Coronavirus

[Randomizer]

Coronavirus is a dirty Democratic political trick. A Trump said so:

https://news.yahoo.com/eric-trump-says- ... 00392.html

[Octavious]

Coronavirus is a dirty Conservative political trick. A Corbyn said so:

https://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn/status ... 68704?s=19

[orathaic]

Who is Piers Corbyn?

[Octavious]

Jeremy Corbyn's older (and, academicly at least, far more successful) brother. He's been a leading figure in the anti lockdown protests in the UK, in places ranging from Glastonbury to London. His line seems to straddle both the idea that it's massively overhyped and that it's being caused by 5G phone masts.

It's both fascinating and somewhat tragic.

[Octavious]

His https://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn/status ... 70816?s=19 post contains a link to a leaflet he's promoting. The usual stuff, 5G bad, vaccines bad, Bill Gates bad, Mainstream Media bad, and a bit about NHS privatisation for good measure.

[Jamiet99uk]

His https://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn/status ... 70816?s=19 post contains a link to a leaflet he's promoting. The usual stuff, 5G bad, vaccines bad, Bill Gates bad, Mainstream Media bad, and a bit about NHS privatisation for good measure.

Oh dear. If he'd just add a reference to chemtrails that would be bingo.

[Randomizer]

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-says-he-st ... 45823.html

Trump is now taking a drug that has not only been shown to be ineffective for this, but causes almost twice the deaths of COVID-19 patients than those not taking it. Then there is the possibility of it causing a heart attack in healthy people.

Let's hear it for the Trump suicide pill. Better than Jim Jones Kool-Aid.

[orathaic]

I mean. He says he is taking it. But A) do we have evidence for it as a preventative measure rather than a treatment? And B) do we have evidence that he has a financial stake in the drug? And C) will the usual customers be harmed greatly if millions of Trump supporters take it?

[Randomizer]

I mean. He says he is taking it. But A) do we have evidence for it as a preventative measure rather than a treatment? And B) do we have evidence that he has a financial stake in the drug? And C) will the usual customers be harmed greatly if millions of Trump supporters take it?

A) Trump's a known liar so we can't tell unless he dies or rushed to a hospital whether it is either. It has not been shown to be a preventative it reliably done studies, but only in questionable studies where it can't be reproduced.
B) Trump's last reported financial statement of holdings has his trusts holding shares in mutual funds with large blocks of that drug manufacture. His friends have even larger shares.
C) Current customers for lupus, an approved use, were told that they couldn't renew their prescriptions because it was needed for at that time unproven use. It has since been shown not to be useful and even harmful.

Lupus suffers are more likely to get the flu when they can't take the drug. So they have it worse with existing problems and increased chances of getting COVD-19.

[peterlund]

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-says-he-st ... 45823.html

Trump is now taking a drug that has not only been shown to be ineffective for this, but causes almost twice the deaths of COVID-19 patients than those not taking it. Then there is the possibility of it causing a heart attack in healthy people.

Let's hear it for the Trump suicide pill. Better than Jim Jones Kool-Aid.

I would not mind much if Trump and his followers go for the Darwin Awards this or any other way. That would be a true blessing.

[Fluminator]

Ok I've quarantined myself for a couple months now. I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the people in charge, but data point after data point keep showing how wrong they are yet they keep doubling down harder with no logic. I'm done.

Can you elaborate?

I get too frustrated when talking about this which is why I procrastinated on responding.
Study after study show this lockdown and takeaway of our rights was completely unjustified and the virus wasn't nearly as bad as the media was hyping it up to be.
The latest study by the WHO reveals asymptotic carriers don't even transfer the virus.

I'd love to assume the governments were doing everything out of genuine concern for our health, but the fact they're supporting the protests (and I'm not saying anything about whether they should support the protests) shows they never were concerned about this virus spreading.

It was all a power grab. Sweden is doing fine and they didn't lock down.

[Fluminator]

In southern Saskatchewan there was literally one person out of all the tests with coronavirus. Yet my relatives were still banned from going to church. (although that's all out the window once the protests started)

[orathaic]

In southern Saskatchewan there was literally one person out of all the tests with coronavirus. Yet my relatives were still banned from going to church. (although that's all out the window once the protests started)

It turns out 'we are being killed by police' and 'coronavirus disproportionately harms Black communities' isn't some contradiction.

Both are literally life and death situations.

