The Coronavirus thread - Page 6

On March 15 2020 18:51 LemOn[5thF] wrote: Btw I see facebook posts from "brave" people saying people should wear face masks with photos of actual proper face mask and commenting how people look weird at them when they have it These people mean well but they are fucking up big time in countries with facemask and respirator shortages Pharmacists don't have them, police don't have them and 0 shopkeepers have them because there are huge shortages And these virtue signalling "selfless" geniuses are making it worse by telling people to start buying them... Shut the fuck up mate, gift the good ones (hospitals are asking for them to be gifted) ...Just shows how tricky the situation is. There are wards asking people to sow masks for them and gift them. Not sure what's going to happen really, it doesn't help much to protect you but no grocery sales staff or pharmacist having them is just fucked up

It's kind of hard to educate people like that to think more far than their noses sadly


@Jelle you're underestimating this entire thing so much, society will not collapse is just as good of a statement as its opposite. Exponential spreading of pneumonia is unbearable by society and we're proving to be unable to handle it. The entire situation is quite terrifying and the aftermath could potentially be even worse depending on how fast we stop the growth

It also doesn't matter how media perceives and shoves it into people's throat and the actual reality, since countries are in shutdown mode.

This whole paranoia thing is annoying. Every time you cough or sneeze cause some dust got in your nose or feel a bit weird at all you start thinking you have it.

Annoying Paranoia is the least of your concerns in a few days time. And people will not look weirdly at you when you cough, they will be terrified to death and pray they don't have guns to defend them-self. National Lockdown incoming

Keep in mind this is your expert in the White house for this "annoyance"
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/03/15/sotu-fauci-millions.cnn

I think it's amazing the level of production the world was able to achieve during WWII to output machines to kill each other yet we can't keep up with the demand for surgical masks.

Can someone explain to me based on what does WHO announce the death rate to be around 2-4%?

Active cases are around 7% critical condition
Closed cases have 8% death rate


Even if somehow only 1% of that 7 % end up dying, the total will still be over 4%. That's from a statistical excerpt of 170,000 people in developed countries.

The reported cases isn't even close to matching the real number of infected, because for young people many only feel very mild symptoms. South Korea is the country where they have done the most extensive testing, and from their 8,162 cases only 75 have died. (Even if all the other 59 that are in critical condition end up dying, you'd still only be at 1.6% or something. )

Numbers from SK actually indicate that as long as health care system isn't overwhelmed, real mortality rate might well be below 1%, but this, health care systems not being overwhelmed, is a big 'if', and will vary greatly from country to country. Norway atm has 1254 cases (I'd assume the real number is way higher, they don't test people with mild symptoms anymore), but only 3 deaths (and 27 in critical condition where many of those would die in an overburdened situation). Sweden, Denmark, similar extremely low numbers of dead. However a country like Italy where the infrastructure is much worse (and where they got less time to prepare because they were the first western country hit badly), the percentage is like 7.5% - but again, they've stopped testing people with mild symptoms, so the real number of infected is way higher than the 24k reported.

In short, mortality numbers are really uncertain at the moment. But we can know a couple things - number of infected is vastly underreported, pretty much everywhere, number of dead is going to increase by a large amount over the next weeks as many western countries have followed a similar trajectory to Italy, just ~2 weeks behind, and their death count has been rising really fast lately (and then increase further over the next months), and the mortality rate greatly depends on the health care provided. If there are respirators for all the people in critical condition, most of those people survive. If there are not, most of them die. How good of a shape a population is in probably matters, too - obesity, diabetes, smoking habits are all likely to exacerbate how harmful it is.

Yeah this is all about the healthcare systems being crippled moreso than standard mortality rates

People die, no big deal if it's 1% -3%
People dying totally unnecessarily and rest of healthcare not working almost at all is a disaster that fuck entire countries.


