Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[PufPuf93]

There is an extremely powerful graphic I am clueless about how to post to RI but I recommend to take a look and share. The graphic shows the COVID per million in State population in June and progresses continuously to 10/9. So time is on the x axis and # of cases per million pop is the y axis. Each State is color coded as to whether a Red State or a Blue State with dark red and blue as well as light red and blue. The Red states are on a suicide course. The top 14 States are Red. Nevada weakly Blue is 15. California strongly Blue is 22. Twenty-two of the worse 25 States are Red (Wisconsin is neutral). The Red States are surging. There is a function for doing various sorts.

COVID cases since June
Total cases per million since June 1, 2020 (total to date by day) Hit play and reload to start progression from June.

Worst 25 States (highest rates)

http://dangoodspeed.com/covid/total-cas ... qUlum3TQhM

Best 25 States (lowest rates of infection per 1 million population)

http://dangoodspeed.com/covid/total-cas ... qUlum3TQhM

[SonicG]

The US will be overwhelmed by a second wave of the virus and election chaos in Nov.
Please be safe and take care!

[PufPuf93]

The US will be overwhelmed by a second wave of the virus and election chaos in Nov.
Please be safe and take care!

Thank you SonicG.

Weird times in the USA.

[Joe Hillshoist]

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Enviable position.

In contrast, I live within ~25 miles of NYC and have daughters at an age that, for now, require my participation in certain aspects of control mechanisms, but i continue to explore other options.

One day, perhaps. The one lining in this current shift attempt is that it appears many no longer need to be tethered to a metro area. The more resilient metro areas will evolve and adapt, however.

One thing a regular job and life provides is stability and certainty. (After editing - I just realised that is two things ... but they do go together.)

People are losing that mental "solid ground" with this virus, but it's also something my life hasn't really had. I dunno if it's enviable or not.

I have three daughters under ten now and wonder if they'd have been better served if I'd made different choices.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Bolting on to my last clip, it appears the WHO is now backtracking... months after it became clear.

Will be interesting to see if this gains traction in Eatablishment media.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid- ... IMKOYXLRU/

Covid 19 coronavirus: World Health Organisation backflips on virus stance by condemning lockdowns


The World Health Organisation has backflipped on its original COVID-19 stance after calling for world leaders to stop locking down their countries and economies.

Dr David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop "using lockdowns as your primary control method" of the coronavirus.

He also claimed that the only thing lockdowns achieved was poverty – with no mention of the potential lives saved.

"Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer," he said.

"We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus," Dr Nabarro told The Spectator.

"The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganise, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we'd rather not do it."

Dr Nabarro's main criticism of lockdowns involved the global impact, explaining how poorer economies that had been indirectly affected.

"Just look at what's happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren't taking their holidays," he said.

"Look what's happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. … Look what's happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition."

[DrEvil]

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Is this funded by the Koch Brothers? And right now, damn f'ing right the WHO and Gates are FAR more damaging to the world than the f'ing diminishing influence of the Koch Bros.

Funded by AIER (located in Barrington, hence the name of the declaration), a libertarian think tank that gets most of its funding from the Koch brothers (well, brother, now that one of the fuckers is dead).

How is Gates and WHO worse than the Kochs?

Also: what do you mean by "completely ignore the long-term effects"? How do you define "long-term"? Hasn't been a year yet.

Where are these studies and/or figures that demonstrate substantive long-term effects, outside of outliers?

That's kinda the point. We don't really know yet, but there are plenty of reports of people with side effects persisting for weeks and months. Here's an overview:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... t-20490351

The obvious must also be stated: the standard flu, pneumonia, and just about any illness that effects the respiratory system has the potential for lingering/long-term damage. This is not relegated to COVID alone.


Thousands of real, actual scientists have signed that declaration so far. Clearly, there is merit to their statements. Or what: are they ALL compromised actors, then?

How do you know? Anyone can sign it. Dr Bananas, Dr Harold Shipman and Cominic Dummings have all signed, along with a bunch of homeopaths and other quacks. There's also thousands of real, actual scientists who haven't signed.

And what of Fauci, a govt spokesperson?

What about him? Is him disagreeing with the declaration somehow evidence of its validity?

Sweden is a real-world example of the declaration in action. Good for the Swedes, marching to their own drum.

I won't let petty Establishment political leanings distract from the ongoing criminality in place since the onset of this... pandemic.

