*** Trust the supermarket workers. They know. ***

[MacCruiskeen]

hi mentalgongfu, I hope you and your loved ones are well. Please just ask yourself and them the obvious questions.

Maybe you live in a rural area and/or have made a point of stockpiling tinned foods for months ahead. I haven't/we haven't here.

I'm trying to make things as clear as I can, to myself and others. I'm not crowing at anyone or making light of their worries. On the contrary. And I'm not concealing any big secret. I have no privileged knowledge.

I do not live on some weird remote tiny hebridean island where the half-a-dozen supermarket workers have all evolved some kind of new superpower, some special genetic immunity to OMFG-COMORBID-911, the Deadly Oriental Killer Virus that's making supermarket workers cough their guts out, curl up and die everywhere else [Shurely shome mishtake?? - Ed].

I live in a big european capital city, berlin (pop. 3.8 million), currently under near-total lockdown. (Only gas stations, pharmacies & supermarkets are still open for business.) I know of no supermarket workers who have succumbed to this. None.

I shop daily for fresh fruit and veggies. I have made a point of asking the checkout workers, briefly and politely, over the last week, in at least three supermarkets, if they and their colleagues are doing OK. They're doing fine, just a bit stressed-out by all the panic-buyers with their stacked shopping-trolleys. Those workers are not dropping like flies. Yet each & every one of them faces *thousands* of strangers daily. What can we learn from this?

Is it any different anywhere else? I am asking.

[Cordelia]

1. Insist on the immediate requisition of hotels (all now empty anyway) as emergency hospitals.

Or cruise ships that are pristine and ready to sail (before its industry was shut down); dock in hard-it port cities like S.F.? (An ironic twist that would be, patients being returned to cruise ships.)


WWII Hospital Ship

Cruise ships arriving in San Francisco dock at the cruise port terminal between the Fisherman’s Wharf and the Bay Bridge at Pier 35 and Pier 27. All cruise ships are linked to their complete current itinerary. In order to view the next port of call just click on a specific vessel.
http://crew-center.com/san-francisco-ca ... edule-2019

^^^Pre-2020

[JackRiddler]

MacC, please see here.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42004&start=60#p684892

These two threads ("CO-MORBID 9/11" and "Trust the supermarket workers") have been merged. I'm sorry, but the Merge function is notorious for picking which title it will use at random, and then not allowing mods to revise it. (You may have noticed this over recent years.)

The other two threads you started with the same message have been locked. Feel free to migrate anything important from those here, via copy-paste.

As someone who has long objected to others' board-flooding behaviors, I am sure you will understand.

Please see this, but don't reply to it there. Thanks:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42004&start=60#p684892

The way you've started talking to people and conveying your views without unwarranted personal insinuations, attacks, etc., is encouraging. You have something to say, so please say it and avoid the aggressive harrassment you were doing. Thank you.

.

[MacCruiskeen]

You are lying to yourself, to me and to the board.

You know I attacked no one. You know i have been attacked incessantly and viciously, including by you ("dick, cunt, prick, shit, heartless bastard". Sic.) You know this.

None of us have any time left to waste now.

So long, boss. Power may corrupt, and petty power may corrupt worst of all. But bei Gott it's fun, isn't it, for at least as long as it lasts.

Fascism is here.

[JackRiddler]

This is being moved from the "Coronavirus is Seriously Dangerous" thread:

Et tu.

The dishonesty and cowardice and panicked rage and sheer irrationality on display here is just breathtaking. Berlin 1933 was nothing compared to SmartF@scism 2020. The American Spook Dream is now going truly global.

I insulted no one, Jack. No one. You know this, as does Elvis, as does anyone who can read and refuses to succumb to terror It is me who been called a dick, a cunt, a wanker, a shit, a heartkess bastard, and god knows what else, and I never once responded in kind. You know this.

You know this.

They all did it with impunity, and not one of you mods ever said a single word against it. Not Elvis, not you.

Be proud, Jack. You've chosen. You're boss now. So enjoy the adulation of the addled fearporn addicts. You're on the winning team. Enjoy.

Fascism is here.

'bye.

We can now add a 15th sign of fascism, nay of something worse than the Third Reich: *

15. Being asked to tone down your mean-man jeremiad on a message board.

This thread is very interesting, by the way, and will remain open.

.

