Random Rant Thread

[gols]

Oct 13, 2020 17:03:09 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Again, I think the problem with the UK's Covid-19 policies is that they are based substantially on misguided notions about this virus. It's not just the cabinet, but the advisory board (or whatever they call it) as well.

You almost get the impression that their guideline hasn't been updated since March.

I think you are exactly right. I was talking about this with a friend the other day, it's like the guidance is still the same as in March/April, plus face masks. Nothing learned from the rest of the world. Brexit mentality I guess?

[K1power]

miscmisc said:

What discussion exactly? On their effectiveness? Unless the Dutch politicians/bureaucrats/scientists know something that the rest of us don't, what "discussion" on that exactly?

On the administrative procedure? Why would it be difficult when they can introduce other super-restrictive measures pretty easily like that?

I really, really don't get all this profoundly stupid tapdance around masks in some countries. Would it kill for them to make it simple? If they don't think they work on balance, stop tapdancing and just don't bother. Sweden was at least straightforward about that.

"Well, maybe they sort of work, but we don't know, but then Germans are saying they do, so maybe, I don't know, maybe we should kind of sort of advise our people to maybe wear them just in sorta kinda case" and so on and on like they have something stuck up their ass.

It's this attitude that makes people think less and less of masks, and even in a way stigmatizes them completely unnecessarily. It's all been just strategically wrong. What they should've done, if they thought that masks work to some degree, even only slightly like 10% reduction of cases (which wouldn't be nothing ESPECIALLY given the randomness of this disease that we are dealing with), was to normalize them, making masks a no-big deal. These governments have absolutely failed at that, and it's too late now.

5 minutes after Rutte announced masks are going to be mandatory a discussion around it errupted in one of my WhatsApp groups with friends; "Can they even do that, legally?", "Masks aren't even proven to work.", "It can't be healthy to wear a mask all day." are some of the quotes to give a general idea of what that was like.

To clarify it wasn't just me against the rest, but every group seems to have at least one person feeling the need to support an idiotic idea. They're my close friends and I love them, but some of them tend to subscribe to cringeworthy trains of thought (not excluding myself btw). Of course I gave everyone shit - I tend to be the shit-giver - and referred them to this very thread (one of them is a member here, at least), but I know they'll probably doubt me regardless of what I tell them. It probably doesn't help that just like everywhere else we have some assholes with a PhD and an ego who went public to double down on their anti-mask bullshit agenda, because they can't admit they're wrong.

[miscmisc]

If it was just ignorance, you would be able to do something about it. But the energy and passion that some people spend to deny the efficacy of a simple piece of cloth/fiber is quite pathological, and ignorance alone couldn't explain it.

So much ado over a simple medical item, as if it would kill to wear it, as if wearing it would shake the foundation of the Western civilization or something. Well, that's literally what those right-wing Americans say, but there's the same kind of idiot energy wafting from a particular kind of people in Europe as well.

And I still largely blame governments for that. It's possible to educate people, and if many don't listen, well, Berlin distributed thousands of posters with an old woman wearing a mask giving you the finger. You can openly confront them like that too, to create the peer pressure around them.

But many governments simply didn't bother, primarily because deep down they actually don't quite believe in the efficacy of masks either. They might not really deny it or dismiss it, but wouldn't totally embrace it either. I mean, it's obvious. That must be the case with the Dutch government too. They "recommend" them and "advise" people to try them on only because they are cowardly and don't want to stick their neck out and get vilified like Sweden. They are sort of going with the flow without ever actually trying to promote it. That's what I mean by "tap-dancing". 

And yes, those assholes with a PhD. They are the worst, lol. What's funny about those pathetic fools is that they don't seem to realize that accepting the airborne transmission theory and denying the efficacy of masks are mutually exclusive now. You simply can't do both, especially since the world's fastest computer has demonstrated how well a simple surgical mask can block most droplets and even tiny aerosols.

Would they dare to challenge the airborne transmission theory? Of course not.

And if they want to argue that masks are useless because they aren't 100% efficient, then they would have to argue that viral load doesn't matter at all - getting 1k viruses is no different from getting 100k.

Would they dare to argue that? Nope.

Then they talk about the "false sense of security" crap and inadvertently reveal that it isn't about science at all. They are an intellectual mess. Like I said, and like you said, it's just about their ego, and I feel sorry for all the people who have to ride on that destructive ego train with them.

[miscmisc]

Oct 14, 2020 14:33:20 GMT 1 gols said:

Oct 13, 2020 17:03:09 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Again, I think the problem with the UK's Covid-19 policies is that they are based substantially on misguided notions about this virus. It's not just the cabinet, but the advisory board (or whatever they call it) as well.

You almost get the impression that their guideline hasn't been updated since March.

I think you are exactly right. I was talking about this with a friend the other day, it's like the guidance is still the same as in March/April, plus face masks. Nothing learned from the rest of the world. Brexit mentality I guess?

Like I said in my reply to K1power, honestly I think much of it is professional ego. It's particularly damaging in the UK precisely because it's a leading country in epidemiology. There's way too much useless pride creating dark energy around Oxbridge.

This pandemic has been shaking the foundation of epidemiology. Some of its basic assumptions have been proven wrong, or turned out to be completely useless against SARS-CoV-2. I mean, it seems that way to me at least.

But those "leading scientists" wouldn't want to accept it. I'd bet a lot of money that some of your top scientists still don't believe the efficacy of masks or the importance of ventilation deep down, because those things contradict the conventional wisdom of epidemiology.