Not so good for the thousands of Swedes who are currently dead, compared to a few hundred in all their neighboring countries. I'm in Norway and we're pretty much back to normal now, with some localized restrictions in places with high numbers of infections. Where I live we just wash our hands and try not to clump together when standing in line at the store, otherwise it's business as usual.

Even if the Swedish model was the best way to handle things it wouldn't work in the US. It assumes that people are sensible and trust each other and the government to act responsibly. The Swedes did have some measures in place, just not as strict as everyone else, and if all they got out of it was a slightly better economy then that's a fucked up argument to use in favor of their model. You don't sacrifice several thousand people for money.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Of course the Gates Foundation and WHO are worse. They, and others involved in this debacle, are directly responsible for millions of lives and livelihoods lost due to the manner in which lockdown measures have been mandated.

It's not even f'ing close.

And Fauci is a govt spokesperson, first and foremost.

Look up the names of the doctors and scientists in that declaration and you can see for yourself that they are indeed real.

However valid the extent of the lockdowns may have been at the onset, they are no longer necessary to the extent they currently are being implemented. Most 'cases' are asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic.

Science is about testing, re-testing, and re-calibrating/adjusting approaches as data points change.

What's being done now is not 'science'. It's f'ing politics.

The reality of our uber-capitalist/globalist system is that most large-scale initiatives will likely have dubious funding. It's increasingly challenging to have a true grassroots movement gain ground without compromise or infiltration by bad actors.

The Koch brothers involvement in this declaration doesn't de facto nullify it, needless to say.

And Sweden has one of the LOWEST death tallies compared to other nations. Given what most outlets have conveyed about lockdowns, one would expect Sweden to be near the top, if taking the purported benefits of 'extensive lockdowns' at face value.


*the below are official figures, which include deaths counted as COVID deaths due to a prior positive test result even though a patient was terminal or died of other causes.




https://www.statista.com/statistics/109 ... y-country/

[Belligerent Savant]

https://twitter.com/gnocchiwizard/statu ... 66817?s=20

[Elvis]

Other countries are remedying the economic effects, and the US government could do that, but the US government won't do it. Rather, the US government is maintaining an artificial scarcity of money—exactly what predatory capitalism wants.

Let's imagine for a moment that a highly contagious and deadly disease started spreading in the US, and 'lockdown' measures were required to stop the spread. Lockdowns mean that a lot of people lose their incomes—unless the national government makes up the difference with direct payments.

Canada is still paying every affected citizen CAN$2K per month. It's not causing inflation. Nobody, including anyone's children or grandchildren, will ever have to 'pay it back.' No workers in Canada are going hungry or getting evicted because of Covid-19.

Why isn't the US doing the same thing?

I think pressure from the finance industry et al. is keeping the US government from acting to provide relief. Those are the fuckers to be put on trial.

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^^^^

Spot-on.

[stickdog99]

You either pay to to stay at home to "save lives" or you stop mandating that people stay at home to "save lives."

In the USA, we have the worst of both worlds. And that's because the billionaires want it all, and they want it all at low, low prices.

[DrEvil]

Other countries are remedying the economic effects, and the US government could do that, but the US government won't do it. Rather, the US government is maintaining an artificial scarcity of money—exactly what predatory capitalism wants.

Let's imagine for a moment that a highly contagious and deadly disease started spreading in the US, and 'lockdown' measures were required to stop the spread. Lockdowns mean that a lot of people lose their incomes—unless the national government makes up the difference with direct payments.

Canada is still paying every affected citizen CAN$2K per month. It's not causing inflation. Nobody, including anyone's children or grandchildren, will ever have to 'pay it back.' No workers in Canada are going hungry or getting evicted because of Covid-19.

Why isn't the US doing the same thing?

I think pressure from the finance industry et al. is keeping the US government from acting to provide relief. Those are the fuckers to be put on trial.

Very much this. So much of the fuckery going on could have been avoided by the government being for the people and not the corporations. Two trillion for Wall Street, 1200 for you (wouldn't hurt if they made a little more effort getting the money where it's supposed to go either. Plenty of people in Norway got the check because they at some point lived in the US). Shows where their priorities are.

@Belligerent_Savant: That list of countries has Sweden (population 10 million) between Egypt (population 100 million) and Bangladesh (population 160 million). That's not exactly a flattering comparison for Sweden.

A better comparison would be with Norway (5.5 million, 275 dead), Denmark (6 million, 671 dead) and Finland (5.5 million, 346 dead), and the comparison is still not very flattering. Yay, they shaved some fractions of a percentage off their potential economic losses, all they had to do was kill off a few thousand of their most vulnerable people.

