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4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I do think a grand union of Canada and the coastal US would make a lot of sense. Y'all can have Alberta in exchange -- you'll like it, there's oil and stuff!

is always interesting to think about what the futures could be when large territories re-align

Texas, New Mexico and Arizona could rejoin with Mexico as well in some new union

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3 hours ago, TDD123 said:

I don't know if it was his intention, but as well as the obvious "heroic figure" context, I also found myself wondering if he was making a point about how we treat the NHS and its workers. Children love their toys but they don't always treat them with the necessary care to keep them in good condition for as long as possible. And that can be intentional or merely neglectful. 

A doctor friend has told me she doesn't miss the Friday/Saturday night influx of drunk people filling up A&E with completely avoidable accidents. 

Edited by Amina Sopwith
I just can't seem to decide which words to use.
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14 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I just had a phone chat with a friend who's firmly in Tolya's camp. He made some valid points and missed some, too. One of his arguments was that, almost everywhere that random antibody testing is being done the infection rate is north of 15%, suggesting that herd immunity is within reach. I've no doubt that there are more infected than the current counts indicate, but it's also the case that the current antibody tests are producing significant false positive and false negatives. I can't think of a single COVID-19 statistic I really trust right now.

The other point my friend made was that, after accounting for co-morbidities, the actual COVID-19 mortality rate is comparable to the flu. When I asked him if he was comparing to flu, minus co-morbidities, he paused and said... "hmm".

My gut feeling at the moment is that enough people will act responsibly when restrictions are lifted to get R0 below one and keep it there. I don't have a lot of confidence in that feeling, but I think it more likely that we're on the path to recovery (long and slow as it might be) than to doom. We've all seen the news reports of people crammed together to protest safe distancing restrictions, but I think that's not representative of the larger population. Those reports remind me of the "idiot on the street" segments that are so popular on late night television. You find what you look for.

The difference between the urban and rural rates Scylla mentioned underpin the debate between states and the federal government and between cities and states regarding lifting of restrictions. Unfortunately nobody's really in a good position to call the shots. The interconnectedness of modern society entangles everyone in everyone else's business. One of the advantages of the US being a confederation of states is that we get to run lots of experiments, both intention and accidental. That's also a disadvantage. The big question for me, once again, is whether we'll learn anything from all this.

The second question is just what the long term economic costs will be. The markets don't seem terribly worried at the moment.

 

Some very good points.  Isn't the fact that the models used to make decisions thus far have been terribly inaccurate (and always on the "we're all gonna die!" side), the data is unreliable, and that what works in urban areas vs. what works in rural areas may be be significantly different, all argument AGAINST the sort of state-wide mandates we've seen?  Nebraska's approach has been to let cities and counties decide for themselves, for instance.

Also, while I could understand Scylla's point (setting the bad use of comparison data aside) in terms of infection rate (people crammed together are going to pass viruses more quickly) it seems to fail when applied to death rates, which I have focused on.  Rural residents have much less convenient access to health care than someone in, say, NYC.  They also tend to livemore isolated lives, so there is going to be less pressure from friends, family, and neighbors to go get checked out.  There is minimal evidence that NYC's health care system being overwhelmed caused their high death rate; the Navy hospital ship and much of the field hospital capacity went unused, lots of ventilators remained in their shipping boxes, hospitals are laying off staff because they aren't allowed to do anything but emergency work, etc.

As for the markets, they are still down 15% from before the world went to heck - markets react quickly to information, so their worry is already factored in.  The economic cost in terms of the markets at the moment is 1/7th of the average American's investment portfolio.  The markets are also still pretty volatile, and if this drags on and we start to see consecutive quarters of bad corporate earnings, we'll likely see them go down further.  Final point on economics, then I should probably get back to work - certain people seem to feel that the push to reopen things is somehow greedy corporations putting dollars over lives.  That is certainly how Cuomo consistently puts it while trying to justify his own actions.  That's pretty preposterous.  Most large businesses are still operating, even if at lower levels, and can sustain months of this.  It's the small businesses that are being crushed.  They don't have large capital reserves or an ability to easily borrow operating capital, and can't take a lot of the actions (notably lay off people) to stay afloat that large businesses can.  It's not oil execs being led off in handcuffs, it's hair salon operators, and I don't see business executives at protests over this (they're at home as their salaries keep getting paid), I see tattoo artists.  A month or two of being locked out of their businesses puts them under, and for them it's not just a matter of going through a bankruptcy reorganization and getting your golden parachute paid out before heading off the the consulting biz.  Mostly it's just people that the media hasn't been able to frighten into believing Covid death is raining from the skies and would just like to go back to living their lives rather than living under virtual house arrest to ease the fears of other people.

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11 hours ago, norajulian said:

My dad died of Covid19 last month and we couldn’t have a funeral or visitation or even be with him in the hospital, and I wasn’t permitted to drive cross country to begin with to be with my family, so this entire mess can kiss my butt.

