|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
posted June 18, 2020 05:07 PM |
|
Edited by Zenofex at 17:13, 18 Jun 2020.
|
artu said:
@Zenofex
If this was only one government, you could go with corruption, hidden agenda, impotance etc.. But so many governments, and not “allied” governments taking similar precaution measures... What would be the catch? Why would they want to ruin their own economy? It just doesnt fit.
That argument doesn't hold as-is, because each government can have its own agenda in this situation. The UK - Brexit issues, Scotland wants to leave. Italy - economy funding via external aids (they were... and are pretty much bankrupt). The US - isolating China. China - capitalizing on coming out of the quarantine and resuming economic activity first. Etc. You need to do much deeper analysis of the individual countries to come up with a conclusion, stating that this was a, more or less, unified global response to a health crisis. And it really wasn't - some countries had heavy measures, some had lighter, some had none. Besides, it's not that simple - when the panic spreads, you are not left with much of a choice if you're statesman - your population watches the apocalyptic pictures from another country, then somebody announces that the same virus which is allegedly piling up corpses in other countries has arrived to your country as well - what would you do?
Besides, I don't claim to have all the answers, but that there are many serious questions which are neither asked in public by the people who have some influence on the information flow to/from the wide audience, or if they are asked - nobody answers them. Which is the troubling bit. For half an year since the first cases were (officially) detected in China, this "pandemic" still has caused fewer fatalities worldwide than seasonal flu. The assumption that it started spreading in Europe in February/March doesn't hold either, it was even published that there was such a case in France last December. I personally know people who got ill with the described symptoms around the end of January, i.e. a month and a half before any sort of measures have been taken - they are all alive and well and some of them don't exactly have healthy lifestyle either. At the same time we get nearly deaf with listening how infectious this thing is. The problem for me is not so much that we have been bombarded with media crap around the development of the "pandemic" but rather that there has been only one predominant "truth" advertised everywhere and the people who opposed it have remained largely ignored by the mass media, despite the fact that the "truth" in question has more gaps in it than a Swiss cheese after cluster bombardment.
|
|
fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 05:10 PM |
|
Edited by fred79 at 17:14, 18 Jun 2020.
|
@ artu:
Where am i defending neo-nazis or rednecks? Are you referring to the news reports of people protesting wearing masks? I need you to include your answer before you respond to the rest, please.
Secondly, i haven't yet figured out what the goal is with the lockdowns. I haven't yet come to a conclusion on how serious this virus is, either. There's too much conflicting input, and a lot of what the media says doesn't make logical sense.
No, i was more referring to everything besides covid, when i responded regarding the people pulling strings.
If the virus is indeed dangerous or capable of mutating to something more lethal, then i can see why it was engineered in a lab, and i would understand it's purpose: mass depopulation. As it appears now, with the targeting of the elderly(but somehow NOT the elderly in government, which is suspicious), it is only meant to attack strictly Trump voters. 
But the snow the media keeps spewing, tells me something is seriously up. And i really don't think it's virus-related, at all. I don't know just WHAT, but i have ideas ruminating.
I agree with the points zeno brought up above.
|
|
artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 06:21 PM |
|
|
@fred
Since you mentioned other threads, I was referring to the WLM movement, you know, the guys in Charlotsville marching happily with their swastika flags.
@zeno
I don’t know dude, each government pulling the same hoax with a different agenda seems far fetched to me.
I know you dont claim to have ALL the answers but these are very fundamental questions. And I think the reason for alternative theories not being publicly spoken out so much (they are neither censored or banned, one can still reach them easily if he looks for them) is that if they are wrong, then the pandemic will really skyrocket and people are understandably cautious.
____________
Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
|
|
fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 06:46 PM |
|
|
artu said:
@fred
Since you mentioned other threads, I was referring to the WLM movement, you know, the guys in Charlotsville marching happily with their swastika flags.
If there were anyone marching with that snow, they were either idiots who didn't get the point of the whole thing, or infiltration agents there to undermine the actual cause.
Or, they could have been 4chan trolls, since that's where the op originated. I've seen channers in person at a protest i went to; one with a highly amusing picket sign.
|
|
RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 07:03 PM |
|
|
Zenofex said:
artu said:
@Zenofex
For half an year since the first cases were (officially) detected in China, this "pandemic" still has caused fewer fatalities worldwide than seasonal flu....
BullS***!
people are dying from that corona snow, it is more dangerous than a flu. If there would have been no lockdown the situation would be way worse. 1 min google search will tell you that, please stop spreading theories.
|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 09:47 PM |
|
|
artu said:
@zeno
I don’t know dude, each government pulling the same hoax with a different agenda seems far fetched to me.
