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Utopia Talk / Politics / Here is a plan to save the country
patom
Member
Tue Mar 24 09:11:27
http://www...pasap/videos/1052466471785090/
Paramount
Member
Tue Mar 24 09:29:51
Losing your business is worse than dying?
Rugian
Member
Tue Mar 24 09:45:36
James Bullard (St Louis Fed) has predicted that unemployment could shoot to 30%, while GDP will decline by a full 50%.

It's a worthy question to ask whether the country should suffer such extreme vissicitudes just so that senile pop pop can hang onto life for a few more years.
Wrath of Orion
Member
Tue Mar 24 09:52:00
Then go on out, find some COVID-19 patients, and volunteer to help. No protective gear required, of course. Man up, you're good.
Dakyron
Member
Tue Mar 24 09:53:39
Most, if not all, people making policy right now are part of the population most likely to die from coronavirus.

Our only real hope is Trump, Pelosi, McConnel and a handful of others all get it and die. Then any amount of economic catastrophe would be worth it.
patom
Member
Tue Mar 24 09:57:59
Obamacare was supposedly promoting death panels. It seems Republicans are all for them now.
TJ
Member
Tue Mar 24 10:20:18
Dog eat dog..., death panels.

Wait, maybe I should have posted this in another thread about tenderized puppies. Anything seems worthy of discussion these days. AK locked and loaded. lmao
kargen
Member
Tue Mar 24 13:07:37
"Let's get back to work. Let's get back to living. Let's be smart about it and those of us who are 70 plus we'll take care of ourselves but don't sacrifice the country."

Rugian
Member
Tue Mar 24 13:26:11
Patom,

If you'll recall, "death panels" referred to a prospective nationalization of health care (in which the government eliminates any alternative options) and then the sick and/or disabled being refused treatment under said national plan (thereby effectively sentencing them to death, as no alternative options are available).

That's a tad bit different than someone saying "hey, maybe we shouldn't INDEFINITELY SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE NATIONAL ECONOMY because there's the equivalent of a really bad strain of flu going around."
hood
Member
Tue Mar 24 13:33:48
And that's different than sending people out to get infected with a life threatening disease for which they may not be able to receive medical care, how?

Oh, right, it's actual conspiracy to commit murder. Gotcha. Murder is fine, scientifically supported medical treatment isn't. That and the death panel scare was an actual hoax, whereas covid is real.
Daemon
Member
Tue Mar 24 13:53:40
Would that work at all?

People under 60 usually don't die, but many need a bed in a hospital. Some numbers:
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-age
"In Spain, out of 1,285 cases for people 20 to 29 (a much bigger sample size than we have for children), 183 of them have been hospitalized, a 14 percent rate; eight have ended up in intensive care, a 0.6 percent rate, and four people in this age range have died, a 0.3 percent fatality rate.

30-49:
In Spain, out of 5,127 cases from this cohort, 1,028 people have been hospitalized, a 20 percent rate; 55 went to the ICU, a 1.1 percent rate; and 12 people ages 30 to 49 have died, a 0.2 percent fatality rate.

50-69
In Spain, out of 6,045 cases from this cohort, 2,166 people have been hospitalized, a 36 percent hospitalization rate; 221 went to the ICU, a 3.7 percent rate; and 83 people ages 50 to 69 have died, a 1.4 percent fatality rate."

So if you let the virus infect quickly as many people as possible to end the whole story then you will have millions of people in need for a hospital bed even if you do not count people at age 70+.
I assume that would make mortality go up in these age groups.
Wrath of Orion
Member
Tue Mar 24 14:55:46
"Would that work at all?"

No, Rugian is a fucking retard. Don't take anything he posts seriously (I mean, he's serious about the shit he posts, but hopefully nobody actually takes his opinions seriously).
patom
Member
Tue Mar 24 15:48:24
Did a quick google search on this Lt. Gov. and wasn't surprised that he never volunteered for military service and offer up his life. But he's all too eager for the very people and generations that did serve to offer up their lives again. How generous of him.
Paramount
Member
Tue Mar 24 17:47:19
Yeah, but he is running a business that he doesn’t want to lose. It doesn’t hurt to ask the elderly if they want to risk their lives for him.
Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 09:39:58
Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?

