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| "Liberty. Equality. Stupidity." Coming Soon...? |
I'M NOT ARGUING FOR MAINTAINING A PERPETUAL LOCKDOWN.
Nor any 57 other things that have been done stupidly during it.
What we're doing now is moving on to 57 Stupid Ways To End That Lockdown.
The body count is liable to be commensurately higher than it has so far, precisely because of that stupidity.
I feel like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: The Lost World:
Hammond: "We're not making the same mistakes again."
Malcolm: "You're making all new ones!"
IDGAF if no one locked down because they're infectious is receiving a paycheck. I care that they're locked down, either at home, or in prison. Dealer's choice. If anyone can't live within those guidelines, society should be happy to provide them three hots and a cot, for a year, minimum, and a handy felony conviction as a parting gift.
There are no "acceptable losses" in a pandemic. Citizens are not pawns to be sacrificed. Period. Paragraph.
That error is the exact slippery slope that has seen the greatest slaughters of the 20th century, by governments, and yet people who would claim to recoil if it were done with gas chambers are salivating at letting a pandemic accomplish the same thing. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
The first duty of legitimate government is to protect the lives of its citizens.
Without those lives, there's no liberty, and no pursuit of happiness.
We have many morons that can't grasp that obvious fact, or else who would willingly grease the machinery of society with the entrails of some good number of their neighbors, so they can pay their credit card bills and go to Disneyland.
Anyone expressing that sentiment aloud needs a punch in the dick.
Anyone actually carrying it out needs shot in the face.
It's all fun and games for them until they and their family are being put in the grease bucket, and they act shocked that anyone would suggest such was ever possible, or likely, when in fact it becomes inevitable, once you first start down that pathway.
People want to look at the wrong things.
They want to understand how WWI started.
Or our own Civil War.
This isn't that.
It's Germany in 1932, and France the day before they stormed the Bastille.
Tread carefully.
You're about a New York Minute from getting a doctoral dissertation lesson in the madness of crowds.
Right in front of you.
It doesn't end well.
But there will be blood. And no end of tears.
30 comments:
Yup.
And when Round 1.5 arrives around July 1-4 based on Round 1 transit time the Summer is going to become REAL nasty.
I'm not YET convinced that the CCP "Resurgence" problem is a different genome than we are dealing with here today (Thus making this Round 2) NOR am I convinced it is the SAME (making this Round 1.5).
EITHER WAY, we're pretty definitely in for the High Jump, the one with the sharp tug JUST before our feet hit.
The actual EXPECTED Round 2 (in the Fall) is going to redefine the term UGLY for anyone younger than 45. And if we're even REMOTELY intelligent we'll go forth with true QUARANTINE as our most used tool.
ALWAYS ASSUMING that the Powers who Think They BE (PWTTB) have an understanding of the moral Fiduciary Responsibility to the citizens.
@Ferdinand,
Nice try. Straw man harder yourself. Less smartass, more brainz.
Engage on the topic.
It's not about who wants out. It's about how you do it.
Average IQ means you're getting the Gilligan Option.
Good luck with that.
Here I thought the first duty of government was to protect the god given RIGHTS of the people. Which they long since stopped doing!
I figured I would not get an answer so not disappointed.
I did not feel like I was straw manning in the least but posing you some questions you so far have refused to answer here or anywhere else but instead turn around and ask us.
Topic then, righto.
You want to preserve life. Perhaps at the cost of not just convenience but freedom. We can liken that to rationing, light and power discipline, or war gardens during WWII to make it sound better. Sacrifices for the whole of society and some greater good.
Nothing in life is bloodless and you can never eliminate risk. If your arguments and efforts to minimize risk are so drastic with secondary and tertiary effects to society as a whole maybe it would be worth looking at the cause instead of saying the ends justify the means and we must maintain the course until a better course is laid.
Those of us willing to take those risks can affect others. Sure.
But we have not removed their self determination. They do not have to go to the gym, or to the dentist for a cleaning, they can sit home and live off grubhub and their savings while we work on rebuilding.
