[lunatic]

Good luck with making this work. Once upon a time I thought that people, when presented with facts, could adjust their ideas to fit events.

After some years of pursuing this philosophy I now can see I was wrong. Perhaps eleven people in a thousand can actually think. The other 989 will just squabble and/or hurl insults.

The decision of course is up to the site owner but one thing I am sure of - expecting people to act like rational adults is naive :(

I disagree in the sense that the idea of purely rational thinking is unrealistic. People generally want to feel good about themselves and sometimes life is really hurting you. In recent years the discussion has shifted from diverging opinions to completely diverging perceptions of reality. If an objective fact of reality makes people feel uncomfortable or - god forbid - reality insults America, people demand their right to feel good by simply denying and adjusting reality to their needs. The more we ban discussion and the more we demand safe spaces, the more people move into their "happy place" where they only find the opinions they like, ultimately reinforcing the cycle.
That said, some of the discussion in this forum has been less than friendly. This should really be improved. Also I do not think that it's about being able to laugh at oneself. Honest and competent criticism isn't a bad joke, where you laugh with the crowd and go on with your life. Sometimes you should take criticism seriously and possibly adjust and change your behavior. Yes, that may include feeling uncomfortable...

[Raion]

Hey guys,

I'm still sorta kinda halfway here, kind of just easing myself back in. But either way, here's some thoughts on the matter of COVID-19.

   

These are the current stats reported by Google on Virginia. For what it was worth, these are concentrated mostly in Northern Virginia, which surrounds Washington DC. The rest of the state suffered at the expense of draconian quarantine measures by our governor that honestly, don't really solve the problems:

• Limiting hours in stores? What? This doesn't stop the spread! Forcing stores to close early only hurts third shift and late second shift people, like myself. 
  
• Stay at home orders: Okay, but these aren't enforced. I continued to travel (for reference, I had COVID in February and I've been fine since) without once being hassled by cops.
  
• Making restaurants takeout only: I disagree with this. 
  

Overall, I believe that discretionary measures are better than mandatory measures. People should not have their rights violated by order of a government to a virus that has absolutely little penetration outside of dense urban areas like New York, Washington State or California. And I don't think the stay at home orders matter. 

Mask rules in businesses? It sucks, I don't like it, but I respect it. Why? Because businesses can refuse service for things like shirts, shoes or open-toed footwear (Yes, this is a thing) It's not a violation of the ADA or civil rights if you don't want to wear a mask. I say vote with your wallet if you're that unhappy. 

Without saying too much, I'm a bit disappointed by Trump's professional conduct during this. He's said some things that while not illegal, simply weren't necessary to say. His administration has taken a hit from this, and I'm concerned this opens the way for something way worse. 

On the theory it came from the Wuhan Virology Lab, I still hold that's more likely than from a wet market. As I have stated before, the circulating image of bat soup was taken in Palau, not China. I've not been to Wuhan, but I can tell you that the Chinese wet markets do not sell exotic animals regularly. I went to several of them in Xi'an, Ningbo, Shanghai, Shaoxing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Beijing. If that's not sufficient to vindicate Chinese peasants who probably lack a middle school education, I don't know what. We already know that the WHO refused to acknowledge Taiwan, and Japan and Korea both have criticized the WHO. I already distrust the UN because China and Russia wield immense influence in the UN, to the point Taiwan isn't allowed to be a UN member. It's not a leap for me to go after the WHO which also is dominated by Chinese influence. 

This doesn't mean it didn't come from bats or pangolins. The COVID virus is related to both SARS and Coronaviruses in bats and pangolins. Inoculating a bat or pangolin isn't hard. I would rather blame a lab operating under Chinese governmental power, than the poor peasants inhabiting wet markets.

People are taking notice: 

https://www.aip.org/fyi/2020/under-polit...rology-lab

For the record, I'm not anti-Chinese. I like Chinese people, I like Chinese food, I like Chinese culture. I do not like the authoritarian, mafia state regime that is headed by Xi Jinping. He has undone ten years of hard work by Hu Jintao to open up China and bring it into the world, and his treatment of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet should show he's cut from the same cloth as Mao Zedong. He's a hardline Chinese Communist who probably would bring back the cultural revolution if he could get away with it.