Current estimates about the Covid-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude.

By Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya
March 24, 2020 6:21 pm ET

If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.

Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate—2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.

The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million. If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.

Population samples from China, Italy, Iceland and the U.S. provide relevant evidence. On or around Jan. 31, countries sent planes to evacuate citizens from Wuhan, China. When those planes landed, the passengers were tested for Covid-19 and quarantined. After 14 days, the percentage who tested positive was 0.9%. If this was the prevalence in the greater Wuhan area on Jan. 31, then, with a population of about 20 million, greater Wuhan had 178,000 infections, about 30-fold more than the number of reported cases. The fatality rate, then, would be at least 10-fold lower than estimates based on reported cases.

Next, the northeastern Italian town of Vò, near the provincial capital of Padua. On March 6, all 3,300 people of Vò were tested, and 90 were positive, a prevalence of 2.7%. Applying that prevalence to the whole province (population 955,000), which had 198 reported cases, suggests there were actually 26,000 infections at that time. That’s more than 130-fold the number of actual reported cases. Since Italy’s case fatality rate of 8% is estimated using the confirmed cases, the real fatality rate could in fact be closer to 0.06%.

In Iceland, deCode Genetics is working with the government to perform widespread testing. In a sample of nearly 2,000 entirely asymptomatic people, researchers estimated disease prevalence of just over 1%. Iceland’s first case was reported on Feb. 28, weeks behind the U.S. It’s plausible that the proportion of the U.S. population that has been infected is double, triple or even 10 times as high as the estimates from Iceland. That also implies a dramatically lower fatality rate.

The best (albeit very weak) evidence in the U.S. comes from the National Basketball Association. Between March 11 and 19, a substantial number of NBA players and teams received testing. By March 19, 10 out of 450 rostered players were positive. Since not everyone was tested, that represents a lower bound on the prevalence of 2.2%. The NBA isn’t a representative population, and contact among players might have facilitated transmission. But if we extend that lower-bound assumption to cities with NBA teams (population 45 million), we get at least 990,000 infections in the U.S. The number of cases reported on March 19 in the U.S. was 13,677, more than 72-fold lower. These numbers imply a fatality rate from Covid-19 orders of magnitude smaller than it appears.

How can we reconcile these estimates with the epidemiological models? First, the test used to identify cases doesn’t catch people who were infected and recovered. Second, testing rates were woefully low for a long time and typically reserved for the severely ill. Together, these facts imply that the confirmed cases are likely orders of magnitude less than the true number of infections. Epidemiological modelers haven’t adequately adapted their estimates to account for these factors.

The epidemic started in China sometime in November or December. The first confirmed U.S. cases included a person who traveled from Wuhan on Jan. 15, and it is likely that the virus entered before that: Tens of thousands of people traveled from Wuhan to the U.S. in December. Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism.

This does not make Covid-19 a nonissue. The daily reports from Italy and across the U.S. show real struggles and overwhelmed health systems. But a 20,000- or 40,000-death epidemic is a far less severe problem than one that kills two million. Given the enormous consequences of decisions around Covid-19 response, getting clear data to guide decisions now is critical. We don’t know the true infection rate in the U.S. Antibody testing of representative samples to measure disease prevalence (including the recovered) is crucial. Nearly every day a new lab gets approval for antibody testing, so population testing using this technology is now feasible.

If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible. Elective procedures will need to be rescheduled. Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions.

A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.

Dr. Bendavid and Dr. Bhattacharya are professors of medicine at Stanford. Neeraj Sood contributed to this article.

http://www...deadly-as-they-say-11585088464

It's time to end this massive overreaction and get Americans back to work.
hood
Member
Wed Mar 25 10:08:51
An opinion article, not a scientific paper? Their non-scientific, completely unproven opinions, can be unceremoniously discarded until they'd like to stake their career on their assertions.
Daemon
Member
Wed Mar 25 10:18:19
"It's time to end this massive overreaction and get Americans back to work. "

Rugian I'm happy that you want to try it. We will watch what happens and follow your example if it works. But if not...
Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 10:20:19
So pointing out the obvious fact that analyzing Chinese virus-related deaths as a percentage of diagnosed cases is a classic example of selection bias is inadmissible if not put in a formal paper? ROFL.
Dakyron
Member
Wed Mar 25 10:21:53
There is a good case for a middle ground. Ban large gatherings, cruises, etc... Ban personal air travel.

