The Gaming Den

Thaluikhain wrote:But let's start to hoard vaccines anyway in case they might work against Covid, not like tuberculosis is nasty and people might legitimately need those.

It's one of if not the most effective vaccine in recorded history, plus indeed tubercolosis is pretty nasty on its own so doesn't hurt to try.

Notice that both Japan and S.Korea had pretty intensive vaccination against tubercolosis for decades and guess which nations are right next to China and mostly shrugging off the pandemic.

Countries that take their mass vaccination seriously deal with diseases better, who could've ever imagined?

Hey fucking moron maybe "one of the most effective vaccines" can hurt to try because you are preventing people who actually need that vaccine for the thing it actually does work for, TB, wont be able to have it because you were recreationally using vaccines.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a- ... -modeling/

maglag wrote:Notice that both Japan and S.Korea had pretty intensive vaccination against tubercolosis for decades and guess which nations are right next to China and mostly shrugging off the pandemic.

Countries that take their mass vaccination seriously deal with diseases better, who could've ever imagined?

Not so shure about Japan, I got the impression they are trying the (early) Trump method of not testing? So the numbers are low.
But the curve seems to be going straight up.

Please correct me, if I am mistaken.

USA government fires specialist warning about new COVID-10 outbreak

Then it turns out the new outbreak was true.

But since it's the USA government doing it, it's totally fine and nobody here complains. Those sailors were clearly all very stupid communists suffering from dementia and rapists to boot, the USA government did no wrong.

Complaining about every terrible thing the Trump administration does is a full-time job. I have other things to do.

The (acting) Secretary of the Navy resigned, so it's not like there's been zero fallout.

Korwin wrote: Not so shure about Japan, I got the impression they are trying the (early) Trump method of not testing? So the numbers are low.
But the curve seems to be going straight up.

Please correct me, if I am mistaken.

That's what I read about Japan too.
For S. Korea, I've read that they did a lot of testing very early, which allowed them to be far more effective.

South Korea had an almost perfect containment until patient #31 spread the virus to thousands of other people.

Korwin wrote:

maglag wrote:Notice that both Japan and S.Korea had pretty intensive vaccination against tubercolosis for decades and guess which nations are right next to China and mostly shrugging off the pandemic.

Countries that take their mass vaccination seriously deal with diseases better, who could've ever imagined?

Not so shure about Japan, I got the impression they are trying the (early) Trump method of not testing? So the numbers are low.
But the curve seems to be going straight up.

Please correct me, if I am mistaken.

You should ignore Maglag completely. You should pretend that post never happened. I don't mean he is irresponsibly spinning hopeful possibility into certainty, so you need to "read what he says with caution." I don't mean that he is drawing wrong or misleading conclusions from the data, so you need to "be aware that there might be other explanations." I mean that he is making observations about things that aren't there to be observed and you cannot grant him the tiniest assumption without risking being misinformed.

If Maglag tries to explain to you why the sky is blue, it's not enough to doubt his explanation. You need to go outside and check what color the sky is. That is the level of incredulity you need to protect yourself from being mislead by those irresponsible dumbass posts.

China and South Korea were getting their asses kicked by COVID-19. They were on the exponential highway to hell, then they shut their countries down, and then after a painful waiting period (because hospitalizations and deaths lag infections, obviously), their cases/deaths plateaued hard and fast. That is not what you would expect to see if the population had some pre-existing resistance. That is what you expect to see when you shut your country the fuck down. Insofar as we can draw any absolute conclusions from the data in China and South Korea, it's that shutdowns work.

There is no evidence of a pre-existing resistance in the Chinese or South Korean populations. There is also no evidence of the absence of a pre-existing resistance in the Chinese or South Korean populations - because it's actually really fucking hard to compare country-to-country right now, so if there were some pre-existing resistance we wouldn't know how to control enough variables to isolate it! A study with known flaws that has not been peer reviewed suggested a possible correlation, and frankly it's worth finding out whether that correlation is because of the flaws or an actual connection, so we will do more studies and try to find out. But until then we don't fucking know and Maglag may as well be trying to sell us on the pharmaceutical benefits of Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina candles. No peer-reviewed study means fuck you shut the fuck up and let us study it, not shout "IT WORKS, I PROMISE" into the digital void.

