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Post by miscmisc on Mar 28, 2022 0:06:58 GMT 1
Covid makes a significant percentage of under-65 people who got it flu-or-above-level sick. Not a majority, but a significantly high number. Many of those who had prior infections or/and were vaccinated got really, really sick too, if not sick enough to be hospitalized.
Omicron is "mild" all right. But I told you one gazillion times here what "mild" *actually* means.
On top of that, SARS-CoV-2 at this point is way more transmissible than influenza viruses, and its cycle is much more rapid. The reinfections rates are ridiculously high too.
Of course these things can change. Covid might reach the truly endemic level. But I'm talking about what we've got now, not about what we hope for.
The world in which a huge number of people get flu-or-above-level sick for 10 days and miss work/school regularly, as regularly as they catch a cold, would never allow the society to "go back to normal". You can pretend it's all normal, but when you are sick, you are sick. That sickness is real. You won't be able to pretend it's not there.
I'm just being realistic here. Many people are illogical about this.
Hell, I don't even know what the "normal" means. Was the life in 2019 "normal"? It's all arbitrary.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 28, 2022 7:32:53 GMT 1
Ah shit.
Twice, eh? That's awful.
I guess Japan will have another round too. It's been mostly BA.1 around here, and the booster rate is still piss poor.
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Post by K1power on Mar 28, 2022 7:47:36 GMT 1
One thing I absolutely hate about young Western Europeans in general these days is that they use far too many English words in their conversation. I've heard a German girl say "cringe", in a German conversation. That's garbage, man, unless I'm mistaken and it's actually a legit word. Guilty of that myself, though I've been trying to tone it down recently. In my defense, Dutch is barely its own language to begin with. If you take out all the 'borrowed' words from other languages all that's left is a bit of weird vocabulary with terrible structure and rules thrown in. More than once have I heard people saying they find it one of the most if not the most difficult/confusing language(s) to learn. English words thrown into Dutch conversations sounds relatively natural, whereas in German it just sounds 'cringe', ironically. German pretty much has its own word for everything. |
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Post by K1power on Mar 28, 2022 7:48:56 GMT 1
Hahaha what a shitshow. Will Smith has to be one of the fakest celebrities out there.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 28, 2022 17:38:27 GMT 1
One thing I absolutely hate about young Western Europeans in general these days is that they use far too many English words in their conversation. I've heard a German girl say "cringe", in a German conversation. That's garbage, man, unless I'm mistaken and it's actually a legit word. Guilty of that myself, though I've been trying to tone it down recently. In my defense, Dutch is barely its own language to begin with. If you take out all the 'borrowed' words from other languages all that's left is a bit of weird vocabulary with terrible structure and rules thrown in. More than once have I heard people saying they find it one of the most if not the most difficult/confusing language(s) to learn. English words thrown into Dutch conversations sounds relatively natural, whereas in German it just sounds 'cringe', ironically. German pretty much has its own word for everything. I cut the Dutch some slack as they were the original English-speaking Continental Europeans before the era of Every European Speaks English. They were at it way before the others started doing it. But, like you said, German-speaking people starting to incorporate English words into their daily conversation lexicon would just be the end of the world as we know it. It ought to be the other way around if anything. "There must be a German word for this" is a recurring joke in the English speaking world after all. Basically English's weaknesses are German's strengths, and vice versa. These are fairly closely related languages in terms of grammars, fundamental structures and origins of words, but at the same time oil and water in many ways. Anyway, I didn't like it when I was able to more or less understand what local people were talking about in Flemish in no small part because they used so many English words. But it was just Flemish-speaking people in Belgium, you know. No big deal. But in this era of the internet and social network, I can feel it's really getting worse! |
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 28, 2022 17:52:23 GMT 1
I regret to inform you that it's been a while since I secretly started watching the rest of The Walking Dead, up to, you know, this week's episode. I pretty much fast-forwarded Season 8, but I am up to date.
Have I enjoyed it so far? Well, YES and NO. Mostly YES, though.
And here's the rant: Why do they do that review thing after every episode, where producer Angela Kang literally explains the story of the episode as if she were talking to a child, in the low-resolution Zoom window no less? Like, "here, Daryl is actually very nervous!" Well, no shit, Angela. That segment has yet to give me anything interesting whatsoever; Hell, it has rather taken some *away* from my enjoyment.