[lunatic]

Good to see you get back.

Anyway... Unnecessary "draconian quarantine measures"?

   

sure... The US has now gone beyond 100000 deaths, more than any country on Earth, more total infections than any other country, still more confirmed daily new infections than any other country.
I guess these are now exciting times and job opportunities for medical professionals, coroners, carpenters, and morticians.
You're unhappy with some of the things Trump said? Like the suggestion that people should drink disinfectant (isopropanol)? Yeah, that was dumb. Because it can kill you.

On a less sarcastic note, an interesting comparison of containment strategies can be seen in Europe if you compare Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Sweden was often named as an example that drastic measures are not necessary if general infection rates are still rather low. Results can now be seen months later as Sweden has now 13 to 16 times the number of COVID deaths (given about twice the population count) as its direct neighbors. People in Sweden now question the reasonability of their government's response to the pandemic and realize that Sweden nonetheless faces strong economic problems. Turns out that even in a non-regulated economy, the economy suffers, because apparently scared people and dead people don't go shopping or to restaurants.

Me, I have finally been able to get a haircut after having my hair grown for 3 months. Last time I looked this bad, it was still in the 1990s. Was it worth looking like crap for this time? Yes. Not for me personally, but for other people as well. Do I like wearing a mask whenever I go shopping? No. Is it worth doing so to keep all of our lives going? Yes. Over here there is no force and no police restricting you. I haven't seen an actual cop in weeks. Most people follow the safety guidelines and it pays off. There are ongoing discussions about the necessity of restrictions and the appropriateness of guidelines. Some opinions are extreme, some are crazy. But that's fine and a democratic society can deal with that.

The medical side of COVID news is actually quite interesting. Over time we have learned that COVID is even more dangerous than initially assumed, that it affects more than just the lungs, that it is way more infective than thought at first, that an infection may have long term consequences and create long term damage to the lungs, even if the patient had just a mild case of COVID symptoms. Also interesting was that commonly used tests for SARS-CoV2 have a strong chance to produce false-negatives, that is, a negative test result even though the patient is infected. This basically means that we need way more testing and quicker re-tests. When we look at countries like Brazil and Russia, we are basically just waiting for the number of deaths to skyrocket. Brazil is a horrifying example for a country that essentially lacks the infrastructure to properly contain the outbreak. Numbers all over South America go through the roof. It's a disaster unfolding right in front of our eyes.

[Raion]

Good to see you get back.

Anyway... Unnecessary "draconian quarantine measures"?

The US is a big country, and states that didn't enact statewide stay at home measures until the last minute still had far less deaths than New York or California. Moreover, some states like Arkansas didn't at all, and have under a hundred deaths.

   

Word of advice, treat every US state like a country in the EU. Texas for instance is about the size of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic combined. Our density is far less too. Please understand that enacting the same order as in California or New York is basically retarded.

sure... The US has now gone beyond 100000 deaths, more than any country on Earth, more total infections than any other country, still more confirmed daily new infections than any other country.

Please check the map:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020...cases.html

Deaths are concentrated in specific parts of the country. Not everyone needs to be under essentially house arrest. Same with infections.

You want to know whose responsible for the deaths? The tone-deaf governments of New York, California, Washington State, New Jersey and other hot spots. Too little, too late, and when it mattered most for them to step up and do a good job, they didn't.

The NY City mayor Bill De Blasio has an approval rating of 40%; that's lower than Trump is at 43% currently circa today.

You're unhappy with some of the things Trump said? Like the suggestion that people should drink disinfectant (isopropanol)? Yeah, that was dumb. Because it can kill you.

I'm disappointed that the current face of the US government is unprofessional and makes unnecessary comments and statements that get people who aren't very smart in trouble. I offer actual criticism instead of calling him names or blindly supporting the opposition. I think it's important to understand the state that the US is in is very precarious, and it pays to support ideas and values, not individuals.

