BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

You want good government? How do you propose getting to this magical utopia? You live in a one party state where the government has the opportunity to finally enact every wish list item they could ever dream of. Has it made California a better place? Has it made it less corrupt? Why do you have a hundred thousand homeless? Why are your state utilities so decrepit they burned a good chunk of your forests down?

I'm not a capitalist because I drank kool-aid. I'm a capitalist because I've seen the inside of the government and how wasteful and inefficient and indifferent it is. None of our elected officials actually care about us, and neither do the bureaucrats that staff the agencies. Do you think macbeth gives a single shit about any of his students.

You want peace, love, brotherhood, and caring? Go join a commune. I don't mean that as a flip remark, either. Go try it out. Let the rest of us know how you can scale it up.

Me? I'm realistic. I have my family, and I have my friends. They need something and I'm there in a heartbeat. You can only extend yourself to strangers, and be taken advantage of for it, so many times before you just stop caring. I'm not there yet, but I'm close. Humanity in general sucks.

anyway. you should all read this.
https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/rup … short-cuts

rupert beale is at the francis crick institute, which is probably one of the best biomedical centres in the world. he is a cambridge-educated immunologist, not an epidemiologist.

here are some facts.

If someone outside a high-end research lab has conducted a test for you purporting to show that you are ‘immune’, I strongly caution against assuming it means anything. Lots of people have had symptoms compatible with coronavirus. In a recent draft of a study from an excellent laboratory in New York, 99.5 per cent of people who had confirmed infection developed antibodies eventually, sometimes several weeks after the test for the virus itself. Only 38 per cent of people with likely symptoms of Covid-19 – but with no positive test – had developed antibodies. Assuming that probable infection means definite immunity is a very big mistake.

There are four ‘seasonal’ coronaviruses – 229E, OC43, NL63 and HKU1 – that cause mild disease in nearly everyone, only occasionally causing pneumonia. They can be given to healthy volunteers to study the immune response. They cause the ‘common cold’, and in experimentally infected humans they give rise to an antibody response. That response wanes after a few months, and the same people can be experimentally reinfected, though they tend to get milder symptoms the second time round. It is thought that adults get reinfected on average about once every five years. Sars-CoV-2 causes mild disease in most cases, and gives rise to antibody responses in nearly all cases. We don’t know how long these responses will last, but it is likely that people who suffer only mild disease will be susceptible to reinfection after a few months or years. Humanity has never developed ‘herd immunity’ to any coronavirus, and it’s unlikely that Sars-CoV-2 infection will be any different. If we did nothing, a likely possibility is that Covid-19 would become a recurring plague. We don’t know yet. It may have seemed like an aeon, but we have been aware of this virus for only a few months.

read the whole thing.

jay your understanding of immunology is actually laughable. we develop vaccines for many mutating pathogens. the flu is a very obvious example and flu vaccination is near-universally practiced here in the UK/europe.

the very next paragraph in the article states

We need a vaccine. The good news is that the virus is not mutating in such a way as to make immunisation especially difficult. One extremely crude vaccine consists of killed virus. This induces very decent immunity in experimental models. More sophisticated vaccines may well be better, and there are more than ninety in various stages of development. Vaccines that induce neutralising antibodies to the virus are strongly predicted to work: maybe not perfectly, and maybe not without complications, but I don’t know a single immunologist or virologist who thinks a vaccine is impossible.

read that. read it again. read it one more time.

these are the experts talking now. it's time for you to stop ranting about 'if something mutates it's pointless to develop a vaccine, we're doomed'. this isn't something a qualified singer can tell you about in the national review.

people get flu jabs every year, jay. nobody is expecting a one-time magic immunity bullet. that's your silly misconceptions.

covid is not going to be eradicated. nobody thinks that either. but suppression has to be sought. otherwise we have a recurring plague.

why don't you actually read and listen to experts on this matter? i am genuinely confused why you are so mistrustful of every person to come forward.

your doctor is a physician. she is not an immunologist. the truth is that she doesn't know. the head scientist at the best institute for biomedical research in the west can say he doesn't know. so please stop spitballing about your new jersey MD's opinion.

why would it matter if we had to re-vaccinate every year or 6 months? many other illnesses require booster shots. is that really a problem for you compared to locking down the economy or not being able to see your loved ones?

he is being realistic in the article. i know you think scientists are only hyping the worst case scenarios to bolster their cause, but you should just read it.

that's because you are a fucking idiot.

that untrustworthy academic is responsible for developing those antibody tests that you are relying on like gospel. which he admits are not very good at present, FYI.

but i guess you should trust your local doctor because she's checked your balls for lumps and asked how your stupid kids are doing.

Jay wrote:

You want good government? How do you propose getting to this magical utopia? You live in a one party state where the government has the opportunity to finally enact every wish list item they could ever dream of. Has it made California a better place? Has it made it less corrupt? Why do you have a hundred thousand homeless? Why are your state utilities so decrepit they burned a good chunk of your forests down?

