Covid-19 #17: Covid Is For Ever

[lessthanluke]

9 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

No question about it. The problem is, there’s a pandemic going on. The millionaire restaurant owners talk about how they’re fine in Florida because people can eat outdoors all year long, but restaurants in New York can’t survive on 25% capacity. It’s a problem. Blaming Cuomo and Di Blasio, as they do, isn’t going to solve the problem. I’m sure they are aggressively pushing for NY and other states to throw open their doors just like Florida. But who’s going to eat there and how many are going to die?

How many people are going to die because their industry has crumbled and they have no job. How many people are going to die due to homelessness because of the above. Or suicide. 

Covid deaths aren't worse than any other fucking deaths. 

[Gareth]

10 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Covid deaths aren't worse than any other fucking deaths. 

Death rate is relatively low, especially now that we have learned so much from the last 9 months of treating COVID-19.  With that being said, we also know there is definitely an inflammatory disease associated with COVID-19.  The long term complications from COVID-19 will be discussed for a long time after the pandemic is over.  

[Heartofice]

10 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

No question about it. The problem is, there’s a pandemic going on. The millionaire restaurant owners talk about how they’re fine in Florida because people can eat outdoors all year long, but restaurants in New York can’t survive on 25% capacity. It’s a problem. Blaming Cuomo and Di Blasio, as they do, isn’t going to solve the problem. I’m sure they are aggressively pushing for NY and other states to throw open their doors just like Florida. But who’s going to eat there and how many are going to die?

The idea that people who own restaurants or even bars are millionaires, or in a lot of cases are even rich, is nonsense. I know a few of my friends whose livelihoods are on the line because of this crisis. They’ve had to let lots of staff go and are facing losing their businesses and could be thrown into poverty and homelessness. Not one of them could have been considered rich.

I’ve seen numerous comments here in the UK that opening up is sacrificing people’s lives just to save Pret and Starbucks. That sort of attitude makes my blood boil.

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, lessthanluke said:

How many people are going to die because their industry has crumbled and they have no job. How many people are going to die due to homelessness because of the above. Or suicide. 

Covid deaths aren't worse than any other fucking deaths. 

Which was always going to be the problem with the half assed way all our nation's approached the lock downs. It needed to do a whole lot more than just lock down businesses and populations because that was always going to fuck all businesses that aren't megacorps. To be able to do this long term needed to essentially suspend capitalism - freeze all rent be it residential or commercial, freeze salaries etc and have the government covering everything for everyone. Which obviously was never going to happen either and would have taken a huge adjustment to all levels of our societies.

I've got no answer to what we should have actually done, but I'm at least not going to be sympathetic to people that are trying to navigate this shit of a year whether they're small business owners trying to stay afloat or immune compromised people trying to avoid catching a dangerous and extremely unpleasant disease. 

Which is a long winded way of saying not very much, but you're my friend and sound like you're pretty fucking stressed out for very good reason and I lost a friend in the last week to suicide so wanted to at least reply and acknowledge yeah... It fucking sucks.

[Zorral]

Whoever let 'herd immunity' out of its cage and into the wild population of idiots has a world of hurt to answer to.

"The C.D.C. and leading experts have concluded, using different scientific methods, that as many as 90 percent of Americans are still vulnerable to infection."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html?

Quote

“The idea that herd immunity will happen at 10 or 20 percent is just nonsense,” said Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which produced the epidemic model frequently cited during White House news briefings as the epidemic hit hard in the spring.

But we knew this from the gitgo.  

Quote

“Immunity in 2020 is no closer to being just around the corner than prosperity was in 1930,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The route to immunity without a vaccine would be through graveyards filled with hundreds of thousands of Americans who did not have to die.”

Those who propagate this fantasy need to be put against the wall and executed for murder.

[Gareth]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Those who propagate this fantasy need to be put against the wall and executed for murder.

Scott Atlas is the driving force for this fantasy.

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, Gareth said:

Scott Atlas is the driving force for this fantasy.

I don't even know who that is.  But clearly and evil being who should be executed.

Ah.  Just looked him up -- that guy.  Ya, sticking his head voluntarily into shoggoth's ass deserves mercy killing.

 

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

How many people are going to die because their industry has crumbled and they have no job. How many people are going to die due to homelessness because of the above. Or suicide. 

Covid deaths aren't worse than any other fucking deaths. 

First of all, my comment was about watching millionaires coming on CNBC and bitching about N.Y. city and state not allowing restaurants to be open at 100% capacity. I was inaccurate - most of them are billionaires, and part-owners if basketball and football teams. Di Blasio and Cuomo are between a rock and a hard place. Do you think they don’t understand how people are suffering? Stop the suffering by getting the virus under control. Opening restaurants to 100% capacity is not going to help, is it?

We’ve had this argument before. IMO, governments have to step up to the plate in this crisis. The problem in the US is politics. You know damn well there’s an election and both sides are sticking to their guns and cooperation is in very short supply. Trump’s position for months now has been return businesses to full blast asap. It’s no skin off his nose when he has every person setting foot in the WH tested and he stays 20 or 30 feet away from his crowds when he does a rally. Where are the instant tests for everybody else? Does the WH have all of them?