[Belligerent Savant]

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I get your point Re: Sweden's death tallies relative to their overall population (and compared to their immediate neighbors), and do not discount it.

Some scientists have put forth the premise that the previously mild flu seasons offered the more frail/vulnerable a temporary reprieve, and they were subsequently taken down early when COVID first hit. Yes, I understand this is a crude way of putting it, and whether or not this was a primary or contributing factor is for scientists to ponder in the years to follow, along with other theories. It may also be that the virus was more potent during the earlier months compared to now. This is speculative.

It remains however that Sweden's numbers are markedly lower than forecast by the early (absurd and egregiously overestimated) figures cited as justification for the severity of lockdowns elsewhere.

But to reiterate and make clear, my point is not "the lockdowns should never have been implemented". My point, which I've iterated a number of times, is that the extent and duration of the lockdowns were excessive, particularly as we began to learn more about this virus, and more cases were found to be largely asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic.

Initial lockdowns were understandable for the first couple months, particularly for harder hit regions, domestically and abroad; once the initial actual figures* began to be processed, steps should have been taken to re-calibrate, ease the extent of the measures, and new, less harsh tactics should have been implemented as data points changed, with an appreciation and focus towards ameliorating economic as well as health factors. Arguably, businesses -- and schools, especially -- never needed to be shut down, but rather, more tightly managed during those critical early months (among other alternative measures that were never even considered).

But that's easier to say now in hindsight. What is NOT explicable however is that measures have essentially remained unchanged in many regions that clearly no longer merit such strict measures (measures that have been shown to do little, if anything, to slow down spread, and do not address 'cluster spreads', etc. -- if indeed this latest development is of merit and not simply another bit of partial disinfo).

This crisis has been horribly mismanaged at best, but as all of us here should well know by now, and as the MONETARY FIGURES CLEARLY DEMONSTRATE, this is not simply a matter of 'gross mismanagement'. Perhaps it may have been initially -- or not. At some point, or maybe since the onset, the greedy vampires at the upper tiers have capitalized greatly on this crisis. Yet another great transfer of wealth has occurred, to the great detriment of the majority.

And here we are, bickering about certain details while the criminality persists. Exactly as intended.


*figures that have been manipulated, distorted, and misrepresented by media channels and even 'official' sources, to various degrees, for reasons that were likely inadvertent (human error) at times, but also just as likely to have been nefarious in at least a few instances.

[DrEvil]

^^Can't really say I disagree with any of that. The way I think it should have been handled is roughly:

1. Lockdowns early on to get a handle on things and let the experts get to grips with the virus.
2. Easing of restrictions when things are leveling out and we have more knowledge.
3. Contact tracing and localized measures to contain outbreaks as they pop up.
4. Open-ended financial aid to anyone affected by the measures (except industries that need to die anyway, like coal and oil. Throw money at the workers but let the companies die).
5. Massive incentives and job programs to shift to a green economy. This would be a perfect time to start implementing the Green New Deal.

The first four (minus killing the oil industry because just look at all that money!) are how things are being handled where I live and it seems to be working pretty well, but it's a small, centralized country with high levels of trust in the government and each other.

Big picture-wise I really think that's the biggest issue at play in the US: people simply don't trust each other. It feels like the populations of two countries that hate each other's guts squeezed into one country. Doesn't matter who says what, half the country will immediately assume they're lying.

The Thing in the White House and his GOP cultists haven't exactly helped either. The last time someone killed that many Americans they had a couple of nukes dropped on them (now there's a thought). With sensible, consistent policies they could probably have cut the number of dead in half.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Indeed. Makes me want to relocate to Norway.. (or Sweden!). If i was flying solo, perhaps...

Instead, we (those outside the Nordic-ish regions) remain in this malaise.

EDIT:

This last bit, though:

The Thing in the White House and his GOP cultists haven't exactly helped either. The last time someone killed that many Americans they had a couple of nukes dropped on them (now there's a thought). With sensible, consistent policies they could probably have cut the number of dead in half.

I continue to distrust the numbers associated with COVID at face value, for reasons already outlined numerous times in this thread.

That aside, the numbers attributed to the U.S. are by no means the fault of only one entity or Party. Clearly, the fault is to be distributed broadly across decision-makers, across Party lines. Cuomo, as an example local to my area, should be hung in a square for his actions alone (Re: sending ill patients to nursing homes, etc, costing the lives of THOUSANDS).
The use of ventilators was another horrible decision that cost many lives.