Japan has spent most of the outbreak artificially limiting their test capacity. They would only test known contacts and the severely ill, and they would only test so many a day, despite having the resources to run tens if not hundreds of times as many tests as they were actually running. They also started some minimally disruptive social distancing very early, like South Korea, except they didn't have that one dumbass fucking superspreader who single-handedly created a cluster the size of a thousand individuals before it was detected. So Japan's infections are almost perfectly linear because of the testing constraints (maybe they've changed policy since I last checked), but their deaths appear to be on an exponential curve that just started slow because of the early social distancing and a touch of luck. Time will give us more certainty on their situation, because right now it's fairly early for them.

Whatever wrote:South Korea had an almost perfect containment until patient #31 spread the virus to thousands of other people.

Turns out churches are terrible ideas. Who knew.

Nah. They're essential! Like the WWE!

And Trump is there praising the McMahon for his attitude in ignoring all sensible advice and pushing on as "essential", because we live in the most stupid timeline.

As an added bonus: Trump wants to sign the stimulus checks! (But he can't because the President isn't a signer on the US Treasury, so he's putting his signature in the memo line instead.)

Maj wrote:As an added bonus: Trump wants to sign the stimulus checks! (But he can't because the President isn't a signer on the US Treasury, so he's putting his signature in the memo line instead.)

And it's being forecast that this will delay the checks...

I feel the same way about this (and every other thing the Trump admin does) as I felt while watching Tiger King - my brain just rebels, this shit can't be real. But it is.

Every food bank in the country is swamped with lines of cars and people. The House is still on recess. And Joe Biden and Pelosi are making jokes about her giant freezer full of gelato.

I know this isnt going to result in a wave of political assassinations of every elected official at the end of this pandemic, but every day makes me more and more confused that it wont.

Maybe not assassinations, but when the food riots and the plundering start maybe look in the bigger houses first?

Stahlseele wrote:Maybe not assassinations, but when the food riots and the plundering start maybe look in the bigger houses first?

only in my dreams. People tend to raid nearby neighborhood businesses first. Heads of state probably all have big refrigerators though.

Pelosi says they can't do Congress through Zoom because it's a Chinese entity.\

Now, 1) Obviously don't do Congress through Zoom because it's a PRIVATE entity, duh.

2) You don't actually need to do it through a fucking face app, you could fucking call in or email or whatever the fuck. But you could also just have the state use existing software it has to create video conferences.

3) Zoom is not a Chinese entity, it's a US corporation, but it's CEO is a Chinese American, so I'm going to suggest that MAYBE this stupid comment was made because Pelosi basically pulled a Bari Weiss and just assumed something is Chinese because she saw an Asian face. Which like... would be pretty fucked up.

Maj wrote:As an added bonus: Trump wants to sign the stimulus checks! (But he can't because the President isn't a signer on the US Treasury, so he's putting his signature in the memo line instead.)

I joked about how that would unironically be a good idea, and here he is doing it. Nothing says "vote for me" like a check in your mailbox with a big fucking signature titled "DONALD J. TRUMP". Preferably the most visible things on the check are the dollar amount and the signature. If only the Democrats were smart enough to do something like that...

Kaelik wrote:Pelosi says they can't do Congress through Zoom because it's a Chinese entity.\

Now, 1) Obviously don't do Congress through Zoom because it's a PRIVATE entity, duh.

2) You don't actually need to do it through a fucking face app, you could fucking call in or email or whatever the fuck. But you could also just have the state use existing software it has to create video conferences.

3) Zoom is not a Chinese entity, it's a US corporation, but it's CEO is a Chinese American, so I'm going to suggest that MAYBE this stupid comment was made because Pelosi basically pulled a Bari Weiss and just assumed something is Chinese because she saw an Asian face. Which like... would be pretty fucked up.

I imagine you are not following Tech News more than anything else but . .
You do not use ZOOM no matter who makes it because it is a fucking unsecure piece of crap software that i would not even do tech support via for people i do not like . .

I'm certain that as the Covid-19 pandemic persists, it will become increasingly personal for everyone. When my wife was getting her graduate degree in Iowa City, we were good friends with Brian Miller. The last time we went through DC, we tried to connect but it didn't work - we were going to make sure we met up next time. He was a really good guy.

My great uncle (who I've never met) had been in a medically induced coma and was on a ventilator from March 21st through April 8th (18 days). He's been able to talk with family via Face time, but he's difficult to understand due to hoarseness, tires easily, and is confused about where he is and why. He's still eating through a tube so he doesn't get food in his lungs, but we're hopeful for a full recovery.

