SubJeff on 6/2/2021 at 00:16
Come now. Your population numbers and density are a completely different thing. It's supercool that you guys managed it but we can't take that many lessons from you elsewhere, especially not the USA where they have a high high number of complete numbskulls. We're not far off tbh.
mopgoblin on 6/2/2021 at 03:56
We don't have any urban areas the size of London, it's true, but Auckland would probably come in at #5 in terms of population if it were in the UK, and we eliminated the coronavirus there twice. The specifics might be a bit different, and you might have had to shut down a few more things or held out for a bit longer, but if the differences were insurmountable then you wouldn't have seen the rate of new cases drop significantly (until immunity becomes common enough to be a major factor - even now your confirmed cases aren't at a double-digit percentage of the population, so immune people won't have been chipping much off the transmission rate).
Speaking of which, the UK government had that whole "herd immunity" idea for far too long in the early days, too. Then you shut things down fairly well, and by mid-last year or so you were down to ~500 new cases per day (from ~5000 three months prior), so the government snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by reopening a whole range of things. Like schools and pubs!
Like, my semi-relevant background is in maths, simulation/modelling, and politics rather than epidemiology, virology, or immunology, but I've been right pretty consistently about how this pandemic is going to go and how various governments' responses will succeed or fail. It's mostly not that difficult - I did have a leg up by having a basic understanding of coronaviruses since years ago, but that's nothing you can't get from an hour or so on Wikipedia. Hell, we've known for years that the next big pandemic was pretty likely to be a coronavirus of animal (most likely bat) origin, and we had a warning shot with the original SARS coronavirus almost twenty years ago. There are a few lessons from HIV/AIDS that evidently weren't properly learned either (e.g. don't half-arse it when a disease mostly kills people in specific demographics you don't care about), and even from the common cold (employers will try to coerce sick people into coming in to work before they're fully recovered, or even for the whole time, don't fucking let them do that).
We had all the knowledge and tools we needed to nip this thing in the bud, at least in the West, even in densely-populated areas with enough of an effort. But that involved shutting a lot of things down for a while, and that's not allowed with the kind of capitalist economy we have. Governments hesitated and tried to plead their way around it instead of biting the bullet and shutting things down swiftly, leading to probably over a million preventable deaths in the West alone (in the best-case scenario). We may well never be rid of it now because capitalism couldn't think beyond the next quarter's profit figures.
For the most part it's not even good for business beyond the first few weeks of avoided shutdowns - could you imagine starting up a small business in the foreseeable future, with the constant threat of future shutdowns where you're stuck paying rent on premises you can't monetise, and no one in the world will insure you against that?
The American idiot problem is a difficult one, admittedly, but in its way that's just a longer-term symptom of capitalism too.
catbarf on 6/2/2021 at 04:59
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
It’s not too late to do that. Biden has the power to declare a national emergency, give EVERY citizen a food ration that will last four weeks, and then immediately declare a 100% shutdown where ANYONE who steps outside their own property is immediately detained and disinfected at a quarantine facility.
Fuck off, dumbass.
Frankly I'm surprised that this transparently bullshit born-again leftist shtick is tolerated. Does Tony think everyone just completely forgot about his right-wing posting history? Or that time he said he goes on Facebook and pretends to be an extreme leftist to see if anyone calls him out?
demagogue on 6/2/2021 at 10:49
Someone points it out pretty much every time, at least until everyone just started ignoring him.
The only people that fall for it are other right-wing kooks that don't visit often and take him at face value and rage. :joke:
faetal on 6/2/2021 at 13:20
It's like he never fully understood what a straw man argument is and considered it a tactic rather than a logical fallacy.
It's a lot less annoying just to set him to ignore.
Whenever I see one of his hidden posts pop up, all I hear is (
https://youtu.be/ss2hULhXf04) this.
Occasionally the nonsense peeps through when someone quotes him, but that just validates the value of the ignore function.
SubJeff on 6/2/2021 at 15:40
Must be the most ignored poster in the history of Comm Chat.
carbarf - try it. It's so much nicer.
Quote Posted by mopgoblin
We had all the knowledge and tools we needed to nip this thing in the bud, at least in the West, even in densely-populated areas with enough of an effort. But that involved shutting a lot of things down for a while, and that's not allowed with the kind of capitalist economy we have.
Yes. That and fear of "control". It's not just capitalism, it's democracy and freedom. I'd happily see troops on the streets and a super strict lockdown for 2 months, because that would quell things. But we're too soft for that.
Quote Posted by mopgoblin
The American idiot problem is a difficult one, admittedly, but in its way that's just a longer-term symptom of capitalism too.
Not sure how you're getting from A to B here.
Tony_Tarantula on 6/2/2021 at 16:12
Quote Posted by catbarf
Fuck off, dumbass.
Frankly I'm surprised that this transparently bullshit born-again leftist shtick is tolerated. Does Tony think everyone just completely forgot about his right-wing posting history? Or that time he said he goes on Facebook and pretends to be an extreme leftist to see if anyone calls him out?
How the fuck do you think some of those cities in Australia got to zero cases?
Dumbass.
They got there by doing more or less what I described.
Even SubJeff, not exactly the brightest bulb in the world, agrees with me. It's so obvious even he can see it:
SubJeff on 10/2/2021 at 14:08
Well, we're storming on with the vaccine programme but boy have we got issues with viral variants and £10k fines now!
I think we need this, because people are idiots.
Gryzemuis on 10/2/2021 at 16:09
Viral variants? What do you mean?
Variants that have different properties (illness more severe, easier spreading, etc)? Or are you worried that the existing vaccines might not protect properly against new variants? Or something else? Just curious.
Harvester on 10/2/2021 at 18:20
It's becoming clear that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine does not protect well again the South African variant. That's a setback for South Africa because they ordered a lot of Oxford/AZ vaccines. There are also some cases where a vaccine does not prevent people from becoming ill from a certain variant, but it makes the illness a lot milder so virtually all hospitalizations and deaths are prevented. That's less than ideal but better than nothing.