Nora, I'm so terribly sorry.

I have been a bundle of anxiety over the last few months, worrying when SL friends disappeared from sight for a time, concerned that friends here and in-world whom I know to be high risk are taking care of themselves. It's easy to forgot how many other awful ways this can impact and make our lives miserable. And I've been worried about my own parents. Please accept my virtual hugs.

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14 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

I used NY state, not city, but, by all means, use the wrong comparison to try and make your point.  Did you bother to look at anything but the most densely populated city in the US and improperly compare it to a state?

Well, actually, I chose NYC to reinforce the point I was making about urban vs. rural. If you use NY state instead, it's true that the difference in density of population drops from roughly 1000:1 to a mere 100:1.

I think you're missing my overall point (as Luna suggested somewhere above). I'm not trying to counter your inadequate model and cherry-picked stats with my own equally reductive and misleading ones. I was trying to demonstrate how the addition of new and different data points and context can upend a simplistic model.

I'll say again, as I said in my original post: we need to have a conversation about the most effective ways of balancing the needs of the economy with the necessity of saving lives and preventing our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed.

That conversation needs to be fully informed by a really comprehensive understanding of all the contexts -- different statistical models, cultural differences, varied chronologies. Comparing Sweden with Belgium or New York and New Jersey with South Dakota doesn't really cut it in that regard.

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Can I stick my oar in?  I think you can prove most any point with statistics but that doesn't mean diddly squat.  It's just the nature of the beast.  Sweden has more deaths than it's neighbors who closed things down before the crisis but less than other countries with more condensed populations who closed down later. What a surprise. East Bumfeck has more  than West.  The truth is quite simple, if you are in a high risk group like myself, then you have to keep sheltering in or risk death by Covid until the herd immunity kicks in or a vaccine is developed.  If other people want to open the world again they are quite welcome to; I'm gonna stay in my cocoon of safety either way. While it's true that we're all gonna die someday, I prefer to die from something other than stupidity.

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1 hour ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Final point on economics, then I should probably get back to work - certain people seem to feel that the push to reopen things is somehow greedy corporations putting dollars over lives.  That is certainly how Cuomo consistently puts it while trying to justify his own actions.  That's pretty preposterous.  Most large businesses are still operating, even if at lower levels, and can sustain months of this.  It's the small businesses that are being crushed.  They don't have large capital reserves or an ability to easily borrow operating capital, and can't take a lot of the actions (notably lay off people) to stay afloat that large businesses can.  It's not oil execs being led off in handcuffs, it's hair salon operators, and I don't see business executives at protests over this (they're at home as their salaries keep getting paid), I see tattoo artists.  A month or two of being locked out of their businesses puts them under, and for them it's not just a matter of going through a bankruptcy reorganization and getting your golden parachute paid out before heading off the the consulting biz.  Mostly it's just people that the media hasn't been able to frighten into believing Covid death is raining from the skies and would just like to go back to living their lives rather than living under virtual house arrest to ease the fears of other people.

Why does your analysis of nearly every situation side with the wealthy and more empowered facets of society even as you pretend you are focused on the less-fortunate. It's maddening! 

Did it ever occur to you that for awhile longer the US government could actually give more of a relief package (like they appear to be doing in other countries) to those "tattoo artists" and other front line workers in the service industries who are risking their lives for us? I guess not, I guess in your mind they would be expecting the government to take care of them huh?  Horror of horrors -- better to let them risk their lives and die for those who are wealthier or have safe online jobs that pay better, while you imagine you are caring about these poor service workers who need jobs.

Edited by Luna Bliss
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1 hour ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I don't know if it was his intention, but as well as the obvious "heroic figure" context, I also found myself wondering if he was making a point about how we treat the NHS and its workers.

Nice interpretation , but I personally doubt that.  I don't actually see children playing with these puppets in real life anytime soon. This painting obviously made you place it in your context and that makes it good art , right ?

 


 

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2 hours ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Your blind hatred of any viewpoint other than your own is really sad, but all to common these days.

I'm not going to accept a viewpoint that causes others to suffer needlessly. The way the US treats their poor compared to Europe is despicable, and you feed into this mindset with your frequent disparagement of a decent kind of government power that could create a more equitable society.

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23 minutes ago, TDD123 said:

Nice interpretation , but I personally doubt that.  I don't actually see children playing with these puppets in real life anytime soon. This painting obviously made you place it in your context and that makes it good art , right ?

 

Oh, definitely good art and I don't think Banksy would mind people having individual takes on his work. (I can't see what else he could have intended when he murdered a phone box in Westminster.) He doesn't even confirm or deny if a work is his, although if it goes through the shredder right after being sold, you can assume it was likely to be genuine. And probably worth even more as a result, I guess. 

I don't know if it matters, art wise, whether children play with superhero NHS dolls in real life; he's making a point artistically, not producing an ordinary portrait. Kids do enjoy playing doctors though. 

