uziq
Member
+493|3669
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETk-iuDXgAQKKfz?format=jpg&name=large

america still above the 33% daily increase line, and seems to be taking off compared to all other nations. and jay is here telling us that 'exponential growth is unrealistic' and that the numbers are going to reach about 15% of all americans. oooooh dear me.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3936
Senate Republicans, racing to put their imprint on the crisis response, unveiled a package that would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in loans to big corporations and small businesses, large corporate tax cuts and checks of up to $1,200 for taxpayers. The plan would also place limits on a paid-leave program enacted this week to respond to the crisis.
...
But he also injected new uncertainty into the government’s response, suggesting it was not his responsibility to meet the needs of health care workers on the front lines of combating the disease. A day after he said he would use the Defense Production Act — a Korean War-era law that allows presidents to force American industry to ramp up production of critical equipment and supplies — Mr. Trump told reporters that he would rather rely on states to deliver equipment to health care workers.

“The federal government’s not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping,” Mr. Trump said. “You know, we’re not a shipping clerk,” he said, adding that governors “are supposed to be doing it.”
Republicans genuinely believe this whole thing will blow over on its own. If this was only happening in the U.S. then that's not a crazy thought really. But the leaders of the major engines of world productivity, the East Asians and Westerners, are voluntarily shutting down their own economies over this. Do people really think that all of those nations are just spooked by Social Justice Twitter and CNN?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+493|3669
if jay is anything to go by as far as the republican base, scientific illiteracy has a lot to do with it.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3936
I think I know what is happening. The Republicans are treating this like it is an economic crisis and not a slow rolling disaster. Their typical solutions of tax cuts and free market isn't prepared for something like this. They think this is like the Great Recession when it is instead a slow rolling 9/11 with the global potential to kill as many people as 20 years of the Global War on terrorism is a faster time. 13,000 deaths in 3 months and growing. Those are early Syrian Civil War numbers.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6323|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

good luck trying to get the world’s politicians to jerk the global economy into a nosedive in week 2 of the outbreak in china. evidently all you could convince republican politicians to do at that juncture was rearrange their stocks portfolio.
There was never any need to nosedive the economy, if it was OK to isolate Hubei it was OK to isolate China - however much they whined about racism.
If they hadn't kept it secret in the first six weeks those decisions could have been worked up.

Even now it would be a whole lot better to stop 100% of the world economy for 8-12 weeks than stop 95% for 12-18 months. No-one has the balls though.

The letters page of the Aus equivalent of The Times is starting to fill out with people asking when China is going to accept the blame for this and how they'd like to compensate the world for inflicting it.

Interesting and lethal times ahead.
Fuck Israel
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6323|eXtreme to the maX

SuperJail Warden wrote:

I think I know what is happening. The Republicans are treating this like it is an economic crisis and not a slow rolling disaster. Their typical solutions of tax cuts and free market isn't prepared for something like this. They think this is like the Great Recession when it is instead a slow rolling 9/11 with the global potential to kill as many people as 20 years of the Global War on terrorism is a faster time. 13,000 deaths in 3 months and growing. Those are early Syrian Civil War numbers.
Thats the thing if you only care about money and not people.
Is Syria a drain on Jay's 401K? Does Trump have any hotels there? OK, doesn't matter then.
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+493|3669
so in your reading it's all china's fault for protesting about isolation. if only we had forced an embargo upon them, then we could have starved it out!

except that's not what happened. the virus had spread far beyond hubei province likely a week before the numbers started showing up. we didn't, and couldn't, know then that it had such a long period of asymptomatic incubation.

undoubtedly it could have been nipped in the bud in the first 2 weeks. if the local government had listened to the first frontline doctors' reports, if they had quarantined the entire city immediately and treated it seriously, if, if ... but this is literally the nature of pandemics. a very small, containable situation quickly becomes an uncontainable one. your idea that we could neatly 'close off' china in a global system, especially a city like wuhan which is the hub of their logistical/trade wheel, is a pure fantasy of control. too many people come and go from china, too many goods. the virus had bolted outside of china before we even recognised the gravity of the situation.

the virus 'wasn't kept secret' in the first 6 weeks. western agencies had knowledge of it. an article was published reporting on its existence in the Lancet, the most widely read and respected medical journal in the world. kept secret? no. badly handled politically? absolutely.

no surprises that your average australian times reader is an idiot white person who wants to hold johnny foreigner to account for all their misfortunes. placing all your anger and frustration on someone else is always so comforting.

