BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

yeah, i commented on this a few days ago. the truth is more likely somewhere between outright cover-up/fabrication and just the complexity of the situation.

britain also 'suddenly' revised its death figure up by 20-30% overnight, about a week and a half ago, after tallying up the total deaths from care homes and suchlike. it's not inconceivable that china have just audited the numbers again with a wider definition of what exactly constitutes a death 'from' coronavirus. they are now reporting so few daily deaths -- we have to assume there's a grain of truth in the downturn -- that perhaps they are now able to follow-up and properly account for the the human costs.

our morbid fascination with daily news updates in infected/death numbers belies an extremely complicated epidemiological reality. we simply do not know how many people have it, or how many are dying of it. the scale is too great; it is raging out of control. even much-vaunted antibody tests are problematic and may not give an accurate picture. we lack perfect and universal testing; probably an authoritarian country like china even lacks the wherewithal (not to mention will) to carry out total and complete testing. of course, there is the undeniable political element, and they are going to massage the facts and stage-manage the outbreak to their maximal advantage, but still. you are ascribing a malevolent agency to a government that mostly had as little practical grip on things in the early stages of their outbreak as we do at present. daily statistics dutifully reported in the media gives us a false sense of security that we actually are measuring it in any meaningful way. i wouldn't be surprised if our own statistics get drastically revised after we have managed this 'first peak'.

i wouldn't get so hysterical and out for blood about china at this point. let dilbert take care of that. it is going to achieve the exact sum-total of fuck all. one thing i notice about 'outrage' or 'fears' of china, as especially espoused by the likes of dilbert, is how much basically supernatural agency he ascribes to china. it's very similar to american's fear of the soviets in the cold war. everything is read as some stratagem, part of a patiently deployed strategy to conquer the world and vanquish its foes; even its mistakes are actually purposeful, mere ruses and distraction techniques. it is nearly always an overestimation of their ability or capacity.

i find it very hard to read an especial malice in china's actions with coronavirus, especially considering the widespread incompetence and failures across the 'free' world in dealing with it. how many democratic governments have bungled it? adopted bad strategies? or even much worse, as in the case of america? and this even with the benefit of advance warning, months to prepare, some amount of data at least being made public, etc. maybe i'm just a traitorous maoist. /shrug.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-19 07:16:14)

uziq wrote:

i wouldn't get so hysterical and out for blood about china at this point. let dilbert take care of that. it is going to achieve the exact sum-total of fuck all. one thing i notice about 'outrage' or 'fears' of china, as especially espoused by the likes of dilbert, is how much basically supernatural agency he ascribes to china. it's very similar to american's fear of the soviets in the cold war. everything is read as some stratagem, part of a patiently deployed strategy to conquer the world and vanquish its foes; even its mistakes are actually purposeful, mere ruses and distraction techniques. it is nearly always an overestimation of their ability or capacity.

Obviously not every event is necessarily part of an evil scheme.

The Soviet Union was and still is a malevolent entity, they have been pursuing Stalin's masterplan before, during and since WW2. Take a bit of Ukraine here, shoot down an airliner there, promote instability in Syria, sail a battlefleet here, provoke with long range bombers there.

China too is a malevolent nation, they're been pursuing their aggressive international agenda since Korea, through Vietnam and beyond. They aren't building influence, runways and deepwater ports hrough the South Pacific for no reason.
Its unlikely Wuhan Bat Flu was really a deliberate attack of some kind. Whats more significant is they've responded with instinctive secrecy and nationalist aggression.

They haven't told the world anything like the full story about the pandemic in China, either their numbers are garbage or they have a suppression mechanism they're not telling us about. They certainly knew all about it much earlier than they admitted, there's no way the whole world has been affected but not Wuhan's neighbouring regions. They did not quarantine Wuhan or lock down the rest of China early enough  for the rest of China to not be significantly affected, its not credible. It is strange that they locked down Wuhan but then aggressively pushed for continued international travel for Chinese citizens.
Meanwhile the release may well have been accidental or natural but they will be happy to sit back and watch us all choke to death as they ship us faulty masks and test kits.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-04-20 05:00:21)

uziq wrote:

funny how your leader follows the science on pandemics but not climate change, eh? selective reckonings. his lord works in mysterious ways, alright ...

Bushfires have forced the issue, assuming this virus thing goes away climate change is now a real issue here.

What greater freedom is there than to work to consume.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment … aths-study

high levels of air pollution may be key contributor to covid deaths. can’t be a stretch of the imagination or much of a surprise to anyone, but a sobering thought nonetheless. the level of ambient pollution people accept as part of living in many major cities is nothing less than shocking. measurable years lost of life expectancy even without a lethal respiratory illness in circulation.

i’m not one to go in for the eco-fascist line of thinking that wants a senseless pandemic to be ‘divine justice’ or ‘nature getting her own back’ on climate changing, animal eating, polluting humans, but nothing has quite shown up the weaknesses in our globalised system and, indeed, now the weaknesses the same system creates in our own bodies and lungs, quite like this covid. it’s the perfect virus for 21st century earth.

It's funny that Jay is willing to throw away over a decade worth of friendship and interpersonal relationships in order for his kid and some El Salvadorian children to get a few extra months of learning to color in between the lines.

Now I am not criticizing sacrificing people. I would sacrifice all of you too but for money relative to how much I like you. The range is between $10,000 to $250,000 in case you were wondering.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Now I am not criticizing sacrificing people. I would sacrifice all of you too but for money relative to how much I like you. The range is between $10,000 to $250,000 in case you were wondering.

I find that range surprisingly high.

There is no future for children. In a year we will all be living underground and sending people back in time like in the 12 Monkeys.

A couple threads on the alleged astroturfing of the anti-quarantine protests. I won't post their entirety here, but:

https://www.reddit.com/r/maryland/comme … e/fnstpyl/

Seriously, even without that information - who or whomever is responsible for this astroturfing couldn't make this more obvious if they tried. It honestly took me longer to type all of this up to present here than it did for me to find this all. Yet people have taken the bait hook-line-and-sinker.

Meanwhile, the President then starts tweeting "LIBERATE MINNESOTA", "LIBERATE VIRGINIA...", and "LIBERATE MICHIGAN"; and one of the major forces behind the group in Michigan was a political group that has direct ties to and has historically been heavily funded by the family of the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (though said family denies direct involvement in last weeks protest)?

In that regard, I'm not alleging some major conspiracy here, but l-o-fucking-l.

https://www.reddit.com/r/esist/comments … uarantine/

I followed his links and I found that these groups are all created by what I thought were two brothers. It turns out it is four brothers who are known for running pro 2a and pro trump groups that instill fear into gun owners in order to raise funds via donation. They have lost their non-profit status with at least one of their nonprofits they were running. These guys are the Dorr Brothers. I had a conversation with one on Facebook until he blocked me where he admitted to creating the Facebook groups.

Here is a screenshot of that conversation.

These guys have a anti-scam website dedicated to them. The Minnesota GOP has a website warning about them. Minnesota FOX 9 has a story about them. Several pro-gun groups have warned their members about them.

Link to a WP article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo … e-protests

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

But I can get behind Jay's wishes for his children to have a proper education so that they can become the future's virologists, epidemiologists, and liberal voters.

Right now Jay is probably realising what his kids are actually like, and by extension what he was like as a kid.

I hope Jay is practising libertarian discipline on them, which is to say none.
Then when they're old enough he can hand them over to the army to deal with and give them a future.