Btw we have official quarantine
Home work shop
Everything else police will try to stop you
Well they unofficially allowed walks as long as you are 2 metres from others

More countries will follow with quarantine and complete shutdown. I suspect we aren't being told the full truth. I hope Italy and South Korea's HUGE discrepancy is based on purely the factors we discussed. I think there are possibilities it has another reason and that is why all governments are moving so fast, but that belongs more into conspiracy theory.

For now: As posted before, I started a discord channel: https://discord.gg/MJJg3k
If you are good with that stuff ( I am old, I come from the IRC / ICQ days) feel free to become admin. My goal is to put information together for everyone who is impacted. As with this thread, I hope it is just a waste of time. To everyone who feels we are in this together, please help.

Hey spit it's 8% because dying closes a case faster than full recovery and testing negative

And new cases are not opening at a linear rate because the spread is in the phase of accelerating

On March 15 2020 21:40 Spitfiree wrote: @Jelle you're underestimating this entire thing so much, society will not collapse is just as good of a statement as its opposite. Exponential spreading of pneumonia is unbearable by society and we're proving to be unable to handle it. The entire situation is quite terrifying and the aftermath could potentially be even worse depending on how fast we stop the growth It also doesn't matter how media perceives and shoves it into people's throat and the actual reality, since countries are in shutdown mode.

I'm not I understand exactly what you mean / where you disagree. Are you saying that my prediction of society not collapsing is bad, or that it's too obvious / not worth mentioning?

I really don't think I'm saying anything outlandish - i agree that this is a disaster and countermeasures are necessary and good. I just expect that, 2 years from now, the scale of the disaster to be much smaller than some of these "best case" prediction model outcomes.

I gave simple reasons for why I feel that way, and I haven't heard anyone dispute them. Meanwhile as I type this Bill Perkins is discussing "Why don't I just move into toilet paper? People always need to wipe their ass" as a potential financial strategy on joeyingram's podcast. Maybe I am just hearing only the most extreme opinions because that's what gets clicks / views but yeah it really does feel like people expect mad max 2 scenarios soon without exaggeration.

Yeah, I believe your opinion on that is quite untrue. It's hard to point anything 'outlandish' since your previous comment is ' its better to panic than take it lightly' so you're trying to find the middle ground I suppose, that's fair.

The thing is, this event is already unprecedented in our modern history post-antibiotics. People give examples of the spanish flu yet they forget that it still managed to kill millions, while mass transport was only a sci-fi belief for decades to come. We're not prepared, I'm actually glad that politicians started panicking, but its already too late now. We're most likely going to be stuck at least for a few months just to slow it down and then if we're lucky there won't be a second wave in the autumn/winter. There's not going to be a vaccine any time soon. Everything points out to this virus going to go through its entire growth cycle

So to make the points:
-almost every public business will be closed for months
-businesses that have them as clients will also be hurt directly out of that
-we'll be stuck in our homes

This is pretty much a dystopian situation right now, im not sure what else you'd consider as 'society collapsing' but anything worse than that is basically our extinction




What we're lucky about is that this isnt some superbug immune to antibiotics

On March 16 2020 20:59 Spitfiree wrote: Yeah, I believe your opinion on that is quite untrue. It's hard to point anything 'outlandish' since your previous comment is ' its better to panic than take it lightly' so you're trying to find the middle ground I suppose, that's fair. The thing is, this event is already unprecedented in our modern history post-antibiotics. People give examples of the spanish flu yet they forget that it still managed to kill millions, while mass transport was only a sci-fi belief for decades to come. We're not prepared, I'm actually glad that politicians started panicking, but its already too late now. We're most likely going to be stuck at least for a few months just to slow it down and then if we're lucky there won't be a second wave in the autumn/winter. There's not going to be a vaccine any time soon. Everything points out to this virus going to go through its entire growth cycle So to make the points: -almost every public business will be closed for months -businesses that have them as clients will also be hurt directly out of that -we'll be stuck in our homes This is pretty much a dystopian situation right now, im not sure what else you'd consider as 'society collapsing' but anything worse than that is basically our extinction What we're lucky about is that this isnt some superbug immune to antibiotics

