Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

Hey, what's up?

It's been tough for many, no doubt. So many things about this disease, this pandemic, are excruciatingly random and unfair. So, everyone needs a coping mechanism of sorts. I view Covid denialism as one variation of it in fact. They are trying to cope with the absurdity of all in their own way, and for some type of people it almost always ends up in that contrarian dead end.

Your straightforward no bullshit sentiment shows that you have sanity, common sense, and the sense of being part of a society intact. It will continue to be tough for a while, but well, what can we say. We are living in what the Chinese would call "interesting times."

[mzn]

Jan 3, 2021 15:04:36 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

It's been tough for many, no doubt. So many things about this disease, this pandemic, are excruciatingly random and unfair. So, everyone needs a coping mechanism of sorts. I view Covid denialism as one variation of it in fact. They are trying to cope with the absurdity of all in their own way, and for some type of people it almost always ends up in that contrarian dead end.

I would like to add to that, that after WWII we entered the idea of your own responsibility and personal accountability to the mix. I'm in no way comparing WWII with this pandemic by the way! Nazis defended themselves by stating that they were following orders, and that what they did was according to the rule of law at that moment. They still got punished because everyone should understand that what they did was atrocious and that they have a personal responsibility following those orders.

The society I live in revolves around making your own choices: what to vote, what education to follow, what kind of hobbies and to have an opinion about our rulers. Everyone in every layer of society is responsible to do that for themselves. We gained an identity. It's something that I think is a great good.

Then this virus shows up and completely wipes it's bottom with almost everything I believe in. It calls for collective force. For mankind to move as one and do the right thing. This virus has certainly managed to point out to me that we aren't up for that. As you already noticed, that pisses me off. But I shouldn't be hypocritical, I should have known that this is a downside of personal freedom and responsibility. I'm not ready to move to a completely regulated police-state either. :-)

Anyway, thank you for the kind words miscmisc! I'm doing fine. I have a secure job. They pay me well. I have a place of my own which I can easily afford. At the same time, pressure is high at my job and I feel as if I'm running myself into the ground. Also, going out to get some fresh air and physically exercise is something I can't bring myself to do. So I'm sabotaging myself a bit, like a proper fool :-).

[miscmisc]

I must tell you that actually going through the whole process of getting infected, having symptoms, testing positive, being hospitalized, with your local health officials wearing funny plastic suits and treating you like a space alien, forbidden to step outside the room or even open the windows gave me a slightly enhanced perspective on the whole thing.

With the very mild symptoms like mine, I wouldn't be admitted in the hospital today. But back in the beginning of the pandemic, I was treated like the hybrid of a highly hazardous pariah and a royalty, and was given a huge suite room at the hospital, for no extra fee of course, for the sole reason that it's well separated from the other wards.

The gap between how actually sick I was and how seriously everyone reacted to and treated me gave me some insight on the whole thing. I had pretty much every single major symptom of Covid-19 (fever, cough, headache, shivering, physical/mental fatigue, loss of taste/smell, muscle ache), only for a very short time for each. I can imagine what it's like to keep having some or all of them for months and beyond like all the long-haulers out there. After all, there is a difference between understanding something as knowledge and actually experiencing it firsthand.

Anyway, that's how I started ranting here again, in case you didn't know... I was bored at the hospital.

[miscmisc]

We, particularly Americans, overrate and worship "success" way too much. Just listen to Donald's phone call to Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.

That incredibly pathetic man managed to become the President of the United States of America. Think of what "success" actually means in our society.

You must be extremely lucky to be successful first and foremost. Why would you even rate, let alone overrate, luckiness?

[miscmisc]

The South African variant looks twice as bad as the English one.  They seem like the winners, an updated version of SARS-CoV-2. Not ver. 2.0, but probably 1.1. It's possible that they can beat the vaccines that we have now.

Remember we caught these variants because both the UK and South Africa do sequencing frequently. On the other hand, the US doesn't sequence for shit although there are tons of viruses circulating over there.

[miscmisc]

Yes, I did say schools were safe back in late spring and summer, but that was then, and this is now. Unfortunately schools became the worst SARS-CoV-2 hotbeds in this second wave. That explains why the household transmissions have become very highly pronounced, as I mentioned it way back.

Unless you are ready to isolate children from their parents in some way, schools should be closed, at least in the hardest hit countries. In other countries, ventilation and masking. ALL children and staff in ALL buildings ALL day.

[mzn]

Jan 4, 2021 9:23:42 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

I must tell you that actually going through the whole process of getting infected, having symptoms, testing positive, being hospitalized, with your local health officials wearing funny plastic suits and treating you like a space alien, forbidden to step outside the room or even open the windows gave me a slightly enhanced perspective on the whole thing.

With the very mild symptoms like mine, I wouldn't be admitted in the hospital today. But back in the beginning of the pandemic, I was treated like the hybrid of a highly hazardous pariah and a royalty, and was given a huge suite room at the hospital, for no extra fee of course, for the sole reason that it's well separated from the other wards.

The gap between how actually sick I was and how seriously everyone reacted to and treated me gave me some insight on the whole thing. I had pretty much every single major symptom of Covid-19 (fever, cough, headache, shivering, physical/mental fatigue, loss of taste/smell, muscle ache), only for a very short time for each. I can imagine what it's like to keep having some or all of them for months and beyond like all the long-haulers out there. After all, there is a difference between understanding something as knowledge and actually experiencing it firsthand.

Anyway, that's how I started ranting here again, in case you didn't know... I was bored at the hospital.