 

Edited by Amina Sopwith
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11 hours ago, kiramanell said:

I knew a rather sick girl once. She used to go online, endlessly trolling ppl, for months on end, saying she was a teen mother or something, and needed emotional support -- like a 'sapper', but more malicious. It was all fake, of course. One day, while trashing others, she was accusing them of a similar scheme. No one naturally believed her, because she had made the story way too outrageous. To her, however, it all actually sounded plausible -- like something normal ppl do. And that's the point of the story: to her, the fib sounded entirely legit, as she was used to doing those things herself.

Thus, those asking "So let me ask the SJW's among us" is really just their way of informing you they themselves do not care, because 'exhibiting some sort of fake stance' is what they'd be doing themselves, simply not grasping ppl could actually genuinely care for someone without ulterior motive.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here regarding the phenomenon of 'projection', although in your example the cause seems more due to some sort of mental illness.  Anyway, many overly-individualistic persons live in a kind of bubble, separated off from the rest of society. They don't comprehend the idea of 'community'. They view those who are more community-minded as fake, because they simply can't connect with something further than their own nose.

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2 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

I don't know if it was his intention, but as well as the obvious "heroic figure" context, I also found myself wondering if he was making a point about how we treat the NHS and its workers. Children love their toys but they don't always treat them with the necessary care to keep them in good condition for as long as possible. And that can be intentional or merely neglectful.

 

I'm not sure I necessarily see how 'he was making a point about how we treat the NHS and its workers.' It's a good point to be made, though. :) Probably nothing will come of it, I fear. Firefighters were our heroes after 9/11. I don't think, over time, their salaries went up subbstantially, or that ppl wondered how they're treated. Could be I'm being too cynical; in fact, I hope I am.

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3 minutes ago, kiramanell said:

I'm not sure I necessarily see how 'he was making a point about how we treat the NHS and its workers.' It's a good point to be made, though. :) Probably nothing will come of it, I fear. Firefighters were our heroes after 9/11. I don't think, over time, their salaries went up subbstantially, or that ppl wondered how they're treated. Could be I'm being too cynical; in fact, I hope I am.

It's strange how in the collective imagination our heroes are the ones who fight against the powerful in service of the weaker, yet our society in the US values 'might makes right' and simply winning a battle more important than the cause over which it might be fought.

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2 hours ago, kiramanell said:

 

I'm not sure I necessarily see how 'he was making a point about how we treat the NHS and its workers.' It's a good point to be made, though. :) Probably nothing will come of it, I fear. Firefighters were our heroes after 9/11. I don't think, over time, their salaries went up subbstantially, or that ppl wondered how they're treated. Could be I'm being too cynical; in fact, I hope I am.

I guess it was a mixture of seeing how children treat toys (love having them, love playing with them, often don't really like looking after them properly and putting them away nicely), the very concept of a toy (something to entertain and benefit you) and the fact that the box holding Batman and Spiderman looks a bit like a bin. What seems even cleverer to me, though, is that even though the piece sparked those thoughts in me, it did still also spark the "frontline staff are the true superheroes of the world that children want to emulate" message as well. 

Obviously I've no idea if Banksy was thinking any of that. It's just what the piece prompted in me. I like it very much. I've seen a lot of superhero-themed artworks dedicated to the NHS lately. That's another reason why I wondered if Banksy was saying something more. I thought he might be responding in some way to all of that, without in any way detracting from the message of gratitude and respect. 

ETA: Hmm. It definitely looks like a bin, but maybe the point is that the boy has thrown away Spiderman and Batman because the NHS nurse is the best superhero of all. I don't know.

 

superhero badge.jpg

superhero mural.jpg

superhero nhs.jpg

superheroes bow.jpg

Edited by Amina Sopwith
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This is a public service announcement warning people about the impact of being pent up with others for too long..

Hi, My name is Ceka Cianci and to be honest, I've become pretty ruthless while in quarantine..

EEKACaoWkAMQyxq.jpg

 

Ok commercial break is over now..Carry on!! \o/

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I'm reposting this because I thought it was interesting AND on topic, and I believe it got lost in the shuffle of stupidity.

It is a map of the USA that shows the patterns of where people are staying in or not, and it shows it in several phases over time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/map-us-still-staying-home-coronavirus/

An example shot:

 

download.png

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28 minutes ago, Theresa Linden said:

Hey all,

Just a gentle reminder, as you already know, to stay civil and on topic!  We just want to keep this thread going.

Hope you all are well :)

Theresa Linden

You're a newbie? For some reason that makes me smile.

And besides the thank you emoji, I just wanted to say thank you for cleaning up the extraneous bits on this thread, and not shutting it down. I'm a little prejudiced as the OP, but I do think this thread has value since most of us are going somewhat stressed (nuts) because of this whole COVID-19 "thing."

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