Have to agree and after 1 week of exhausting writing and talking and phoning people and trying to finding plausible arguments that counter the data I found.... I am basically accepting that I try my best, will only convince a small population and brace for impact. In 2 weeks the same people will come back to me for advise and I will forgive and help, I hope they only show my text to their friends and laugh because I am proven wrong. The worst part is the intellectual fatigue with people of high IQ, I have a hard time forgiving them. I talked today with my aunt who is a retired doctor. She had 2 burn outs because she couldn't leave people in need and was always taking everything to heart. Today I talked to her about the numbers, the crisis ahead and all that stuff. She agreed with everything but told me to stay cool and not panic and that we cannot do much anyways. Yet doesn't go to the press, doesn't talk with virus experts, doesn't call people up. I talked to her about exponential growth and how she is not equipped to understand it and that it will be much worse and that she can save lives right now by not only isolating but also convincing others. She is contemplating to come back out of retirement to help with the worst cases of the epidemic when she already has health conditions and is in the highest mortality rate. The manual labor to save people in the hospital is so much less productive in a few weeks than telling 1-2 people that have influence to understand the data and act accordingly. It is sickening how stupid everyone is and the cost to benefit ratio is so outlandish, worst case you will be made fun of. I really feel like I am going crazy with this, it is so saddening to see. The worst part everyone with a decent brain who looked at the data agrees with me, they are just in different modes of acceptance instead of calling people up. I don't understand

When I say societal collapse I mean mad max 2 scenarios, people stop believing in the stories that glue our society together, Bill Perkins becomes a local chief because he controls the toilet roll supply, ridiculous (to me) scenarios like that. Maybe sounds too ridiculous to even discuss but I think a lot of people really believe this is legit in the cards right now, because the situation is never before seen as u said and that makes people extremely fearful and come up with some wild predictions. Didn't Fisheye mention something about police being unwilling to go outside because the threat is too high or did I dream that?

What do you mean exactly by every public company? Retail storefronts, airlines, stuff like that? In every country? When will they all close, do you believe? If you put some falsifiable predictions with milestones for the near future I think you will be relieved when they don't hit and feel better.

Yeah in many countries you'll be stuck in your homes for a while I don't think that's dystopian

To me the scenario that Fisheye posted with the human drama of huge swathes of the global population dying, for example, is already dramatically worse than this one, yet nowhere near extinction. I also think that scenario is not going to happen, I think basically every health factor will go better than imagined. Less infections, way lower death rate, faster vaccine development.

On March 16 2020 23:53 Jelle wrote: When I say societal collapse I mean mad max 2 scenarios, people stop believing in the stories that glue our society together, Bill Perkins becomes a local chief because he controls the toilet roll supply, ridiculous (to me) scenarios like that. Maybe sounds too ridiculous to even discuss but I think a lot of people really believe this is legit in the cards right now, because the situation is never before seen as u said and that makes people extremely fearful and come up with some wild predictions. Didn't Fisheye mention something about police being unwilling to go outside because the threat is too high or did I dream that? What do you mean exactly by every public company? Retail storefronts, airlines, stuff like that? In every country? When will they all close, do you believe? If you put some falsifiable predictions with milestones for the near future I think you will be relieved when they don't hit and feel better. Yeah in many countries you'll be stuck in your homes for a while I don't think that's dystopian To me the scenario that Fisheye posted with the human drama of huge swathes of the global population dying, for example, is already dramatically worse than this one, yet nowhere near extinction. I also think that scenario is not going to happen, I think basically every health factor will go better than imagined. Less infections, way lower death rate, faster vaccine development.

