Coronavirus COVID-19

[SeparateHold]

1 minute ago, ignatius said:

it's as if he took all the stupid internet comments and made a video out of them

God, fucking right?? It's so awful. I'm all for freedom, and I think those countries he mentioned with the awful laws being put in place are insane. BUT THEM BEING BAD DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD OPEN BACK UP AND PUT OTHERS LIVES AT RISK!!! Ugh.... I hate the internet sometimes.

[goDel]

17 minutes ago, KingBo0 said:

This has got to be the most irritating video I have ever watched. I'm hoping this bastard is just misinformed, and isn't being willfuly ignorant. He says so many dumbass things and blames "the liberals" for the lockdowns. Why can't people on either side stop thinking every choice the other side makes is bad? I don't understand how anything will ever get done when people like him, with tens of thousands of subscribers, go around encouraging you to go out and basically willfully perpetuate this virus. It's so frustrating.

Good example at what you can do with a bunch of half-truths. Especially with some predispositions, like his blatant anti-government stance, or the comment about the radical left.

The frustrating thing is that it isnt stupid either. Its an example of taking a certain set of facts, some half facts and some personal opinions, and a bunch of self serving logic. You see it often on all sides of the debate. What you rarely see, is some argument where someone believes something and addresses potentially damaging information going against their own beliefs. (Remember dunning-kruger and the self doubt you develop when getting more skilled?) Instead its this pseudo lawyerly argument where the goal is to build your own argument and destroy the counter argument. It becomes toxic when people with different beliefs are labeled as radical, or stupid or whatever. Any other argument is either considered logically invalid -before the argument is being heard- or morally invalid -to justify you dont have to actually listen to them. The impossible thing is that it often requires a level of expertise people rarely have to recognize where things are presented skewed, or the logic is just wrong. Thats when emotions take over and it often ends in a shouting match. Weve all been there.

My personal pet peeve is the argument this virus is way less deadly and the odds of people dying are some small number and all that, so lockdowns should be ended. Or some scientist who crunched the numbers and "proved " lockdowns don't work (https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/22/there-is-no-empirical-evidence-for-these-lockdowns/ ). There's always some type of logic resulting in some generalised blanket statement. In a situation with many unknowns and high risks (in terms of lives, economies and anything you can reasonably bring to the argument). Without any regard of the local context. And the point i'm currently making is no exception either. 

Most difficult thing apparently, is to trust your authorities in times like these. And go with the flow of what your government has made up to be the best for all. Thats not to say people cant or shouldnt be critical. But that is to say some level of cooperation is critical to keep society going in times like these. Even if you don't agree.

Central government isn't perfect, but can create some order in all the chaos. If people don't cooperate, it only creates more chaos. And theres always going to be a percentage who don't. And a percentage who do (like maniacs). The majority is somewhere in the middle. The people who kinda cooperate. A lot of central government is about moving this majority into the rightish direction. Or rather, to keep them where they naturally are. As the majority naturally defines societies order. It's often a mostly immovable object.

I'd love to see an analysis about societies where governments are showed to follow these majorities. In a couple societies lots of people went into a personal lockdown out of their own before their central government were even willing to do so. It's interesting to see how societies can control and define their governments. 

Sorry for this useless rant. :S

[SeparateHold]

17 minutes ago, goDel said:

Sorry for this useless rant. :S

This summarizes alot of what I feel but wasn't intelligent enough to put into writing.

[cwmbrancity]

8 hours ago, goDel said:

Good example at what you can do with a bunch of half-truths. Especially with some predispositions, like his blatant anti-government stance, or the comment about the radical left.

The frustrating thing is that it isnt stupid either. Its an example of taking a certain set of facts, some half facts and some personal opinions, and a bunch of self serving logic. You see it often on all sides of the debate. What you rarely see, is some argument where someone believes something and addresses potentially damaging information going against their own beliefs. (Remember dunning-kruger and the self doubt you develop when getting more skilled?) Instead its this pseudo lawyerly argument where the goal is to build your own argument and destroy the counter argument. It becomes toxic when people with different beliefs are labeled as radical, or stupid or whatever. Any other argument is either considered logically invalid -before the argument is being heard- or morally invalid -to justify you dont have to actually listen to them. The impossible thing is that it often requires a level of expertise people rarely have to recognize where things are presented skewed, or the logic is just wrong. Thats when emotions take over and it often ends in a shouting match. Weve all been there.

