BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

uziq wrote:

'here' = australia, a tiny island nation

Don't worry, Jay made that mistake too.

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

'here' = australia, a tiny island nation

Don't worry, Jay made that mistake too.

i meant in terms of population and prominence, dipshit. i know that the fucking island of australia is geographically big ffs.

australia is not a major international hub (nor is new zealand). it's in the arse end of nowhere and has a tiny population. no shit you can close your island and kid yourself that the solution fits everywhere. that's what i meant by tiny 'island nation'. not that the island is tiny. /facepalm

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-17 19:31:08)

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

'here' = australia, a tiny island nation

Don't worry, Jay made that mistake too.

Seems you have plenty of space for immigrants.

TLDR

Australia is highly dependent on travel, for tourism and students for two.
Still better to crimp travel and not live under lockdown.

So when is Boris delivering his victory speech?

Who exactly needs to travel though?

Its pretty well no-one, not with telephones, email, zoom etc.

You didn't need to travel to Korea, but being an egotist you thought the risk to everyone else was worth it to you.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Who exactly needs to travel though?

Its pretty well no-one, not with telephones, email, zoom etc.

You didn't need to travel to Korea, but being an egotist you thought the risk to everyone else was worth it to you.

i was vaccinated and korea had 250 cases per day in a population of 60 million. i took 2 tests before departure, 1 test in germany, and 3 tests within my first 2 weeks of arrival in isolation. i paid $1500 to quarantine in total self-isolation for 2 weeks. in addition, i'm not frivolously hopping around, crossing borders: i've moved somewhere to stay put for the foreseeable (and i'm contributing handsomely to their national health service, natch). 'the risk to everyone'. tell me more, oh dilbertius the grand inquisitor!

do i need to remind you again that non-essential travel was totally banned at the time? there were police officers at the border gates of heathrow ffs. weren't you gloating about it in the lead-up to my move, rubbing your hands at the thought that i'd have to cancel and be as miserable as you? 'frivolous' travel in the eyes of you but not the eyes of the british and korean embassies, i guess. you should send them a letter!

who needs to travel? are you just ignoring everything i said about economic migrants? what if you're separated from your family and elderly relatives? what if someone falls unwell? what if you have to attend the funeral of your parents? immigrant or itinerant workers are often only in their host country in the first place to help support a family living far away.

you really do think that the world is made up of lolly-gagging jetsetters and idiot influencers, don't you?

go and rewatch idiocracy! you really have a grasp on people's lives!

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-17 20:28:33)

uziq wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Who exactly needs to travel though?

Its pretty well no-one, not with telephones, email, zoom etc.

You didn't need to travel to Korea, but being an egotist you thought the risk to everyone else was worth it to you.

i was vaccinated and korea had 250 cases per day in a population of 60 million. i took 2 tests before departure, 1 test in germany, and 3 tests within my first 2 weeks of arrival in isolation. i paid $1500 to quarantine in total self-isolation for 2 weeks. in addition, i'm not frivolously hopping around, crossing borders: i've moved somewhere to stay put for the foreseeable

But you didn't actually have a single valid reason to go did you? Except you felt like it.

I'm sure if you suddenly need to go back to the UK you'll be whining as hard as everyone else that borders should be open, the govt needs to do more to support citizens abroad etc.
Or if Korea has an outbreak like Taiwan you'll want to get out ASAP and won't give a stuff if you bring a vaccine resistant strain back to the UK.

What we're in is not much different to a world war in the seriousness, people couldn't just hop on on a plane then because the snowflakes had worked for a year and needed a holiday because they were 'burned out' LMAO.

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Australia is highly dependent on travel, for tourism and students for two.

In 2019, tourism in Australia accounted for 3.1% of the national GDP, contributing $60.8 billion to the Australian economy [...] Of this, 26% came from international visitors to Australia while 74% came from domestic tourism.

According to data from the tourism satellite account published by the INE, the industry generates 12.3% of Spain's GDP and 12.7% of its employment.

Various areas are highly dependent on tourism, NT and Northern QLD for two.

1 in 8 people in spain are employed in tourism. 12.3% of its GDP. international tourism, meanwhile, accounts for 0.8% of australia's GDP.

even when talking about the most frivolous and 'unnecessary' types of flight, holidaying and tourism, can you not see that a global travel ban has bigger ramifications in places that aren't australia? it's almost like ... i fucking said ... a one-size-fits-all blanket ban is a bad idea!

whilst you're moaning about 'hipsters' and 'egotists', 1 in 8 people in spain, a country already in poor economic health, are looking at joblessness, evictions, homelessness and structural deprivation (youth unemployment in spain: 40% australia: 11%).

so that's about 6 million people in spain whose livelihoods would be destroyed by a year-long travel ban, just to take one example from a developed country. so about a quarter of australia's total population. 'but northern QLD ...!'

easy for you to make dismissive pronouncements from your suburb where you risk nothing, venture nothing, and in fact do nothing, isn't it? 'let's shut down the world for a year, it'll be fine, we can all use zoom, it works swimmingly on my ipad pro actually when i need to ask pater to bring me some soda from the next room'. and meanwhile you start frothing with rhetoric about how this is 'our world war' oh my god you precious little ... snowflake?

