The Gaming Den

My City (hamburg, germany) just hit 1000 infections today.
Our Chancelor is not infected appearantly.
Despite being tested by, of all things, an infected doctor . .

Dogs can cooperate and IME they enjoy doing so more than humans. If humans have a superpower it's being able to pass information on, and in proper superheroic fashion it's also their super-weakness, if bad info gets into the network.

Let's talk about what's happening in the United States.

The economy is imploding and millions of Americans have no idea where they're going to get the money for groceries next month - or possibly even next week, for many of them.

Republicans put forward a "bailout" that very clearly wasn't ever actually intended to be any kind of relief or stimulus. It was a bunch of bribes intended to hold their political coalition together; a $500 billion USD slush fund Trump could use to reward oligarchs for their continued loyalty and support in these trying times. There were absolutely no effective restrictions in place to guarantee that the money be used to retain workers, offer benefits, or engage in any kind of economically stimulating activity, because none of those things were the point. The point was to placate the oligarchs while America burned.

Democrats made it clear that that would not be happening and started moving their own plan through the House. The same day, Fox News' key talking point was "you can't let the cure be worse than the disease," Larry Kudlow was talking about "difficult tradeoffs," and saying things like "the economic cost [of shutting down] to individuals is too great," and Donald Trump announced that he would be attempting to restart the economy in 1-2 weeks. Bonus: Donald Trump has refused to order the emergency manufacture of medical supplies because a bunch of corporate lobbies complained it would disrupt their businesses.

These are not hard lines to read between. Republicans are planning to tell Democrats to fuck off and just let the coronavirus play out. If I had to guess, McConnell figures that their odds in November are about as good with a couple million dead as they are with a tanked economy, so he is simply preferring the outcome where the government engages in the least amount of downwards wealth redistribution - the one where Americans beg to be let back to work because they're starving, states relent, and then somewhere between 1 in 150 and 1 in 50 Americans die of COVID-19.

Republicans are the slave plantation party

And apparently Dr Fauci has been sidelined so that Trump can run 2 hour campaign rallies from a White House briefing room uninterrupted by contradicting facts. FFS.

[edit: ah, looks like he was allowed to speak today. Guess Trump was just testing the waters]

The situation in France - basically the same than in the other western country - the disease, the dead, lockdown, people partying ahead of lockdown, people leaving the urban areas for the countryside just before the lockdown, lack of hospital beds and testing, no more toilet paper nor pasta in store (because this is France, people also bought flour, eggs, and sugar en masse to cook at home)... Eastern France is badly hit, due to contaminations during a 2,000 evangelical gathering on February 17-21.

We're on day nine of nation-wide quarantine. The ad hoc group of scientific advisors recommended yesterday it to be a six weeks lockdown (which would thus end on april 28th). That seems to have been the working hypothesis in the administration lately, so I think that's what we're going to have.

On the political front, the government has been under fire, first for not cancelling the first round of the nation-wide city elections (though, to be fair, had it done so it would likely have been criticized instead for cancelling an election opinion polls forecasted the ruling party would lose), then for the lack of testing, then for the shortage of masks, then for not resorting to chloroquinine, and currently for failing to properly account for covid related death in nursing houses. For additional context, labor unions in the medical sector have been demonstrating and picketing for several months prior to the epidemy to protest against budgetary cuts.

So the number of death is likely to jump at some point once the deaths in nursing houses will be be accounted for. Overall, the official numbers that are currently available are not reliable, like, at all. Testing policy restricted test to people with symptoms AND either requiring hospitalization, returning from a foreign country deemed at risks, or confirmed to have spend at least one hour within one meter of someone tested positive. In the first weeks, the average was less than eight persons being tested for every confirmed case, medical staff included, so it seems likely colleagues or schoolmates were rarely tested.

It wasn't until March 20th that the health minister publicly admitted that the number of "confirmed cases" (tested positive) might differ from reality. He then stating the actual number of cases ought to be twice the number of confirmed cases. Which IMHO is a fairly conservative estimate.

My personal experience is that me and my GF may have had Covid - coughing, fever, shortness of breath, with symptoms appearing on the same day, and the only person we were both in contact with in the previous two weeks being our daughter - hinting at something infectious enough and possibly assymptomatic with children. We fell ill on March 11th, at which point the official number of cases in the 100,000 city we live in was 2, with no obvious link to us. If that was Covid (which we may never know for sure, since we don't fit the aforementioned criterion for testing), it would suggest a significant number of cases that are not accounted for.