After that, let Americans do what they want with the expectation the virus will slowly make its way through the US population over the next couple months.

Harshly enforced shelter in place orders for two months at a time is probably too much.
hood
Member
Wed Mar 25 10:57:43
Pointing obvious facts that were taken into consideration when calculating a potential mortality rate doesn't make one's opinion valid. If you want to challenge the scientifically estimated mortality rate, do it scientifically. Making up numbers because they sound good to say "OMG LOOK ITS WRONG" is really easy to do when your credibility in your field isn't on the line. Yes, if they want to challenge the mortality rate estimated by infectious disease specialists, assumedly these author's peers, they gonna need to do more than cite the NBA and make opinion based guesses.


Their opinion paper is just as valid as my "we probably have 10x the number of active cases vs what's published as confirmed" statements.

They also made a pretty fucking critical error in not accounting for the fact that most of these potential undiagnosed cases, and even diagnosed cases, have not resolved yet. People take more than a week to die. Suggesting "OMG we have 900,000 cases now but only 499 deaths!!!" makes a valid mortality rate is hilariously retarded. How many of those 900,000 suspected cases will end up dead by the time their case is resolved? Gonna be ~2-4%, chucklefucks.
patom
Member
Wed Mar 25 11:56:39
Iceland, um are any stats from Iceland really relative to the rest of the world? Just how does Iceland's travel conduct compare with say Long Island New York? or Washington DC or Los
Angeles?

How many people have died that were never tested before or after death to determine if they had Corvid 19?

Granted some of the numbers may be way off because many aren't being tested because they need their Dr. to recommend a test. Even that doesn't guarantee you will be tested. Aspire was told by his Dr. to be tested and when he called to schedule a test. The testers turned him down and told him that at the moment they were only testing front line workers due to a shortage of testing kits.
jergul
large member
Wed Mar 25 12:07:49
Patom
We will really only know the impact after the fact.

Some people who would have died in car accidents are alive today because of the shelter in place order.

Some people killed their spouses, then themselves to be safe from the covid-19.

All that will give a net excess mortality rate once the numbers are ready. You simply compare the number of dead per 100k population in 2020 compared to 2021.

National Center for Health Statistics has just opened data access for 2019. Most States are done providing information for that year.

So maybe we can see in April 2021.
jergul
large member
Wed Mar 25 12:09:51
In 2020 compared to 2019. You would have to wait a year for 2021 :).
patom
Member
Wed Mar 25 14:18:02
What could be bad is Trump has the numbers fudged to make him look good and people vote for him based on those numbers.
Dakyron
Member
Wed Mar 25 14:44:07
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/why-are-so-few-germans-dying-from-the-coronavirus-experts-wonder/ar-BB11HjEC?ocid=spartandhp

MAINZ, Germany — While countries around the globe struggle to cope with the death, panic, restrictions and economic dislocation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, a different picture has emerged in Germany.
Experts are scrambling to figure out why the country has around 34,000 confirmed infections — the fifth highest in the world — but far fewer deaths than other countries.
There have been 172 recorded coronavirus deaths in Germany. That's just 0.5 percent of the total cases, higher than seasonal flu but drastically lower than Italy's soaring case fatality rate of almost 10 percent.
In fact, no major country comes close to Germany. By comparison, the United States has around 55,000 recorded cases and around 1.4 percent of those, about 800 people as of Wednesday, have died so far.

Experts have a number of theories about why it appears to be such an outlier, but they are cautious about holding up the country as an example during what is still likely the early stages of the pandemic.
"I would be happy if we can come back in two months' time and still be able to talk about what Germany did right," said Hajo Zeeb, a professor at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology. "But right now it's simply too early to say that."

