Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

You gotta remember, the people putting out most of the fake news and disinformation about the virus are people who don't care if the poor die because they consider not being rich as proof that you're a bad person. Lying to bad people is perfectly fine, right?

 

Excuse me sir when rich people do that we call that "branding" or "marketing", since lying is something bad people do.

Anyway have some COVID memes, all sourced from "Most Viral" for maximum USRDA irony content, hopefully no repeats.

Spoiler: Memes

 

Wow, it's almost as if the small island part of the USA had a substantially lower case total then the large landmass with very porous borders and more in line with that of other islands. Do you even read the numbers you just gave me and not realize that it proves the point raised? The idea that "small islands have easier time keeping cases low" is not some unknown speculation. There's even data to back it up, you can literally look at how pretty much every small island state had a lower total then the rest of the world did.

You're assuming that the creditor in question gave out fixed rate loans rather then variable rate ones. If it's the latter then inflation does nothing good for you. And that is ignoring how when creditors stop handing out as much credit because of inflation, it's not going to be the ruling class who's going to get cut off, it's the middle and lower class who will. As well as that this is going to be normal rates of inflation rather then larger amounts of it and I wouldn't be entirely sure that one is off the table for every nation. I hope I'm wrong on that last bit but still.

Besides if the cost of goods like food and fuel rises who gets hurt worse, the guy whose finances are in the billions and who just spent most of the pandemic seeing them improve (look up the wealth transfer that happened during the pandemic) or the guy who lives paycheck to paycheck with very little savings left? Because his paycheck isn't going to be rising anywhere near as fast as the costs will.

I have single question in response to that, why do you trust the Vietnamese data at face value? You are aware that the only people there who can actually give out numbers at all is their Ministry of Health. No independent numbers or else you risk fines or worse. In a communist country. Who had legitimacy issues. And as we all know, it wouldn't be the first time a communist country lied about a disaster. You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical about it.

 

Reminds me of the US.

 

So, basically, 'the actual data is wrong, please listen to me, a random internet pontificator, who clearly speaks nothing but gospel.' Yes?

 

If that's your takeaway from that then you know what, sure. *shrug*

 

It is. Nothing you’ve argued actually supports the points you were making about the response being more expensive than the disease. It’s just creationist-tier bullshit, trying to poke holes in any response you get without actually supporting your own arguments, just letting them coast.

So, since you have nothing to actually say, I’m going to disregard your obviously-unbiased skepticism and just assume the countries with lower infection rates actually know what they’re doing instead of just assuming it’s all luck and reality works how you arbitrarily claim it does.

 

The man who tries to claim a continent and an island are the same speaks to me of creationist tier bullshit. Truly you are a man without peer, if only in your ability to ignore what is said and shown in favor of repeating yourself. You provided less then nothing, were given examples and proceeded to ignore everything shown to you. Why should I treat you as anything other then the waste of my time you are?

 

That’s my line. You’re the one making an entirely unsupported claim, and rejecting any response as insufficient to disprove the nothing you’ve presented.

When you challenged the land-locked country versus island comparison, I gave you island versus island. What have you given any of us besides ‘I don’t think it works that way’?

 

I hope you're rich.

 

Donuts to dollars he’s a ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaire.’

 

In other words, a pawn.

 

I showed you that every island had a lower case rate compared to a landlocked nation. Substantially so in fact. The main difference was that the quarantine measures were nowhere as severe in most of those compared to New Zealand. The country who will happily shut the entire border down for the rest of the year.

And I hope you get to move to a state more in line with your desires and never leave there again. Perhaps New York would be more to your liking, though you might want to avoid the nursing homes there.

 

First off, enough with the weasel shit. Your source said they had 0.7% of the population and 0.3% of the cases. So, something like half or a third if we’re really generous. Which is less favorable than my Hawaii to US comparison, and not even remotely in line with New Zealand having less than 1/100th the cases per capita as the US, and about a fiftieth of Hawaii’s.

