Author Topic: Coronavirus Outbreak  (Read 134707 times)

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Offline karajorma

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As for the financial interest in chloroquine... Surely every single dollar Trump doesn't earn from this is worthy of any price, including thousands of dead.

There is a massive difference between pointing out why Trump might be pushing an almost completely untested drug as a cure and saying that doctors shouldn't be trying promising leads.
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Offline The E

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Just....

Jesus. ****ing. Christ.

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1248374630399672321

Mass graves. Bodies in cheap boxes, piled 3 deep into a shallow pit, because they had no next of kin or their families were unable to pay for an actual funeral. In god damn New York City.

If this doesn't make you furious, if all you care about is scoring points on some imaginary scoreboard by deflecting criticism of your governments' handling of this affair by pointing out how evil the chinese are, get. ****ing. lost. Leave this forum and never, ever return.
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Offline The E

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I am quite serious about this. There are mass graves being dug and filled in New York, and Trump is on Twitter, talking about how unfair the media is to him in not reporting on the TV ratings his disinformation sessions get.

Congratulations, Goober, jr2, all you other ****ing ghouls: You got the President you wished for. Are you happy yet? Are you winning enough yet? Is America finally Great Again? Are the liberals triggered enough for your taste?
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Offline Enioch

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Mass graves. Bodies in cheap boxes, piled 3 deep into a shallow pit, because they had no next of kin or their families were unable to pay for an actual funeral. In god damn New York City.


This does not make me furious. This is normal. This does not even register anymore. This is the legacy of a pandemic and we have seen it in Italy and China and every other country that has been hit hard by the virus. And I fail to see why the 'god damn New York City' bit is relevant or should be rage-inducing. If anything, the fact that NYC is a city that tends to stack people like sardines in every social context means that things could be much worse (and might still get worse). At this point, after seeing my neighboring country resort to using military convoys to ship bodies to other cities for cremation, I'm afraid to say that all I can mange is a lukewarm 'OK, this is a thing that is happening' and get back to work.

if all you care about is scoring points on some imaginary scoreboard by deflecting criticism of your governments' handling of this affair by pointing out how evil the chinese are

This, on the other hand, makes me furious.
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Offline The E

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This does not make me furious. This is normal. This does not even register anymore. This is the legacy of a pandemic and we have seen it in Italy and China and every other country that has been hit hard by the virus. And I fail to see why the 'god damn New York City' bit is relevant or should be rage-inducing. If anything, the fact that NYC is a city that tends to stack people like sardines in every social context means that things could be much worse (and might still get worse). At this point, after seeing my neighboring country resort to using military convoys to ship bodies to other cities for cremation, I'm afraid to say that all I can mange is a lukewarm 'OK, this is a thing that is happening' and get back to work.

I can understand your perspective.

Me, however... the thought of people being sacrificed on the altar of one leader's vanity, who ignored repeated warnings, who let disaster preparedness slip in an inexcusable manner, who is right now nervously shuffling around and itching to reopen the country because he is completely unprepared for the situation he finds himself in, makes me angry in a manner I can barely put into words. I am relatively insulated from these tragedies; there are no mass graves here (just the usual completely infuriating refusal by our leadership to act in the interests of the EU as a whole when we could use our relative good fortune to render aid to others), there are comparatively few people who have lost anyone to corona yet here. I can let myself be angry because on some goddamn awful level, the losses and tragedies aren't quite real yet for me.
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Offline Rhymes

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As an American it doesn't make me angry--I've been angry pretty much every waking moment for the past three and a half years. When this thing started, I graduated from that to incandescent with fury. Right now I'm just riding it out and waiting for the day the bill comes due for these useless, spineless, monstrous, idiotic little ****s.
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Quote
(just the usual completely infuriating refusal by our leadership to act in the interests of the EU as a whole when we could use our relative good fortune to render aid to others)

And you say that as a German! Our (the Dutch) government has been ****ing awful, but well, it's not just them. There's been a strong "They brought this on themselves" sentiment towards the Italians with the people I've spoken to, which is a bit... yeah. It's a bit hypocritical considering we didn't do things much differently from the Italians, Germany was *far* better prepared.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2020, 06:45:30 am by -Joshua- »

 
There's been a strong "They brought this on themselves" sentiment towards the Italians with the people I've spoken to, which is a bit... yeah.

Yeah, that's unfair. Before Italy, most of the world didn't realize how great the danger was. Afterward, there was no excuse.

 
though jr2 will try very hard to find one
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Offline Enioch

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Before Italy, most of the world didn't realize how great the danger was.

Let's be honest, now.