I wish you and your loved ones the best through that.

Have the restaurants shut down y'all's neighborhoods?

I have seen reports from individuals who have caught the virus that there are mental side effects. Some have said that they are making stupid decisions. Others are saying they're more angry and argumentative.

I'm finding it impossible to find information about because google returns articles about the mental health of nurses and doctors, and people who are worried about catching it. But not about the people who have it.

If any of you have information about this, I would appreciate linkable sources.

Those are not mental side effects.
Those are affects of being sick and irritated and annoyed.
I get very cranky when i get sick.
When i get seriously ill i get compliant because i just want people to go away and shut up so i will just agree with basically any stupid nonsense to be left alone.

Maj wrote:I have seen reports from individuals who have caught the virus that there are mental side effects. Some have said that they are making stupid decisions. Others are saying they're more angry and argumentative.

I'm finding it impossible to find information about because google returns articles about the mental health of nurses and doctors, and people who are worried about catching it. But not about the people who have it.

If any of you have information about this, I would appreciate linkable sources.

Not a doctor, but I'd not find any strange that a disease that causes fevers and reduces blood oxygenation can lead to impaired reasoning skills.

Also, I'm down with Flu-like symptoms, and people here in Rio aren't taking this seriously enough yet.

Maj wrote:I have seen reports from individuals who have caught the virus that there are mental side effects. Some have said that they are making stupid decisions. Others are saying they're more angry and argumentative.

....

If any of you have information about this, I would appreciate linkable sources.

You just asked the Gaming Den if people are being angry and argumentative.

The virus is almost certainly not directly affecting your neurochemistry or mood or anything like that.

It can, however, cause a significant degree of discomfort and pain, which can lead to mood swings through the totally mundane mechanism of being irritated about all the discomfort and pain you're in.

It can also cause low oxygen levels, which can lead to confusion, which in the medical sense does not always necessarily mean "huh, wha?" so much as irrational, moody, or otherwise out-of-character behavior.

None of these things will just sneak up on you, though. Pain is pain, and low oxygen levels will be preceded by things like shortness of breath. They're not really diagnostically useful, and if you get to the point of confusion you should really already be seeking treatment for your shortness of breath.

OgreBattle wrote:I wish you and your loved ones the best through that.

Have the restaurants shut down y'all's neighborhoods?

Yep. Restaurants have had to be carry-out or drive-thru only since St. Patrick's Day here.

Should I assume that Frank's silence means that the plague is currently saturating the UK medical system?

DSMatticus wrote:The virus is almost certainly not directly affecting your neurochemistry or mood or anything like that.

???

Can we actually know that?

I think it's like... if I stub my toe I will be angry and irritated, but it's not my brain that was stubbed... if that makes sense.

Maj wrote:

DSMatticus wrote:The virus is almost certainly not directly affecting your neurochemistry or mood or anything like that.

???

Can we actually know that?

In the broader sense anything that affects your metabolism in any way has an effect on your brain. Because your brain is not a glowing soul fragment but a physical organ in constant communication with your blood. But in the more specific sense, SARS viruses don't take your brain over.

They make you hypoxic and fatigued, which can also make you irritable. But that's "all."

Looks like I have to take away praise from the house since they didnt pass the good bill and now the senate is going to pass a mostly bad bill except for sanders unemployment expansion and then are going to leave town for a month to force dems to pass it through the house or not have any response.

If only the house passed the good bill and forced the Senate to deal with that.

Overall, the official numbers that are currently available are not reliable, like, at all. Testing policy restricted test to people with symptoms AND either requiring hospitalization, returning from a foreign country deemed at risks, or confirmed to have spend at least one hour within one meter of someone tested positive. In the first weeks, the average was less than eight persons being tested for every confirmed case, medical staff included, so it seems likely colleagues or schoolmates were rarely tested.

It wasn't until March 20th that the health minister publicly admitted that the number of "confirmed cases" (tested positive) might differ from reality. He then stating the actual number of cases ought to be twice the number of confirmed cases. Which IMHO is a fairly conservative estimate.