On a less sarcastic note, an interesting comparison of containment strategies can be seen in Europe if you compare Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Sweden was often named as an example that drastic measures are not necessary if general infection rates are still rather low. Results can now be seen months later as Sweden has now 13 to 16 times the number of COVID deaths (given about twice the population count) as its direct neighbors. People in Sweden now question the reasonability of their government's response to the pandemic and realize that Sweden nonetheless faces strong economic problems. Turns out that even in a non-regulated economy, the economy suffers, because apparently scared people and dead people don't go shopping or to restaurants.

Me, I have finally been able to get a haircut after having my hair grown for 3 months. Last time I looked this bad, it was still in the 1990s. Was it worth looking like crap for this time? Yes. Not for me personally, but for other people as well. Do I like wearing a mask whenever I go shopping? No. Is it worth doing so to keep all of our lives going? Yes. Over here there is no force and no police restricting you. I haven't seen an actual cop in weeks. Most people follow the safety guidelines and it pays off. There are ongoing discussions about the necessity of restrictions and the appropriateness of guidelines. Some opinions are extreme, some are crazy. But that's fine and a democratic society can deal with that.

I don't think that it's particularly extreme, for my state, to believe discretionary controls are sufficient and that the actions of our incompetent, blackface-wearing governor were incompetent and out of touch with what the people needed.

   

The medical side of COVID news is actually quite interesting. Over time we have learned that COVID is even more dangerous than initially assumed, that it affects more than just the lungs, that it is way more infective than thought at first, that an infection may have long term consequences and create long term damage to the lungs, even if the patient had just a mild case of COVID symptoms. Also interesting was that commonly used tests for SARS-CoV2 have a strong chance to produce false-negatives, that is, a negative test result even though the patient is infected. This basically means that we need way more testing and quicker re-tests. When we look at countries like Brazil and Russia, we are basically just waiting for the number of deaths to skyrocket. Brazil is a horrifying example for a country that essentially lacks the infrastructure to properly contain the outbreak. Numbers all over South America go through the roof. It's a disaster unfolding right in front of our eyes.

I'm not surprised it got this bad. The west did a lot of things wrong:

1. Didn't immediately shut down air travel from China
2. Trusted the Chinese
3. Haven't normalized mask-wearing in public. Hell, in some US states before this, it was illegal to go outside wearing a mask, even without intent to conceal one's identity.
4. Brought back foreign nationals when they should have been treated in the countries they arrived/were in (In particular, cruise ship families.) already

We haven't had a pandemic of this magnitude in our lifetimes. We learned some hard lessons, and I'm not unsympathetic to those who lost loved ones. My friend lost his grandmother to pneumonia as a result of COVID. It's not good.

[hamei]

I'm not surprised it got this bad. The west did a lot of things wrong:

1. Didn't immediately shut down air travel from China
2. Trusted the Chinese
3. Haven't normalized mask-wearing in public.

.....

We haven't had a pandemic of this magnitude in our lifetimes. We learned some hard lessons,

I will preface this by saying that this is exactly why I think there should be no, zero, none, nada, absolument zero political speech on a site dedicated to computers.

I, myself, believe in free speech. But how it works out is not free speech. How it works out in practice is, Joe McCarthy and his heirs and assigns freely make fifty ignorant statements, then one person responds and the thread is closed and locked because "politics are not allowed here." It is always acceptable to parrot the conventional wisdom but an opposing view is immediately "political".

That is not an exchange of ideas. That is biased, hypocritical censorship. So, to me, an absolute ban is preferable to the "we like to give people room until it gets out of hand" system. That turns out to be nothing but hypocrisy in a sheep suit.

About the first two statements, this is demonstrably, pardon my French, crap.

First, "immediately" was already too late. By the time this new virus was even recognized as such, there were people who had been exposed and were spreading it around the world. The New York outbreak came from Europe, not China. Mr Trump also claims to have stopped entry from China but what he did was stop foreign visa holders. All the US citizens and dependents happily waltzed through the airport bringing the virus with them. It's not as if you need slanty eyes to catch a virus. The "screening" ? A pitiful joke. US citizens at the time ridiculed that so-called "screening" - it was a question on the health card, "Have you collected any dangerous viruses in Wuhan within the past ten days ?" No testing, to tracking, no real quarantine, no nothing for US citizens or green card holders or dependents. As of the end of January the US had done 440 tests. Total.

And the tests were apparently worthless anyhow.