What is known is that Germany, with 82 million people, has recorded more cases per capita than Iran, France and the United States.
But in contrast to countries like Italy, the U.K. and large parts of the U.S., it has not shut down daily life, although it has banned public gatherings of more than two people. Its chancellor, Angela Merkel, tested negative but has isolated herself awaiting further results after one of her doctors became infected.
Germany is also better equipped than most when it comes to health care. It has 28,000 intensive care beds, considerably higher than the European average. Because it was not hit as early as Italy and elsewhere, it's also had time to prepare.

But many experts believe that the main reason behind its relatively low death rate is the large number of tests it has been able to conduct among its population.
The government has not released official figures but says it has the capacity to test some 160,000 people every week.
As well as potentially helping identify and slow the spread of the contagion, widespread tests are also likely to detect more mild cases that are going unrecorded in other countries, according to Dr. Mike Ryan, health emergencies director at the World Health Organisation.
"They've had a very aggressive testing process," Ryan told a briefing last week. "So the number of tests and the number of confirmed cases may be detecting more mild cases as a proportion of overall cases — that's an important determination."

The thinking is that other countries may be only catching the more severe cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, a larger proportion of whom are likely to die. Germany's death rate is effectively watered down, so the theory goes, because its figure takes account of the many mild cases missed by other nations.
This question drives at the heart of a huge unknown in the coronavirus crisis: How many people have been infected but don't know it? Getting closer to that figure will give experts and officials a better idea of how deadly this outbreak really is — closer to Germany, or more like Italy?
"The numbers we're getting from the other countries have probably overestimated the infection fatality rate, so that's Italy, Spain, France, the U.K. and the U.S., because there is not enough testing," said Miguel Hernan, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard.
"Having said that, the 0.4 percent we're seeing in Germany is strikingly low," he added, "when you compare it with other countries with similar health care systems and even more testing, like South Korea."

Despite its wide number of tests, experts still "believe there is a lot of underdiagnosis also in Germany," according to Sabine Gabrysch, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health. "We mostly only test those who had contact with confirmed cases or traveled to risk areas."

The reason experts are cautious about lauding Germany is that many tests were conducted on mild or even asymptomatic cases — people who may deteriorate in the coming days and weeks.

"Our epidemic is still earlier than South Korea's and Italy's," Gabrysch said. "The severe cases and deaths will still go up in Germany over the next few days until we hopefully see an effect of the control policies put in place."

The data may be skewed even further because of the way that Germany and Italy conduct post-mortems.

"The Italians test deceased persons who had specific symptoms and bring them into the statistics — we in Germany do not," according to Dietrich Rothenbacher, a professor at the Institute for Epidemiology and Medical Biometry at Germany's Ulm University.

"It's a complex scenario," he said. Before any solid comparison can be made between countries, Rothenbacher feels strongly that "the first step would be to obtain comparable numbers."

Another possible factor behind Germany's lower death rate is that most of its cases have been among younger people. The median age of those infected is 47, compared with 63 in Italy.

It appears that Germany's high number of cases were initially fueled by younger people returning from skiing holidays in neighboring Austria and Italy, the country's epidemiologists say. That seems to have spread further as those people attended a series of carnival celebrations held in many German towns and cities in February.

That's in contrast to Italy, where some researchers think that the high number of younger people living with elderly relatives may have put those more vulnerable to the infection at greater risk.

Nevertheless, there is still the fear in Germany that if the outbreak does start to spread among older circles, the country could also see a spike in deaths. Already one nursing home in Würzburg, a city in Bavaria, has seen 37 residents test positive and nine of them die.

The nursing home's first case was reported on March 8, when the number of confirmed cases was around 1,000 in Germany. Since then, 33 of its 58 staff have tested positive, and officials are now working to find out how the infection found its way inside.

"We are doing our best," Michael Schwab, a doctor at the nursing home, said in a statement. "Even when the high risk of infection is one of our biggest challenges."

And finally, in a complex, fast-moving situation that's still likely in its infancy, there are few experts who do not discount pure chance when it comes to Germany's successes so far.

"I think what we're seeing is a mix of factors," Zeeb said. "We have a well-prepared health service, but also we have been lucky."