I know you dont claim to have ALL the answers but these are very fundamental questions. And I think the reason for alternative theories not being publicly spoken out so much (they are neither censored or banned, one can still reach them easily if he looks for them) is that if they are wrong, then the pandemic will really skyrocket and people are understandably cautious.
Well, if they opponents of the official version are wrong, why the death toll hasn't skyrocketed after the removal of the restrictions and why countries which have imposed no lockdowns of any kind don't have higher death rate than countries which have full quarantine? Compare Italy to Sweden, or to Belarus. I already mentioned how the pseudo-quarantine looked like in Bulgaria. And by the way, I'm not saying that the virus is benign or anything like that, I have a relative who got through it. Twice. And said that it's not funny at all.
The governments are not pulling the same hoax. The most likely theory to me is: someone (not necessarily one person, could be a up to state level) triggered the hysteria in the media and it spread like wildfire after that. It's not even necessary to manage something like that, in the world where sensationalism has replaced journalism it's enough to give it a push through some influential media and it enters a loop on global level. In Bulgaria, a vast majority of the international news are copy-pasted from other media with wider global coverage, with (often poor) translation of course - they are not even verified. People got scared, since health is one of the most sensitive topics for everyone on individual level. Such news reaching a country, the population of which has relatively good access to external information sources AND has not taken any measures means that the government is expected to take measures, otherwise the risk for them is huge. For political unions like the EU it's pretty much impossible to do nothing when "the others" have already done something. On the other hand, doing like the rest has no major drawbacks, because you can grasp the slogan that you were' protecting people's health when someone starts blaming you that X% have lost their jobs or some such and that the local economy suffers because the global one suffers. It's a win-win in the latter case. From there on, you can start pursuing individual goals.
Being cautious is advisable in the face of a major threat but it has not been proven that this threat is major enough to justify the counter-measures, which have their own serious negatives. There's no official investigation on the matter (and probably there will never be) but it's quite likely that in Bulgaria for example more people have died because they could not get access to medical treatment on time because of the measures or because they were scared that going to the hospital is a death sentence anyway because they'll get infected, than the actual victims of the virus. The serious economic problems are yet to come and won't stay for a few months, the damage they will cause, including to the healthcare, is nigh impossible to estimate.
@RerryR, if you have a problem with alternative theories, you can always read only what you like.  That's what makes the world turn.  Here, some 1-minuted Google-jutsu. I suppose you have the worldmeter bookmarked, do some kindergarten-level math.
|
|
Gnomes2169
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Duke of the Glade
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 10:40 PM |
|
|
Oh hey look, a literal scientific study comparing flu deaths vs Coronavirus deaths.
"Based on data from death certificates, during the deadliest week of flu season over the last several years, the counted number of U.S. deaths due to flu ranged from 351 during the 2015 to 2016 flu season to 1,626 during the 2017 to 2018 flu season, the authors said. The average number of flu deaths during the week of peak flu mortality in recent seasons (from 2013 to 2020) was 752 deaths.
In contrast, for COVID-19, there were 15,455 deaths reported in the U.S. during the week ending April 21 (the highest weekly death toll during the pandemic so far) the authors said "
Oh wow look this virus is way more deadly than a flu and at this rate? Has already killed more people in the USA than the flu did over the last 3 years combined. And it's only been exploding in infections for 3 months. Wow. This isn't a deadly pandemic at all.
____________
Yeah in the 18th century, two inventions suggested a method of measurement. One won and the other stayed in America.
-Ghost destroying Fred
|
|
CountBezuhoff
Supreme Hero
Nihil sub sole novum
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 10:45 PM |
|
|
The flu hardly kills anyone outside of the Third World, but I get your point.
The Count
____________
|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
|
posted June 18, 2020 10:55 PM |
|
|
|
RerryR
Promising
Supreme Hero
Researching Magic
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 03:15 PM |
|
Edited by RerryR at 15:28, 19 Jun 2020.
|
Zenofex said:
Oh look - there other sources as well!
Oh look - another one!
Oh look - people who are quarantined all the time seem to die the most!
Quoted from first link:
"The burden of influenza disease in the United States can vary widely ...
CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010."
That would tell us that in the US in 3-4 months we have doubled the deaths by covid than flue for the whole year.
Second link tells us smt about:
" Estimates of infection fatality rates inferred from seroprevalence studies tend to be much lower than original speculations made in the early days of the pandemic."
Third I didn't look because i can't open it.
For me the situation seems more dangerous than the flue.
My kindergarden math tells me this:
"Up to 650 000 deaths annually are associated with respiratory diseases from seasonal influenza,"
now I look at the Corona Map and I read Global Deaths: 454,522 and counting ...
meaning that your statement so far was not incorrect but will be very soon. And I cannot agree upon the point you are trying to make.
|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 09:12 PM |
|
|
It's incorrect because? What does "soon will be" mean? We are 6 months in since the official start of the pandemic, the flu season is October - April, i.e. there is 1 month to catch up with a - what pretty much everyone considered until now - a trivial disease which have never, in any country, caused anything like what we are observing this year. Not even remotely close.
