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Post by miscmisc on Sept 10, 2021 20:36:07 GMT 1
It's been months since the US started hoarding the vaccines, and the vaccination rate is barely above 50%. That's fucking embarrassing of course. But everyone knows that, and Biden said it was, to the whole world.
Much less mentioned is the fact that Israel started vaccinating people even earlier, and their vaccination rate has been stuck around 60% forever now. Now gazillions of countries, mostly in Western Europe, are ahead of them, which many people don't seem to know.
The country was touted as the front runner, and we should thank them for providing valuable information for us. But their vaccination rate is pretty bad, for a small country with a stable bureaucratic system who has been on it for more than 9 months already. I'm actually surprised.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 14, 2021 12:00:49 GMT 1
When you're so confused, narcissistic, and ignorant that your overriding principles in political decisions are the condition of your fee-fees:  |
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 14, 2021 12:38:06 GMT 1
So, how long have we been dealing with this virus now? 1.5 years?
And there are still fools out there who seem to think that "mild" Covid cases are actually mild, like it's nothing.
As someone who got Covid very, very early, earlier than most people in the world, I'm telling you, for the n-th time, that in most cases "mild" Covid is not fucking mild at all, and that fact hasn't changed at all.
I'm not even talking about long Covid, which is another beast; I'm talking about people who get Covid and suffer for two weeks in different kinds of pain, but are "fine" enough to be ordered to stay home and just tough it out. Very early in the pandemic they might have been generous enough to give you the "moderate" label for that, but not nowadays.
Like I said before, my case was even milder than "mild." I was sick for several days, but the more I learned about how sick many of my friends with officially "mild" cases were, the more I hesitated to even call myself a "mild" case. I'd say I was barely symptomatic, and still it felt worse than cold.
We talk a lot about deaths and asymptomatic cases as two opposite pillars of this disease, and that's fine because that's what makes Covid-19 very hard to deal with, but I sometimes feel that people kind of forget how nasty this disease is for non-dying, non-ICU, non-ECMO, non-extra-Oxygen symptomatic cases, which are the vast majority.
It's a horrible disease, way worse than the flu for most people. I wasn't one of the "most people," but anecdotally I'm in a minority. Covid is usually a longer battle too especially since there's no Tamiflu for it. You really don't even want to get the "mild" one.
And there's "moderate," which is officially worse than "mild." Now, people don't care about "moderates" because, you know, who cares, it's not like they are dying, be a man and stop bitching, etc. and as you can guess, if you are a "moderate" case, you are so sick that you definitely weep in your bed. You are so sick that you can barely move. But you are most likely to be disqualified for hospitalization.
Because there are "severe" cases above you. Those people need to be prioritized for hospitalization especially during a "wave."
And then there are "critical" cases above them. ICU. ECMO.
And then, deaths.
It's a nasty, nasty disease. It's amazing that I have to repeat such basics, but truly, it's a fucking horrible viral disease on top of every social problem that it causes.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 14, 2021 15:44:51 GMT 1
OK, everyone in America seems to be talking about this, so I will throw in my two cents FWIW.
I loved it, it was a perfectly fine move in terms of _politics in the noblest sense of the word_, but since we live in an utterly debased world full of arrogant fools, it was probably a mistake, meaning that she should've stayed home.
It's not her fault that it was a mistake, if you get what I mean.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 15, 2021 3:34:34 GMT 1
Re: "mild" Covid, in Japan it's even more misleading since there are only four categories - asymptomatic, mild, moderate, severe - and "mild" covers a large spectrum of patients, including very, very, very sick people. Basically everyone who didn't need extra oxygen is officially just a "mild" case no matter how sick they felt. I have quite a few "mild case" friends who saw hell.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 15, 2021 4:31:49 GMT 1
What you ought to realize seeing all the debates on inflation going on in economics right now is that economics really doesn't understand how the damn thing works, at all. If you get the impression that no one knows what the hell is going on, that's because your impression is the truth.
Mysteries and lack of knowledge are what drives any intellectual endeavor forward. But economics, and the people who make a living in there severely lack the humility over ignorance and (ir)relevance, and thus are plagued with all kinds of problems that are harmful to the society at large.
The true utility of economics stands outside the realm of actually understanding how economy works. It took me almost 10 years to realize that.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 15, 2021 4:38:13 GMT 1
Does anyone know what's up with the anti-seatbelt bros these days? "Hey people die with seatbelts on too!" "People will go WILD with seatbelts on because it gives them the FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY, MAN!" I hear they were very loud and visible back in the days.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 15, 2021 4:43:47 GMT 1
Just open the goddamn windows frequently!