Carlo Angerer reported from Mainz, and Alexander Smith reported from London.
jergul
large member
Wed Mar 25 16:24:57
Daky
Early days. Better healthcare may simply keep critically ill people alive longer.

This a comment on two healthcare systems not yet overwhelmed.
Daemon
Member
Wed Mar 25 16:47:44
"The median age of those infected is 47, compared with 63 in Italy"

This is it.

Anyway, a German doctor association has released guidelines for triage today, they expect worse things to come. In German language:
http://www...-covid-19-ethik-abbildung/file
http://www.divi.de/empfehlungen/publikationen/covid-19/1531-covid-19-ethik-empfehlung/file
Dakyron
Member
Wed Mar 25 16:48:07
Its just a larger denominator. COVID is bad, but its not 10% fatal bad. I think 0.5% - 1% is probably the truth.
jergul
large member
Wed Mar 25 17:01:23
Daemon
That explains it. Thanks.

Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:12:56
There's no reason why COVID-19 would be more likely to infect the elderly in Italy than the elderly in Germany. If anything, the lower median age for Germany supports the theory that the death rate has been massively overstated to date. Germany has more capacity to test younger, less seriously-ill residents, so the median age drops as a result.

Shit like this is a lesson in why you never exclusively listen to experts. Their opinions are valuable, but ultimately they come at a situation from a certain direction and cant see the larger picture. Ultimately, nationwide quarantine is a gross overreaction and the harm it causes far outweighs the amount of senior citizens saved.
hood
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:13:51
^ clinically retarded
Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:15:48
^submitting to mass hysteria
hood
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:18:01
^ unable to determine reality from his own fantasy
Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:18:52
Authoritarians like Hood and Dukhat love overreacting to stuff like this. It's the same mentality that makes them want to take away people's rights to bear arms because a minuscule number of people die in high-profile incidents involving AR-15s every year. Every situation requires a massive government reaction and substantial restriction of people's liberties, because saving a statistically insignificant number of people is always more important.
hood
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:25:46
You still confused me with a boilerplate liberal who wants to ban guns despite the many times I've corrected you on that false claim, and then wonder why I continue to point out that you don't live in the real world?

I work for a hospital system. The Chicago area hasn't even exploded yet (although it's about to) and we've already retasked entire non-clinical teams for covid related work. We're pulling clinical expertise from various non-clinical roles to go work the hospital floor because there isn't enough staff to handle things. And you're sitting there saying "no big deal, let's just get everyone infected and put 60,000,000 people in the hospital."

You're fucking stupid and you're fucking wrong.
Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:29:25
Hood,

Are you or are you not in favor of the legality of the sale of so-called assault weapons to the general public?

Based on your little anecdote there, the solution would be to increase medical capacity. Not shut down the entire economy for weeks to months on end.

Do you even realize how bad a -25% to -50% fall in GDP is?
Rugian
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:31:03
South Korea managed to flatten their curve without having to resort to the drastic measures we've taken. But sure, economic suicide is the only solution I guess.
hood
Member
Wed Mar 25 17:46:43
"Are you or are you not in favor of the legality of the sale of so-called assault weapons to the general public?"

I assume you're talking about the AR-15? I think it's wildly pointless for a random citizen to own one and that people who buy them are fucking retarded, but I have no issue with their general sale.


"Based on your little anecdote there, the solution would be to increase medical capacity."

Sounds cool in theory, but this is the real world. Beds alone don't deliver oxygen to the lungs. Medically trained personnel don't grow on trees.


"South Korea managed to flatten their curve"

With testing that the US can't do (yet - and not for a while). So, again, real world vs. your fantasy.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Wed Mar 25 18:00:17
Rugian
”There's no reason why COVID-19 would be more likely to infect the elderly in Italy than the elderly in Germany.”

Actually there are several cultural reasons. It is much more common for several generation of a family living in the same house or building and socializing frequently. Social distancing is a thing in Northern Europe even before Corona, remember Waiting for the bus like a Swede meme? That’s actually a thing.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Wed Mar 25 18:02:02
It is much more common for several generation of a family living in the same house or building *in Italy* and socializing frequently.
Seb
Member
Wed Mar 25 19:23:15
Real fatality rate is linked to treatment, and calculated rates depend on testing.