Second, that doesn’t actually support anything you were saying, which is why I gave up trying to actually argue with you. You can’t support your claims, all you can do is argue that my rejection of them isn’t good enough. And I’m done with that useless bullshit. Put up, shut up, or at least go try and lick billionaire asshole somewhere else.

 

If someone expects it from any scenario then they are delusional. It is question of what kind of bad consequences are preferable (though in New Zealand lockdown may be actually optimal)

Not exactly. If increase in prices of things are not matched by increase in wages then regular people are fucked.

AKA as "and real estate prices doubled, rent doubled, my wage increased 20%" (though here restrictions on building new residential buildings, especially multilevel ones and converting residential areas in tourism rental also contributed...)

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlocked_country list - it is not surprising. Most of them have big problems so poor COVID handling surprised noone.

 

The UK? ~9.6% of the population had/have it.

 

I'm not going to praise any USA government here, but the American South borders ARE huge and illegal immigrants DO slip by constantly even under the best of conditions.

That's not really comparable to a small island country isolated from the rest of the world.

Well, yeah, good for you. We can't all be so lucky.

Living in a Third World country where we already were in economic freefall and we have pretty much to earn a living in a day-by-day basis, I'm not going to lie, we are in a tight spot from all of this.

I might lose my job by Year's end and new jobs aren't easy to find here, at least not at my age and in a way that actually pays decently.

 

Isn't that why the example was the rate in Hawaii and not someplace like Texas?

 

There's plenty to show that islands (New Zealand and Iceland showing up in the ) are better at blocking pandemics jvia quarantines and blocking traffic. You can look at the outcome of 1918 influenza pandemic in that region. The islands with strict naval quarantines got it later and with substantially less severity then the ones who did not have a strict quarantine. By contrast, New Zealand at the time did not have a quarantine or border control measures in place and so was infected immediately and at greater severity. Iceland meanwhile initially failed to impose quarantines but managed to with later quarantines protect a portion of their population. (Full text is behind paywall, abstract is sufficient). You can look at studies that show that just reducing the number of travelers into the low hundreds alone would be enough to give a pacific island around a 50% chance of not having a disease outbreak outright, that's without further measures by the way. The idea is valuable enough to justify studies on the subject (using NZ as the example amusingly). There are other historical examples such as the cholera outbreak in Italy back in 1835-1836 where Sardinia was the only part which evaded the plague by virtue threatening to shoot anyone who attempted to land there. The concept is not a new one.

It even bears out on modern cases, the countries with low rates are typically either islands, remote African nations or warzones, all of which are factors which make it easier to keep travelers and thereby Corona out. (Well barring China and Vietnam but frankly I'd sooner take the Africans' numbers at face value then those two.)

Questioning the policies that have led to billions being siphoned from the middle class into the waiting hands of billionaires is apparently acting in support of them. These things and more I learn from the child begging the government to put it's boot on his throat harder.

Started overall quarantines far later then NZ who raised them earlier and much tighter. Also had substantial connections with France in the form of the channel tunnel and ship traffic that went on for a while.

 

Yes... But the thing is... its like any investment.

You might not be able to afford repaying it NOW... but one cannot grow without SOME level of investment. And frankly one should mainly be paying back into the system Based on how much growth one achieved.

IE. You can't get good stuff if you aint willing to pay for it. And this would basically be the government investing in the people the same way a farmer invests in caring for his crops.

Welcome to the circle of life.



Taxes are the price of Civilization. And Social Safety Nets are the Price Civilization pays to have PEOPLE to pay that price.

 

It's a nice theory but in practice the actual answer to that problem is more along the lines of "the people who actually used it don't really pay enough to cover themselves and leave most of the debt to the next generation which continues until the system finally breaks". Social security is typically designed under the twin assumptions of a permanently growing youth population (or at least more numerous then the old parts of it) and the aging parts of it dying off before they can use up too much of it. If either of those ceases to be true it begins to break down slowly or quickly as the case may be. Throw in an economic shock or two and you or your kids might find your investment is providing you with depressingly little actual pay off. See the forecast for the American version of it or the problems the British NHS has been having. Although you could probably find similar issues in most western countries if you went looking with the right language.