And yes, I learned to just not watch that part. So it's not a problem for me anymore, but I utterly fail to see the point of intentionally dumbing down your work like that. It really *is* the same as explaining your joke.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 28, 2022 18:02:57 GMT 1
I really think in many fields people are losing it. If you are a comedian, you shouldn't explain your joke. Everyone agrees on that, but that's actually a universal ethical code for all kinds of creators. Sometimes you have to, but in principle you shouldn't, not least because you actually do not own your work. And I'm not talking about the issue of copyrights/intellectual property here; I'm talking about you needing to let your work do all the talking, and enjoy the surprises that it often gives you. You do not own your work, as you do not own your children.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 28, 2022 19:22:53 GMT 1
As for the Oscars:
No, I mean, seriously.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 3:15:28 GMT 1
Anyone Who Can Use Excel Can Bullshit About Data, the Swedish edition (for the n-th time, really). Good thread.
I feel sorry for smart Swedes like this guy. It's a bit Kafka-esque situation that they find themselves in. You wake up one day, and find your group massively popular on Fox News and InfoWars. That would creep me out, and make me start wondering what went wrong!
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 3:26:49 GMT 1
It's absolutely unfair that if you are an economist and screw up on your predictions and understanding, you can most likely get away with it not least because economic metrics tend to be highly abstract and therefore highly spinnable, even if your "mistake" ended up killing tons of people indirectly, whereas it's much harder with public health, because it deals directly with people's lives and wellbeing.
So I understand why a public health expert tends to double down and goes down the rabbit hole even after it becomes sort of clear that they were wrong on their initial assumptions. It's just monumentally hard to say, "Two thousand more people had to die because of my mistake, and I'm so sorry about that."
In the case of economists, a large part of it is about their stupid ego. For public health experts, it's more about their own sanity, really. They are not used to public gazes like that either.
So I don't want to lynch them. They were in a tough spot to begin with. But I have to, because they double down and spread garbage. I totally understand why they do that, but I have to sort of lynch them. The whole thing is pretty awful, but can't be helped.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 3:58:58 GMT 1
In case you misunderstand it, when I talked about "model cases" on Covid, I was joking. It really is not an international competition. There's just the fact that some countries have done better than others, and that can change in the future too.
Every country has its successes and failures, advantages and disadvantages. In the case of Japan, for example, the Japanese experts figured out how this thing spreads before anybody else, which is +1. Universal mask-wearing, +1. Piss-poor testing system/availability, -1. Constantly a few steps behind on vaccination, -1. Easy border control, +1. Aged population, -1. Etc.
Japan is not a "model case". And neither is New Zealand. Neither is Taiwan. There are a lot of accidental factors too, which are almost as important as policies and inherent advantages/disadvantages.
The only thing that is perfectly clear is that many countries screwed up royally, meaning that they could've absolutely done a hell of a lot better than they did. A helluva lot better.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 4:45:24 GMT 1
The best thing about that Oscar incident is people's reactions to it on social media. Holy shit is that a goldmine of Hot Takes. I guess it was good TV for that reason alone.  So hot I can't breathe. |
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 7:40:45 GMT 1
I often miss the days when I debated libertarians on a regular basis in various places on and offline, especially when I see liberals and even leftists do it all wrong and actually lose miserably to them. I guess you need to be an ex-libertarian, like me, to understand their debate tactics. It's not hard at all actually.
And the very first thing that you need to understand is that libertarianism is the astrology for men. That's very important to understand, because at the end of the day, you must start with the premise that it's inherently a massive waste of time and energy to debate them in the first place. It's an astrology, so you have to treat it as such.
When I was a libertarian dweeb, 3/4 of my brain was totally immersed in the sheer energy and contrarian optimism that it gave me, but the other quarter of it kind of knew that it was all just a feel-good fantasy.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 8:22:40 GMT 1
There are many replies to this to correct the fundamental misunderstanding, but I've seen this so frequently everywhere, even from otherwise smart/smart-ish people like Jeet, that it drives me crazy.
The US State Department - the *civilian* branch - has almost always been more hawkish and war-hungry than the Pentagon/US military for a long, long, long time. That's really the basic pattern of the dynamics in the US government. It's so obvious and well-documented that I wonder why so many people miss it.
Of course the US military goes all in and kills everyone once it started. They are professional killers and not a bunch of peaceniks at all, but "Are you sure it is absolutely necessary?" is usually the attitude.
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Post by miscmisc on Mar 29, 2022 8:37:21 GMT 1
Another Super Hot Take:
After countless wars, and days of war footage from Ukraine, Americans are collectively traumatized by a slap in the face on screen.
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