So far, it is going worse than the predictions I had. The things I told my family a week ago that would happen till the end of the month already happened. And the almost 8% mortality rate in Italy is so much higher than I anticipated and Germany is still not prepared. I don't think it is important what happens in 3months, it is only important to alert as many people right now, not to leave the house unless really important emergency (basically food, and that is it, only go when you absolutely must). Everything else is crazy with the information you can google or watch unfold on reddits corona news stream or all the date you find on the aggregation sites. Most people wouldn't go into the water in Australia if they hear there are a few sharks. Actually you probably will be forced to stay out of the water by authorities due to the impending danger. If near your house/neighborhood someone crazy runs around with a knife, people will call you up and tell you to stay home due to the huge risks you take if you and 100000 others would leave the house right now. If someone has Aids you would never have Sex with that person because you have a 1-5% chance of getting it and maybe you will not be cured or you die 20 years from now due to complications with your immune system. Yet when you have all the important world experts tell you there is a killer virus in the world, in your city, in your neighborhood that is infecting people at a rate that is mind boggling and killing people and if you are healthy, there is a probability of maybe 1 (or higher)% that you will die (currently 3,8% worldwide of registered cases) in addition to severe complications with Fibrosis/Pneumatic-esque lung issues (30-40% reduction in lung capacity) IF you heal up and there are reports in Italy of 16 year old, 30 year old dying and the doctors talk about the complete uncertainty with the stats for young people.... Then people call it the flu, talk about wanting to go to the gym. Probably try to stack up on weed last minute or just are fed up with being so restricted in their homes and want to live a little and go outside. Just a bit, you know, won't hurt.

Why does that seem sane to you? I mean I tried my best, you are always free to come back but at this point I will focus on the ones that actually look at the data, read the reports, see the danger. See their responsibility to warn others, to argue with them about the data, to find ways how we can become Korea, not Italy, US, Germany.... I just don't have energy for that right now. There are plenty who do get it, and who will help and save lives. Maybe you will reconsider your position, as I think it just doesn't work from a rational point of view. What is your ultimate cost if you take it serious and help others to realize it them-self, by actually working with the data that health experts and real cases provide? Compared that to taking it not serious and taking a "we will see, I don't think it is that bad" approach? I don't think you can argue for the risk-reward here. Plus the bad consciousness in case you do care about your fellow humans and you have been informed when there was time to act and be the hero you could have been (without medals and unnoticed by society obviously, we won't even get a cookie).

On March 16 2020 22:05 FiSheYe wrote: Show nested quote + On March 16 2020 20:59 Spitfiree wrote: Yeah, I believe your opinion on that is quite untrue. It's hard to point anything 'outlandish' since your previous comment is ' its better to panic than take it lightly' so you're trying to find the middle ground I suppose, that's fair. The thing is, this event is already unprecedented in our modern history post-antibiotics. People give examples of the spanish flu yet they forget that it still managed to kill millions, while mass transport was only a sci-fi belief for decades to come. We're not prepared, I'm actually glad that politicians started panicking, but its already too late now. We're most likely going to be stuck at least for a few months just to slow it down and then if we're lucky there won't be a second wave in the autumn/winter. There's not going to be a vaccine any time soon. Everything points out to this virus going to go through its entire growth cycle So to make the points: -almost every public business will be closed for months -businesses that have them as clients will also be hurt directly out of that -we'll be stuck in our homes This is pretty much a dystopian situation right now, im not sure what else you'd consider as 'society collapsing' but anything worse than that is basically our extinction What we're lucky about is that this isnt some superbug immune to antibiotics Have to agree and after 1 week of exhausting writing and talking and phoning people and trying to finding plausible arguments that counter the data I found.... I am basically accepting that I try my best, will only convince a small population and brace for impact. In 2 weeks the same people will come back to me for advise and I will forgive and help, I hope they only show my text to their friends and laugh because I am proven wrong. The worst part is the intellectual fatigue with people of high IQ, I have a hard time forgiving them. I talked today with my aunt who is a retired doctor. She had 2 burn outs because she couldn't leave people in need and was always taking everything to heart. Today I talked to her about the numbers, the crisis ahead and all that stuff. She agreed with everything but told me to stay cool and not panic and that we cannot do much anyways. Yet doesn't go to the press, doesn't talk with virus experts, doesn't call people up. I talked to her about exponential growth and how she is not equipped to understand it and that it will be much worse and that she can save lives right now by not only isolating but also convincing others. She is contemplating to come back out of retirement to help with the worst cases of the epidemic when she already has health conditions and is in the highest mortality rate. The manual labor to save people in the hospital is so much less productive in a few weeks than telling 1-2 people that have influence to understand the data and act accordingly. It is sickening how stupid everyone is and the cost to benefit ratio is so outlandish, worst case you will be made fun of. I really feel like I am going crazy with this, it is so saddening to see. The worst part everyone with a decent brain who looked at the data agrees with me, they are just in different modes of acceptance instead of calling people up. I don't understand