I was so selfish not to ask you how you were doing. I guess this shows. I hope you're fine now. It's a common occurrence that had people who had it, think a lot different than people that didn't. And this is your rantingplace right? Don't contain yourself!

[mzn]

Jan 4, 2021 15:33:45 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

Yes, I did say schools were safe back in late spring and summer, but that was then, and this is now. Unfortunately schools became the worst SARS-CoV-2 hotbeds in this second wave. That explains why the household transmissions have become very highly pronounced, as I mentioned it way back.

Unless you are ready to isolate children from their parents in some way, schools should be closed, at least in the hardest hit countries. In other countries, ventilation and masking. ALL children and staff in ALL buildings ALL day.

I agree with you.

I personally have a colleague who has prior lung problems and is overweight because of all the prednisone she took against it.  She deliberately never came to our office because of her risky predisposition. Well, she got it. The entire family got it. Her son caught it at school. All of us were pretty worried, but luckily the worst symptomes faded quickly. But she's nowhere near a full recovery.

[miscmisc]

Jan 4, 2021 18:49:20 GMT 1 mzn said:

Jan 4, 2021 9:23:42 GMT 1 miscmisc said:

I must tell you that actually going through the whole process of getting infected, having symptoms, testing positive, being hospitalized, with your local health officials wearing funny plastic suits and treating you like a space alien, forbidden to step outside the room or even open the windows gave me a slightly enhanced perspective on the whole thing.

With the very mild symptoms like mine, I wouldn't be admitted in the hospital today. But back in the beginning of the pandemic, I was treated like the hybrid of a highly hazardous pariah and a royalty, and was given a huge suite room at the hospital, for no extra fee of course, for the sole reason that it's well separated from the other wards.

The gap between how actually sick I was and how seriously everyone reacted to and treated me gave me some insight on the whole thing. I had pretty much every single major symptom of Covid-19 (fever, cough, headache, shivering, physical/mental fatigue, loss of taste/smell, muscle ache), only for a very short time for each. I can imagine what it's like to keep having some or all of them for months and beyond like all the long-haulers out there. After all, there is a difference between understanding something as knowledge and actually experiencing it firsthand.

Anyway, that's how I started ranting here again, in case you didn't know... I was bored at the hospital.

I was so selfish not to ask you how you were doing. I guess this shows. I hope you're fine now. It's a common occurrence that had people who had it, think a lot different than people that didn't. And this is your rantingplace right? Don't contain yourself! 

Oh no, that's not selfish of you at all, it was selfish of *me* to mention it almost out of the blue.

I just wanted to tell you that there was actually a VERY specific thing that brought me back here this time, lol. The Doom and Gloom Man getting Covid himself kind of says it all about this pandemic if you think about it.

[miscmisc]

I've been watching Denmark too.

[miscmisc]

I called the way the new cases "bounced back" in the UK (and to a lesser extent the Netherlands) "disturbing," but the way they have skyrocketed in the UK since then is beyond disturbing. It doesn't seem that the new variant is the only cause; The rates are just through the roof beyond the prevalence of the new variant.

What the hell is going on over there? It's extremely worrisome. gols?

[miscmisc]

When I say those who tend to embrace conspiracy theories suffer from the lack of imagination, many seem confused. "Don't they let their imagination run wild, if anything?"

Well, No. That's not "imagination" in the true sense of the word. 

Covid-19 made it perfectly clear, again.

When you think about things that actually happen in this reality, and that you cannot see or hear or experience in person, you need the ability to properly "imagine" them, and the other things that are related to them.

If you hear that the Infection Fatality Rate of Covid-19 is somewhere between 0.5% and 1.0%, and wonder why the whole world has gone apeshit over such no big deal, you suffer from the lack of imagination.

First of all, you cannot "imagine" what the percentage "0.5-1.0%" entails in actuality. Imagination often requires some basic math skills.

Sure, you might be able to grasp that it would be a lot of people with a big denominator, such as the entire population of the US (340M), and still conclude that it's relatively no big deal as tons of people die every year anyway. The lack of imagination strikes there again, since you are suddenly engaging in binary thinking for no good reason at all: dead or alive, and nothing in between.

For every dead person there are 10 people who have to be hospitalized. And some of them will have to live with permanent organ damage. A few of them will suffer from long Covid too. And pray tell, how many hospitals and doctors and nurses are there?

People equipped with the decent "imagination" skills can "imagine" these things, even though they may not be accurate, without anyone giving them any specific information. When they look at the way the cases increase (transmission rates) and hear that the IFR is 0.5-1.0%, they can quickly reach the conclusion that this viral disease is a big deal, and that letting it spread freely would decimate the economy far worse than a lockdown would.

But there are some who can't. They might not sound retarded when they explain their "theories," but there's always the issue of the severe lack of imagination with those people. That problem makes it impossible for them to realize how unmoored their theories are from reality.

By far the biggest driving force in the history of natural science is people's imagination, and needless to say that has always been based upon highly advanced analytical skills and the proper understanding of reality first and foremost. 

[miscmisc]

God, the last rant is so basic and elementary that I'm embarrassed that I posted it. But whatever. Some people are just beyond redemption aren't they.

[miscmisc]

[miscmisc]

In 1948, New York City rolled out 5.7 million smallpox vaccines in a month.

In 2020-21, New York City rolls out a few thousand Covid-19 vaccines on weekends, and zero on holidays. It has been more than 3 weeks since the vaccination started, and do you even want to know how many NYC residents have been vaccinated so far?

This is the result of gutting states/cities' capabilities for decades under the name of "decentralization" and "privatization." Yet those cunts are talking about how evil "socialism" is while people keep dying of Covid-19 left and right.