Coronavirus 2019

Of no surprise to me just got an email that currently we expect to start going back to the office day after Easter. Guess we know who our upper management listens to.

Conservatives talking points

  • is a hoax
  • is exagerated
  • fuck fuck fuck, we have to do something
  • is too late
  • maybe we can accelerate it?

I think “its a hoax” was a week ago in USA.

wonder what would be the next talking point among conservatives?

Get back to work.

thats another version of “lets accelerate it”.

In NYC population density and ubiquitous use of public transport are certainly factors.

97 posts were split to a new topic: Idiot conspiracy theories that are COMING FROM INSIDE THE FORUM!

NY also acted way too late. SF acted relatively early.

Yes, they can definitely be more open. Although I do not necessarily agree that being more open will reduce people’s anxiety as the linked article argues, because more data can also mean more armchair analysts writing “it’s all going to fail” op-eds that instead increase panic. We saw that when a former lead epidemologist posted her take on the strategy.

However, yes I agree, I would personally also like more data to feel more confident, but I try to keep the mindset that they know what they are doing, and take comfort in the fact that if they do know what they are doing, then it’s very good that our government is basing the response on those recommendations. You might call it a “not worrying about what I cannot control” strategy. :)

In my media feed, he’s pretty much equally hated as cheered. I wouldn’t call it a general happy acceptance of it.

Really? Well…Sticking to Trumpian racism…

Think of a person who doesn’t have much going for him and really feels bad about that. Maybe he didn’t get into college, maybe he flunked out. Maybe he’s had trouble holding down a job, and he knows deep down that it’s his fault. Maybe the only reason he has a job is help from his parents, and he knows he couldn’t cut it on his own.

Maybe he’s never known how to attract others, how to make friends. Maybe he feels people don’t like him or respect him, and deep down he wonders if they’re right not to.

He’s never had love, and certainly hasn’t had the sex he’s seen in movies. Maybe he married the first and only woman who would have him, and maybe he’s always felt she somehow wasn’t good enough — maybe he thinks no one who would accept him is good enough, or maybe he’s a total no-hoper who still doesn’t understand why the prom queen didn’t love him back in high school even though he never spoke to her, or who thinks Kim Kardashian would love him if she only met him. Maybe his wife left him, inexplicably saying he was angry.

Or maybe it’s all in his head — maybe he’s just fine, but it’s never enough to assuage his self-doubt. He may lift weights, work hard, save money, dress fashionably, whatever it is that he thinks matters, and still he feels that he’s out of place. Maybe he overcompensates, bragging and posing to try to impress others, and so he only alienates them further and feels worse.

Either way, he stalks around his lonely home, glowering and imagining telling off or beating up the people who humiliate him in his imagination. With my money (that he may or may not actually have) I will buy and sell you! With my handgun and katana collections I will slay you all when you come after me! My local sports team will crush yours! He watches Rocky II and III and the Dirty Harry movies and gets angry when nonwhites are cast in Star Wars retreads. Meanwhile the pizza boxes stack up on his countertops.

Now, what happens when such people are offered a story to believe in where these feelings, these circumstances are not their fault? Where the fault of someone he doesn’t know, who’s easy to identify by sight?

The story goes like this: Hey, you are NORMAL and the rightful heir to this kingdom. You are a white, Christian man (or whatever the local standard is). George Washington was a white, Christian man like you, so you share credit for everything he did. That anguish you feel one hour into your five-hour shift at Wal-Mart is the feeling of hard work — in fact, you are a hard-working hero who built America, not a lazy half-wit like your manager thinks.

So why don’t you have more than you do?

Because THOSE people took what was meant for you, goes the story. Brown Spanish speakers swam the Rio Grande and somehow took the job you really deserve. That incredibly handsome black man with the incredibly beautiful blonde woman – how’d that happen? It’s unnatural, she must be a horrible slut who just wants black dick, like you saw on Pornhub. Those Orientals who think they’re so smart, making all that money just because they got good grades and went to good colleges and worked their way up while you were watching TV like the other normal people — can’t everyone see that they’re short and their language sounds funny? Has everyone forgotten the natural order of things?

The guys described above will JUMP at this story, which makes them good and even heroic just for their demographics, which gets them off the hook for all their failures, which gives them a vent for all their pent-up emotions, which may even give them a hope of turning things in their favor. Cheer for Trump and he’ll build that wall, he’ll insult everyone who’s not like you, he’ll grab the pussies you’d like to grab and never say he’s sorry.

And that will matter so much to these guys that they’ll believe ANYTHING ANYTHING ANYTHING to keep believing it. It’s a religion in that way.

They will even believe “coronavirus is a hoax,” “coronavirus is the fault of THOSE PEOPLE,” and “THOSE PEOPLE are wrong about coronavirus, but we’re hard-working heroes who AREN’T AFRAID!”

Short version: people are shit.

I know that initially there was a lot of criticism, but then after the news came out about how he was being harassed (of course), I felt the blowback from that was way overdone, veering into paeans of praise for this “great scientist”. But maybe I’ve just been unfortunate timing with when I’ve been reading the news.

The long version was worth a read. I liked the bit about the pizza boxes piling up.

There is always an audience for racism, always people eager to find scapegoats. It has probably worked since the first hominid tribes found another tribe living in the next valley. It’s such an easy fucking button to push in difficult times.

I love* it when the media blames “the media” for misinformation.

I always appreciate how your usual contributions to threads are these funny absurdities but then you drop a great post like that. That was like the most anti-JMJ post I’ve personally seen you write, JMJ. :)

Raucous applause!

Plus a shitload of PPE, ventilators, and consistent coordinated informed national leadership.

BTW, the new idea coming from Trumpists (after “Just get the economy rolling and Gramma and Grandpa have had nice lives and are happy to die to boost your 401K” failed to really capture the public’s fancy) is now shifting to "Get the economy rolling by sending people back to work, but keep at risk population – elders and those who are immunocompromised – in strict quarantine for their own ‘protection’.

Yes indeed. We could maybe send the at-risk population to nice camps. Maybe on trains. Give it a catchy name like “Lebensunwerten” or something.

Good thoughts, DJT, time to get on it.

Question - if anyone knows - for the stimulus package, with regards to going off 2018 tax returns (in the event someone was lazy and hasn’t done 2019 yet, for instance) are they giving out $500 per kid that was a dependent on that tax return, or currently? I had two kids in 2018! I mean, I still have two kids, but one doesn’t live home starting late last year…

I don’t think anyone knows that level of detail yet. In fact, I haven’t seen a reference to using 2018’s returns since we first saw the Senate Republican initial proposal. No idea if that survived. I know the House Democrat proposal was to just give everyone money and sort it out based on 2020’s tax returns next year.

I wish someone would produce videos of Trump’s press conferences with all lies bleeped out with one sound, and all racism bleeped out with another sound.