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Day of Chaos 2: a.Covid-19 thread.

Started by TordelBack, 05 March, 2020, 08:57:13 PM

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Rately

Love to TB and DDD, I am sure we all have our struggles during this bizarre time, but i can't even begin to imagine how much you and your families are hurting.


Bolt-01

Ah Phil, that's hard.

My mam lives down t'road in Hulme - and even though I've not seen her in the flesh since last christmas - I'm very lucky that she's savvy enough for us to instagram chat every weekend. I've missed out on none of my relations shenanigans and been able to keep my mam updated as to our situations.

I really feel for you in your situ.


Funt Solo

Coronavirus: Sweden's isolated elderly urged to rejoin society ... so they can join the ranks of the dead.

Reading up on Sweden's approach it seems to consist of letting the vulnerable die but not counting them in the stats. Now all the economy-firsters point at Sweden and say "See - their death rate is low - herd immunity works!"
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Funt Solo on 22 October, 2020, 04:05:07 PM
Now all the economy-firsters point at Sweden and say "See - their death rate is low - herd immunity works!"

All of which is utterly enraging, because:

1) It's simply not true.



2) There is no sign that Sweden is anywhere near 'herd immunity'. In fact, there are literally no examples of herd immunity arising through 'natural' infection cycles. No disease in human history has gone away because so many people got it that the population developed herd immunity — you need a vaccine for that.
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IndigoPrime

Last I heard, they had something like 6–10% immunity in the general population. You'd need, what, 40–50% for that to be remotely effective and around 80–90% to effectively eradicate a disease by leaving it with nowhere to go. Sweden's been a shitshow.

TordelBack

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 22 October, 2020, 08:00:46 PM
Last I heard, they had something like 6–10% immunity in the general population...

And those antibodies don't even guarantee immunity.  I still can't get over the herd immunity stans: how'd that work out for TB, for one example?  One of my worries through all this is that my mother has impaired lung function due to TB as a child in the late '40s - one of 7000 cases a year then, and the epidemic had been running for 80 years at that point.  Only legally-enforced notification and isolation in sanatoriums and temporary quarantine structures in gardens brought it under control, and even then it wasn't hit on the head until universal vaccination of infants was introduced from the '50s. The natural route doesn't seem like something to pin your hopes on.

Funt Solo

I had started to wonder if, at the heart of the Swedish policy, was a desire to let the disease cull the weak and elderly.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

TordelBack

Quote from: Funt Solo on 22 October, 2020, 10:03:22 PM
I had started to wonder if, at the heart of the Swedish policy, was a desire to let the disease cull the weak and elderly.

Again,  you mean?

sheridan

Quote from: Funt Solo on 22 October, 2020, 10:03:22 PM
I had started to wonder if, at the heart of the Swedish policy, was a desire to let the disease cull the weak and elderly.

I thought that was what the difference between immunity and herd immunity was - immunity means in individual is now immune, herd immunity means that those who aren't immune are dead.

JOE SOAP

#1059
Antibodies are not guaranteed to last and T-cell immunity doesn't stop you getting or spreading it, it just helps lessen the severity of your symptoms, apparently.

TordelBack

#1060
So this whole thing (and if I'm being entirely honest probably my steadily deteriorating mental health) has finally pushed me into creating my very own lockdown conspiracy theory. I won't set it out here, because the last thing we need is yet more counterproductive fantasy and for now I'm still clinging to a shred of social responsibility, but I am genuinely struggling with the way it competes with accepted reality.

It's like I'm focusing on a different screen with each eye, and the images swim across each other and blend and obscure, and sometimes I forget which is which. I know one is something I've come up with myself, and the other is what everyone around me is seeing, but it's an effort of will not to parse every piece of news or observation through the former. Even harder is trying not to proselytize those around me in order to ease the dissonance.

