Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX
From a local perspective:

Funny how the Chinese immediately started screaming racism when various countries put travel bans in place. They're free to lock down Wuhan but the world can't lock down China.

The current 14 day 'quarantine' is inadequate, never mind symptomless carriers. Students mostly are circumventing it by staying in a third country, eg Thailand for 14 days then travelling to Australia. Australia's first outbreak will almost certainly be in a university.

Haven't most of the recent plagues come from eating meat we shouldn't be eating? AIDS, Ebola, Marburg, SARS, MERS now COVID 19?
The pursuit of excess protein may be the end of us, that and radical individualism which brought AIDS to the wider community.

But yeah, diseases are like the free market, we shouldn't interfere, let them run their course and they'll weed out the weak from the herd. Plus there are all the business opportunities - mask makers must be making a killing, soon there'll be whole new business models, whole building sterilisation systems to link up with the HVAC, home cremation kits, its win win.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-28 14:55:24)

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uziq
Member
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a malaria researcher at oxford has just been saying that we're in for a marathon, realistically, not a sprint. this probably will not be contained until next year, and could even become a seasonal thing with us for the long run, much like the current winter flu, but possibly worse.

the economic costs in the short-term are going to be huge. organisations are going to have to cross-train key staff. it puts a lot of stress on the gig economy and workers without a contract (or a fucking union!) generally.

wishing it to go away or pretending its no worse than the (pretty fucking severe and costly) flu isn't going to make it so.

AIDS, Ebola, Marburg, SARS, MERS now COVID 19?
animal contact rather than eating. it's a misconception that covid 19 started by someone eating bats. that was just you linking the usual hysterical-xenophobic videos pointing at another cultures's eating habits (or rather, extreme delicacies). so not really about getting proteins; there's more than one way for a zoonotic disease to get into your system.

radical individualism which brought AIDS to the wider community
hahahahaha we're not even on page 2 of the pandemic thread and dilbert is making side-swipes at gay people and their 'sinful' lifestyles.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-28 14:56:52)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX
No I'm making swipes at radical individualism. Students demanding to break the quarantine for example.
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uziq
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you just literally said 'rampant individualism brought AIDS to the wider community'. if that's not a 'gay plague' dog-whistle then i don't know what is. please, tell me more how it was rampant individualism that caused the spread of AIDS and not, you know, total lack of knowledge about the virus and its transmission. no, it was people having casual sex outside of marriage!!
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX
"rampant individualism brought AIDS to the wider community"

Rampant individualism caused AIDS to rip through the gay community and into the wider community, there's not much doubt about it.

Lets see how this works:

Although I'm Chinese, recently visited Wuhan and directly know many people with COVID-19 I demand the right to travel where I like, attend unprotected orgies with strangers in saunas and lie when donating blood.
You can't stop me because that would be sinophobic, you have to accept whatever I want to do is part of my culture or you're a bigot.
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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Also the fake numbers on wall street are going down.
The US market is long overdue for a yuuuge correction, unfortunate that it will bring down markets which are around fair value with it.
Oh well, some good buying opportunities ahead if we survive.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
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looks like that correction will take out the corona drinks brand. weep.

i'm sorry but saying that AIDS spread because of 'rampant individualism' is a pretty crass moral judgment. making it about individual choice, supposedly selfish individual choice, is kind of missing the whole background of social and sexual habits at that time. it was a permissive era. post-Pill, post-contraceptive. people didn't know it existed.

you really would have been a much happier soul with a briefcase and a crewcut in the buttoned-down 1950s.

Although I'm Chinese, recently visited Wuhan and directly know many people with COVID-19 I demand the right to travel where I like, attend unprotected orgies with strangers in saunas and lie when donating blood.
You can't stop me because that would be sinophobic, you have to accept whatever I want to do is part of my culture or you're a bigot.
where has anything like this happened anywhere in the world? china complained about countries imposing blanket bans on chinese citizens' travel in the very early stages of the outbreak. fair enough, things changed on the ground. where have the chinese demanded the right to let their infected do what they want? they are already living under incredibly harsh and disciplinary quarantine conditions. as usual, you are talking complete u t t e r bollocks.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-28 15:43:16)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

i'm sorry but saying that AIDS spread because of 'rampant individualism' is a pretty crass moral judgment. making it about individual choice, supposedly selfish individual choice, is kind of missing the whole background of social and sexual habits at that time. it was a permissive era. post-Pill, post-contraceptive. people didn't know it existed.
Morals have nothing to do with it, is pure epidemiology. There were plenty of other diseases which were well known which ripped through the gay community, hepatitis for example, but they carried on and so got repeated infections, drug resistant hepatitis is now a thing.
Now the same group is demanding PreP so they can exercise their inalienable right to unprotected sex with strangers and we're already down the path of PreP immune AIDS.

where has anything like this happened anywhere in the world?
Thats the AIDS epidemic in a nutshell. The Chinese are still demanding unrestricted travel when it suits them.