What jobs there are left have begun revamping their day to day routines in such a way that will change many aspects of consumerism and retail permanently. Some for the better some for the worse. Local stores have already begun consulting floor routes to maximize impulse buying under the guise of social distancing.
Getting a crown or teeth cleaning is hardly the same as rooting out ideological dissidents for the bonfires and gas chambers.
The law in general disagrees with you on a duty to save lives in many instances and frankly to the elite, it seems like most of us are as expendable as prisoners used to clear mine fields.
On grounds of people no longer trust this government or have anything in common with each other Civil war in the USA is probably inevitable. In the middle of a pandemic is an especially bad time for one.
Let's not.
That said there are a hell of lot of heavy handed, poorly communicated things that could trigger one. Forced vaccination might, continuous economic free fall, large scale evictions a few months after a bunch of things.
This mess needs to be handled with much better care than we are at present.
Now as to something everyone can do to avoid being stupid, wash your damned hands and try not to touch your face. I hope people keep doing this for good because there are lots and lots of infections that can be stopped that way.
A last question. Obviously L.A and NYC need different handling but I'd be curious how would you end this lock down assuming you were the advisor?
History will tell. And pretty soon too.
Last three paragraphs are on the money. "Who will benefit from the crisis?" - that's what gives me the chills.
@clabonjones,
Let me know if this rings any bells:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
Now, suppose I take your life away. Tell me, at that point, what matters about the other two?
I'll wait.
Aesop,
You wrote, "There are no 'acceptable losses' in a pandemic. Citizens are not pawns to be sacrificed. Period. Paragraph."
Let's tweak what you wrote a bit and see how it sounds."There are no 'acceptable losses' with gun violence. Citizens are not pawns to be sacrificed. Period. Paragraph."
Uh..no. There are acceptable losses in combat, speed limits, and the right to bear arms, to name a few. If the powers that be can restrict your First Amendment rights and justify keeping the population locked down because somebody might die, they can take away your Second Amendment rights because somebody might die, too.
For both pandemic management and the right to bear arms, I am in favor of conceding that acceptable losses are necessary. If we have to wait until it is "safe" to come out of our homes, that means we may well be there forever. We have to get this country moving again before the economy is completely strangled, and if some people die, that is unfortunate, but "acceptable."
@Ferdinand,
I figured I would not get an answer so not disappointed.
I figured not posting your first petulant screed would spare you some permanent internet embarrassment, and save me blood pressure points, so we're both ahead on the merits.
I did not feel like I was straw manning in the least but posing you some questions you so far have refused to answer here or anywhere else but instead turn around and ask us.
Au contraire.
The question isn't whether we undo this lockdown, or who we do it for.
We absolutely do it, and ASAP.
The question is "How?". Doing it wisely is a better choice, but I'm outvoted by the impatient, the ignorant, the deliberately stupid, the lazy, and the apathetic. And panic, of any sort, is not conducive to rational thought either. Regardless of what I'd like, the Gilligans are now driving the bus, just like they did the pandemic. That never works out in the long run.
Topic then, righto.
You want to preserve life. Perhaps at the cost of not just convenience but freedom. We can liken that to rationing, light and power discipline, or war gardens during WWII to make it sound better. Sacrifices for the whole of society and some greater good.
Yes, but more specifically, I don't want to deliberately do anything so jackassically stupid that it ensures more people will die, that needn't have. Like, for one example from recent weeks, certain states decreeing that convo homes had to accept known COVID-positive patients, despite those facilities not having the means or ability to adequately care for them, nor co-habitate them with their other populations, which killed hundreds and thousands of them, in many places. That sort of homicidal horseshit should be prosecuted, and death penalties awarded, in haste, but with all the legal trimmings. So no, please, let's not have any more of that jackassical nonsense, nor anything like, fair enough?
Nothing in life is bloodless and you can never eliminate risk. If your arguments and efforts to minimize risk are so drastic with secondary and tertiary effects to society as a whole maybe it would be worth looking at the cause instead of saying the ends justify the means and we must maintain the course until a better course is laid.
