Coronavirus

Grinds the gears.

 

Several other countries have stopped Corona epidemics cold or have slowed them down to a crawl before they really got going, thereby buying time for the health system to adjust and keeping the number of active cases down(to be fair, the US seems to be in the process of adopting the same strategies). Had Trump responded in January when the first cases were known by declaring a medical emergency (as happened in april 2009 during the Obama administration then there were a total of 20 cases and no deaths), there would not be 160.000 plus known cases in the US at this moment, with who knows how many more out there. Probably not even half of that. Maybe that is hindsight, maybe its simply a desire to see politicians act on basic science about diseases. Surely exponential growth should be known to both politicians and businessmen.

Two critical months were spent on assurances and minimization, as well as ridiculous party wars (for which you can and should blame both sides), and it seems to me no one is calling on the people in charge of the federal government to account for their actions or lack thereof during that timeframe. Yet the fact remains, they knew about Corona for two months, had but to look to China to see the chaos, and they did nothing. Not in January where it started spreading, not in february where people started dying by the dozens, and not during the first half of march. Not until the dead could be counted by the hundreds and the infected numbered in the tens of thousands were the borders shut down and govenors started receiving the aid they needed all along to slow Corona down.

So yeah, as you can hear the stupidity and inaction is starting to get to me . It also offends me that several other countries are taking Corona so lightly, as it means more of our citizens will be infected and die in the future.

 

I don't recall any efforts made for swine flue. That was a shit show, schools were only saying just stay home if you got the flue, which didn't work. I might not have known about the efforts I suppose, but I missed weeks of labs, and you couldn't be seen in the clinics, they were booked for the rest of the semester.

 

You are also forgetting the media lambasting Trump for ending travel from China. Biden called it a xenophobic move. You had the mayor of New York until march encouraging people to go out and not to be afraid. In London you had the mayor in march encouraging people to keep using the tubes. We had the media saying this was just the flu up until Trump played it down then it was the worst thing ever. When I prepped in early February CNN labeled people like me conspiracy theorist who over reacted.

To claim that our leaders are free from flaws would be a lie, but to complain they were listening to the experts at the time (yes the WHO was downplaying this and final got serious after on a federal we were already taking action) makes them completely inept would be wrong.

I hate having to defend politicians, but since we are stuck with them I will give them praise when they are at least doing a better job than most peers in the developed world.

 

Agreed. I think we agree on more things than not.

 

I would love to see a flow chart of false information and who started it and another for true information that was considered false or not popular. Was there a Twitter post that was kidding but now is spread like it's true: covid thriving on ibuprofen.

 

I hate to say it, but some of the things the US holds dear are working against you now.

The very fact anyone in the media can tell lies with impunity means you can't stop a panic starting. Not sure if it's true or not, but the word was the toilet paper panic started on US tv, with commentators joking about how much they had stockpiled. Within 4 hours, all the shelves were empty country wide, and the rest of the world was following along.

I know you love your constitution in the US, but some of your rights are only going to get people killed these days. It's way past time the constitution was updated for the tv and digital age, and people were held accountable for their lies. That includes politicians. Ours are no better, but politics is all about who can tell the bigger lie and get away with it, and that is no way to run countries in this sort of crisis.

Freedom of the press carries responsibilities to the truth, and these days, there is no truth in the media, or it's so lost in the lies you can't tell it is the truth when you find it.

In a world where every 2 years we get another of these health crisis, we can no longer afford a corrupt and sensation seeking media. Or politicians who lie.

 

Our constitution is fine and the blatant unconstitutional power grabs are deeply disconcerting. The problem is we are not enforcing anti trust laws, we have given utility protection to companies like Facebook, and google despite them acting like publishers.

There are problems but they are not with the founding ideals rather the erosion of them.

 

So you're fine with blatant lying with no consequences?

 

The toilet paper thing was going to happen anyway. It will keep being a problem until we all get bidets.
Also a squatty potty

 

...make speech not a right? I could see the authoritarian side of our governments loving that.

 

There are laws against libel and slander. If we had a healthy news media then we could have people we trust the help cut through the bs. Unfortunately today all of them are partisan hacks. It would be fine if they were partisan hacks if they admitted it, agreed on actual facts, and then in order to get the truth watch both sides of the argument with grains of salt, and realize the events they base there arguments on are the facts and the rest is opinion.

We have all seen videos of every network straight up making up bs and using manipulation to show the inverse of reality. If we also stopped the massive conglomeration of news networks and foriegn investment in our news that would help as well.

Side note on the tp. Yes it was kicked off by the media, but tp is a large item so there is limited quantity on the shelf. That makes it much more visible when people start buying slightly more than average. Also, when you haven't seen tp on the shelf for weeks after the initial "run on the tp" and you know you need some and you don't know when the selves will be full again you pick up a couple extra rolls.

It makes completely since despite all the jokes about people not being able to eat tp and this not being a stomach virus.

 

It may well have been. On the other hand, h1n1 killed about 1 in 4876. Obama declared it a national emergency after it had infected 60.8 million, and killed 12.000+.

Corona hospitalizes somewhere between 5 and 15 % of infected, most of whom would die if they did not receive care. A flood of infected will hit US hospitals in the coming weeks especially in New York, and unless I have massively overestimated the scale, will create situations reminiscent of northern Italy, except it will be even worse (hard to imagine as they are already moving trucks piled with corpses). Currently, Corona kills less than 1 in 34, but it is still at least a hundred times deadlier than h1n1. Once hospitals in Italy were overloaded with patients, they reported mortality rates between 7 and 10 percent. Sometimes higher.