China has angrily responded to Australia’s coronavirus travel ban and blasted what it called a “wave of panic, over-reaction and racism”
https://www.news.com.au/national/strand … 687d625441
International students stranded in China say the ban on coming to New Zealand because of the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak is unfair and should be lifted.
"I hope the New Zealand government can exempt all international students, including intermediate students, high school students and university students and protect their rights."
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zea … travel-ban

you really would have been a much happier soul with a briefcase and a crewcut in the buttoned-down 1950s.
Yes, I'm the problem, not selfish individualists.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-28 16:45:01)

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uziq
Member
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my point wasn't arguing over whether AIDS was spread in the gay community, which it obviously was from an epidemiological perspective, but that by framing it as 'rampant individualism' you were weirdly making it a matter of political or moral judgment. that's like saying that syphilis and gonorrhoea spread rampantly around georgian england because of 'rampant individualism', i mean, OK, that's one way to put it, i guess. it would be better to talk about these things in terms of education/awareness, prevention, protection, cure, etc., you know, the language of epidemiology, rather than talking derisively about 'people wanting to have sex with strangers'.

certain strains of hepatitis, like herpes and HPV, are incredibly common in the adult population, and have developed similar immunities to cure. they don't have to be associated with 'unprotected sex with strangers' or 'rampant individualism'. very weird take. hence my comment about you sounding like someone from the 1950s preaching abstinence.

also don't you literally pay to have sex with strangers? with the benefit of hindsight, four decades after the outbreak, it's easy for you to judge when you know to use protection.

The pursuit of excess protein may be the end of us, that and radical individualism which brought AIDS to the wider community.
it's amazing how much dilbert has come to sound like a fascist ninny. this could be a Hitler-the-vegan quote.

so there should be a blanket ban on all flights into and out of china, is that what you're saying? international students, foreign workers, tourists, etc, shouldn't be repatriated? just to be clear, here. most countries have tried to localise their travel bans to hotspots/clusters of identified transmission, rather than banning an entire country.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-29 02:52:57)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
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Woman who recovered from coronavirus tests positive for it again in Japan
https://nypost.com/2020/02/27/woman-who … n-in-japan

It's almost like professional concern over a disease with so many unknown variables is justifiable, no?

"Just the flu"   -'ride-it-out' Jay
uziq
Member
+492|3615
the main worry has always been the elderly and vulnerable, and for it to break out uncontained in the middle-east or africa. look at the death rate in Iran after a relatively small breakout.

of course jay thinks it’s over-rated because it will disproportionately affect brown people far away. this is a guy who keeps flattering himself on his social status after killing little girls in iraq for a job.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ … oronavirus
first-person account from a 21-year-old in china. it sounds pretty horrid to me. i had flu last year and would not wish to repeat it.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-29 02:43:28)

Jay
Bork! Bork! Bork!
+2,006|5520|London, England
https://ruinmyweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/iZF2Pnw.jpg
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
-Frederick Bastiat
uziq
Member
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jay doesn't know how viruses work. it's almost cute.

two engineers who both harbour deep insecurities about china. we're really onto something here. you're being replaced, fellas.

Last edited by uziq (2020-02-29 05:45:53)

Larssen
Member
+99|2050
From the stories I've read a bad case of corona is excruciatingly painful. The symptoms are similar to the flu. Fever, shivers, bad cough. All orders of magnitude worse than in regular flu though, leaving healthy young people hospitalised as well.

Apparently medication, care and proper cleaning in the early stages of the disease helps prevent a worsening condition, ensuring the infection doesn't progress beyond a mild flu. Access to medication and testing can be a real issue if too many people fall sick, which is the danger in this epidemic. However I do think it's quite premature to announce that corona will inevitably affect us all. There's been quite a number of dangerous infectious diseases since the 90s and none of them came even close to causing societal downfall in the west.

It's the poor countries with subpar health systems which are at risk, but those have also been disproprotionally affected by h1n1, ebola etc. Unlike those nations I don't foresee us running out of disinfectants and medicine quite so quickly. Also, while the media has been up in arms, we seem to forget a dozen or even few hundred cases doesn't warrant the most extreme government reactions. There's still some way to go to really start worrying - when worldwide infection rates more closely mirror the quoted infectivity of ~3.5 new cases per person, that would be bad.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX
3500 In South Korea, 1100 in Italy, I'd say its escaped now and has the potential to be very bad indeed.
Right now quarantine requirements - be out of an infection zone for 14 days and you're free to travel anywhere - is wholly unsuitable in the circumstances.

Disinfectants and medicines are barely the issue, its going to rip through populations and kill people.

two engineers who both harbour deep insecurities about china. we're really onto something here. you're being replaced, fellas.
Its no fun being disrupted, ask any bookshop owner.
Apart from that China is a threat to the Western world on many levels, military, economic, environmental.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-29 18:05:40)

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unnamednewbie13
Moderator
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"Ride it out, dilbert! It's just the flu! No use thinking too hard about it."
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX
I had secretly been hoping for the Thanos solution.
Maybe this is it.