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-21 05:30:08)

uziq
Member
+493|3669
the way you think, dilbert, reminds me of dominic cummings, actually. which is ironic that you likened me to him, despite our venn diagram only overlapping for a crescent moon's nail clipping that says 'has a humanities degree'.

a commentator said on cummings' wish to overhaul government and bring in his own 'weirdos and misfits' that he's essentially trying to put together a Marvel Avengers line-up that is going to magically sweep in and fix all the institutions and systems in a week. it's an adolescent fantasy of control and change, that completely misunderstands the granular, gradualist way that the world works – indeed, the way that human beings think and conceive of the world and 'the possible'. society is an oil tanker that can only change direction very slowly and in increments. larssen has written very lucidly on this elsewhere.

you have this absolutist thinking that doesn't make any practicable sense. it's a nonsense. tabloid comments section bluster. angry pub bore material. 'why don't we shut down 100% of the world economy? 95% isn't enough'. oh yes, so people will keep harvesting and providing food, supermarkets will remain stocked, pharmacies will remain open, drugs will continue to be dispensed, hospitals will continue to be staffed, public transport networks will continue to operate, taxi drivers will continue to give rides, rents will continue to be paid ... in a 100% economic shutdown? why does this stuff even have to be pointed out to you? it's like talking to a small angry man-child who petulantly kicks against the pricks when the world isn't to his liking (which is seldom).

Last edited by uziq (2020-03-21 05:40:15)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6323|eXtreme to the maX
100% for 8 wks, 95% for 100-150 weeks

DO THE MATHS
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+493|3669
it's not possible to create a 100% economic shutdown. people need food. they need public services. they need hospital care. a minimum level of infrastructure has to tick over. that is economic activity, ergo it is people moving about and interacting. you dipshit.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6988|PNW

All the films releasing early on demand due to coronavirus – and how to watch at home (3/17)
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/20 … virus-film

Noticing this popping up. Amazon Cinema. Fandango Home Premiere. Checking Fandango, there aren't even any showtimes listed before April.

Two big players in my area:

Regal Cinemas Closing All U.S. Theaters Due to Coronavirus (3/16)
https://variety.com/2020/film/box-offic … 1203536003

AMC Theatres, Regal Cinemas to close due to coronavirus pandemic (3/16)
https://news.yahoo.com/amc-theatres-reg … 00424.html

Not that I was actually considering going to the cinema during all this.
uziq
Member
+493|3669
i imagine they’re releasing on demand because theatres/cinemas are closed across most of the western world. they’re not releasing early to cause a rush on your local multiplex.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6988|PNW

Right, thus my links to the two local players shutting down.
uziq
Member
+493|3669
netflix and youtube here are in SD potato quality at the moment to ease bandwidth. it's almost vintage. feel like watching chocolate rain or something.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3936
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6988|PNW

Pence standing behind anybody making a speech, looking like:

https://i.imgur.com/i4tOrbk.png
Larssen
Member
+99|2104
The local Chinese government didn't just fail to respond, it actively shut down whistleblowers. The official communication on the virus even at the national level was also very muted. Had the authorities seriously warned the rest of the world instead of being preoccupied with saving face, other countries' politicians might have taken it a little more seriously a little sooner.

Not to pretend there isn't plenty political blame to go around in the West as well. The political caste failed to greater or lesser degree in various parts of the world. But it seems to me national health institutes were also unprepared for the speed of the spread and often based their recommendations on present numbers instead of future projections.

Furthermore local cultural norms and inexperience with disease pandemics seem to be exacerbating factors in the spread regardless of government action. Asian societies appear to be more socially prepared to deal with this sort of problem than Western ones.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-03-21 07:41:38)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6988|PNW

On that, I had a recent conversation with an intermittent Europhile (when it suits him) who insisted that modern European governments have some innate, superior common sense response at dealing with pandemics because of centuries long experience with the plague. And that's why US response is underwhelming.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3936
Europe is a shit show right now. If there was anyone to take lessons from it would have been the Japanese. They live on an island the America is kind of like an island.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6988|PNW

https://i.imgur.com/WAYX4bp.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6988|PNW

https://i.imgur.com/YO5X1Pt.png
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6323|eXtreme to the maX

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Europe is a shit show right now. If there was anyone to take lessons from it would have been the Japanese. They live on an island the America is kind of like an island.
Every nation or state which can close its borders should do so.
Fuck Israel
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,813|6323|eXtreme to the maX
Doctors are terrified. They know America's hospitals are about to be hit by a tsunami of infected patients and they don't have enough beds or ventilators to treat them. They don't even have basic protective gear to keep their staff healthy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51981627
Fuck Israel
uziq
Member
+493|3669
they voted for an idiot and the first true test of leadership he obviously failed.

the federal government have been enacting a vision from white house of 'best government is no government'.

now all the libertarians and freedom fighters can see their conspiracy theories about 'the deep state' play out.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+640|3936

uziq wrote:

now all the libertarians and freedom fighters can see their conspiracy theories about 'the deep state' play out.
In America it is impossible to find anyone who openly admits to voting for Bush. I have heard so many people talk about how much they hated Bush but love Trump. If Trump loses in 2020 and a lot of people die in this pandemic, a lot of Republicans will be talking about how much they hated Trump and never voted for him before voting for Tom Cotton (R).
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg

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