I wonder is this disturbing state the common experience of people who fall for things like QAnon?  I realise the latter is a deliberately malicious fabrication by the chan boys, rather than something individuals have made up in their own minds, but is this sense of experiencing conflicting realities, and in a sense being forced to consciously choose one, something that people go through?  Is it a type of mental illness, a form of schizophrenia say, rather than the mix of ignorance and lack of critical thinking that we like to paint it as?  If so, I may just have discovered a point of sympathy with not just the tragic Dave Sim types, but also some of the people I most dislike in this world.

The Legendary Shark


It's not the way the wind blows, it's how the sails are set.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




The Legendary Shark


Also:

"Two Windows" - a poem

Two windows made of glass
One is black
One is clear
One window shows me elsewhere
The other shows me here
One window illuminates a world seemingly
gone mad
Spectacles of hatred and everything that's bad
The other instills calmness with clouds up in
the sky
Green grass with dandelions and songbirds
flying by
The first window is bright but the light is
artificial
The second one is lit by none other than the
sun
The first window is selling things and telling me
they're beneficial
Window two has far less for sale than does
window one
The first window shows me people who lie and
steal and cheat
The second one has children riding bicycles
down the street
From the first I get the notion that sex is no
big deal
My wife is pregnant in the other one proving
miracles are real
I see her stewarding our garden with her hands
tending to the dirt
Meanwhile on the first one I see people
getting hurt
The first window has programs and channels to
peruse
And lots of lots of opinions masquerading as
the news
Information from the second indicates that
there's a breeze
By the leaves there gently swaying on the
branches of my trees
Window one I gaze straight into
Window two I look right through
Window one is done with a button
Two turns on with each new dawn to start the
day anew
Oh what would be if window one were here no
more
Would stories revert to verbal like they were
in days of yore?
Would the pace of life slow down, would
attention spans increase?
And what about the rate of crimes, would their
quantity decrease?
Perhaps that day will never come, so all I can
do is ponder
While I glance outside the second one which
inspires me to wander
And get to know the world I'm in, the domain
in which I dwell
The one that I feel warmth in, the one that I
can smell
Window one can be fun but it also likes to steal
My time and my emotions and my sense of
what is real
Window two is just a window and it's clearer
when it's clean
Better to fix one's eyes on nature than to fixate
on the screen

~ Benny Wills, Stand-Up Poet
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Funt Solo

Quote from: TordelBack on 23 October, 2020, 11:50:40 AM
So this whole thing (and if I'm being entirely honest probably my steadily deteriorating mental health) has finally pushed me into creating my very own lockdown conspiracy theory. I won't set it out here, because the last thing we need is yet more counterproductive fantasy and for now I'm still clinging to a shred of social responsibility, but I am genuinely struggling with the way it competes with accepted reality.

It's like I'm focusing on a different screen with each eye, and the images swim across each other and blend and obscure, and sometimes I forget which is which. I know one is something I've come up with myself, and the other is what everyone around me is seeing, but it's an effort of will not to parse every piece of news or observation through the former. Even harder is trying not to proselytize those around me in order to ease the dissonance.

I wonder is this disturbing state the common experience of people who fall for things like QAnon?  I realise the latter is a deliberately malicious fabrication by the chan boys, rather than something individuals have made up in their own minds, but is this sense of experiencing conflicting realities, and in a sense being forced to consciously choose one, something that people go through?  Is it a type of mental illness, a form of schizophrenia say, rather than the mix of ignorance and lack of critical thinking that we like to paint it as?  If so, I may just have discovered a point of sympathy with not just the tragic Dave Sim types, but also some of the people I most dislike in this world.

It's too abstract a question for me to tackle. If someone asked me if I thought they were hallucinating, I'd need to know what it was they (thought) they were seeing. And if they'd ingested any mushrooms.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Funt Solo

QuoteInformation from the second indicates that
there's a breeze
By the leaves there gently swaying on the
branches of my trees

It's a nice sentiment: focus on what's in front of you rather than the television.  I did notice that in the poem his wife is toiling in the field doing back-breaking work while he's gazing out the window getting inspiration for his next piece.

There are, of course, arguments in favor of weather forecasting - like warning of an incoming hurricane, for example.
++ A-Z ++  coma ++