On the brighter side of things, you will have learned quite a bit about the world you live in and the people with whom you share this earth, and the meaninglessness of things like IQ, which isn't representative of general intelligence or "wisdom".

The reason we are in this situation, fundamentally, is because people have a blind faith in authorities, and have been robbed of their autonomy, and kept in the dark about the way power operates in this world. Whether it's because they believe in some God or some political party, or their parents or community leaders; people have never been equipped to think for themselves. The societies of mass consumption that we exist in can only survive because of this fact.

The positives of something like this might be to reawaken the need for mutual aid and a general disillusionment with representationalism, but I wouldn't hold my breath. This is just the beginning of a series of crises that have been in the cards for a long time and which a profit-oriented world could not be prepared to handle properly, and it pales in comparison with the impacts that climate change will have. The way you feel right now is the way millions of ecologically-conscious people have been feeling for years: that we are walking towards a cliff as a species and most people don't seem to notice or be able to care, and it's depressing and anxiety-inducing to have to interact with such people and also depressing and anxiety-inducing to resign yourself to the fact that nothing is likely going to change before it's too late.

Maybe video is easier to understand, the mortality rate is incorrect and they aren't talking about the "cured" ones that have life long problems nor all the young new cases that are healthy and still died BUT it is better than "it is the flu" videos:

No actually on the risk/reward part I agree with u 100%. That's the most persuasive thing you can say I think.

On the brighter side of things, you will have learned quite a bit about the world you live in and the people with whom you share this earth, and the meaninglessness of things like IQ, which isn't representative of general intelligence or "wisdom". The reason we are in this situation, fundamentally, is because people have a blind faith in authorities, and have been robbed of their autonomy, and kept in the dark about the way power operates in this world. Whether it's because they believe in some God or some political party, or their parents or community leaders; people have never been equipped to think for themselves. The societies of mass consumption that we exist in can only survive because of this fact. The positives of something like this might be to reawaken the need for mutual aid and a general disillusionment with representationalism, but I wouldn't hold my breath. This is just the beginning of a series of crises that have been in the cards for a long time and which a profit-oriented world could not be prepared to handle properly, and it pales in comparison with the impacts that climate change will have. The way you feel right now is the way millions of ecologically-conscious people have been feeling for years: that we are walking towards a cliff as a species and most people don't seem to notice or be able to care, and it's depressing and anxiety-inducing to have to interact with such people and also depressing and anxiety-inducing to resign yourself to the fact that nothing is likely going to change before it's too late.