If you want to objectively calculate how many people have died from the corona-virus - or rather from complications caused by the infection - you have to take into account at least:
- their general health condition - so far the reports are pretty unanimous that the fatality rate is overwhelmingly greater among people who already have serious health issues and that people with good immune system may not even realize that they are "sick" or go through it like a regular flu;
- other infectious diseases which have similar symptoms and which could be contributing - the pandemic partially coincided with the flu season;
- contributing factors lowering the capabilities of the immune system to fight the disease, like for example the exhaustion of the medical workers in Italy.
In other words - you have cancer and are on chemotherapy which ****s up your immune system, you catch corona-virus (which should be read as - the test is positive) and you die - what killed you?
As for the tests themselves - you may have already seen the video about the positively tested papaya and goat from Tanzania, if not - I'll link it for you.
So, you have a diseases which (allegedly) kills predominantly elderly people or people with major health issues and does not affect seriously any other group. These two groups are at risk from dying from any disease. You also don't have a clear distinction between "dead from corona-virus" and "dead and positively tested for corona-virus" in the body count calculations (if you have seen such a study, I would very much like to read it). And you don't even have a clear picture about when the spread has started - today the study from two labs announced evidence for that thing from last year when nobody was not even considering doing something of the scale which was introduced two months later (and for some reason the mortality rate for these two months does not exceed the regular annual one). Flu has been around for a long time, so the numbers about it are far more reliable. So, where is the scientifically-sound evidence that the COVID is scary enough to justify what we have been through and what we may yet again face, if they force us?
|
|
artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 09:34 PM |
|
|
Zenofex said:
The most likely theory to me is: someone (not necessarily one person, could be a up to state level) triggered the hysteria in the media and it spread like wildfire after that. It's not even necessary to manage something like that, in the world where sensationalism has replaced journalism it's enough to give it a push through some influential media and it enters a loop on global level. In Bulgaria, a vast majority of the international news are copy-pasted from other media with wider global coverage, with (often poor) translation of course - they are not even verified. People got scared, since health is one of the most sensitive topics for everyone on individual level. Such news reaching a country, the population of which has relatively good access to external information sources AND has not taken any measures means that the government is expected to take measures, otherwise the risk for them is huge
Sorry, this just caught my eye. Here’s the thing, the hysteria theory can explain how the masses behave, it can even explain the press, but so many scientific boards of doctors whose job is to calmly and professionaly evaulate the sitution, all from different countries, repeating the same decisions for months now, not for a few weeks of panic... It just have to be the biggest spook in history of mankind then. Because the consequences of these lock downs will be too severe to be profitable by any politician, no matter who they throw the blame to.
And I know not every country goes this way but too many of them do. And the ones which dont, well, they have different circumstances regarding too many parameters, population, population density, location, travel frequency of foreigners, cultural tendency to obey regulations even if they are not obligatory... Sweden, for instance, is very lucky in many of those parameters.
____________
Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
|
|
Blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 09:36 PM |
|
|
If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you are a doctor, it is your job to treat and prevent sickness.
There's going to be a lot of questions in the future about how many lives were saved globally from quarantining versus how many lives were lost globally because of the economic effects of quarantining, but there will probably never be a 100% conclusive answer.
|
|
Blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 09:56 PM |
|
|
Sweden had a much better strategy than its neighbors. The sickness isn't actually gone in any of the countries that handled it more aggressively and they're either going to have to adopt Sweden's strategy (the more likely scenario) or they're going to have to go back into yet another extreme lockdown, which would be completely ridiculous.
The only thing Sweden did do poorly was that they were sluggish as hell on testing, but otherwise they were more sane then everybody else around them.
A lot of Swedes themselves are calling their strategy a bad strategy, but that is more about PR and saving face than it is about reality.
|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 10:03 PM |
|
|
artu said:
Here’s the thing, the hysteria theory can explain how the masses behave, it can even explain the press, but so many scientific boards of doctors whose job is to calmly and professionaly evaulate the sitution, all from different countries, repeating the same decisions for months now, not for a few weeks of panic...
These "boards", "commissions" and such, call them however your like, are government-assigned and their job is to justify the actions of the government, which in turn had little choice but to jump on the panic train - you can't really detach these two groups. I already told you what "specialists" are in our "board" and how they react when summoned to discuss their decisions with their opponents. It's not like nobody is objecting against these things from the stratum of these very same calm doctors either - I can give you as many links as you want to, but I guess you can check that yourself too.