Nor would I suggest otherwise. I'm just pulling as hard as I can to minimize the gorram stupidity, to the maximum extent possible. That's not the same as saying "Let's all stay in lockdown forever", which is equally jackassical with "Let's just pretend this isn't happening". Somewhere between those two goalpost uprights of Stupid is probably any number of better and brighter approaches, at this point.
(cont.)
(cont.)
Those of us willing to take those risks can affect others. Sure.
But we have not removed their self determination. They do not have to go to the gym, or to the dentist for a cleaning, they can sit home and live off grubhub and their savings while we work on rebuilding.
Q.: Why should they be forced to curtail their liberty, while you are not? Your answer is, essentially, "Devil take the hindmost."
Their ox is gored, and you're to blame.
How about instead if we make sure you aren't an asymptomatic carrier, and then turn you loose with all haste to earn your daily crust, thus eliminating the infected from the public square to everyone's equal benefit?
Now, tell me why your plan is more respecting of everyone's rights than mine.
Or that it isn't.
What jobs there are left have begun revamping their day to day routines in such a way that will change many aspects of consumerism and retail permanently. Some for the better some for the worse. Local stores have already begun consulting floor routes to maximize impulse buying under the guise of social distancing.
That's called freedom and capitalism. I have no beef there. As long as everyone's following the same rules, you can do anything within them you want. That works for NASCAR and Indy car racing, the America's Cup, and damned near everything else in life.
Getting a crown or teeth cleaning is hardly the same as rooting out ideological dissidents for the bonfires and gas chambers.
Which refers to what place where we stated otherwise?
@5stonegames,
"A last question. Obviously L.A and NYC need different handling but I'd be curious how would you end this lock down assuming you were the advisor?"
No problem. I answered that one a month ago:
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/04/so-you-want-out-of-lockdown.html
Now, look at what we're doing, and what we're NOT, and see if I'm smarter or dumber than the governor of your state, for any of 50 values of that answer.
Personally, I like my odds.
I agree that if you are infectious, you should be quarantined. However, locking down every Tom, Dick, and Mary on the possibility that they may be infectious is without precedent and nothing more than a recipe for insurrection.
No one was locked down "on the possibility that they may be infectious".
The lockdown was quite literally to starve the pandemic of hosts and victims.
As for your suggestion being a recipe for insurrection, absolutely yes.
Literally starving the pandemic requires only that you quarantine those infected, anything more and it is factually only on the possibility that they may be infectious. Which is what we have had here in most of These United States.
Aesop,
"No one was locked down "on the possibility that they may be infectious".
The lockdown was quite literally to starve the pandemic of hosts and victims." That is a distinction without a difference, a matter of mere semantics.
@Survivorman99,
Words mean things.
If someone doesn't understand why you're doing something, you can't tell them why it's time to end it, or not.
File this under: Explaining things to the left end of the IQ curve.
@Chip,
Starving the pandemic can be done either way.
I can take your food away, or I can wire your jaw shut.
Either approach works.
When I can't tell you who the infected people are, because a huge number are asymptomatic, and there's no valid test available to find out who they are, exactly as was the case in the US with Kung Flu for two months out of the last three, the options become rather more limited, in this case, to locking damn near everybody down.
One rather populous state said "F**k that! It's just the flu, bro!"
Hint: It didn't work out well for them.
Repeat the experiment at your leisure, and let us know how it goes for you.
Or, not.
"That sort of homicidal horseshit should be prosecuted, and death penalties awarded, in haste, but with all the legal trimmings."
Oh Aesop, if "we" cannot manage to get effing Hillary and her minions charged, convicted, and locked away forever (death is too EASY an escape for that evil bitch; I'm okay with hemp-and-lamppost for the rest) -- in what possible state of affairs can "we" manage to get ANY of these political hacks prosecuted (or even limited for now)? Someone with illicit power putting sick people into old folks homes with no care for either group should be -- BUT NEVER WILL BE -- punished IAW moral law (cause LEGAL law, apparently does not consider that a crime!)