I'm not a capitalist because I drank kool-aid. I'm a capitalist because I've seen the inside of the government and how wasteful and inefficient and indifferent it is. None of our elected officials actually care about us, and neither do the bureaucrats that staff the agencies. Do you think macbeth gives a single shit about any of his students.

You want peace, love, brotherhood, and caring? Go join a commune. I don't mean that as a flip remark, either. Go try it out. Let the rest of us know how you can scale it up.

Me? I'm realistic. I have my family, and I have my friends. They need something and I'm there in a heartbeat. You can only extend yourself to strangers, and be taken advantage of for it, so many times before you just stop caring. I'm not there yet, but I'm close. Humanity in general sucks.

I don't have any delusions about creating a utopia. I do think we can create a better functioning government that serves a larger chunk of society at a lower overall cost to the average person.

I'm not sure what you are talking about re: California. You still think I'm in lock step with the DNC despite spending close to 15 years here describing them as one of the heads of a two-headed dragon? It's like your default defense mechanism is to just call people liberals, or democrats or something. Very weird.

Why do we have one hundred thousand homeless? If you'd like to have this discussion, we can. I have spent a large chunk of time and energy helping out the homeless youth in orange county over the last 3 years, and can talk at length about it. There are far too many factors to discuss in one post.

Regarding our "state" utilities, you are aware that these are private enterprises with shareholders and everything, right? Why did PG&E elect to issue bonuses to their executives and shareholders instead of maintaining their systems? Seems like exactly the type of indictment against free-market capitalism. Sorry, maintenance and prolonged health are negative externalities in the marketplace, we can't properly account for them!  Are you aware that the state had to threaten to take over PG&E in order to get them to enter in to arbitration agreements to start paying into funds for the people who's homes and entire livelihoods were ruined? Do you actually have any clue what you are talking about here?

To be clear, you are NOT a capitalist. A capitalist has...capital! You are a worker. Just because you've graduated from lumpenprole to petit bourgeois doesn't mean you are a capitalist. You are a flag bearer for capitalists, but definitely are not one. Bootlicker!

I don't very much align with the whole kumbaya hippies, but yes, I do want to live in a society that looks to uplift the less fortunate, and punish people who take advantage of other people. I think you're actually the one that more closely aligns with the peace and brotherhood thing. NAP and all that, right? It's just that the NAP hasn't properly priced things like the environment or mental health, but once all those negative externalities are properly accounted for, the fREEEE market will win.

I will always live my life in a way that prioritizes helping people who are worse off than i am. I know that humanity can be vicious at times when reduced to person to person interactions - i've experienced it many times. My solution is to keep plodding forward, not curl up into a ball and say "fuck it, I'll make sure to get mine." And I will continue to advocate for a system of governance that prioritizes the same.

it's really tiresome having to explain to someone that every other western democracy in the world is doing a better job of redistributing wealth and managing inequality than the USA.

stop pretending like KJ is tasking himself with writing another plato's republic.

oh and just like i said a few pages ago, cuomo mentioned that the death rate in NY is thought to have been drastically underestimated. noticing initial discrepancies of 5,000-6,000 deaths. that's just the beginning. which sure does scotch your pet theory that covid is harmless and the death rate is 0.1%, as revealed by upscaled testing, doesn't it? the deaths are as unreported as the positive testing.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-11 18:16:06)

yep, congratulations america.



meanwhile a pandemic has brought your country to the brink of civil unrest. 40% of all americans don't have $400 spare.

really a good time to be smug about your tax returns.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-11 18:18:06)

uziq wrote:

yep, congratulations america.

meanwhile a pandemic has brought your country to the brink of civil unrest. 40% of all americans don't have $400 spare.

really a good time to be smug about your tax returns.

Respect the GINI!

it's funny that you disagreed with KJ about being selfish but in the space of 2 posts you've essentially said 'a fairer society? but that involves paying more tax! hah!' and 'covid mostly kills the ill and the elderly so we should stop making a fuss'.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Just tell me what you want! Why always critiquing but never offering a goal?

I think you must have glossed over those parts. It's there though. Not concrete, white paper policy, but the goals are clearly there.

I'm not asking for a white paper, and we will fundamentally never see eye-to-eye. You're a True Believer of labor theory and I'm not. I don't think profits are evil. I don't have a problem with some people making a lot of money and others making less. I'm not one of those people that believes billionaires shouldn't exist. If they earned it, I'm happy for them. Your default position is that they didn't earn it, couldn't earn it, because to land with that pile of cash they had to exploit their workers and steal excess profits. I disagree. In a cartelized economy where workers are locked into an industry or forced to choose between only a handful of employers, their leverage is muted. In an open economy, they have a decent amount of leverage. Not perfect, but decent. What you are proposing is even more extreme than a cartelized economy. You want a nationalized economy with a single employer. This gives you no leverage as an individual whatsoever. You don't get to have a say in your wages. You don't get to define your own value. You become nothing more than a numbered cog with a value assigned to you by some disinterested committee.