This is stupidity in the first degree. Chinese Commies had nothing to do with this. Germany had tests available by January 13. The CDC refused to use them or allow their use. Not only did the CDC fail to perform, they actively stood in the way of rational public health measures.

If you don't know who has the virus, how can you deal with it ? They have passenger lists. They could have stopped this virus before it got a foothold. It just takes an IQ over ten and a little bit of work. Ooooh, it might cost $5 !

Yeah, well, what did the result of inaction cost ?

Now the US has almost two million cases and over 100,000 dead -- so far. You may be halfway through, but the stats don't support that. My estimate is it will get at least twice as bad as it is now.

This has nothing to do with China. Bruce Aylward and a crew spent two weeks observing and reporting on the situation in mid-February. Long before that time it was obvious that this was going to be a problem. Aylward outlined the tactics and results the government had taken. Anyone with two ears would have paid attention. The man is a trained scientist. Maybe you don't like him but what he reported was fact. Maybe China's method would not be suitable for the US but by god, do something more effective than lying about it.

I live here. I went though this and reported on it at the time as well. No one wanted to listen.

Fine. You've got 25% unemployment, economic destruction, 100,000 dead so far, and now race riots because "We aren't going to listen to that commie scum !"

I'm so happy for you.


"Trusted the Chinese" .... I am biting my tongue. Ouch. If the igorant, stupid Amurricans had listened to "the Chinese" then this epidemic would be a nothing, a blip. We  (I say "we" only because I live here and followed along with interest, certainly the people in charge did not ask my advice) slammed this virus in three weeks.

Can you people do arithmetic ? Third grade level, even ? Incubation is two weeks. Close things down for three, to be safe, and you are done.  They closed the country on February 9. We opened back up on March 1. Currently it is normal here (except no one in their right mind wants to go to the US).  SIMPLE FUCKING ARITHMETIC.

I swear to god, even a Down's baby can figure this out, but the US cannot. I've always known there were lots of ignorant people in the US but thought it was restricted to the South. Boy was I wrong. Trump & Co are from Noo Yawk, where apparently they thought God said "trains" too.

Oh yeah, the great mask debate. "I'm not gonna wear no mask ! That's impinging on my freedom !"

You fucking assholes. Wearing a mask is a preventive measure, so if you become exposed to the virus and don't know about it, you don't give it to other people. The things cost all of five bucks for twenty-five masks. It's absolutely no restriction to wear the things and avoid possibly killing someone's granny. Is there anything more selfish than what I read about in the US ?  How can a people be so ignorant and still remember to breathe ?

What a bunch of morons. Look at the figures ... which are incontrovertible, so I guess that's why the sudden antagonism to China. Y'all remind me of Michael Moorer.  Can't be your own fault, oh noooooooo, it was a lucky punch !  "I won that fight !" yeah .... except for the part about lying on the floor unconscious, you won. Every round.

Farking idjuts. At least Big George had the character to sit back and reevaluate his self-image. The jury is out on the US  but so far, not looking too good. Maybe you can lynch a few niggers to make yourselves feel better.

"Trust the Chinese" ?  So far the US has been nothing but monkeys in the zoo, shitting in your hands and throwing it at everyone outisde the cage. Not impressive.

And that, senors and senoritas, is why I think "no politics" is a better idea than "until it gets out of hand"   As soon as you get past the whitewash the facts are too ugly to contemplate, better to stick to computer discussion ...

p.s. I don't think you learned any lessons. South Korea learned lessons from MERS, they also got on this virus immediately. But the US is too busy shitting in their hands and throwing it to learn any lessons. Next time it happens it'll be exactly the same thing. This happened before in 1918 and you still deny everything that was learned then.

Stoopid. Sorry, just the facts, ma'am. Dumber than a box of rocks.

[Raion]

Your opinion is duly-noted, but then again, every time I crack down hard on politicking, everyone's got to have the last word. We're fucked if we do, fucked if we don't. I guess I just wish that people could talk like adults about this and not throw around insults. As I've openly stated before, I consider most forms of authoritarianism the same old thing, whether it's a communist, or a national socialist holding the bullhorn.