Again, how long have we been dealing with this damn virus now? What the hell is that "there is nothing more we can do" look on their face when there are goddamn(openable) windows right there?
It. Is. Fucking. Airborne.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 15, 2021 12:53:23 GMT 1
It seems that a clear majority of Covid deniers have already reached the "Dr. Evil controlling all the information" stage. Good. That's the place they deserve to rot in.
Everyone thinks they are different, their "theory" is different, this time it's all different. But it's the same fucking rabbit hole all the way down, every single time.
A wise man said that conspiracy theory is the last refuge of the intellectual weaklings. True. But I don't think it's exclusively of the "intellectual weaklings." Anyone can find themselves in that trap, for much of it is actually about being unable to admit you were wrong, unable to say you're sorry. You burned down the bridge a long time ago, and there's only one way left to go no matter what. If the reality gets in your way, you burn it down and fabricate one instead for yourself. You keep marching forward, toward the ruin of all.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 15, 2021 13:04:34 GMT 1
One of the all time greats in the archives of mainstream media headlines:  |
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 16, 2021 2:07:08 GMT 1
I'm not going to lie, Pope Francis being cold as hell to that idiot Cardinal Burke this way gives me a lot of pleasure. Thing about the Jesuits, they don't fuck around.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 17, 2021 2:33:28 GMT 1
People in general lack imagination, or to put it more precisely the ability to imagine, and the pandemic has made it abundantly clear.
The ability to imagine is at the core of the human civilization. It's absolutely essential in science in particular. Coming up with a new theory on blackhole takes much, much, much more imagination than writing a movie script. Einstein's theory of relativity is the most famous one in history for that reason. Even putting aside whether it's actually the Truth, the mind-bending nature of the theory is just breathtaking. What it demonstrates more than anything else is the power of human imagination.
Imagination isn't a lazy story-telling that you pull out of your ass to comfort yourself. That's delusion, almost the opposite of imagination. You have to have sufficient knowledge and basic analytical skills to properly "imagine." People who are vulnerable to conspiracy theory suffer first and foremost from the lack of imagination. If what you "imagine" has no anchor to the reality, no measure to put things into an objective context, that's just delusion.
So many people cannot "imagine" what it means to have to deal with an infectious disease, with the raw R0 being somewhere between 2 and 7, with the survival rate of 99%. They think "99%" is actually great news - only few die, man! - but can't answer the question of relative to what.
They cannot imagine what it is like for a hospital to have to treat 80 Covid patients, because they can't even be arsed to learn the most basic things about running a hospital.
Since they personally know no one close to them under 75 who died of Covid-19, they think the world has been overreacting. They can't process all the information to properly "imagine" what is going on.
When you tell them that one in 500 people have died of Covid-19 in the US, they go, "Well, you'd think more have died, wouldn't you?" Because they don't think they could win the 1/500 lottery. They would be rich now if they were that "lucky," right?
The total inability to understand numbers, particularly large numbers, and their proper context is closely related to the inability to "imagine."
These people are not all of us, but many of us. All the technological development over the last several decades hasn't helped them one bit. There are even studies that suggest that they have regressed, gradually losing their ability to assess the relation between what they (think they) imagine and the reality.
Like I said several times in this thread, this problem persists in every single important issue that we have to deal with.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 17, 2021 4:07:19 GMT 1
If even this kind of stuff doesn't convince your anti-mask friend of the efficacy of masking, it's not about "evidence" or science at all; It's about their feeling. Don't even bother. You're wasting your time.
We moved on from the stupidity of "do masks work?" ages ago. We are very close to understanding the exact mechanism of micro droplet/aerosol transmissions.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 17, 2021 7:41:42 GMT 1
The tragedy is that even Louie Gohmert is not the stupidest House Representative in America.
This jock cretin just keeps revising the definition of "ignorant politicians" every day. It's inevitable that you get total fools as elected officials. That's democracy. But there are limits to things, America. This moron is just out of this world, isn't even playing to his audience as this is truly what he believes, meaning he doesn't have a fucking clue about what the word "Constitution" even means, and precisely because of that he can fundraise better than most others.
In the right-wing world, it has become an established genre to argue for/against things based 100% on what they fantasize the Constitution to be, which, needless to say, has nothing to do with the US Constitution.
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Post by miscmisc on Sept 17, 2021 7:52:10 GMT 1
The state of Montana is bigger than Germany, and we are talking about 75 refugees here.
You could give each one of those refugees a fucking national park to live in, and there would be still plenty of space left for the current population of Montana.
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