It's very, very clear now that only 20% or less of people with the viruses infect others. Yet they are still talking about R0.

They don't want to admit that they were catastrophically wrong back in the spring, and that it didn't occur to them that super-spreading events were the driving force of the epidemic. Of course they have changed their opinions as they learned new things, but something still holds them back and makes them hesitate to totally embrace the New Reality of Epidemiology.

It would've been different if it were the Top Epidemiologists at Fancy Universities themselves that pointed out that conventional epidemiological thinking wasn't really working. Unfortunately it wasn't really the case. It was largely unknown health researchers, medical professionals, civil servants in East Asia, and even sociologists. That must have hurt their professional pride.  

That's what I suspect, because those people aren't idiots. I know this sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but I have no doubt in my mind that this played SOME part in the way they have behaved. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches.

[miscmisc]

FYI, my uncle, a Japanese medical doctor, still doesn't believe masks work although he wears one everywhere due to the peer pressure. Because he still can't shake the old conventional wisdom in the medical world that masks don't work against the flu. I tell him that this is not the flu, and that even with the flu the conventional wisdom may have been wrong actually, but he wouldn't totally change his mind because "it still doesn't feel right."

He believes in washing your hands instead, because that's what they taught him at schools and hospitals.

When the Japanese government started the massive mask promotion campaign back in March, he openly ridiculed the PM. He told everyone that he met that it was all foolish, and that masks wouldn't work.

So, he's up in that tree, and the ladder is gone. Well, actually it's still there, but he refuses to climb down.

It's these professional people with ego that resist the new reality the most, and that's the case even in a masked-up country like Japan.

People can be disconcertingly irrational, and quite often that's not because of ignorance.

[miscmisc]

I can't stress this enough: What makes Trumpism (including stuff like QAnon) dangerous is the fact that Trump himself is not in charge of anything at all; He's just a mere participant in the whole thing. One of the "sheeples" if you will, although none of the regular "sheeples" see him that way. That's what I meant when I said Donald Trump is sort of like Edward Norton in Fight Club, although not quite (because the Tyler Durden in this case is a pure illusion/mass hallucination - NOT Norton's real alter ego).

The fact of the matter is that there is no mastermind; not Miller, not Spencer, not Bannon, and certainly not Trump. No one is in charge. It's just an echo chamber, and everyone, be it Donald Trump or Joe Dumbfuck Smith from rural Oregon, is drowning in it.

It's different from a regular cult where there is a clear structure with someone/some group in charge. It's hard to fight something like that.

[miscmisc]

If the October Surprise Bombshell! this year is this story about Hunter Biden paying DC strippers to watch him smoke crack in the VIP room and having a child with one, well, what can I say.

That's the most relatable aspect of Hunter Biden if anything. Everyone knows he was a huge drug addict, and people will actually LIKE him for this fun story.

Hunter is a complete idiot, corrupt even, but this wouldn't do a thing for Republicans.

Trump will need another Comey Letter before the election day at least.

[miscmisc]

The German ambassador to the US is very... bold. She has just tweeted this, three weeks before the US election.

"refuse to engage with reality" just perfectly sums it up.

[miscmisc]

No one gives a shit about ratings, Donald. You should get out more, seriously.

[miscmisc]

Seriously, the party that doesn't have guts to tacitly, gently, yet firmly elbow out an unfathomably vapid, wildly overaged useless establishment fool like Dianne Feinstein deserves all the shit that it suffers because of it.

[miscmisc]

SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST TOO FUCKING OLD FOR THEIR JOB, damn it. Feinstein was a disconnected establishment fool when she was younger; She's a fucking train wreck now at the age of 87. US Senate - which should be abolished BTW - is not a fucking luxury nursing home.

This senile mega fool has been de facto complicit in McConnell's Senate-led destruction of America. Every time I see her face I want to scream.

And she completely fucked up once again.

[miscmisc]

Donald Trump rarely changes his opinion on things, so I'm pretty sure that even after owing so incredibly much to their voting power, he thinks Evangelical Christians are the biggest losers of this universe. I really doubt he changed his mind about that.

He used to be kind of terrified of them, but likes them now, of course. He likes people who support him (duh). "Scary zombies" may not be so scary to him anymore, but zombies are zombies. He still has no respect for them.

I wish there were some recording somewhere where he totally treats them as non-human. That would finish him once and for all.

[miscmisc]

The consensus around this corner of the world is that at least 85% mask-wearing rate (permanently) is necessary to keep it at a manageable level. It's not exact science, but you should keep that in mind. That's the minimum rate. You should aim higher.

The rate has been far, far, far below that in most of Europe for months, even lower than many parts of the US. Very clearly Arizona >>> France, not to mention New York/New Jersey/etc.

I know it's mandatory in most countries now, but I'm talking about "permanently". This on-and-off business must end now. We are wasting so much energy and even lives by neglecting to come to terms with the fact that we have to stay vigilant AT ALL TIMES.

I know it's fucking exhausting, but it's nothing compared to the climate catastrophe. If you can't even ride this one out, I don't know what to say. 

[miscmisc]

I've said this two million times, but this. This. This.

[miscmisc]

Kind of defeats the purpose, you know.



Why has everyone gone stupid? Stupidity is not supposed to be a Covid-19 symptom.

Panting, sweating, talking, indoors, no mask.

Somehow movie theaters have been closed in Ontario while this has been allowed.