BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

yes, right, it's we who are thinking irrationally. not you, jay. who cannot read a graph. who cannot comprehend public health policy which everyone else has seen the commonsense of almost immediately.

you are still in denial about the gravity of the situation. you haven't genuinely acknowledged what is happening this entire time. we are in a pandemic situation with a virus that is far more dangerous than flu. many, many people will die unless drastic action is taken. the only way out of this situation we find ourselves in, for the first time as a global community, is a vaccine. coronavirus is a novel pathogen. we have no immunity -- your herd immunity is in fact the religious object here, a faith for which we have no direct evidence.

i love that you think a vaccine is hopeless and won't work, 'because mutation' (???), but think everything will be fixed by this magical herd immunity for which we have no evidence. but if the virus mutates so much, why would herd immunity work? do you have the first fucking idea what you're talking about, man? did you take a class on the human immune system in high school?

the world is going to have to wait or restrict in some capacity until a vaccine. that's the situation we are in. it's a fait accompli at this point. you can kick against the pricks all you want.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-17 09:08:10)

Larssen wrote:

Jay look at this graph, comparisons to the Spanish flu is as close as we'll get because at least the death rate is similar. Which in the case of coronavirus would explode if ICU's are truly overrun.

https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu- … in-history

Average life expectancy dropped by over 10 years in some places. The human cost of the Spanish flu in Europe was worse than the second world war. Do you understand the magnitude of the problem we're facing? You expect a government to mobilise in war but do nothing in a pandemic?

Jay wrote:

There is no real plan. There are no triggering criteria where everyone is released. You're all willing to hunker down and hide for some indeterminate amount of time until there's a vaccine. You're grasping onto that one thing like a religious object. The grail! The grail! The vaccine!

The world can't wait the 18 months it will take to work up a vaccine. Better start making alternative plans before people start ignoring officials and start going about their business on their own again. It's already starting.

no triggering criteria

Drop in ICU admissions to manageable, i.e. normal levels
Reopening businesses without massive spike in cases
Continued control over virus spread

Measurable, triggering criteria. Here you go. I'm sure you can develop a whole list of measurable KPIs on which to base policy here.

Ok, and ICU beds open up? What then? You reopen 20% of restaurants by lottery? Really painted themselves into a corner, haven't they? Just like with any other law, once it's enacted it takes an act of God to overcome inertia and get it repealed.

Jay wrote:

Larssen wrote:

Jay look at this graph, comparisons to the Spanish flu is as close as we'll get because at least the death rate is similar. Which in the case of coronavirus would explode if ICU's are truly overrun.

https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu- … in-history

Average life expectancy dropped by over 10 years in some places. The human cost of the Spanish flu in Europe was worse than the second world war. Do you understand the magnitude of the problem we're facing? You expect a government to mobilise in war but do nothing in a pandemic?

Jay wrote:

There is no real plan. There are no triggering criteria where everyone is released. You're all willing to hunker down and hide for some indeterminate amount of time until there's a vaccine. You're grasping onto that one thing like a religious object. The grail! The grail! The vaccine!

The world can't wait the 18 months it will take to work up a vaccine. Better start making alternative plans before people start ignoring officials and start going about their business on their own again. It's already starting.

no triggering criteria

Drop in ICU admissions to manageable, i.e. normal levels
Reopening businesses without massive spike in cases
Continued control over virus spread

Measurable, triggering criteria. Here you go. I'm sure you can develop a whole list of measurable KPIs on which to base policy here.

Ok, and ICU beds open up? What then? You reopen 20% of restaurants by lottery? Really painted themselves into a corner, haven't they? Just like with any other law, once it's enacted it takes an act of God to overcome inertia and get it repealed.

oh yes, we are certainly going to have to go through the full court system to 'repeal laws' in order to get society back to normal. an overweening, despotic government is going to use this as an excuse to keep businesses closed and the economy in a death-spiral for as long as possible! just like the *checks notes* evil democrats!

most governments are discussing limited opening up, yes, for lack of any other better strategy. it's as yet unproven how much we can 'control' the spread of the disease by opening the faucet incrementally. it is highly contagious. what is for certain is that safety measures and distancing are not going away until that vaccine appears, open businesses or not.

you still haven't answered how your own strategy is any better? what's the use of a hypothetical herd immunity if the virus is, to quote your reasoning, highly mutative? why is herd immunity more effective than a vaccine?

sweden, which has more deaths than any other scandinavian nation.

working well! no wonder america likes it.

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1712761/
"nice" little graphic here.