And, as damned near EVERY politician must be psychotic to even get elected; expecting, hoping, praying for, or even railing against stupid venal evil grasping greedy PoS actions that result in unnecessary deaths that could have been prevented is just our lot in life! MOST people who are desperate to 'get out' are not looking for trips to Disneyland or even, necessarily, just the beach! Life -- for those who do not die -- MUST go on. Life, in these modern times requires working for pay. Yes, many Americans were in hock up to their ears before corona-chan came to visit. Perhaps those who get through will learn to do better before next time. But probably NOT -- because MPAI. There is no 'fix' for MPAI.
(I cannot express how GRATEFUL I am that my poor demented 94-yr-old mom died in Nov 2018; she escaped suffocating to death in a (actually mostly nice and mostly caring) 'memory-care' wing. I miss her, but she's better off wherever she is, if there is a wherever. I'm also one of the 'higher likelihood to die' if I get it. {shrug} As the saying goes: "Them's the breaks of Naval Air.")
Stupid people will do stupid things, and end up hurting not just themselves, but other stupid people and uninvolved others. That is human life; the human condition, that is irrevocable. We do what we CAN; and release what we can't.
Hang in there. Your anger and frustration are understandable; but you can't fix MOST people; and ... wasn't it Aristotle who said there are some people who CANNOT be educated? Since we keep breeding 'em and preventing Mother Nature from doin' her thang; we've got more than our share.
@Aesop,
"...in this case, to locking damn near everybody down." In other words, every Tom, Dick, and Mary and as we see, Americans were willing to do so for a specific reason and limited duration. Once the goal posts started moving and the lock-down time increased, civil unrest began growing. It is only a matter of time, and not very long at that, when things become violent.
I realize you see a very specific set which colors your opinion due to your field of work. I know how it works, I have been lucky enough to have played in many different and unrelated fields over my lifetime. The pandemic is loose and at this point, it can only be slowed, heck once China turned it loose months ago this was the case.
Now we have inexpensive therapies for treatment and practice cleanliness to the point where any more lock-downs are contraindicated. We also have a good idea on who is more likely to go TU and they may want to take extra precautions.
@Chip,
The goalposts were always going to move, because you can't do a 2-week lockdown for a virus that incubates up to 21 days.
I indicated at the outset that people should be prepared for a lockdown duration of several months. People who thought that was hyperbole at the time are probably sadder, but wiser, now.
There's no approved therapy that works in all cases, but we have a better idea of what to do and what not to do, esp. knowing that for about 97% of everyone, it's not a concern anyways. But more importantly, we're not doing magic in the hospital. If I can work amongst it for three months without acquiring it, anyone else can too, if they'll use basic PPE and practice common sense, for those who must.
Now, if we'd simply start testing everyone once before turning them loose, with an accurate and valid test, we'd eliminate most of the risk to most people, and get through this as well as possible, with minimal disruption, and minimal future additional casualties.
That's how we should do it, but not how we will.
The latter part is going to kill more people needlessly, and killing people via stupidity is about the worst civil rights violation I can think of, and in this case, perpetrated by, and/or at the behest of, the government.
And worse: as this edges up to BAD again, there are rumblings of Lockdown II.
Which is going to add insult to injury, and get us none of the benefits of opening up, but all of the problems of breaking quarantine stupidly.
Which is what I'm trying to warn folks about, ever so gently.
@Avalanche,
I'm a lifeguard for the shallow end of the gene pool. Tell me about it.
They tell me I can't fix stupid. I say they just won't let me use a big enough hammer.
Oh Aesop, I'd BUY YOU the hammer if I could, and if it would actually help! But then there's that problem with the "Capitol Police" at the state and Fed level who NEED to be hit! 'cause whacking the stupid people just makes them ornery, not smarter. (Is ornerier a word?)
Harsh as it sounds, maybe corona-chan is also doing her bit as disinfectant at the shallow end of the gene pool. Unfortunately, when some/many folks are peeing in the shallow end, some good folk (good swimmers?) passing through toward deeper water, or too frail to swim out there, will get peed on. (There, did I mangle your metaphor completely enough?)
Stay safe, stay healthy, DON'T stay thirsty, my friend!
@Aesop
Without life no, rights. As that is the first thing they mentioned. Life ,Liberty,etc.