Stahlseele wrote:Maybe not assassinations, but when the food riots and the plundering start maybe look in the bigger houses first?

Food riots.

It is only a matter of time until the 50~74% of americans living paycheck to paycheck in january 2020, the 50% of americans with less than 400$ in savings, and the 30% of americans with ZERO savings run out of money. And the system that compels your labor for wages to exchange for food with the implicit threat of destitution and starvation backed up by the explicit threat of being shot in the goddam face for taking food without paying for it is going to crash straight into the wall of there is an incurable plague and the vast majority of americans cannot work or they will be exposed, overstuff the hospitals, and fucking die. Not just from the incurable plague where 20% of those affected require hospitalization to survive, but from all the other life threatening accidents and diseases that happen normally.

These cops were not here yesterday

And the very moment the people who are being forced to starve at gunpoint when we not only produce more than enough food to feed everyone but even ship it to your neighborhood every fucking day REALIZE that they out number all the police, national guard, and military by 99 to 1, this whole farce is over.

This whole farce has been over the moment Congress printed up one and a half trillion dollars from nothing. 1/3 of that went to the people to buy groceries for a month, and 2/3 of that went to businesses. But until that vaccine is not only found but tested and administered we're staring down 3 to 22 months of shelter in place, depending on how many people we want to let die. Regardless of what happens, Capitalism is over. It failed. We're doing socialism. Like right now, when a 1.5 trillion dollars was invented to give to people so they wouldn't starve. If the government does enough socialism, we may even get to vote in elections.

If the government does not do enough socialism.... food riots and looting. Americans have more guns than every man, woman, and child in america. 250+ million people are at risk. And we will either unite in solidarity to provide for the people and end the riots, ie actual communism, or the population will be fractured into pockets of people who swear loyalty for access to another's food hoard or be shot in the face, ie feudalism.

And if we collapse into feudalism, we will not achieve global negative carbon emissions by 2030, and eventually all our farmland to produce and roads to distribute will be fractured and flooded under rivers and seas of salt water. An actual instead of enforced famine, and humanity is over.

I have nightmares about this every night. I can barely sleep.

And you know what? Technically I got mine, right? I'm a trucker who drives groceries to stores accross the north east. I will be the literal last person working with health insurance and access to literal truckloads of food. However, in the face of 250 million people being forced to starve at gunpoint, that is flatly unacceptable.

i refuse to stand by and watch this come to pass.

Ergo, we must connect, plan, and organize our workplaces to ensure fuel, food, medicine, and goods are produced and distributed to the public for when they have no wages to exchange for sustinance. We produce in excess. We distribute in excess. Wages are the bottleneck; suspend their requirement. Driven no longer by a profit motive, but by a communal survival motive: It is simply not nessisary for you to die to a plague working a non-essential job when we essential workers can provide. Your job is to shelter in place and perform social distancing.

I... I cannot go home. Not until a vaccine is distributed and my wife recovers from it. She has comorbidities and is right near the 55% death age bracket. But that is only if the government does enough socialism to feed and house and clothe and connect everyone until a vaccine arrives. If they don't... well I may get to see her again if after the food riots we do communism... but if we collapse into feudalism I'll never get to see her again without risking unintentionally killing her.

So prepare.

Connect and Plan to Organize and Collectivize.

And I will do my damndest to truck y'all your groceries.

Stahlseele wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Pelosi says they can't do Congress through Zoom because it's a Chinese entity.\

Now, 1) Obviously don't do Congress through Zoom because it's a PRIVATE entity, duh.

2) You don't actually need to do it through a fucking face app, you could fucking call in or email or whatever the fuck. But you could also just have the state use existing software it has to create video conferences.

3) Zoom is not a Chinese entity, it's a US corporation, but it's CEO is a Chinese American, so I'm going to suggest that MAYBE this stupid comment was made because Pelosi basically pulled a Bari Weiss and just assumed something is Chinese because she saw an Asian face. Which like... would be pretty fucked up.

I imagine you are not following Tech News more than anything else but . .
You do not use ZOOM no matter who makes it because it is a fucking unsecure piece of crap software that i would not even do tech support via for people i do not like . .

Seems like an bad excuse anyway. Just use Microsoft Teams* or any other programm you have confidence in.

* We use that at work.

Teams . . uuurrg . . i dread the day it gets introduced by our clients or even worse by my company <.<

Teamviewer is good and free and right now they overlook the use for business concerns with the free versions as well . .