Germany has a low fatality rate because it tests and because its healthcare system hasn't imploded.

Without social distancing and lockdown, the rate of spread remains exponential.

And while the fatality rate may be low, it will be enough to overwhelm the healthcare systems, increasing fatality rates for our conditions.

In addition you will get a huge spike of people off ill, in critical industries.

Also the more people fall ill, the more opportunities for mutation that could increase the aggressiveness and lethality.

So the idea of a slow burn through the population while permitting economic activity is a fallacy.

You will likely get a terrible economic hit anyway, deaths spread across the spectrum from other treatable conditions that can't be treated due to health care systems imploding, and lose the ability to protect critical infrastructure and services.

Shutdown, testing, then switch to isolating only the sick. Test. Test. Test.

The Asian countries get it. They will emerge less damaged in both body count and economy than the West, despite the West having way more lead time.

The West is fucking up badly, and the more neoliberal the worse it is fucking up, because too many people are idiots like Rugian who can't grasp systems thinking.
sam adams
Member
Thu Mar 26 00:01:56
Part of the failure is that governments in the west have been so retarded for so long that no one trusts them, and they cant make decisions.

Part of it is inherent to our freedoms and travel.

Part of it is the general incompetence of the medical induatry as a whole. Seriously... the ammount of money that goes into medicine and the general lack of progress there is pathetic.

Airplanes cross the world in nearly perfect safety, computers link the entire planet, engineers build skyscrapers nearly a kilometer high, we land on the moon, split the atom, and walk on the bottom of the ocean?

And what had medical science given us? A slight increase in adult life expectancy? Come on geneticists. Pick up the fucking pace you slackers.
sam adams
Member
Thu Mar 26 00:04:23
Seriously... other than vaccines... medical science has done basically nothing.
Wrath of Orion
Member
Thu Mar 26 01:18:57
Weird how shit dealing with complex biological systems isn't as easy or clear cut as physical systems. Truly weird...
Nekran
Member
Thu Mar 26 01:33:35
Funny that you'd mention airplanes. They always have me thinking "why have you not improved in 50 years?!?". Go faster already! I'd like to visit Japan and New Zealand!

I think medical science has been doing pretty damn well, really.
Seb
Member
Thu Mar 26 02:02:29
Medical science is no better in Asia.

Medical practice is better.

And generally what you are seeing is the more "Samish" a govt is, the worse it is failing.

Where the state has been hollowed out following the demands of idiots like Sam that govt must in principle be a bad thing so it ought to be starved of funds and kept minimal, suprise suprise, it's not got much capability to rise to the challenge. Market based mechanisms are not able to coordinate to rise to a systemic public health challenge. It turns out that low wages workers are essential to the economy even if any individual one is replacable and Sam's of entire philosophy of valuing a person based on their wage and deeming any vulnerabiliies they are exposed to as a problem for them alone just leads to a brittle nation.

There is a reason the US is going to end up having more casualties most other countries: it's the utter failure of Samism.

Coronavirys is America's Chernobyl: a catastrophe that brutally exposes the fundamental flaws in your political and social culture.
Dukhat
Member
Thu Mar 26 02:13:42
Our life expectancy is way up compared to even 30 years ago so I don't know what Sam is smoking.

Westerners in general are just fat and lazy. Just look at the average Trump supporter. It's like a morbidly obese white guy in his 60's. My mom is a pharmacist and has to give prescriptions to these fuckers all the time. They take so many pills and are busy eating cheeseburgers and downing super-sized sodas while blaming Mexicans for their troubles.

Medicine was too successful. Time for a culling. What's sad is that a lot of responsible people will die along with all the Trumptards.
Seb
Member
Thu Mar 26 03:07:36
Sam is hilarious. He spent 20 years rambling about the inferiority of "mud hitters", and now suddenly he's saying the West has backwards technology.
sam adams
Member
Thu Mar 26 09:52:27

Seb, your memory and your processing is faulty. If only medical science was better you might be able to fix that.