But the securing of the god given rights of men should closely follow life. If you are still alive you have your rights, Gov should protect them.
Aesop and learned guests,
Has anyone put together an accessible characterization of
(1) What targets we need from our tests, in terms of sufficient accuracy (false pos/neg readings, etc), ease of use (administer/process), cost/quantity/production, and duration/frequency of the testing period;
(2) whether or not our current tech supports us achieving those targets; and
(3) whether or not the tech exists, how long until we can make it actually work?
If what we need isn't actually possible, then what do we do? And if it is, then once we have all agreed on our targets, what will it take for us to throw the needed resources at what needs to be done?
Thanks to all.
So, we know the following as absolute truths:
1. Liberals, more specifically socialists, marxists, communists, are evil, and detest freedom in favor of despotism... they cannot stand or live with the idea that people can and do make decisions for themselves.
2. The liberals want to destroy the conservatives. They have said so. They would be happy to see us all dead, and even happier if they can have something to do with it.
3. Liberals are very short-sighted, and narrow-minded, but that does not mean they are stupid, or cannot learn from their mistakes (and successes).
4. Liberals understand that we are in a war. In a war, you have to be united. They know they cannot defeat us (conservatives) if we are united. Therefore they must divide and conquer. Barack Hussein Obama knew this (well, his puppet-masters did, and do).
How do they divide conservatives? The same way they they do everything else... by deception. Think Mike Flynn. Or the impeachment of President Donald Trump. They used false information, circulated it around, repeated it, confirmed it through their "sources" and pretty soon it became "fact". This is called "gaslighting". Repeat a lie often enough and long enough that it becomes understood as truth, even when it was always a lie. Actual facts are useless to them, because facts point out the flaws in their thinking. Liberals rarely think, they rely on emotion for their decision-making.
As conservatives, we have a habit of taking things at face value. Well, the liberals have learned this. The liberals/marxists/socialists/communists are deceivers... remember who the Great Deceiver is. So, as a consequence, they have modified their rules. Now they have used gaslighting in a novel way... they are causing us to gaslight ourselves, via the very instruments we have relied on to learn the truth about what is going on and what they are doing. And it is working. Possibly beyond their wildest dreams, and this is why we are in such danger of defeat.
Let's talk about vaccinations. So, every conservative alt-right website (well, almost every one) is filled with stories of vaccinations gone awry. How millions of people have been affected, maimed, killed. How thimerosal is a neurotoxin that is in every vaccine in order to kill us and depopulate the world (Mike Adams, Alex Jones, and myriad others are saying this). BTW, did you know that you can specifically request a thimerosal-free vaccine when you get your flu shot? As a rule, Mike Adams is very smart, and is right about almost everything. I would never diminish the value and benefits of nutritional supplements and the tremendous boost our immune system gets from using them regularly. But on this, he has bought, or reasoned out himself, inaccurately, the lie of vaccines. For the longest time, I believed him, and Alex Jones, and many others about this, because they back up their claims and articles with lots of accurate-sounding, genuine people and sources that confirm their hypothesis. These stories travel the web at warp speed (see what I did there?) and pretty soon many, many people believe that the globalists (think Bill Gates) want to kill us and depopulate the planet with vaccines that cause cancer, or will activate the "next" covid-19 (maybe covid-20?) and create a cytokine storm that will destroy our immune system and kill us very efficiently.
(continued)
... Okay. So, any thoughts as to why Gates, and Soros, and everyone else is not fighting back against this information? No mention of how crazy this sounds? Not a peep from ANY of the mainstream media? What are they doing? They're talking about the vaccine, and promoting the vaccine, yet about half of the alt-right conservatives are absolutely willing to "go out in a hail of bullets" to prevent being forcibly given the vaccine. Right. And you didn't think for a second that this exactly what they want? You don't think the vaccine disinformation being sowed is intentional? For you to react this way? Really? How about wearing a mask? One poster said he would rather die than wear a mask. How do you think this discord is sowed? We're not sowing it... we don't think that way. Divide and conquer. This is their goal. They either want you to refuse the vaccine, thus eventually, probably sooner rather than later, getting sick, and dying the terrifying death of drowning in your own fluids, or dying by going out in a hail of bullets, or dying because you cannot feed yourself or your family because no employer will let you work. Any of these work... remember, "BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY". Personally, I think they are so damned twisted that they hope you die by drowning slowly, alone, on a ventilator. You must remember that this is who they are. They WANT you to think the vaccine will harm you.