Also the dumb keeps on getting stronger, jesus...

jay literally called the NHS 'propaganda' earlier. it makes you wonder if anything got into his CSF. his brain must be swiss cheese.

jay is the antithesis of the free market. raised by the mother wolf of the state and still yanking at her desiccate teet from time to time.

he works in an industry that is basically state subsidised in all but name. it's hardly a free-market of open competition.

see my post earlier about conservative types being full of bluster and always self-deluding/passing the buck. it's practically a meme.

you can link to time-stamped youtube videos here. the problem is it doesn't like the truncated 'youtu.be' URL. you need the full one.

you can use youtubehq as bb-code tags as well to force 720p.

i just watched the clip: how unhinged and unprofessional is trump? a state-level leader is in a press conference and meanwhile he's sniping the whole thing over twitter. it's just pathetic. an absolute nadir in leadership. this isn't tit-for-tat point scoring in an election season. it's a national emergency in which 1,000s are dying every day. and trump is basically trolling on twitter when state-leaders are trying to get out key information and act accountable.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-17 16:10:15)

Here's your state governor divulging that your president is leaving him out to dry to organise an international supply chain for testing kits, that your president seems blissfully unaware of the contents of reports issued by his federal agencies and that your president was in fact woefully unprepared when it came to organising ventilator stockpiles or logistics. Creating chaos even. Doesn't even know the basics of the relationship between himself and governors either. Now Trump is also insulting the guy on twitter during a press conference.

I have no words.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-17 16:29:09)

coke wrote:

Also the dumb keeps on getting stronger, jesus...

uziq wrote:

he works in an industry that is basically state subsidised in all but name. it's hardly a free-market of open competition.

I'm very confident at least half his income is derived from govt spending, at the same time he gripes endlessly about 'muh taxes'.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-04-17 16:35:00)

So Jay, if the virus mutates too fast for a vaccine to be useful how is herd immunity going to happen?
We need a better answer than 'logic'
If thats the case are you OK with you, your wife and kids getting this thing repeatedly?
Did you know that the more a virus spreads the more hosts its in the more it mutates?

Are you OK with the US death rate stabilising at 3,000/day?
Except thats the rate under lockdown, what does your logic predict it will rise to if the states are liberated from lockdown?
Would 30,000/day be a reasonable guess?
Would you be OK with that rate so you can get back to work?

Dilbert_X wrote:

Jay wrote:

I don't care about the president. I care about what my governor is doing. We have a federal system of government. The actions taken by my state have more impact on my day-to-day life than the federal government ever does. This is how our country was designed. It's not the president's job to organize ventilators. That was supposed to be done at the state level many years ago.

In Europe, is every country responsible for it's own response or is the EU government responsible? Do you all point the finger at the EU for dropping the ball? You've set up a similar form of government to ours, why would you have different expectations? Our president is relatively powerless, no matter how much people like to project onto the office.

EU budget isn't 38% of GDP, as it is in the US, its 1%.

If the EU were spending 38% of GDP then you bet we'd expect them to do something for it, but they're not, 1% is barely in the noise.

Its amazing how you keep pulling out these 'facts' "You've set up a similar form of government to ours" when they have no basis in reality.

I'd also like to point out that the president, in his current use of the office, has a very direct impact on what states are able to do. Here's one example (the site is shit, but it's short and they include source material):

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/03/2 … governors/

Jay wrote:

Larssen wrote:

Here's your state governor divulging that your president is leaving him out to dry to organise an international supply chain for testing kits, that your president seems blissfully unaware of the contents of reports issued by his federal agencies and that your president was in fact woefully unprepared when it came to organising ventilator stockpiles or logistics. Creating chaos even. Doesn't even know the basics of the relationship between himself and governors either. Now Trump is also insulting the guy on twitter during a press conference.

I have no words.

I don't care about the president. I care about what my governor is doing. We have a federal system of government. The actions taken by my state have more impact on my day-to-day life than the federal government ever does. This is how our country was designed. It's not the president's job to organize ventilators. That was supposed to be done at the state level many years ago.

In Europe, is every country responsible for it's own response or is the EU government responsible? Do you all point the finger at the EU for dropping the ball? You've set up a similar form of government to ours, why would you have different expectations? Our president is relatively powerless, no matter how much people like to project onto the office.

The executive powers of your president, the institutes and budget at his disposal are far beyond anything the EU is. The EU is powerful, but has limited to no executive powers that can only be deployed through unanimous consensus among member states.

So no, the expectations are different as the situation cannot be compared. We do expect some manner of coordination at an EU level, but nothing resembling what would be possible in the US.

Your guy is sitting on your country's top data science teams, has an entire intelligence community at his disposal, a mountain of funds and a lot of powers concentrated in his office. There's no need to become personally involved in crisis management at a state level, but there is every reason for him to act in a coordinating manner at the US level. To do what he can to ensure domestic production of testing kits and protective equipment, to arrange international supplies if domestic stockpiles are insufficient, to timely deliver relevant info to states in the form of data models and scenario's, to mobilise if need be that gigantic military of yours to help crisis relief, to devise ways to stem the spread, he could even act as chair in meetings between governors to assist in coordinating their states opening up and to immediately be aware of/act on problems beyond state-level.

These are all national level problems. There is an enormous role he could play and as you now know he either barely does some of the above stuff or not at all. What kind of leader are you if your governors end up openly lambasting you, are even in conflict with you as president? This is not about partisan divides but the president not even understanding the very basics of his role and abilities in your federal government. THAT is the real on-going farce Jay. 10x more people now died than did in 9/11 and you still don't hold that piece of shit to account because he would somehow be good for what exactly? The economy? He demonstrably can't even fucking read the numbers and projections his federal agencies come up with in their reports, what makes you believe he even understands global economics??? He's dumb as a brick, same colour too.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-18 00:16:39)