"Our life expectancy is way up compared to even 30 years ago so I don't know what Sam is smoking."

Its up only a little.

"Weird how shit dealing with complex biological systems isn't as easy or clear cut as physical systems. Truly weird... "

Kindof... but at the same time we are landing probes on titan and etching 10 billion microscopic transistors onto a computer core the size of my thumbnail. If medical science was making equivalent gains, id have a tricorder and a pet tyrannosaur.
sam adams
Member
Thu Mar 26 10:01:42
"Go faster already! "

True, but safety has improved a miraculous amount. Even when we were kids, major western airliners would crash all the fucking time wiping out hundreds of dudes at a time.

Now the last big airliner to crash in the US was 20 years ago and its been 10 since even a regional jet went down.

If we made the equivalent jump in medical safety, coronavirus would have been cured after 2 people died.
Nekran
Member
Thu Mar 26 10:01:46
Yes, medical science is all about bringing back extinct species of animals... Sammy gets it!
Nekran
Member
Thu Mar 26 10:07:21
In all seriousness, I'm pretty impressed with medical science. I think it feels like lagging behind perhaps in part, because it takes a long time to have things approved for use on people. And with good reason.

But when I hear about things like delivery systems that can target specific cells, printing organs and the creation of the first xenobots, I'm pretty impressed.
jergul
large member
Thu Mar 26 10:07:59
Nekran
Don't be silly. The tricorder does the medical stuff. The tyrannosaur is just for fun.

I actually lol'd. Sammy made a funny.
Nekran
Member
Thu Mar 26 10:09:46
And of course the advances in genetic engineering are booming hard now.
jergul
large member
Thu Mar 26 10:10:19
My feeling is that we are on the cusp of seeing a cascade of benefits from endless numbers of incremental improvements.

But cutting edge translates poorly to hospital beds.

For hospital beds: Provide funding and give it some time.

Fixed!
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Thu Mar 26 10:30:07
>>Part of it is the general incompetence of the medical induatry as a whole.<<

No. Part of it is that as we have solved Medical problem, the easiest problems are solved first.

You could actually makes this argument, in fact it is made, that theoretical physics suffers from the same slow down. "No major progress" in the last decades.
Dukhat
Member
Thu Mar 26 10:33:38
Sam whining about how our medicine sucks. Our life expectancy is awesome for how fat and worthless most Americans are. Just look at a Trump rally. The average weight of the people there has to be like 300 lbs. And most will probably live into their 70's.

Our medical technology keeps too many fat, lazy retards alive.
Paramount
Member
Thu Mar 26 11:08:07
Corona may fix that. Overweight men are more likely to die by the virus. At least if we look at Italy. So it may be that alot of Trump’s voting base may die. And that may pave the way for Sanders or Biden. lol
TJ
Member
Thu Mar 26 11:38:34
We are always on the cusp of upward or downward movement, which is not dependent on which universe I'm in at any given moment.

I'm a universe jumper. It's all about the curve. :D

Jumpers are accustomed to havoc.
jergul
large member
Thu Mar 26 11:41:39
TJ
It most definitely depends on what you we are talking about. Hell, in infinite universes, you are president in uncountable numbers of them.
TJ
Member
Thu Mar 26 12:03:37
It will forever be about the infinite universe. Can an infinite universe be universes?
TJ
Member
Thu Mar 26 12:55:37
jergul:
Since your universes are sound mathematically I prefer the terminology of an infinite universal loop, but I accept whatever floats your boat. No need to get semantic or philosophical. I haven't failed to understand your points.
jergul
large member
Thu Mar 26 13:00:57
TJ
I know :-). The ease of which we all can grasp imaginary numbers is quite impressive (infinite is an imaginary concept).

The schools systems really fuck up in explaining something simple, yet not concrete.

Our ability to do the math is fuelled by any number beyond 8 being an abstract anyway. The barrier is there, not elsewhere.

Trouble beyond that is mostly a failure of communication.
TJ
Member
Thu Mar 26 13:13:17
Imagination is the fuel that propels the upward and downward movement. Without it there would be no hill to climb.
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