Sweden being "lucky" doesn't sound serious, but OK, Sweden is lucky. What about Belarus, lucky too? Why does Eastern Europe, which had many migrants coming in and out of infected countries has insignificant number of fatalities? Yes, there are many factors to take into account, but on both sides of the calculation. For example - you lock your country (or region) down, you restrict access to the hospitals and people who already have serious health issues can't reach them in time and die - this increases the death toll, although it has nothing to do with the virus itself. Likewise - people who are more easily affected by fear, panic, any sort of serious disturbance to their daily lives, start suffering from breakdowns, some of them commit suicide, others fall ill or their health condition deteriorates. Being constantly under stress impacts your immune system and you can catch other diseases, including this one. This could also have longer-term consequences which could turn fatal at some point.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but your argument is mostly about "this is too big to be a lie" rather than something specific. We can argue ad infinitum who benefits from such a situation - you know perfectly well that there are people who do, some of them are already beyond filthy rich - but that's not the point. You have the facts, not the interpretations - what do you make of them?
|
|
artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 10:41 PM |
|
Edited by artu at 00:49, 20 Jun 2020.
|
That’s the problem, this is a situation we havent met before, and with so many parameters and details, the facts are quite open to interpretation. Basically it’s like speculating about how the weather will turn out by looking at the clouds. I am not an epidemiologist and even epidemiologists seem to disagree vastly about what to do. If the ones with the lockdown support are right, disregarding their advice will be costly, but same goes with the others.
At this point in my life, I dont go out much anway, so it didnt affect how I behave drastically. But for instance, I was going to go visit my father who is having chemotherapy, but now I dont, since the chemo weakens the immune system. I dont hug or kiss my grandmother (she is 94) when I visit. You can say my position is better safe than sorry at this point.
____________
Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
|
|
Blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 10:55 PM |
|
|
Even if you were an epidemiologist and had been one for decades, you're still not qualified to say how many lives are suffering/being lost due to lockdown versus less lockdown versus almost no lockdown, because it all expands into logistics and economics and a number of other things.
There's not actually a single living human being on Earth who is fully qualified for that. Experts are doing their best but "expert" is a relative term. There is nobody to go to for a fully satisfying answer and so you have large groups drafting ideas, but it's all done on a rushed time table.
|
|
Blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
|
|
posted June 19, 2020 11:51 PM |
|
|
A lot of this depends on how quickly they are able to roll out a mass vaccine, but the problem that countries which went into heavy lockdown are facing is that they haven't actually eliminated the virus and they already went into a very long lockdown period that was draining for a lot of people, financially, emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. Governments could declare yet another heavy lockdown in the autumn but... damn.
The other thing is that nobody on Earth is exempt from political influence, including the medical experts and scientists who can face extreme pressure in their professions to endorse or cave into a certain policy. That's why WHO has been (correctly) called out for corruption despite being a health organization. Minimizing mortality from the virus through complete lockdown allows people to save face but there are SO many undesired consequences that come with that and I doubt anybody can endure a second prolonged lockdown without suffering worse blowback than the first time.
Basically, they'll probably adopt something closer to what Sweden is doing even if it means more bodies hitting the floor.
|
|
Blizzardboy
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Nerf Herder
|
|
posted June 20, 2020 01:01 AM |
|
|
They also did a crappy job at testing, which means the mortality rate balloons later on as more data finally starts to come in. Expect the same in developing countries although to some extent their numbers will be made artificially low if COVID deaths aren't documented except in very clear cases.
But as far as heavily locking down a country once the virus has already infected tens of thousands of people... eh. I'm not sure how smart that will seem years down the road once this is all history. There's another wave coming in the autumn and I doubt there will be another lockdown anywhere on the same scale. That ship has sailed. I think there's going to be a Swedish approach.
|
|
Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
|
|
posted June 20, 2020 06:58 AM |
|
|
|
The "better safe than sorry" attitude applies to a situation like this but only as long as it doesn't cause more damage than it mitigates. People who are against the approach of the serious restrictions, myself included, do not object against the necessity to protect yourself and other people from something you don't have enough information about, but against the overkill based on the available data. You know - and this has been known since before the first lockdowns in Europe - that the groups which are at the greatest risk, are the same which are vulnerable to other infectious diseases which kill them just as effectively, yet you force the entire population to withdraw from social and, in some areas, economic life and keep them constantly exposed to (dis)information bombardment about unverified, unproven, poorly argumented or downright speculative claims about something everyone is sensitive to. This approach shuts down rational thinking and replaces it with fear and you can do whatever you want with people who are in fear. Even assuming you have all the best intentions, you still have to predict whether the medicine won't cause more pain than the disease and that's what has not been done in many countries because they automatically entered panic mode. If the counter-measures had no significant impact on people's lives and were just an inconvenience to endure, very few people would object against them and those would be the truly careless and irresponsible ones but they turned the world upside down in no time and now nobody knows where it's going.
|
| |
|
|
This thread is pages long: 