There are many many articles that go into depth on the amount of lies China did during COVID-19. I highly recommend anyone with an open mind to check through the COVID-19 videos of the China Uncensored Youtube series, and to also look at Laowhy86 on Youtube. Both cover different angles of the situation. 

I'm not gonna sit and argue with you, because as we both know you love China. And there's nothing wrong with that! I considered staying as well when I visited in 2016, but honestly, I wouldn't now. The situation has become worse than it was originally, and I got my visa revoked, so I can't go back anyways unless I kiss the feet of a 50 year old woman at the Chinese Embassy in DC. No gracias. Chinese people are great, the standard of living is far more affordable than America, and there's a lot of things I like about China. The government is not one of them. 

The race riots are mostly their own thing caused by the fact that Minnesota police, especially the capital Minneapolis, can't figure their way out of a paper bag. Kneeing a man in the neck is not a proper way to restrain a suspect.

The fact is though that both parties in the US let China get away with too much, and are too quick to trust the same party that killed sixty million people by trying to force people to work on collective farms, leading to gross famines. They're the same people who shoot people in the eye with rubber bullets:

   

As far as mask wearing goes, I do agree. It's miserable, but if you CBA to put one on, then don't shop anywhere that requires it. 

Whether or not the West has learned anything depends on cultural memory. We sure forgot the lessons of the Spanish Flu, but the Wuhan Flu is the new normal considering the antibiotic resistant-bacteria, the fact most governments do bio engineering and study of viruses for bio warfare purposes, even though they deny it, etc. There's too many new factors in play to say this is the last of it. 

But I don't think COVID is going to have a second wave. At least, no indication as of yet. We'll see.

[lunatic]

The US is a big country, and states that didn't enact statewide stay at home measures until the last minute still had far less deaths than New York or California. Moreover, some states like Arkansas didn't at all, and have under a hundred deaths.

Word of advice, treat every US state like a country in the EU. Texas for instance is about the size of Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic combined. Our density is far less too. Please understand that enacting the same order as in California or New York is basically retarded.

It is very important to understand that treating individual states as separate units while still allowing unrestricted travel between those units is exactly the problem of the uncontrolled outbreak in the US. You are not living on your own little planet. A loose connection of individual, self-sufficient, and highly independent states only ever lived in the dreams of Thomas Jefferson. A global pandemic cannot be fought on a state-by-state level, because decisions in one state affect the others.

Deaths are concentrated in specific parts of the country. Not everyone needs to be under essentially house arrest. Same with infections.

You want to know whose responsible for the deaths? The tone-deaf governments of New York, California, Washington State, New Jersey and other hot spots. Too little, too late, and when it mattered most for them to step up and do a good job, they didn't.

Again: How can you say that New York is to blame for the problem, but at the same time argue that this pandemic could indeed be contained by each state just as this state sees fit?
I really understand that you feel bad with all the ongoing restrictions. I share your pain. But blaming China won't get you out of this mess. You as a country did this to yourself. Even more so, you did this to all of us as well. Based on the uncontrolled outbreak, the US has become a major hotspot, prolonging and spreading the pandemic worldwide. There has been the argument that one needs to accept a certain amount of fatalities, because the economy needs to keep going. But that strategy hasn't worked out for you, has it? In fact, the American way of dealing with COVID essentially prolongs the suffering. And any substantial economic downturn in the US affects us here in Europe, because we are all interconnected. You as a country are basically holding a gun to your own head and screaming at the rest of the world "Don't make me do this! You will regret it!".

I don't think that it's particularly extreme, for my state, to believe discretionary controls are sufficient and that the actions of our incompetent, blackface-wearing governor were incompetent and out of touch with what the people needed.

That is really a level of detail I cannot even comment on. If you don't like your governor, vote for someone else next time.

I'm not surprised it got this bad. The west did a lot of things wrong:

1. Didn't immediately shut down air travel from China
2. Trusted the Chinese
3. Haven't normalized mask-wearing in public. Hell, in some US states before this, it was illegal to go outside wearing a mask, even without intent to conceal one's identity.
4. Brought back foreign nationals when they should have been treated in the countries they arrived/were in (In particular, cruise ship families.) already

We haven't had a pandemic of this magnitude in our lifetimes. We learned some hard lessons, and I'm not unsympathetic to those who lost loved ones. My friend lost his grandmother to pneumonia as a result of COVID. It's not good.

