mistaken.

You on the other hand call me dishonest, because apparently I offended your personal feelings somehow (or the other reason I won't name), and you're not capable of proving me wrong. And wrongfully accusing someone in being dishonest automatically makes the accuser a bad person.

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So let me ask you again - the recent WHO announcement about record daily cases was what? Virus slowdown?

Couldn't find the WHO announcement, only the CNN one, but if it's about record cases then it's about record cases :| I promised to wait a week before commenting on that topic. If you can read graphs, you can understand what I said back then and why I said it.

I too have a few questions for you (and anyone else who wants to answer). For context, my "country" is doing worse than Latvia but better than Finland, so rather well; most people don't care much about the pandemic despite 10-30 cases every day. I feel I'm noticeably off-center towards the alarmist side here.

So my question is, living in an even safer country, how concerned are people you meet face-to-face IRL compared to you? I mean, when it comes to Covid, is your concern level typical for where you are, or you're an outlier? Is this a cultural difference between your society and mine? Also, is it politically incorrect for someone to signal that they're just concerned about the pandemic instead of terribly scared? Here it's the opposite, to underestimate Covid is the norm.

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Tell us about that peak again.

I will, be patient.

[Easo]

Couldn't find the WHO announcement, only the CNN one, but if it's about record cases then it's about record cases :| I promised to wait a week before commenting on that topic. If you can read graphs, you can understand what I said back then and why I said it.

I too have a few questions for you (and anyone else who wants to answer). For context, my "country" is doing worse than Latvia but better than Finland, so rather well; most people don't care much about the pandemic despite 10-30 cases every day. I feel I'm noticeably off-center towards the alarmist side here.

So my question is, living in an even safer country, how concerned are people you meet face-to-face IRL compared to you? I mean, when it comes to Covid, is your concern level typical for where you are, or you're an outlier? Is this a cultural difference between your society and mine? Also, is it politically incorrect for someone to signal that they're just concerned about the pandemic instead of terribly scared? Here it's the opposite, to underestimate Covid is the norm.

I will, be patient.

Pretty sure a week has passed since you first said to wait week...

No, we are not really worried, because idiocy is an universal human flaw and the first wave passed us very lightly as can be seen by our results.
We are both from ex-USSR states, some level of similar mentality is to be expected.

[unfilteredJW]

Phaelix calls me wrong, because we disagree on facts. A discussion worth having, despite PhaelixWW's overly emotional style. Time will tell who's wrong who's right, but wrongfully accusing someone in being wrong doesn't make the accuser bad, just mistaken.

You on the other hand call me dishonest, because apparently I offended your personal feelings somehow (or the other reason I won't name), and you're not capable of proving me wrong. And wrongfully accusing someone in being dishonest automatically makes the accuser a bad person.

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Couldn't find the WHO announcement, only the CNN one, but if it's about record cases then it's about record cases :| I promised to wait a week before commenting on that topic. If you can read graphs, you can understand what I said back then and why I said it.

I too have a few questions for you (and anyone else who wants to answer). For context, my "country" is doing worse than Latvia but better than Finland, so rather well; most people don't care much about the pandemic despite 10-30 cases every day. I feel I'm noticeably off-center towards the alarmist side here.

So my question is, living in an even safer country, how concerned are people you meet face-to-face IRL compared to you? I mean, when it comes to Covid, is your concern level typical for where you are, or you're an outlier? Is this a cultural difference between your society and mine? Also, is it politically incorrect for someone to signal that they're just concerned about the pandemic instead of terribly scared? Here it's the opposite, to underestimate Covid is the norm.

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I will, be patient.

Keep up with the broken clock cosplay then.

[Granyala]

I don't really see any solution to fix it.

The fix is actually super simple (at least for the voting part): create more parties with more varied political agendas.
Or can't you Americans do that? Why only 2 parties with polar opposites?

As for making them politicians do their actual jobs: well ... umm.. no clue how to do that lol.

[Forogil]

The fix is actually super simple (at least for the voting part): create more parties with more varied political agendas.
Or can't you Americans do that? Why only 2 parties with polar opposites?

They likely cannot do that, since they worship their constitution which is hard to change (as Simca also wrote), and it gives the states the power to allocate seats and thus it will be really hard to change the first-past-the-poll systems at least for the large states that matter, since that system gives the states and/or the governing party in the states more power than a proportional system. The only alternative would be local parties - but there is no clearly separate part like Scotland in the UK.

[Katchii]

They likely cannot do that, since they worship their constitution which is hard to change (as Simca also wrote), and it gives the states the power to allocate seats and thus it will be really hard to change the first-past-the-poll systems at least for the large states that matter, since that system gives the states and/or the governing party in the states more power than a proportional system. The only alternative would be local parties - but there is no clearly separate part like Scotland in the UK.

The constitution actually says nothing about the number of political parties, there is no requirement to have only two parties in the US.

[Shadowferal]

The constitution actually says nothing about the number of political parties, there is no requirement to have only two parties in the US.

It's great that the US Constitution and related doesn't say that...now show me the money. Because that's the ugly reality check.

[Granyala]

The constitution actually says nothing about the number of political parties, there is no requirement to have only two parties in the US.

Thank you. This is what I meant.
make new parties with more diversified portfolios -> get the states to recognize them once they surpass a certain %age of voters and let the state assign seats according to their totals.

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now show me the money. Because that's the ugly reality check.

You mean campaign funding?
Should work the same for 3 or 5 parties as it does for 2.
Ultimately, the party program needs to convince people to back them up, both with campaign money and with votes.