Remember that this thing started as an engineered bioweapon in Wuhan, China. It was intended to be used against us, AFTER they created their vaccine to protect their own people. It got out before they were ready.
The liberals will ALL get the vaccine. And they will likely survive. We may not. Don't think for a nanosecond that this is not their plan. They are wicked, and evil, and they serve Satan. And they're not stupid. Sometimes we are.
Many have forgotten that we eliminated smallpox with a vaccine.
If you don't want the vaccine when it comes out, then don't take it. Hopefully you will survive, and without injury to your lungs, kidneys, heart, and brain. We need you to survive. We need as many of us as possible to survive. But understand that sometimes a war is won by attrition. I submit to you that they know they cannot win a shooting war against us, but they can absolutely win the war by letting us destroy ourselves, or reduce our numbers sufficiently (it won't take that many... remember that the split is very close to 50-50) so that they can strip us of our remaining rights until the only thing left is to fight, and die, because it is better to die our our feet than live on our knees. And that is exactly what we will do.
No. My questions were my questions. You do not go into a deli and come away satisfied when you ask for smoked turkey and get roast beef while the butcher says “well this is what I want to sell”.
A.: For the same reasons we didn’t descend into pants wetting madness for swine flu and bird flu or anything else previously. My answer is one of practicality. We expect a certain amount of responsibility from people and within reason will extend reasonable efforts to accommodate them in return. Until this it was a very targeted approach or attempted approach at individuals to limit violations of civil liberties to as few as people as possible not tossing a blanket over a city and telling residents to wait for a bit till the powers that be decide and continually shift the goal post citing needing just a biiiiiiiiit more data.
Immune compromised people probably shouldn’t go bobbing for apples at the county fair but we do not shut down the school and surrounding businesses if that same person wants to go grocery shopping on a particular day to minimize their risk. You are asking me to personally weigh my individual freedoms against a crowd when determining appropriate actions for the good of the societal whole. Why not be fair and weigh the millions of low risk and healthy people against that same crowd for a fairer comparison. If one vs the many is justifiable reasons for drastic measures wouldn’t many vs the few be equally as justified? Before you call that evil look at your post:
“Almost none of you are there, nor anywhere close, and very few really want to be, until it's far too late to fix. I've made a tidy sum over the years on those people. Ask me how I know.
We could go on, but won't.
I hope you all enjoyed your free trial of communism, and I hope you all manage to bounce back and thrive coming out the other side, whenever this current sh*tshow all ends finally.
But you shouldn't have been setting your hair on fire nor sh*tting your pants about anything that happened. And you wouldn't have been, IF you'd been more than half-assed totally unprepared for it.”
You got yours. Damn the rest. You’re getting your Disney ticket and paying your credit card as it were
(continued)
“We have many morons that can't grasp that obvious fact, or else who would willingly grease the machinery of society with the entrails of some good number of their neighbors, so they can pay their credit card bills and go to Disneyland.”
I got a ramrod up (down?) my nose as a work requirement and have antibodies for it or something that would cause them to be present. I’ve volunteered to donate blood, plasma, and other stuff I’d rather have stay in me on an ongoing basis as part of the trials and test research going on. Best we can figure I had this sometime around late January or early February or else I was entirely asymptomatic at some later point. Doc told me at the time I probably had the seasonal sinus infection I get due to folks passing the plague around sick building syndrome style and sent me home for the rest of the week cause he’s nice like that and I am habitually over my hours for both vacation and sick time that I can carry over. This was before any temp or illness was considered immediately suspect and actions taken. We’ve also not been closed a single hour of a single day due to this thing and converted an unused BSL3 lab space into a test kit processing site for COVID kits from the hospitals attached and in our university network. We’re doing some neat stuff with rapid prototyping and problem solving around lack of components for test kits. In short: I have skin in this game and want a good outcome. I do not want to be the only person in my apartment complex who is working while constantly asked when we're coming out of this as if I have some special knowledge.