My personal pet peeve is the argument this virus is way less deadly and the odds of people dying are some small number and all that, so lockdowns should be ended. Or some scientist who crunched the numbers and "proved " lockdowns don't work (https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/22/there-is-no-empirical-evidence-for-these-lockdowns/ ). There's always some type of logic resulting in some generalised blanket statement. In a situation with many unknowns and high risks (in terms of lives, economies and anything you can reasonably bring to the argument). Without any regard of the local context. And the point i'm currently making is no exception either. 

Most difficult thing apparently, is to trust your authorities in times like these. And go with the flow of what your government has made up to be the best for all. Thats not to say people cant or shouldnt be critical. But that is to say some level of cooperation is critical to keep society going in times like these. Even if you don't agree.

Central government isn't perfect, but can create some order in all the chaos. If people don't cooperate, it only creates more chaos. And theres always going to be a percentage who don't. And a percentage who do (like maniacs). The majority is somewhere in the middle. The people who kinda cooperate. A lot of central government is about moving this majority into the rightish direction. Or rather, to keep them where they naturally are. As the majority naturally defines societies order. It's often a mostly immovable object.

I'd love to see an analysis about societies where governments are showed to follow these majorities. In a couple societies lots of people went into a personal lockdown out of their own before their central government were even willing to do so. It's interesting to see how societies can control and define their governments. 

Sorry for this useless rant. :S

[xox]

Croatia is under 5 case per day for the last 7-8 days; yesterday 0, today 1

zero new cases in my county in the last month 

zero covid patients in my hospital in the last 3 weeks

= if you’re healthy you’re welcome as a tourist!

[cwmbrancity]

Fancy a Cummings?

He cums & he CUMS.

[bendish]

fucking uk...jesus...unbelievable. 

cucked nation to use the fash lex

[bendish]

On 4/3/2020 at 5:49 PM, bendish said:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/06/inside-the-mind-of-dominic-cummings-brexit-boris-johnson-conservatives

This is a terrifying read for those interested in the UKs death bungle. The signs are up in neon and everyone's shouting 'Don't listennnnnn to hiiiiiiiim'!

Boris Johnson...my god...how can this man be running the nation? My hobbyist outrage is very shouty right now. Despite some incredible sources of media scrutiny - the majority of UK media is just pathetic. 

Edited May 24, 2020 by bendish

[SeparateHold]

 

[goDel]

*trump approves*

[iococoi]

Amen II - a squirt too far

[Candiru]

What if: there is already reliable intel on the Chinese govt discovering a naturally occurring virus and altering it to increase its transmissibility to humans in a lab setting. Then whoopsie, it got out. 
 

But just saying this outright or making it publicly known would be a disaster for a myriad of reasons, so zip it, buster. For now. 

[Limo]

Or what if, you know, there's wet markets in crazy crowded mega cities with all sorts of different wild animals shitting on top of each other so viruses from tons of different places can mingle in all sorts of different and interesting new ways and people have been warning for decades that this is a disaster waiting to happen

... and then a disaster nearly did happen in 2003 but at that particular instance the mutated virus could only spread when symptoms had appeared so it was reasonably easy to keep in check

... and then a disaster nearly did happen again in 2012 but again the virus it concerned did not spread if you didn't have symptoms so it was still sort of ok

... and then in 2019 it happens again

 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

[Candiru]

Hanlon’s razor is fucking perfect for getting away with things right in front of wicked smaht people
 

 

[EdamAnchorman]

1 hour ago, rhmilo said:

Or what if, you know, there's wet markets in crazy crowded mega cities with all sorts of different wild animals shitting on top of each other so viruses from tons of different places can mingle in all sorts of different and interesting new ways and people have been warning for decades that this is a disaster waiting to happen

... and then a disaster nearly did happen in 2003 but at that particular instance the mutated virus could only spread when symptoms had appeared so it was reasonably easy to keep in check

... and then a disaster nearly did happen again in 2012 but again the virus it concerned did not spread if you didn't have symptoms so it was still sort of ok

... and then in 2019 it happens again

 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

The virus escaping the lab can easily be attributed to stupidity and not malice.  They were researching several coronaviruses with the goal of creating vaccines, no malice there, and it could've escaped accidentally due to lax lab practices or just because it's obviously really fucking contagious.  To me, that scenario seems just as likely due to stupidity.