 

Okay, I checked your sources, and, French Polynesia, a set of Pacific islands where masks are just recommended, has a rate slightly higher than the US. And you know who’s doing way better? Canada and Mexico.

So what you’re saying is that the actual response, rather than their status as an island, is what determines the result? Huh. Imagine that.

And, um, where are these billionaires siphoning billions? Are they in New Zealand? No? They’re in the US? Why yes, arguing against the New Zealand model for the abject failure that was the United States’ ‘lockdowns are a violation of our rights!’ Model is acting in support of them.

I mean, did you even read what you linked? "Generous payments from the public sector to households have meant that disposable household income has been relatively stable and has even risen in some countries." And what don’t they have in the United States? Oh, hey, imagine that.

The motherfucking audacity.

EDIT: I think I’m done with this. This is just sad and boring. It really is like arguing with a creationist.

 

Yeah, when a plague of Boomer locusts descends on your system, and then takes over your system, then it turns out your system might stop working quite so well.

The dysfunction of American social security is not a valid criticism of social security.

 

"Aha an island chain who's main island is densely populated had more covid cases then two countries which aren't."

It's amazing I can give you an explanation and multiple studies for why an island is better able to keep it's numbers low using methods other then lockdowns by means of quarantines and blocking traffic and on seeing that you decide to take it as meaning that lockdowns are the primary cause of the difference in infection. I give up, I can't contend with sophistry and willful blindness of this magnitude.

Why do you somehow think that a harsher more frequent lockdown will have less of an economic impact on small businesses, when the result is reduced opening hours and closed doors? Why do you think that large global businesses like Amazon which are less effected by virtue of being able to afford to do delivery and allow more people in are performing better and replacing the small businesses? Why do you somehow think that more lax lockdowns or straight up refusal to do so somehow caused the smaller businesses to perform worse? Why do you think that a change in locality changes the economic realities of what being made to reduce customers and shut down does to a business that can't afford to do so? Why are you like this?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but while the American situation is bad, you can find similar issues taking place across the west. An aging population is very good at breaking social security through sheer cost inflation and that's the case across the board.

 

And yet you seem to be living with it just fine. Ciao.

 

Sorry about that.

 

Okay this needs a specific person to clarify the EU side of things, but the NHS has increasingly been more privatised and underfunded so it's a great comparison when viewed in that regard.

Now specifically social security is acknowledge to be a strat that will fail on it's own. So most countries don't use it on it's own.

Malaysia and singapore don't like social security, but we have it as a part of a system with the intent of artificially creating competition in an otherwise natural monopolistic industry.

Most uses of Social security in the South east asia region is almost always a part of a greater plan in general since as you said, social security on it's own is kinda like a pyramid scheme.

 

Gotta say, when all of this regularly comes up, I enjoy just pointing at Australia. Where we've bravely volunteered to accidentally do a great study to show how well lockdowns work. Since you can just very easily compare New South Wales and Queensland, where NSW delayed going into a hard lockdown, and has increased up to almost 500 new cases a day, and has basically spent most of the past 2 weeks in a pseudo-lockdown which has consistently failed. On the other hand, in QLD they went into a hard lockdown for about a week after having a single cases detected, and during that week it spiked at something like and entire 15 new cases during a single day, thanks to the fact that every single family that was connected to that initial case stayed at home for 2 weeks, whilst the state paid for groceries to be sent to them to help them safely stay at home.

So that really nicely shows how powerful having a state/federal government that actually bites the bullet and goes into a fast lockdown can prevent cases from spiraling out of control, and also that by supporting those that are forced into lockdown you can actually encourage them to follow those rules and not fuck it up for everyone else.