Update - the French National Institute of Public Health released its weekly written assessment. Turns out the number of positive tests will no longer be reported, as it was "no longer relevant in most regions due to restriction on biological testing" "leading to an underestimation of the actual number of cases."

They started working with the reporting system and statistical approach used each year for influe7nza. In addition to 22 032 cases confirmed by positive tests, they now estimate 42 000 symptomatic cases consulted MD without being tested in the last week. So we may have been with at least thrice and maybe four times the number of previously confirmed cases (rather than twice as said by the health minister). And they still have no clue about the number of assymptomatic cases.

Kaelik wrote:Looks like I have to take away praise from the house since they didnt pass the good bill and now the senate is going to pass a mostly bad bill except for sanders unemployment expansion and then are going to leave town for a month to force dems to pass it through the house or not have any response.

If only the house passed the good bill and forced the Senate to deal with that.

I make no secret of keeping Kaelik on ignore. Because he has been completely consumed by brainworms and exists as a vile parody of a very online Bernie Bro. But I figured that this is the Coronavirus thread and maybe he was interacting with the "real world" like a normal human being. And instead... just what the actual fuck?

OK, the Bernie Bros are a cult. We make fun of them for being a cult, and they are extremely annoying to everyone because they are a cult. But this is so far into coltishness that I couldn't even make something beyond it due to Poe's Law. We joke that cultists have a simple rubric that "all ideas are bad unless the Leader endorses them, and then they become good ideas and also now belong to the Leader." We joke, but here is exactly literally definitely exactly that actual position in the wild. It's beyond parody. Literally beyond parody.

So first of all, obviously there are lots of good and bad things in the disaster response bill. It's 2.2 Trillion fucking dollars. Obviously there are good and bad things in it. Money for DC area teaching hospitals? That's good! But in Kaelik's world I guess that's bad because Kamala Harris did that part and she's not the leader.

But wait, what about the Unemployment Expansion drawn up by Michael Bennet of Colorado? Is that bad? No! That's good, because Sanders made a (genuinely) pretty good speech about how a proposed amendment by Lindsay Graham and Sasse to take it out was bad. And despite the fact that Sanders wasn't the person who wrote the provision (that was Bennet), or the person who negotiated it into the bill in the first place (that appears to have been Dick Durbin), or even physically present in Washington when the negotiations took place (Sanders was in Vermont, hosting a livestreamed variety show with musical guests - yes really), the provision now belongs to Sanders. Because he made a speech about how removing the provision was bad. And that's definitely why the Sasse amendment got 48 votes (all Republican) instead of 60.

How do you engage with epistemic closure that complete? How do you parody it? What the actual fuck? This is literally the Juche Idea.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:I make no secret of keeping Kaelik on ignore.

You are doing an amazing job of keeping it a secret because I don't think anyone believes it is true at this point.

But no the plan to increase unemployment by $50 and do a bunch of things the bill doesn't do put out by Bennett is not the obvious genesis of the bill that does exactly what Sander's plan that he released a week ago said.

Part of Sander's plan as it relates to UI wrote:Expand Unemployment Insurance.

We must provide emergency unemployment assistance to anyone who loses their job through no fault of their own. Under this proposal, everyone who loses a job must qualify for unemployment compensation at 100 percent of their prior salary with a cap of $75,000 a year.

Protect non-traditional workers. In addition, those who depend on tips, gig workers, domestic workers, freelancers, and independent contractors shall also qualify for Unemployment Insurance to make up for the income that they lose during this crisis.

Which is you know, exactly what the bill includes.

Bennett's unemployment triggers and good cause set up are certainly a good thing like many of the good things that many people proposed that didn't get into the bill, but what did get into the bill was Sander's exact structure. And certainly we'd all like for everything to be federally financed when it involves mandatory universal welfare rights, but that isn't getting into any bill with a republican vote needed to pass.

Noted Cultish Bernie Bro Democracy Now wrote:An unemployment provision added to the Senate bill by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders would see laid-off workers receive 100% of their salary up to $75,000 a year, with tipped and gig economy workers covered.

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/25/ ... elief_bill

China is closing its borders to all foreigners* starting March 28 for an indeterminate amount of time

*some exceptions apply, but basically not you

Iduno wrote:https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52053656

Check it out guys... We ('merica) got the border to close and mexico to pay for staff it. Wooo team.

/headesk

So is China lying about their numbers now