The Covid-19 Info thread (keep politics out please)

[Johnson85]

You are calling other people brainwashed and stupid, so let's take a second to talk about things you are ignorant about or possibly brainwashed.

We should be mass producing tests.

"We" are mass producing tests. That's good, but tests are not a cure. They don't allow us to stop the virus. Had they been available early enough, maybe they allow us to avoid shutdowns and just use contact tracing. That horse probably left the barn before we even knew there was an issue based on how far back we are finding deaths now. But to the extent it hadn't, it was a moot point with the CDC screwed up its tests.

Protest that, not just that you miss being whipped by daddy capitalism. The only reason they are pushing to stop having to pay unemployment and such. Follow the money. It's funny, we're a month in and how many people are really going starving because of this? Almost like we do have the capability to not force workers into multiple shitty jobs just to survive. Really makes you think (or in a lot on this thread's case, put your head in the sand.)

This is where it appears you are brainwashed. Yes, people work to provide a lot of good and services that are not necessary to survive, and they work a lot to consume those good and services. But some people do have to produce in order for other people to consume. It sounds like you are advocating that producers just suck it up and produce and non-producers sit home and enjoy the fruits of their labor. That's in theory possible if we accept a much lower standard of living, but the economy is complicated and you can't just isolate one section from the others and the "essential" goods and services still be provided without basically the government nationalizing the entire economy. Just too many interconnected parts between physical supply chains and financing. But even if you could do that, you have a human nature problem. People will do a lot for a month of two if they think it's for the greater good. But at some point, all the people doing the work to produce essential goods and services will notice that they are getting a shitty deal and somehow are worse off than the people who are not.

But even before that point, you are going to have a lot of people that do not want to drastically cut their standard of living (and possibly just as importantly, do not want to stop contributing) for what is a relatively minor risk. Based on the tradeoffs people routinely make between safety and money, we are grossly overreacting to this virus. Even if you could get past the practical problems of trying to shutdown for months on end, why would you want to inflict so much human misery for gains that the vast majority of people, based on their typical actions, do not value that much? People are irrational in how they approach risk for sure, but why do people like you get to choose how they manage risk? You pretty clearly don't seem to be smarter. Are you somehow more moral? What is your or anybody else's claim to that privilege?

You're arguing like it's an extreme measure that I said I want. I simply gave you a reason why you were wrong about social distancing and you took it somewhere else. The reason for social distancing was always to slow spread and prevent the hospitals from being overrun. In the beginning we could have prevented a lot of deaths by being out front of this, but our glorious leader lead us down this path instead, praise be.

Trump certainly could have done better, but he isn't noticeably better or worse than any other political leader, except he did avoid people's worse impulses and not try to shutdown all of the country illogically when a local/regional approach was needed.

What part of "If it spreads to much then it overwhelms the hospital" didn't make sense to you? The part where you had to read, the part where you had to open your eyes, or the part where you had to pull your head out of your ass?

We probably did prevent some deaths by preventing our hospitals from being overrun. We've also caused some deaths and continue to cause some deaths by preventing people from getting "elective" treatments where they died from the delay and also from people just voluntarily avoiding hospitals because of fear of Wuhan. In some places like New Orleans and NYC that was probably not an unreasonable fear. In other places, they died for no reason as potential Wuhan patients were screened before even entering the emergency room waiting room and sent to a separate area. I don't think it's obvious at all whether the net effect was more or fewer deaths than otherwise.

I mean really what a ****ing stupid post. I really don't care about your feelings anymore. That was stupid.



And tweedle dee right behind him. Can read the bible but can't be bothered to understand 3 sentences on a message board though. But by Yahweh he'll give his Holy Opinion (trademarked).

I may be confusing you with another poster, but weren't you one of the ones that was smugly moralizing to other posters and basically calling them stupid, and now subsequent events have shown their guess as to the severity of the situation and appropriate response to be much more accurate and grounded in reality than yours?