You may not always realize, but you are not the only country in "the West". We all knew that we couldn't fully trust the Chinese government in the same way that people mostly knew that back when the Tschernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, we couldn't fully trust the Soviet government. But nobody had to. This was even clearer with the COVID pandemic. Data was available. It was clear months ago. I mean, we personally had this discussion and I personally told you so. As a scientist, that's the thing that really makes me mad. Nobody could know? Well, nobody, except everybody else...
When I look at the data, I can easily delete China from the sample without losing any necessary information. Data from all the other countries is perfectly good enough. It is absolutely clear that South America is next and Brazil will likely overtake even the US in daily new infections in the next days.

[Raion]

If that were the case regarding state travel we would be seeing infections spreading to other parts of the country much faster. We are not. We are seeing hotspots concentrated in areas of high population density. And if that were true, then South Carolina would have much higher deaths and infections than Virginia. It does not.

My point isn't about economy, it's about unnecessarily disrupting people's lives in parts of a country that aren't affected. I'm not saying reopen. I'm saying: examine the situation, understand where the infections are most prevalent, and use a targeted approach. A blanket approach has smothered communities in the process which have remained completely unaffected.

As far as the states of California, New York and New Jersey go, I say they're responsible because they are the ones in power, not the federal government, to be able to make public health declarations. Clearly, they've killed thousands of their own people out of negligence.

Regarding the state governor, I'm powerless to fix the situation. I refuse to vote because I lost confidence in our voting system, and even if I did, Northern Virginia dominates the sphere of this state. They are akin to the coastal region of California calling the shots in the state, or the west coast of Oregon dominating the atmosphere. Despite being unmasked as a racist he refused to resign.

It should also be noted I'm not particularly on frequency with those who are in power. I've avoided criticizing Europe by projecting to the Europeans here that I don't like how your country handled it, so I would appreciate it if you didn't lecture me about those who are in power in the feds here. I don't vote. I don't have allegiance to the government, and nothing you say or tell me is going to particularly change that.

[commodorejohn]

This was even clearer with the COVID pandemic. Data was available. It was clear months ago.

This bears repeating. It was clear by the beginning of the year (even to those of us in the lay masses, let alone people with access to all the data and expert advisors) that this thing wasn't just going to be a little blip on the radar for east Asia, and it only required anyone with the most basic knowledge of how interconnected the world is today to put two and two together. The problem was that nobody in a position of power (on our end of things, anyway) wanted to hear the obvious conclusion, because dealing with it would be difficult and costly and make a lot of people unhappy, and especially in an election year, politicians do not like that sort of thing ending up in their lap. So instead, pretty much everybody in a position to do anything about this decided to smile and nod and parrot the fantasies of the Idiot-In-Chief that this was no big deal and was totally just maybe going to vanish, like next month even! Probably! But, much to everyone's shock and surprise, it turns out that diseases don't really give a shit about anyone's political convenience, and here we are.

[Raion]

Of course, the Italy effect is pretty drastic and even I guessed more than 60,000 dead in the US. What I disputed was it would be as bad as Italy proportionally, and it hasn't been, because our elderly population makes up a much smaller proportion, and it's concentrated in hotspots. The United States is almost as big as the entire country of Russia but it has an average population density that is far lower than most of Europe. For those of us not living in sardine packed cities this was never a problem; hospitals in South Carolina and Virginia alike are not overwhelmed.

For reference: 

US deaths: .03% of the population
Italy: .05%
Spain: .06%

The point I'm trying to make is that considering the situation here in the United States, the situation could be way worse. We have to look at how we are doing compared to other countries proportionally, and we are doing okay if we take it as a whole. It's only when you focus in that you see the biggest challenges.

As far as what CommodoreJohn says, I do agree, but China did suppress statistics, hindered cooperation, and more just to save face. This does hurt everyone overall, and hurt the ability of governments to judge the impact. I believe they even underreported the deaths, because par for the course. 

I'm not surprised Trump responded the way he did. The fact is that professionalism and politics have severely declined. I don't believe there's any indication that this would have been handled better by anyone else, though.