[flash2015]

Ok I've quarantined myself for a couple months now. I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the people in charge, but data point after data point keep showing how wrong they are yet they keep doubling down harder with no logic. I'm done.

Can you elaborate?

I get too frustrated when talking about this which is why I procrastinated on responding.
Study after study show this lockdown and takeaway of our rights was completely unjustified and the virus wasn't nearly as bad as the media was hyping it up to be.
The latest study by the WHO reveals asymptotic carriers don't even transfer the virus.

I'd love to assume the governments were doing everything out of genuine concern for our health, but the fact they're supporting the protests (and I'm not saying anything about whether they should support the protests) shows they never were concerned about this virus spreading.

It was all a power grab. Sweden is doing fine and they didn't lock down.

We likely didn't need a "one size fits all" lockdown. What is required in NYC probably isn't required in North Dakota. And yes, it hasn't been as bad as initially feared, thank goodness. But that doesn't mean that the lockdowns were not warranted at all. Where are you finding the "study after study" that supposedly says the lockdowns were completely unjustified? I have been very closely following the coronavirus thing and I haven't seen them. The WHO study conclusion was way oversimplified in the media. They walked the statements back less than 24 hours later after seeing they caused such confusion.

It is really scary the number of people that are believing conspiracy theories at the moment. The latest conspiracy theory is that George Floyd wasn't murdered and it was all faked to hurt Trump (e.g. I was forwarded this: https://twitter.com/up_weekly/status/12 ... 6493118467). From your wording, you try to make your conspiracy theory sound reasonable but what you leave out are the thousands upon thousands of people all across the world, including thousands of doctors and medical professionals, to be "in on it" to make this "fake" crisis. Governments have screwed up in a big way with handling of coronavirus, no question about that...but to jump the chasm to suggest that it was all faked to allow a power grab suggests, and I am trying not to be rude here, that you are in some danger of losing your grip on reality. I know this situation has been frustrating (I am frustrated too!) but please don't fall down that hole.

The jury is still out on whether Sweden is "fine". Even though they didn't close down, economic output fell not that far from the other nordics (FT says that Sweden will contract at a similar rate to the rest of Europe - https://www.ft.com/content/93105160-dcb ... b262cd4b6e)...yet they have lost several times the people vs the other nordics. Even if you deem that the Swedish tradeoff was worth it, it absolutely doesn't mean that a similar tradeoff would have automatically been worth it in the UK or in Italy or in NY in the US or even in NZ where they have been able to completely wipe out the virus through lockdowns. As I said earlier, one size likely does not fit all.

[Fluminator]

Yes, my uncle did send me an article on the Floyd death being a false flag and that is absolutely crazy.

I don't believe the virus itself was fake, or that it was a fake plandemic. It is real and it does kill people. It seems worse than the flu, and I definitely have no issue with people staying home to stop spreading it, and the government requesting it.

But that doesn't mean that many governments seized upon this opportunity to take away our rights. It's not a conspiracy that it happened because it did. You could argue it was justified on their behalf and they meant well, but power corrupts. You have cops giving tickets to people going for walks with their daughter, shutting down church services when people stayed in their car with their window shut down, giving out tickets for not wearing a mask outside, etc.

Many of these things stopped make no logical sense for preventing the spread of the virus. The story behind taking away our freedoms was to lower the curve, which was fair enough from me! I was content to go along with it. That's at least somewhat logical reasoning. But then after months of nothing happening and businesses being shut down and economic failure, and hospitals being empty (at least where I'm from) that this flatten the curve wasn't the real issue. Then the narrative changed that we had to stay locked down until a vaccine was developed, (fortunately a lot of governments are pushing back on this later narrative but you still had the media blowing until they were blue in the face how problematic it is to go outside and open up business again.)

It's not like stopping the quarantine means people HAVE to go out and fraternize with people.

It's also not a conspiracy that many doctors and medical professionals who have a different point of view about this are censored off facebook and the media. Doctors pointing to the virus being bad doesn't mean much when it's the only non-censored view out there. They will definitely stick out more if that's the case.

I do agree that in some places like NYC with super dense populations a lockdown would be more justified and I'd be less angry.

[flash2015]

Yes, there were a few issues with stupid stuff. But this was an unprecedented situation. Mistakes were going to be made. Stupid things were going to happen. And yes, we weren't completely consistent with regulations. It would have been great if we had more leadership from the top (instead of undermining the effort)...but that didn't happen.