* - the start of which we may actually be witnessing on this planet. As this thread suggests, we may simultaneously be witnessing a great awakening of a different kind -- one that might lead to a global general strike for workers' justice.

.

[Cordelia]

Everyone is terrified Mac, even you, I bet (and, at the risk of being lashed, why you're lashing out at others). If not on a conscious level, deep down, unconscious, primal fear. How will this play out; how will we survive; will we survive?

We can't know who the real enemy really is, but we're not the enemy here.

Please,

[Sounder]

Mac is pressing a very needed perspective. If the CDC cared about the broad population, they would recommend and provide immune boosters, vitamins. But they only know drugs, so forget that. My opinion is that this virus is bad but that our top side (Media, WHO, political) response is counterproductive.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... d-19-panic

Michael T. Osterholm is regents professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores, theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed and on the public dole. The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold.

[…]

[T]he best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work, keep business and manufacturing operating, and “run” society, while at the same time advising higher-risk individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as aggressively as possible. With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the financial structure on which our lives are based.

– “Facing covid-19 reality: A national lockdown is no cure”, Washington Post 21st March 2020

[Elvis]

Tell me Elvis, How can what I wrote be possibly interpreted as me attacking Mac? Yes, to lose someone you care about is painful. And he files a complaint against me and you come running, as if I had committed some rule violation. For me saying he should be Proud of himself for understanding loss?

Iam, I apologize for my vague phrasing, I didn't mean you! You did nothing wrong.

In general this thread: I'm really very interested in the thesis, but not the snappish manner of its prosecution.

[liminalOyster]

Although I am VERY pleased that this thread has been quarantined, I, like Elvis, am interested in some of the questions that Mac raises. The terror of the current pandemic, which I accept largely at face value, in no way suspends the importance of asking the basic kinds of questions that RI has always provided habitat for.

As per celebs, Mac, even the conventional medical discourse of COVID identifies a huge part of the risk as being in the vast number of asymptomatic carriers, probably disproportionately younger too. I'm not terribly surprised that celebs like Elba -- given that their job is basically to straight up be and look healthy -- are more likely to have mild to no symptoms. In the US, the working class is far far more likely to suffer from substance abuse, obesity, chronic untreated health conditions, terrible diet, etc. As I hypothesized elsewhere, Isn't your view a bit clouded by life in a country with a sane safety net and a thus-far pretty good triage of the virus?

[Sounder]

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/26/th ... Lk.twitter

The Scientist Whose Doomsday Pandemic Model Predicted Armageddon Just Walked Back The Apocalyptic Predictions
March 26, 2020 By Madeline Osburn

British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus when he published the bombshell report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed. After both the U.S. and U.K. governments effectively shut down their citizens and economies, Ferguson is walking back his doomsday scenarios.

Ferguson’s report from Imperial College, which White House and other officials took seriously, said that if the U.S. and U.K. did not shut down for 18 months, and isolation measures were not taken, “we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months.” His “models” showed overflowing hospitals and ICU beds.

“For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries,” the report reads.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, reportedly said the administration was particularly focused on the Imperial College report’s conclusion that entire households should stay in isolation for 14 days if any member suffered from COVID-19 symptoms.

But after tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, and businesses closed, Ferguson is now retracting his modeling, saying he feels “reasonably confident” our health care system can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in a few weeks. Testifying before the U.K.’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology on Wednesday, Ferguson said he now predicts U.K. deaths from the disease will not exceed 20,000, and could be much lower.

2/ He now says both that the U.K. should have enough ICU beds and that the coronavirus will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K. – more than 1/2 of whom would have died by the end of the year in any case bc they were so old and sick.

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) March 26, 2020

Big thread. The man who panicked the world is now running from his doomsday projections. Shut up and quarantine crowd MIA. No need to apologize to those of us who told you not to blindly trust 1 projection. Scrutinize a little more next time before you surrender your freedoms. https://t.co/EopJL2BhNB

— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) March 26, 2020

3.3 M jobless claims in US as scientist walks back hysterical model warning between 2-4 M dead. https://t.co/e9KpeK0lLP

— Lee Smith (@LeeSmithDC) March 26, 2020

Ferguson, who has since tested positive for the Wuhan virus himself, has not issued any official retraction or apologies for his incorrect predictions. The New Scientist reports Ferguson did acknowledge it was impractical to keep the country in an isolated lockdown for 12 to 18 months, especially because of the impact on the economy. “We’ll be paying for this year for decades to come,” he said.