“3) There will always be the 10% Gilligans in any population (Stout cudgel. Cranium. Assembly required.) , but people should be required to wear and use properly appropriate PPE, like masks and gloves, and given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own protection, and get out and about. I've taken care of 1-2 dozen Kung Flu patients already, at close range, using nothing more complicated than that. It works, and if I can do it, you darned sure can, if you have access to enough of the PPE to do it. Let's require its use in public, universally, and crank that stuff out by the metric f**kton.”
With that there “taking responsibility for their own protection” why then are we asked to sign for a blanket group's well being.
1) No goal posts were shifted. Anyone that thought a 2-week lockdown was going to be efficacious for a disease with a known latent incubation period of 21 days, and with a large percentage of carriers infected totally asymptomatically, wasn't paying close attention to obvious important facts. I told people from the get-go this would be weeks- to months-long in nature.
2) You can't screen people in or out of quarantine when there's no functional test to tell anyone who's who. Your beef is with the CDC, and whoever thought they could ever find their asses with both hands and a mirror.
3) Swine flu and bird flu had neither the infectiousness, nor the mortality of Kung Flu. Be happy you didn't get Ebola. You'd be on lockdown all year, until we made 330M doses of rVSV-ZEBOV, and gave them to everyone. Breaking quarantine with that would be a death sentence, and government wouldn't have to lift a finger. This was relatively weak by comparison, but 3% CFR makes the multiplicand rather important: "3% of how many people?"
4) Just because something is low-risk for you is exactly why you don't get to do whatever you please. Getting exposed to typhoid was low-risk for Mary Mallon, which is why she was nicknamed "Typhoid Mary". For the people she infected and killed, not so much.
This is also why we don't let Danica Patrick drive 200MPH down the freeway.
How safe she is driving at 200MPH isn't the point, is it?
5) I've "got mine" because I wasn't a grasshopper-asshole for the last 30 years.
All the BMWing I'm hearing is from people whose forethought is shorter than their peckers. I can't hear them over the sound of the tiniest violin on the planet, playing between my thumb and index finger.
I don't have credit card bills. I have months of savings for emergencies like this, and even bigger ones. I have food set aside that'd get me through months, to perhaps a year of this. Anyone can't get themselves out of shit in a year has much bigger issues.
But anyone who couldn't hack a month or two is a short-sighted fucktard.
Shit like this, and worse, happens to people all the time.
Life is hard. It's harder if you're stupid.
That stinging sensation is reality smacking people in the back of the head.
6) You're asked to sign for a blanket group's well being, because for some notable period, there were no tests, and there wasn't nearly enough PPE. So turning loose a few hundred thousand asymptomatic carriers would be a death sentence for thousands to millions more. Which is why anyone out and about should be wearing a mask, and should be tested and confirmed not to be a carrier before we let them back in the pool at large.
Not doing that last part is liable to get us Round II, in short order.
If you like your Kung Flu, you can keep your Kung Flu.
Now with bonus casualties, due to jackassical stupidity, and failure to learn from the initial mistakes.
And when every hospital looks like hospitals in Queens or Brooklyn in April, don't be surprised when people at any or every hospital just say "To hell with it", and let the rest of society live with the plans they've adopted, sans any health care at all.
There'll probably be one helluva lot fewer jackasses to deal with six months from now, and common sense won't be nearly as tough to sell to people once the corpses are stacked high enough.
Bummer about gramps and grannie though.
6 months is optimistic, same though, no debt, at all, a years worth of SAVINGS and pantry to match.
Que Gilligans with hair on fire 3 in months time.
You're right, Mr.Aesop.. And if you want the sine qua non of "Government response to the pandemic: doing it wrong edition" look no further than France. NYC is in the running for gold.
I haven't checked in a couple weeks, but Taiwan seems to be doing it right.
But you go to the re-opening with the population and the AWFL bureaucracy that you have, not the one you wish you had.
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