If Corona spreads to 60 million Americans, well I think you get the mental picture of what it would be like. Obama never faced a crisis of such proportions thats for sure.

 

The WHO upgraded the current outbreak of Corona to a pandemic on March 11 due to the sheer scale, but they had been giving out warnings for weeks beforehand that things were taking a dire turn. Many western countries acted long before the WHO declared it a pandemic, when they started seeing the first cases in their respective countries. One can argue european leaders should have acted even faster to shut out the disease in northern Italy entirely.

Once the current pandemic is over, that does not mean Corona is no longer a threat. It simply means it is no longer as widespread. Its possible for waves of Corona to hit us many times. Especially if it mutates into a form that attacks in a different way, bypassing the immunity of those who have already had it.

 

No, let free speech be a right governed by common sense, making people responsible for what they say.

If you shout "bomb!!" in a crowded stadion, people panic and 20 end up getting trampled to death thats murder. Its no different from firing a gun, so let them face the consequences of that action.

If you deliberately lie, mislead with partial truths, present your personal opinion as fact in a program posing as a news show when it or is in a position where you should have known better, that should also be a punishable offense scaling with the degree of misinformation. It does not matter whether you are a journalist, a tv room news anchor or a blogger, either tell us the story as it is with minimal spin or face severe legal consequences. Its the only way the US will get back to a point where the news media is considered trustworthy.

 

Who gets to decide the truth? Think of the people with the complete opposite opinion of yours. Imagine if they had the power to jail you because they say you lie.

There is also the problem of proving it was deliberate. That is why it is so hard to sue news organizations today.

You also can shout fire in a crowded theater even if there is no fire. You can be charged for manslaughter if someone dies or other crimes depending what happens. People who say you can't is a common misconception that has been ruled on by the supreme court.

I personally find censorship deeply immoral including censorship of vile things, but that is not relevant. What is relevant is that it is ineffective. If the censored party can prove even a grain of truth in what you banned then people take the rest of what was banned even the bs as possibly correct and you make the vile opinions look like myrters. Better to educate people how to critically think and to disprove ideas in the light of day.

 

I always love when someone older than me, shows me some messed up news article and when I look at the source I find it is from a fake news outlet.

It would have been nice to get factual information out of China on this at the start. I got a ad from the 'Epic Times' at the start of this about the flue and how bad it is. They showed images on the add showing how every other paper is downplaying the numbers (except one other paper), except them. What valid reason could they have had for not sharing factual world health information. Is that blatantly lying? Should they be held accountable? Is the Epic Times a fake news outlet?

 

It can be abused, and I am not advocating a blanket decision making power held by the government, if anything it should be controlled by the government and the united media. The current unrestricted freedoms are abused on a daily basis, destroying trust in government and media to say things as they are.

One notable example I remember was when a major news network cut apart a video clip and strung together the two ends before pretending it was the full clip. On it a black woman seemed to be calling for calm, reasonable response to a shooting incident, where a white cop had shot a black kid and people were going nuts over it. Which is great, wonderful woman, truly an inspiration.

The problem is that they cut out the two minuttes where she was calling out for them to stop breaking their own possessions, and go to a white part of the city and start breaking the property of white people. The only reason it was discovered was because the full footage was released and others watched it all the way through.

Thats a deliberate lie and said news station should have been off the air the moment it happened. Instead, there were no meaningful consequences.


Then there are the news stations pushing conspiracies and opinions as fact, hiding behind the legal fiction of being entertainment programs, while spreading vile lies for which they have zero evidence. The recent attacks on the character and integrity of Anthony Farci are but one example, born out of a fear he might, possibly at some point in the future turn on Trump, something he has shown little inclination towards so far. Where is the consequence for spreading malicious slander that has no basis in reality, but could easily end up destroying his career and might even end up costing him his life?

If they can prove their postulates or show that reasonably strong evidence links someone to wrongdoing, that is one thing. If its an organisation less powerful evidence will do. But attacking out of political interest should be punished.

As an example, in the cases of Joe Biden and Donald Trump both have had serious allegations raised against them that seems to me to have at least some connection to reality. Those stories are well within what the media should focus on. The idea that Trump or Clinton has something to do with the death of Epstein is an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, it should not be touted about as fact.

 

I do not trust the government nor the news media with that power. Both have shown again and again the willingness to abuse what power they have and to strive for more.

I remember that incident very clearly. I remember pointing it out to my brother at the time and he refused to accept it as an example of media pushing agendas rather than fact. This is more people refusing to question their world views and be critical of his trusted source. He is also a geneticist who mocks every news story related to anything close to his field because they always get it wrong. Massive cognitive dissonance.

You see a problem of abuse of power and respond with giving them more power. I would rather decentralize said power.

Imagine for a moment there were no main major news networks but rather hundreds of competing networks all ready to attack each other as fake news when they mess up in order to win over more viewership away from the liars. This scenario also only works if people are willing to do some due diligence.

I have been paying attention long enough to notice a weakening of the mind and the ability to analyze. Actual thought used to be a sign of intelligence vs today where it is the ability to regurgitate information told to them. Do you remember when Bush jr. was arguing for a virtual boarder and the Democrats were arguing for a wall? Race relations might have peaked in the early 90s (not perfect by any stretch and there were high profile bad events.) So much changes and happens but people seem to struggle to remember what they were screaming about 3 months ago.

 

I find a lot of dark humor in watching people argue red in the face against something the "other guy" is doing that they were arguing just a strongly was a-okay when there guy was doing it moments before.