Who was saying that we needed to lockdown until a vaccine would be developed? That is nonsense. Yes, some of the media were getting a bit overwrought for the clicks...but the other media spouting the conspiracy nonsense are far worse.

I know who you were talking about with being censored, the Bakersfield doctors. They were either complete and utter idiots or they were lying through their asses knowing that what they were saying was completely and utterly wrong. They argued that since X% of their patients were positive, this means that the same X% applied to the general population and thus the death rate was really even less than the flu. It is like extrapolating the average height of the population using the NY Knicks team as a guide. You can't do this. This is stats 101!! And they had the hide to make this video AFTER we started getting the real studies from NY with much more accurate results. I can understand their frustration with the lockdown and they may have had a legitimate point somewhere but deliberately spreading misinformation using their status as doctors (even dressing up in scrubs to heighten the effect) was downright evil.

[Jamiet99uk]

Ok I've quarantined myself for a couple months now. I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the people in charge, but data point after data point keep showing how wrong they are yet they keep doubling down harder with no logic. I'm done.

Can you elaborate?

I get too frustrated when talking about this which is why I procrastinated on responding.
Study after study show this lockdown and takeaway of our rights was completely unjustified and the virus wasn't nearly as bad as the media was hyping it up to be.
The latest study by the WHO reveals asymptotic carriers don't even transfer the virus.

I'd love to assume the governments were doing everything out of genuine concern for our health, but the fact they're supporting the protests (and I'm not saying anything about whether they should support the protests) shows they never were concerned about this virus spreading.

It was all a power grab. Sweden is doing fine and they didn't lock down.

Sweden is doing fine?

What?

Are you out of your mind, or just really, really badly informed about the real facts.

As of last week Sweden had the highest Covid-19 death rate (i.e. per capita) of any country in the world.

The situation in Sweden is a public health disaster - much like it has been in the UK where our idiot Prime Minister and his incompetent cronies have mis-handled the situation quite appallingly because, like Trump, they are entirely unfit for office. How you can say Sweden is "doing fine" I have no idea. An absolutely absurd thing to say.

[Fluminator]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... habitants/

Belgium, UK, Spain, and Italy are all worse than Sweden. And keep in mind the death number in other countries will go up and catch up anyway after the lockdown is finished. (Unless a vaccine is developed, and there's no shame in at-risk people choosing to quarantine themselves until a vaccine is developed)

Flash, here's a few articles
https://nypost.com/2020/04/09/coronavir ... a-vaccine/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/lo ... index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... study-says
I get it's clickbait, but the media has a very strong influence on popular opinion. The media terrified people, we know of one person who was so scared she had to wash her hands every 30 minutes.

I'll have to look into the context more of the high profile censor, but I got the impression they were far from the only different opinion censored.

[orathaic]

Currently there seems to be a 'social distancing until a vaccine is developed' idea going around. Not quarentine until... at least from what I'm hearing in Ireland, not that I have been paying too much attention as I'm isolating as much as feasible.

This is not unprecedented, in fact it was predicted and that is why we had overblown scares regarding bird flu, sars, swine flu, etc. Because every expert was expecting A pandemic, just didn't know the precise details or when it would hit or what type of virus it would be. The media made lintainsout of mole hills multiple times over the last 20 years (usually there is ~80 years between pandemics, and this one was ~100 years after the last one - doesn't overly surprise me, air travel, population density, total human population, have all changed more in the last 100 years than the previous 1000, and yes we have records of the Justinian Plague going back to 541 CE... Things have changed bacterial plagues are now a simple short course of antibiotics; why it was longer instead of shorter is í think going to be interesting science...)

So yes, social distancing to slow the spread so any second wave can be delayed long enough that the economy keeps chugging, followed by an expensive vaccination programme, (and lockdown/quarentine once a second wave hits where ever it does hit) seems like the order of the day.

I've had relative sin the US share expert opinions regarding the virus, seems like more anti-state alt right crap than anything else (judging by the background of the expert). Odd how silent the alt right is when the state actually ramps up authoritarian actions, I for one am shocked.

[Randomizer]

I'm shocked that Republicans that pushed state rights against Obama are happy with federal intervention in Democratic states.

Countries that were slow to act are still worse off: Iran allowing flights from China, Israel allowing flights from US, US allowing flights from China, ….

It's hard to tell in the US because some states have been massaging the data to make things look better like Florida not reporting the cause of death, Georgia not reporting the numbers in order by date, or not testing.