Jay wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Jay wrote:

You want good government? How do you propose getting to this magical utopia? You live in a one party state where the government has the opportunity to finally enact every wish list item they could ever dream of. Has it made California a better place? Has it made it less corrupt? Why do you have a hundred thousand homeless? Why are your state utilities so decrepit they burned a good chunk of your forests down?

I'm not a capitalist because I drank kool-aid. I'm a capitalist because I've seen the inside of the government and how wasteful and inefficient and indifferent it is. None of our elected officials actually care about us, and neither do the bureaucrats that staff the agencies. Do you think macbeth gives a single shit about any of his students.

You want peace, love, brotherhood, and caring? Go join a commune. I don't mean that as a flip remark, either. Go try it out. Let the rest of us know how you can scale it up.

Me? I'm realistic. I have my family, and I have my friends. They need something and I'm there in a heartbeat. You can only extend yourself to strangers, and be taken advantage of for it, so many times before you just stop caring. I'm not there yet, but I'm close. Humanity in general sucks.

I don't have any delusions about creating a utopia. I do think we can create a better functioning government that serves a larger chunk of society at a lower overall cost to the average person.

I'm not sure what you are talking about re: California. You still think I'm in lock step with the DNC despite spending close to 15 years here describing them as one of the heads of a two-headed dragon? It's like your default defense mechanism is to just call people liberals, or democrats or something. Very weird.

Why do we have one hundred thousand homeless? If you'd like to have this discussion, we can. I have spent a large chunk of time and energy helping out the homeless youth in orange county over the last 3 years, and can talk at length about it. There are far too many factors to discuss in one post.

Regarding our "state" utilities, you are aware that these are private enterprises with shareholders and everything, right? Why did PG&E elect to issue bonuses to their executives and shareholders instead of maintaining their systems? Seems like exactly the type of indictment against free-market capitalism. Sorry, maintenance and prolonged health are negative externalities in the marketplace, we can't properly account for them!  Are you aware that the state had to threaten to take over PG&E in order to get them to enter in to arbitration agreements to start paying into funds for the people who's homes and entire livelihoods were ruined? Do you actually have any clue what you are talking about here?

To be clear, you are NOT a capitalist. A capitalist has...capital! You are a worker. Just because you've graduated from lumpenprole to petit bourgeois doesn't mean you are a capitalist. You are a flag bearer for capitalists, but definitely are not one. Bootlicker!

I don't very much align with the whole kumbaya hippies, but yes, I do want to live in a society that looks to uplift the less fortunate, and punish people who take advantage of other people. I think you're actually the one that more closely aligns with the peace and brotherhood thing. NAP and all that, right? It's just that the NAP hasn't properly priced things like the environment or mental health, but once all those negative externalities are properly accounted for, the fREEEE market will win.

I will always live my life in a way that prioritizes helping people who are worse off than i am. I know that humanity can be vicious at times when reduced to person to person interactions - i've experienced it many times. My solution is to keep plodding forward, not curl up into a ball and say "fuck it, I'll make sure to get mine." And I will continue to advocate for a system of governance that prioritizes the same.

Who do you expect to staff your model government? Are positions earned on merit? Are they by lottery? Or do you maintain democratic elections? How do you prevent your expanded government from becoming corrupt? Are you not worried about concentrating all power in the hands of a small cadre? If not a cadre, do you do direct democratic voting? Representative democracy? What exactly does your ideal government and world look like? If you abolish private property and all profit, how do you deal with the tragedy of the commons? How do you prevent people from shirking? What is supposed to motivate people to go to work every day? How do you assign jobs?

It's easy to criticize and say what you don't want or like. Tell me what you do want.

Humans. Yes. No. Maybe. Enact checks and balances with clear, concise rules and constraints. Been spending years here arguing against the consolidation of power. Maybe. Maybe.

My ideal world is a series of decentralized states, representing exactly Dunbar's number of people, who then report into a structure that also mimics dunbar's number of decentralized states, so on and so on. From there it's (dunbar's) turtles all the way down.

I don't fully believe we need to reinvent the wheel. I think our system of governance can be modified without the need for revolutionary measures and a completely new form of government. Empower the people, empower the institutions, fight back at demagoguery.

Maybe we need a new Age of Enlightenment. One that holds to task the supposed liberal system of governance in it's current form. An acknowledgement that we've largely cast monarchy and totalitarianism, dictatorships and cult of personality to the wayside, only to fall in to a new sort of trap where the same key negative aspects of those systems are able to rear their ugly head, just in more subtle but more nefarious ways. Multiple blunt force blows as opposed to the swift chop of the guillotine.

What not to do: say the world is fucked, no reason to fix what's already broken, fuck everyone else because everyone else doesn't care about me, etc etc.