The Imperial College report was also the basis for the modeling used by the website COVID Act Now, which local and state officials in the U.S. then used to issue “shelter-in-place” mandates. COVID Act Now, which was founded by a handful of Democratic activists in Silicon Valley, is an online mapping tool that generates models predicting coronavirus hospitalizations, which have also already proved to be wildly inaccurate.

Madeline Osburn is a staff editor at the Federalist and the producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Follow her on Twitter.

[DrEvil]

^^The Federalist is a right-wing, racist shitrag. Wuhan virus! Black Crime! Warglebargle!

What Ferguson really said was that with the current measures in place he believes the NHS can cope.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196477/ ... -lockdown/

[Sounder]

The Federalist is a right-wing, racist shitrag.

And that they may be, but article did say; 'But after tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, and businesses closed, Ferguson is now retracting his modeling, saying he feels “reasonably confident” our health care system can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in a few weeks. Testifying before the U.K.’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology on Wednesday, Ferguson said he now predicts U.K. deaths from the disease will not exceed 20,000, and could be much lower.'

While before he suggested that half a million might die, quite a difference to be casual about.

That modeling shit is dicey for using to drive major policy decisions.

[Cordelia]

Re: Thread title topic; w/the new-now exception of tp, other paper products, sanitizers, etc., our local grocery store was fully stocked. No lines, changes in personnel (Help Wanted sign up) or ambiance. People not afraid of each other. More tp to be delivered tomorrow and rationed.

In another, urban area, told that grocery store workers are now receiving hazard's pay and that the grocery store visited had turned off its Muzak, leaving an eerie humming. (Whoever thought Muzak could be missed?)

Haven't fully read this yet, from Philadelphia magazine, but seems heavy on the 'social distancing', fwiw:

“Apocalyptic” Crowds, Hour-Long Lines and Hazard Pay: Philly Grocery Store Employees Tell All

They’re among the heroes of the COVID-19 crisis. And they’ve got some things to get off their chest.

By Claire Sasko· 3/26/2020, 4:27 p.m.

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/03/ ... ronavirus/

[DrEvil]

The Federalist is a right-wing, racist shitrag.

And that they may be, but article did say; 'But after tens of thousands of restaurants, bars, and businesses closed, Ferguson is now retracting his modeling, saying he feels “reasonably confident” our health care system can cope when the predicted peak of the epidemic arrives in a few weeks. Testifying before the U.K.’s parliamentary select committee on science and technology on Wednesday, Ferguson said he now predicts U.K. deaths from the disease will not exceed 20,000, and could be much lower.'

While before he suggested that half a million might die, quite a difference to be casual about.

That modeling shit is dicey for using to drive major policy decisions.

The half a million number was for the original plan of letting the virus rip and building herd immunity, the 20,000 or lower is for the current lockdown. He didn't retract his model, he updated it based on the change in policy.

[mentalgongfu2]

Hi MacCruiskeen,

I appreciate the response and especially the tone, which was at least neutral if not generous, and I think the few conflicts we have had at RI in the past have revolved more around tone and form rather than substance. I also hope you and your loved ones are well.

I appreciate the general questions you are raising. They are valid and relevant. I have not drunk any kool-aid. I see the shutdowns and the danger in them for freedom, not just economics. Limits to freedom of movement are always concerning, as is the attitude of just accepting expert opinions. A few important things to know about my situation, and some additional thoughts:

1) I live in a state that is mostly rural, smack dab in the middle of the USA. I grew up in a city right along the Mississippi RIver that cuts my country in two, and I currently live in a city just about 50 miles or so west of that muddy river divide. Both my hometown and the place I currently live are 2 of the top 3 populated cities in our relatively low-population state.

2) My county, Johnson County, is the center of the coronavirus outbreak in this state. At least, the first publicly verified and/or announced infection. From 16 people who were all on the same cruise ship. (I am of course, in this statement, assuming truth in the news reports that claimed this, and we both know that only goes so far.)

3) I worked as a newspaper reporter in a small Iowa town for 10 years, so aside from the Jason Blairs and other shady characters at big time newspapers that matter, I tend to assume most local journalists are honest and intelligent. I have met most of them. That doesn't mean they can't be deceived, but they're not knowingly involved in any grand effort of psyops or some such.