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-17 21:50:40)

dilbert, old chap, i understand that you've played your hand of cards in this life and have come up craps. i get it. you trace a rather pitiable and desolate figure, and i'm genuinely sorry for it. but your personal animus and grievances are not the world picture, and your 'solution' to this pandemic, to pour scorn on everyone else's 'frivolous' lifestyles and to ban all travel, everywhere, for a year, is just not a good solution.

places like korea and taiwan have managed to suppress the pandemic brilliantly whilst also still keeping their borders open. quarantine, effective track+trace systems, as well as meaningfully deployed restrictions in response to local outbreaks ... this is a better-fitted solution, not this one-size miracle fix you keep doggedly promoting. (if you want to talk about why korea's cases can rise and fall by a 'dramatic' 1000 cases over several months, i'm happy to go into the details of their tier system for you; but international flights are not the culprit.)

i've never likened myself to an economic migrant who has had to move to another country out of sheer necessity, nor have i likened myself to a refugee fleeing a war-torn area. what i have tried to point out to you, though, is that the global system does rely upon the flow of goods and labour – including my own. i am still part of that system, a global worker with globally marketable skills, and my relocation is an entirely valid part of those 'international flights' and routine border-crossings that keep the global system humming along. after all, they had an open visa scheme advertising for applicants even during a so-called 'world war' scenario. go figure.

'the point is', rather, old chap, that the korean and british governments and their respective embassies both deemed my relocation to be 'valid', by their own respective criteria, and granted me permission to travel and settle – this during a time when both countries had any number of restrictions and measures in place which banned 'inessential' travel. your 'feelings' about it are irrelevant: i don't care if you personally see it as valid. or is the vituperative view of an unhappy ginger manchild in an australian suburb more important than the actual governments of the places in question? write them a letter, as i said. i can't help you.

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-17 22:31:54)

'most severe lockdown yet' = almost all businesses open until 10pm, gyms open, offices open, schools open, domestic and international tourism for vaccinated people allowed.

'outbreak' = 1500 cases a day, 2 deaths.

yes, they have managed to suppress the pandemic brilliantly using a fitted solution, NOT a blanket ban. a country of 50 million people has incurred 2000 deaths in 1.5 years. that is world-topping performance almost no matter which way you look at it. meanwhile the economic life of the country has continued with minimal interruption. international arrivals and departures continue as normal so long as they are deemed 'valid' and 'essential'.

and, again, on the question of validity:

your 'feelings' about it are irrelevant

also jay is about a decade older than me. i should hope he is ahead of me. isn't a more meaningful comparison to you? aren't you his senior? surely the logical statement is 'jay is ahead of YOU in every life achievement'. he's younger than you, dipshit. you are really straining hard to make a 30 year old feel bad about pursuing what they want in their life. i’m not going to apologise for it .

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-17 22:58:11)

i've been discussing covid measures, you've been berating me for moving to another country in a safe and governmentally approved way.

considering you feel entitled to criticize a move that was approved by two governments, wouldn't you say you're the person who has a problem with overbearing judgments and opinionating?

Last edited by uziq (2021-07-18 01:29:38)

To an extent, maybe. It feels more like people are victims of ceaseless, concerted gaslighting. I've said before that some of this stuff can ensnare otherwise intelligent people. Press and some of the people who have been floating all this stuff out since the first inkling that Democrats were inventing COVID-19 to harm Trump have been doing a good job highly polishing all of their bullshit.

An aside, I've been hearing the word "gaslighting" from right-wingers complaining about what they think critical race theory is. "The liberal left-wing socialists are gaslighting America!"

Darned if I don't see Fox, etc., spinning viewers and listeners up into a dither. Although where the vaccines are concerned, other big groups share some of that responsibility in sacrificing accuracy for scoop.

The facebook and others fold back into how big tech should be held to task for this stuff if they want to act like media groups.

e: Bringing up all the dying unvaccinated people seems to go in one ear and out the other. The conversation will resume about how Pfizer, Moderna, are obsolete or not FDA-approved (not knowing what that means). Also how they're worried about the side effects and how the second dose has floored people (a thing that has gotten a lot of attention). The horse is dead, and we're still beating in an attempt to save lives.

Instead let's talk about the baby bust (millennials killing population growth) or that part in CRT that says we should load all old white men onto transport ships and push them into the Pacific. Hang on, let me see if I can find that part …

Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2021-07-18 02:26:10)

i don’t want kids in my early 30s. i’m not in a hurry. i’ve got things to do (that don’t involve sitting on my ass at my parents’ house).