Before Italy most of the western world simply refused to believe that a 'first world', technologically advanced, liberal, enlightened nation could suffer as much (if not more) as those uncivilized, backwards, silly and oppressed Chinese from a pandemic

You will not change my mind that the fact that China was the first country to be hit by COVID was a major factor in how western countries responded to the disease. There is still (and there probably always will be) an undercurrent of racism in how we (Europe, US, 'western' countries) perceive the Far East, and especially China. I'm also pretty sure that many of the measures imposed by the Chinese government were not (originally) imposed by western governments because they had previously been imposed by China (and would therefore be perceived as oppressive, restrictive, and 'not something we enlightened people should do, we are a democracy, we can trust our people to self-regulate, not like the Chinese that are following government regulations to a meme level).
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Offline General Battuta

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The PRC ****ing sucks in a lot of ways, but I can't argue that the racist image of China as basically the Human Hive didn't add to a sense of complacency and 'never happen here' in the West.

 

Offline karajorma

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As someone who has actually been to Wuhan, the idea that it's some kind of third world city is completely ****ing ridiculous.
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Offline Enioch

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So, like every other instance of racism then.
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Offline karajorma

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I'm not going to say that the assumption that Wuhan is different from reality is racist, it's definitely ignorant but let's face it, most people in the world had never heard of Wuhan last December, I can't blame them for not knowing what it's like. There definitely are parts of China which are very poor. And there are province capitals which are definitely lower level than a Western city (I'm pretty sure than anyone who has been to Zhengzhou immediately thought of it when they read that!). Wuhan isn't one of those cities but it is pretty close to ones which a much closer to that image.

I do think that the perception that the Chinese MUST have lied about the numbers since the numbers in the US, Italy, etc are so high is racist though. Yes, China has reported fewer cases than Italy or the US. Yes, it's possible that they did lie. But I take exception to the claim that they MUST have lied. China locked down the city of Wuhan when it had 500 cases and the lockdown of the entire country started when there were only 2000. And anyone should see that shutting down the country that hard while the number of cases were still that low should be expected to stop transmissions of the virus. And China STILL had a 40-fold increase in the number of cases after that lockdown.
Then we look at the West. Lockdowns were almost always at much higher levels of infection than in China (if they ever happened). And lockdowns were also less severe than in China where they had measures like only allowing one person from your household to leave to go shopping every other day. Yet China must have lied. Yeah, that's absolutely racist.

I know it's anecdotal evidence, but I've lived in China for 11 years and I don't know anyone, who knows anyone, who had the virus. When I was in Lijiang, the number #1 tourist destination in China they shut down the entire old town on Chinese New Year when they had two cases! I don't think the confirmed cases ever reached double digits. And you know what, I do believe that, I have enough connections in that town to have heard on the grapevine if it was much more.
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I mean we've all seen HBO's Chernobyl and how much a system of lies can persist to the point that nobody knows the truth any more.

But it should also be noted that err - just about everyone outside the USSR knew more or less immediately that something was up. That was before everyone had an internet connection, and this thing kills people a lot faster then radiation.

 

Offline karajorma

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Yep. And although the Chinese government can and does censor Weibo and WeChat, we always hear about the news story trending before it gets censored. If the number of deaths was very high, there would be a lot of stories about it. Not just people extrapolating from the number of urns or how many people decided that they don't need two phone numbers during a pandemic.
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Offline jr2

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This thread debate sections: both sides' issues, summarized (decent job of pointing out that both sides get this wrong):

 

Offline karajorma

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And yet you've done the exact same thing yourself on this thread, been called out on it and not apologised or even ****ing acknowledged that you did it! So once again, why are you suddenly so incenced when you see someone else doing it?

And did you bother to actually do the due diligence on this video before posting it here? Cause the increase in the number of burials is significant but this video tries really hard to not mention that, simply saying that they've changed from waiting 30 days to waiting 14.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/us/new-york-hart-island-burials/index.html

Quote
Usually, about 25 people are buried on the island each week, [NY Press secretary Freddi] Goldstein said. But since coronavirus began claiming victims in the US, she said there are 25 people buried there each day.

Why are you doing the exact same thing you are complaining at other people doing? Repeatedly. After I have repeatedly asked you to stop doing it?
« Last Edit: April 10, 2020, 10:06:02 pm by karajorma »
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Offline General Battuta

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Despite being called on it multiple times you still only talk about, or apparently give a **** about, who is winning some abstract political game. You have never even tried to appear to give a **** about people dying. You can only bring yourself to mention the dead when you want to claim there aren't too many of them.

Do you understand that the US now has as many confirmed cases as the next four countries combined? Those are Spain, Italy, Germany, and France.

Do you understand that the US has nearly a third of all confirmed cases in the entire world?

You claim you entered this conversation because you thought it was ridiculous to say Iran was handling the disease better than the US.

Do you realize that there are twice as many cases in New York alone as in all of Iran?
« Last Edit: April 10, 2020, 11:28:28 pm by General Battuta »

 

Offline General Battuta

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And yes, Iran does have a population four times larger than New York State (let alone NYC), and Tehran has the same population as NYC.