It's all moot anyway because we'll probably never know the origin.  I think I read somewhere that they still haven't pinpointed the source of the last SARS outbreak?

[Limo]

41 minutes ago, randomsummer said:

The virus escaping the lab can easily be attributed to stupidity and not malice.  They were researching several coronaviruses with the goal of creating vaccines, no malice there, and it could've escaped accidentally due to lax lab practices or just because it's obviously really fucking contagious.  To me, that scenario seems just as likely due to stupidity.

The scientist doing exactly this research has been fairly public about this: she said she had some sleepless nights after it turned out there was a novel infectious corona virus on the loose, thinking it might be one of hers. In the end it wasn't, only 80% of the genome matched the viruses she was studying.

The viruses, I might add, she was studying because an outbreak of a pandemic caused by bat viruses is exactly what people have been predicting for decades and she wanted to see what it would be that we would be up against.

I get it. Humans are hard wired to see agency behind everything, and intent. But it is the very fact that this hard wiring exists that means we should be very alert and vigilant against its temptations.

[EdamAnchorman]

Agreed, I don't see any agency behind it at all, just saying that the accidental lab release scenario seems completely plausible to me, as does the natural release scenario.

Edited May 25, 2020 by randomsummer

[bendish]

Cummings press con - uk fucking panto of idiocy - embarrassment the whole thing - the lobby, cummings, the set up, farce. And more than 50000 dead, no care home shielding, ppe or effective testing, pathetic messaging, incompetent leadership who all got covid, the farce of death. 

Edited May 25, 2020 by bendish

[Limo]

2 hours ago, randomsummer said:

Agreed, I don't see any agency behind it at all, just saying that the accidental lab release scenario seems completely plausible to me, as does the natural release scenario.

So which is *more* plausible? “It accidentally escaped from a lab that has all sorts of protocols in place to prevent that from happening and just happened to infect a bunch of people” or “vast numbers of people were visiting a veritable virus factory every day and, whoops, the inevitable happened”?

[Candiru]

Yeah come on, guys. Don’t be silly. They would NEVER

[auxien]

21 minutes ago, Candiru said:

Yeah come on, guys. Don’t be silly. They would NEVER

define 'they' here. to whom specifically are you referring. 

[Hugh Mughnus]

You know it's true.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Hugh Mughnus

[ghsotword]

7 hours ago, rhmilo said:

The scientist doing exactly this research has been fairly public about this: she said she had some sleepless nights after it turned out there was a novel infectious corona virus on the loose, thinking it might be one of hers. In the end it wasn't, only 80% of the genome matched the viruses she was studying.

If the Chinese scientists accidentally leaked the virus from the Wuhan lab, I'm sure they wouldn't admit this happened. Instead, I would expect them to try to cover everything up just like the Soviet Union did with its disasters. So the comments from the Wuhan lab staff or the Chinese government do not really prove or refute anything

[Limo]

9 minutes ago, ghsotword said:

If the Chinese scientists accidentally leaked the virus from the Wuhan lab, I'm sure they wouldn't admit this happened. Instead, I would expect them to try to cover everything up just like the Soviet Union did with its disasters. So the comments from the Wuhan lab staff or the Chinese government do not really prove or refute anything

Does going public and admitting you had sleepless nights over it sound like a coverup?

[ghsotword]

13 minutes ago, rhmilo said:

Does going public and admitting you had sleepless nights over it sound like a coverup?

Well, already before the COVID-19 pandemic happened, it was public information that the Wuhan lab was researching bat coronaviruses, and even working with mutant coronavirus strains. The Wuhan lab had published research papers on these topics. For example, they were co-authors on this paper from 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26552008/. So it is not possible for them to completely deny that they were working with bat coronaviruses. If they were guilty of leaking the virus from the lab, the best they could do to cover it up would be to say that they were worried that it could have come from their lab but then they checked the sequences and they didn't match.