4) We have had very limited government intervention or restrictions. Bars and restaurants were shut down from being public gathering places mid-March, but they are still able to delivery or provide carry out/curbside food and booze. This has affected tons of people I know who work as bartenders, servers, and kitchen staff, but it is a different beast that what you are dealing with in Berlin, for example. It is only today, March 27, that the Governor has ordered additional businesses to close, in what I understand is basically a blanket order for all but what they officially deem "essential."

5) As a result of the above, there have been very few legal restrictions on people before today. It has been a matter of encouraging voluntary behavior to limit contact, and most people are complying based on official medical advice and a desire to do the right thing. THat said, panic shopping is still a huge problem. I went to the grocery store yesterday for the first time in 10 days. The number of people with carts filled for apocalypse level hoarding was infuriating. I discovered they had installed sneeze guards in the checkout aisles. So there is a clear plastic barrier between you and the cashier. It was strange.

6) Prior to the Governor's order of a greater shutdown today, business had all but ceased at my job. Hours reduced, employees laid off. As of Tues this week, prior to the new proclamation, those still employed were mandated to work from home, and all retail locations were closed. We are a business that sells musical instruments. My specific position has myself (and many others) in contact with suppliers in China, where we have been watching an even greater lockdown take place since the end of Lunar New Year, and which has greatly affected our supply chain and future prospects. Some of my co-workers were in China in October, and we are in regular contact with individuals who have been providing us their personal updates on the situation there. They do not think it is fake. If anything, I gather they believe it is worse than the government is letting on, even as factories re-open. Being China and all, they are of course careful in what they do and do not say in their government-monitored emails.

Beyond that, our largest customers are school band and orchestra programs. WIth nearly every school in the country closed for an indeterminate amount of time, none of us know how long we will continue to have jobs. So we would all benefit from you being right in the conclusion that this whole epidemic is way overblown.

6) I think most relevant to the psychology - I am in a country where a President who openly lies about what he said yesterday, and despite said lies being on video, continues to lie with impunity, and his followers and the media who support him continually enforce this daily blast of lies. This known liar is the one most publicly associated with downplaying the concern about the coronavirus. Therefore, if he says it is nothing to worry about, a large percentage of the population is going to conclude the opposite, especially when alleged medical experts are contradicting our Liar in Chief.

I hope some of this makes sense. I started with clear direction and points to make, but I have found my mind wandering and my points are not as clear as I want. I am under a lot of stress, and whether the root cause (COVID-19) is real or imagined, the ripples in the water are hitting many of us as large waves.Perhaps this is the point. I do not want to exclude the possibilities of manipulation that could lead to a near-global lockdown. It does, after all, seem like a wet dream for the fascists. But neither can I ignore the day to day reality that has forced many of my friends out of work and threatens to put me in the same position.

Take care, Mac. Be smart, and be safe.

-Mentalgongfu

hi mentalgongfu, I hope you and your loved ones are well. Please just ask yourself and them the obvious questions.

Maybe you live in a rural area and/or have made a point of stockpiling tinned foods for months ahead. I haven't/we haven't here.

I'm trying to make things as clear as I can, to myself and others. I'm not crowing at anyone or making light of their worries. On the contrary. And I'm not concealing any big secret. I have no privileged knowledge.

I do not live on some weird remote tiny hebridean island where the half-a-dozen supermarket workers have all evolved some kind of new superpower, some special genetic immunity to OMFG-COMORBID-911, the Deadly Oriental Killer Virus that's making supermarket workers cough their guts out, curl up and die everywhere else [Shurely shome mishtake?? - Ed].

I live in a big european capital city, berlin (pop. 3.8 million), currently under near-total lockdown. (Only gas stations, pharmacies & supermarkets are still open for business.) I know of no supermarket workers who have succumbed to this. None.

I shop daily for fresh fruit and veggies. I have made a point of asking the checkout workers, briefly and politely, over the last week, in at least three supermarkets, if they and their colleagues are doing OK. They're doing fine, just a bit stressed-out by all the panic-buyers with their stacked shopping-trolleys. Those workers are not dropping like flies. Yet each & every one of them faces *thousands* of strangers daily. What can we learn from this?

Is it any different anywhere else? I am asking.