Appreciated your way of "positivity" but to me global warming can be here in 5 or 50 or 100 years and I believe with the speed of development in AI and technology we still have chances to get it done. With this virus, people died yesterday in my country. People die today and tomorrow and it will increase. Nobody knows how truly devastating this can become when panics and riots are so hard to calculate on top of the actual mortality rates and what it does to us as a society. You know while I still can, I try to help. In a few weeks when everyone knows it, we can talk about who did it to us and what is all the good out of it. I just feel so much anger and frustration because people like you can help right now (this is not against you, just in general high IQ cynical types that see it from the window and let it play out). This is a free country and a free world, you can do whatever you want, I have honestly no bad feelings towards you. You are actually contributing by increasing awareness but you know, if you care so much for non global warming, please believe more in humanity. We can still do great things, but letting people die because they are too ignorant to inform them self or too stupid to calculate WHO stats and add population * infection rate * mortality rate... I think with great power (high IQ or at least able to read a Data sheet) comes great/certain responsibility. I tried to talk to soooo many people and sooo few understand what is happening with the numbers. And it is all there, I send it to them. MY BEST FRIEND, who I love, he is into 5g, wifi, EMF, some vaccine theories etc. it took me like 5 long talks, hours of reports, data, sms, voice memos calls and so forth to convince him this is not a flu. He isn't stupid, he is just sometimes out there with his ideas. He got it finally, he started talking to others, he makes a change now. It is hard and tedious, but we can all contribute rather than watch the world burn then complain that people don't care enough. You know if its us or some rats/cows/lions, I take us. Team humanity first. I think the animals are their animal type first, too if they had our power (we would be gone by now). We can figure global warming after this pandemic, lets stay positive, positive. Not like less humans, less pollution ideas positive.

Climate change related issues are not something awaiting in the future, they are already here and have been so for a while. Look up the number of people who die or have been hospitalized due to heatstroke every year just as a single example. People have been dying in larger numbers with every year that passes from a number of climatic conditions and issues related to environmental degradation. Droughts and water shortages are another massive issue, not to mention the increasing frequency of "natural" catastrophes leading to deaths and dislocations and enormous damage to infrastructure. Nothing is being done to address this at the level where it matters most: the political level.

And these problems are not something that technology can solve, they are complex organizational, political and ideological problems.Those same problems are what will generate antibiotic resistant superbugs and free ancient viruses and bacteria frozen in permafrost. Nothing is being done to prevent this because "there is no money in it". Not just affecting people of course, but a great number of animals have perished and will continue to perish, which affects the biodiversity that we rely upon for our systems to function. Just the last Australian bushfires killed well over a billion animals. We are less equipped to deal with this problem than coronavirus, and it is one that truly threatens our species as a whole. The coronavirus is just more easily visible and it is more of an immediate threat.

The ideas from the tech nerds surrounding the possibilities of AI and the singularity or whatever are myopic; they have fundamentally the same blind faith attitude as the ones who claim that coronavirus isn't a big deal. These people exist in their own fantasy world and echo chambers and have overspecialized in one area and have absolutely no ability to see the big picture as a result.


Behavioral economist Peter Atwater said the following: “In a crisis, we immediately eliminate anything that is in any way psychologically distant from us because that requires too much thinking. The priorities become all around ‘me-here-now.’ How does it affect me? Is it immediate? Is it geographically proximate? Is it simple? Can I understand it?”

The issue with climate change is that by the time everyone is in crisis mode it will be far too late for our species, there are feedback loops that will become engaged at some point and the planet's warming will not be able to stop. That is the scariest thing to contemplate and come to terms with. We are basically cognitively wired to just keep pushing it in the back of our consciousness and even when we aren't we default to hoping for a technological miracle that currently doesn't exist and couldn't exist on a scale that would make a difference (despite what sensationalistic feel-good headlines might say).


I'm sorry if you took what I was saying as a cynical act; I didn't mean it that way. I was just commiserating, as well as reminding you that if you want to fight for "team humanity" the coronavirus is the smaller battle, even if it's the most pressing right now. You're right of course that people ought to focus on the most immediate threat to them during a pandemic. My brother seems to have already contracted the virus. We will have the results within the next couple days. There aren't a lot of people that I can debate this with. My family members are practicing social distancing, and my friends too, as much as possible (some still have to commute to work).

I personally am struggling because I have a trip planned to go see my girlfriend in Japan in 3 weeks, and I really don't want to cancel it. I'd rather self-isolate with her for the next coming months once I get there than stay here, but I know that the risk is likely not to be trivial. Most likely the decision will be made for me in the coming week or two. Canada's recently announced they were closing our border to non-residents and Japan might do the same soon.