Do I really have to say in every post “I have great sympathy for everyone who is suffering but I have no solutions to offer on top of the ones the medical people provide”? If you think I don’t have sympathy for people in industries getting wiped out by the pandemic you can piss  off, thank-you very much. Hundreds of thousands of people who work in the travel sector of the hospitality industry are going to get further hits unless further aid goes to the airlines.

For three years I have been planning to go Washington DC for Worldcon and I have hoped others would join me to dine at the restaurant Mercenary Chef runs, whatever the cost. Right now I’m about 95% sure I will not bump up my supporting membership and attend the con, because even by August next year most people will not be vaccinated. Going some place even when you are vaccinated when you are surrounded by people who are not vaccinated will not help you. About 70% of the population at the minimum has to be vaccinated. Look at what’s happening with measles, another highly infectious disease.
 

There are restaurants open on the sidewalks and streets here and I have not eaten at any of them, because I value my life more than idea of eating a restaurant meal. Keep in mind that I am in a high risk category, at age 66 with several medical conditions that make me vulnerable. You folks under the age of 50 can go out and eat in restaurants. Even my take-out orders have dropped in frequency because I decided months ago that I was not going to remain an overweight-almost-obese person offering themselves up on silver platter to Covid-19 and that I had to lose the pounds needed to get my weight down to a “normal” BMI.
 

I don’t have answers to the restaurant problem in the northern US states and ALL of Canada. But I do know that watching billionaires show up on CNBC bitch about restaurants not being 100% open and blaming the local politicians does not impress me. They are for the most part Trump supporters, and when I see them now I wonder how much in federal taxes they pay.

[Fragile Bird]

5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

I don't even know who that is.  But clearly and evil being who should be executed.

Ah.  Just looked him up -- that guy.  Ya, sticking his head voluntarily into shoggoth's ass deserves mercy killing.

 

No, he does not deserve mercy killing, he deserves the guillotine. He is one of the people reinforcing Trump’s Fox view of the pandemic, mainly because he was a Fox contributor.

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Right now I’m about 95% sure I will not bump up my supporting membership and attend the con, because even by August next year most people will not be vaccinated.

Please don't remind me.

[Ormond]

I get takeout from restaurants, and I tell them to add a 20% tip. But I am not going to eat inside a restaurant until there's a vaccine Fauci says I can trust, sorry. 

[Zorral]

11 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

No, he does not deserve mercy killing, he deserves the guillotine. He is one of the people reinforcing Trump’s Fox view of the pandemic, mainly because he was a Fox contributor.

I can go along with this. 

 

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

How many people are going to die because their industry has crumbled and they have no job. How many people are going to die due to homelessness because of the above. Or suicide. 

Covid deaths aren't worse than any other fucking deaths. 

It's actually pretty easy to solve the above - you throw money at it. You can't do the same thing with covid. 

[lessthanluke]

16 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

It's actually pretty easy to solve the above - you throw money at it. You can't do the same thing with covid. 

Except our government in the UK isn't throwing money at it unfortunately and until they do the dead people will still be dead. 

[Gareth]

33 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I get takeout from restaurants, and I tell them to add a 20% tip. But I am not going to eat inside a restaurant until there's a vaccine Fauci says I can trust, sorry. 

We do take out or contactless delivery.  For contactless delivery we do 10% tip because usually there is a steep delivery charge already.  We may not be high risk but we allow the kids to socialized with their grandparents who are high risk.  

[Kalbear]

Just now, lessthanluke said:

Except our government in the UK isn't throwing money at it unfortunately and until they do the dead people will still be dead. 

So...perhaps that should be the solution instead of making it more dangerous for everyone and willfully killing more people?

[lessthanluke]

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

Which was always going to be the problem with the half assed way all our nation's approached the lock downs. It needed to do a whole lot more than just lock down businesses and populations because that was always going to fuck all businesses that aren't megacorps. To be able to do this long term needed to essentially suspend capitalism - freeze all rent be it residential or commercial, freeze salaries etc and have the government covering everything for everyone. Which obviously was never going to happen either and would have taken a huge adjustment to all levels of our societies.

I've got no answer to what we should have actually done, but I'm at least not going to be sympathetic to people that are trying to navigate this shit of a year whether they're small business owners trying to stay afloat or immune compromised people trying to avoid catching a dangerous and extremely unpleasant disease. 

Which is a long winded way of saying not very much, but you're my friend and sound like you're pretty fucking stressed out for very good reason and I lost a friend in the last week to suicide so wanted to at least reply and acknowledge yeah... It fucking sucks.

Thank you.  I am indeed super fucking stressed as is everyone else atm I guess. 

I've lost 3 friends so far to suicide during the pandemic so I sympathise. It does fucking suck. 

[lessthanluke]

2 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

So...perhaps that should be the solution instead of making it more dangerous for everyone and willfully killing more people?

Well no shit. I'd love the government to throw money at it.

 

[Red Tiger]

1 hour ago, lessthanluke said:

Thank you. 

I've lost 3 friends so far to suicide during the pandemic so I sympathise. It does fucking suck. 

My condolences. That is truly awful.

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Thank you.  I am indeed super fucking stressed as is everyone else atm I guess. 

I've lost 3 friends so far to suicide during the pandemic so I sympathise. It does fucking suck. 

Fuck that's awful. You've got my sympathy too.