We probably don't have a lot of choice but to ride it out until a vaccine is developed.
It would make sense to limit contagion as far as practically possible in the meantime, not sit back and assume it will be other people dying.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-02-29 23:03:18)

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uziq
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way too much rampant individualism in italy, you see, what with all that family life spreading it around. and far too much rampant individualism in south korea, where the virus has been spread mostly in kooky church congregations, and where the ‘individualism’ is so rampant that the suicide rate is world-topping.

btw your entire reading of the AIDS outbreak being down to careless gay men and their licentious ways is straight up fucking garbage. the way the issue was handled – and politicised – in america on an administrative level is way more complicated than that. if public health authorities advise wrongly, hide information or, worse, let their prejudices come first, then people go on behaving in ignorance (and injuriously). i seriously suggest you read a fucking book on the topic.

the AIDS outbreak was one of the most hyper-politicised health crises of the century. research money was with-held, information was scarce, scaremongering high ... even the president took several years to even utter the word publicly and admit it was real. so fuck off saying it spread into the ‘normal’ population because of ‘rampant individualism’. much like the early spread of COVID in china, it was ENTIRELY avoidable if dealt with properly. AIDS is precisely what happens when there is collective ignorance, panic and inaction, not when ‘rampant individualism’ goes wild; this is just your way of moralising about others’ sexual habits (you who pays for sex, dilbert).

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-01 01:01:45)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
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I have read a book on it, And the Band Played On. I recommend it.
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uziq
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so you re-present verbatim the worst calumnies and lies of the administration that book exposed. well done.

anything to tickle your little proto-fascist appeals to destroying 'individualism', putting on our jackboots to match the authoritarianism of china, islam, israel ...

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-01 05:35:13)

uziq
Member
+492|3615
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ … ra-spinney

tl;dr:
  • previous worst-case pandemics like spanish flu, when out of control, killed 50-100 million and set humanity back decades in terms of development and economy.
  • the death-rate of covid-19 looks to be less than SARS but 20x higher than seasonal flu.
  • we may still be underestimating the incubation period and its contagiousness/degree of transmissibility.
  • for e.g., a 2018 simulation that the Gates Foundation conducted of a flu pandemic estimated that there would be 28,000 cases after one month, 10 million after three months, and 33 million after six months.
  • still quite a while off a vaccine, even as a top priority; and further interesting facts, like how 20% of millennial in america now believe vaccines 'cause autism', and how even checking yourself into hospital in the states for precautionary measures carries a heavy financial burden.
  • outbreak of novel pathogens are inevitable, it's no use promoting militant veganism or waging war on the chinese. according to global guidelines, their response and communication has been good though not perfect (and no one country has a system in place that is perfect).


lots of fun. but hey, jay knows the score. apparently we should just 'ride it out' and viruses peter out over time when they go far away from their source, and don't mutate.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Funny how the Chinese immediately started screaming racism when various countries put travel bans in place. They're free to lock down Wuhan but the world can't lock down China.
by the way, the only country in europe who instated a complete flight ban from china was ... italy. maybe there's something to their complaints of it being unreasonable and ineffective? and are you actually comparing the quarantining of a heavily infected area, which all governments globally do in response, according to the accepted protocol, with complete travel bans for entire countries, which many public health officials, the head official in the UK among them, advise against doing? seems legit, dilderp.

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-01 05:37:18)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
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2 dozen first responders quarantined for coronavirus in Wash.
https://www.policeone.com/officer-safet … cSr900LbVm

People are nervous. There's been a run on some of the stores here for supplies.

Free market's in some places taking good advantage by selling things like hand cleanser, n95 masks, and toilet paper (at huge markup). Great contribution.
uziq
Member
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first US death a man in his mid-50s? let’s hope jay has been hitting the treadmill regularly and has excellent respiratory and cardio fitness.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6268|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

by the way, the only country in europe who instated a complete flight ban from china was ... italy. maybe there's something to their complaints of it being unreasonable and ineffective? and are you actually comparing the quarantining of a heavily infected area, which all governments globally do in response, according to the accepted protocol, with complete travel bans for entire countries, which many public health officials, the head official in the UK among them, advise against doing? seems legit, dilderp.
Whats the alternative to total quarantine? There isn't one, and there's nothing racist about it, derpziq.
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uziq
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total quarantine of an infected area, yes, to control it. obviously. but that quickly went out the window, didn't it? there could have been a month before the virus even started manifesting in human beings. that's a lot of transmission before you can throw down a quarantine in response.

quarantining an entire country and cancelling all flights is a great act of economic self-harm; epidemiologically speaking in these circumstances, it hasn't done anything. italy had the strictest measures on china and yet quickly developed the biggest breakout in all of europe. so those were clearly great tactics dilderp. you should tell the public health chiefs what they're doing wrong.

this whole discussion is meaningless, anyway, as the australia–china comments were made at a very different stage. every few days the situation has changed and become more complex. complaining about the 'racist' stuff at this point is so much blah blah blah

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-01 15:31:29)

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