So what happens with the next virus?

[Leo656]

As for "Do I know anyone who got it", no, not even on FB, at least not among anyone I speak to regularly (although a few claim their relatives had it).

Closest it's gotten to me was, my mother-in-law said that her 90-something aunt had gotten it and was perfectly fine in a few days with no lingering ill-effects. Which does nothing to make me trust the official narrative any more than I do (or don't, as it were).

Again, the reason SOME people are non-compliant and/or don't take this situation at face value, is because what we SEE with our own eyes is the exact opposite of what MSNBC is telling us what's going on. Maddow and Fauci can tell me that the sky is pink, and they can even throw numbers at me to "prove" it, but meanwhile, I look out my window and the sky is blue. I'm gonna take these people seriously? Why? Their Words are not My Reality, so until that changes, giant shakers of salt for every single thing they say. They're the ones benefiting (and in some cases profiting) from this situation, why should I trust them?

As for the bit about making masks in a factory for $12 an hour, Andrew, I completely feel you on that. I wasn't getting rich at my old job because I wasn't working in 8-hour shifts, BUT my commission rate was around $30-40 an hour. I am NEVER going to make that again, thanks to this bullsh*t. I could make more in three hours than the guy mopping the floor at Walmart makes in an entire goddamn day AND I could make my own schedule, more or less. Kiss it goodbye, all gone, never coming back. All because SOME people MIGHT die.

Meanwhile, I lost a good job once, long time ago. Got pneumonia, doctor said I needed a week off. Went back to work, the owner said I should quit. Didn't like that I was out sick for a week. Told me he couldn't fire me for that BUT if I stayed he would make sure to invent a reason to fire me. I reminded him that legally, I could call out sick with a note, especially for something as severe as pneumonia.

Y'know what he told me? "Note or no note, people can't stay home and just decide they don't feel like going to work because you've got a stuffy nose. So you got pneumonia. 'Oh, you could've died.' SO WHAT? People die every day, that's the risk we all take whenever we leave the house. All you told me by staying home all week was, you didn't need this job badly enough to deserve it."

So, I quit. And while I still feel that he was an asshole in that situation, fundamentally, he's right. We can't lock ourselves up and get paid to stay at home because we're scared something bad MIGHT happen.

And frankly, if *I* was expected to risk my own life by going to work even though I could've gotten sick and keeled over dead - and believe me, this wasn't the last time I was in that situation - then everyone else has to, too. It's only fair. If I had a nickel for every time at ANY job I was told, "Sick or not, get your ass to work or else!" I could buy a car with those nickels.

But oh, NOW suddenly it's all the opposite. When it was ME, I was expected to go in and earn my right to breathe whether I was coughing up blood or not because "That's The Way Sh*t Works". NOW, people aren't even sick BUT they might get sick so NOBODY can go to work.

It's nonsense.

The only thing whatsoever that makes me believe in a God, is that SOMEONE has spent the last 38 years manipulating events for the sole purpose of screwing with Me and Me Alone. Nothing else makes any sense.

[oldmanwinters]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I'm not stirring the pot. I'm genuinely curious. The next time there's a COVID-caliber virus... what is going to happen? The same stuff as this time? Shut everything down, stay home, "mask up" and so on for untold months or what?

What do you see happening? Because this will happen again. Like, it didn't happen with Swine Flu (which was actually killing tons of young people), but it happened with this.

Honestly, that was the first thing that came to my mind when all the schools and sports leagues started cancelling things back in March. Once you do it once, people are gonna expect you to do it the next time. I don't personally believe this was a brilliantly orchestrated political-economic conspiracy, but there are will always be people who won't let a crisis go to waste in order to further their own agendas.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

Honestly, that was the first thing that came to my mind when all the schools and sports leagues started cancelling things back in March. Once you do it once, people are gonna expect you to do it the next time.

I fear this as well. That this is going to be standard practice from now on.

Given that it's Fall, I expect a huge panic as soon as people start coughing for all the usual reasons, only this time "We can't take any chances!" so then Boom, back to lockdowns and hoarding toilet paper.

And then it's gonna happen again EVERY time there's even the slightest hint of something bad happening. Where does it end? It doesn't.

And if this is going to be our collective reaction to every passing cloud, then screw it, might as well just tap out and give up, and drop any pretense of things ever "getting better". They can't, if we're just gonna lock the doors and hide under the bed from every shadow.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I fear this as well. That this is going to be standard practice from now on.

Once there is a precedent, it is NEVER walked back.

Otherwise, whether you believe this came from China as a weaponized plague or you believe it's just nature taking its merry course through human incompetence, the people in charge have to admit they were wrong and COVID-19 didn't warrant such a huge response.

That's never going to happen, right or wrong. So this is the new flu season for everyone in America, forever.

[sdp]

It's going to be better but at the same time a huge mess because countries will continue to try to save face, ignore what's happening to avoid showing how incompetent they are and people will show how dumb they are by being anti-vaxxers or saying how the gov wants to control them with fear and that they won't wear facemasks because their ignorant minds know better.

[Leo656]

If masks work so well, then the fearful and symptomatic can continue to wear them and people who aren't sick or afraid can opt out. Very simple. It changes day-by-day as to whether or not they do much at all, anyway, depending on who you listen to. Even people who completely refuse to wear masks often aren't getting sick, which only causes them to further dig in.

I'm past the point of caring if I die from it. I don't WANT to, but I'll take it over the alternative if "the alternative" is to continue as we've been for the last 6 months.

There's no point in being incredibly good-looking if you're forced to cover it up. Like I said: Living Death.

I'm sure this has all been a great field-leveler for ugly people, but some of us actually like to show face. Plus, it's damn near impossible to have a conversation with one of them on. People can't hear me and I'm already a quarter deaf so to hear them I have to get so close that I'm beyond "social distance boundaries" anyway. Once you're a foot away from someone the mask is more a symbolic measure than anything.

I "comply", but under protest. And I'm absolutely not going to play along forever, that's just the way it is.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by Leo656

There's no point in being incredibly good-looking if you're forced to cover it up...

I'm sure this has all been a great field-leveler for ugly people, but some of us actually like to show face.

I know, right? How are people supposed to enjoy the sight of my manly beard when it's hidden behind a cotton mask?

And have you tried wearing glasses with a fvcking mask? $hit sucks.

Originally Posted by Leo656

Plus, it's damn near impossible to have a conversation with one of them on. People can't hear me and I'm already a quarter deaf so to hear them I have to get so close that I'm beyond "social distance boundaries" anyway.

Brother, don't get me started. Lost a lot of hearing in my left ear from driving with the windows down for a year (no A/C in the car)... can't hear for $hit when everything's muffled like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

[Leo656]

Sunglasses, yeah, that's bad enough. Sh*t fogs up immediately.

Not to mention being generally phlegmy-coughy as a natural state of life, wearing a mask for any period of time is a nigh-unbearable aggravation. I just have to remove it every few minutes to spit, anyway.

I put up with it. For Now. But this is already long enough. Workers at the flea market - which is mobbed every weekend - generally stopped wearing them weeks ago and things seem A-OK. Thousands of people there every weekend and no outbreaks, masks or no masks. Some people sure wear them, sure, but only about 6 or 7 out of every 10. And most of the vendors don't. Ask them how they feel, they'll tell you: "It's all bullsh*t, I'm over it."

Time to stop putting condoms on to masturbate and get back to practical living. The worst is over and it's never going away completely, so really, we've done all we can do. Time to let the chips fall where they may.

[Sumac]

Caught up on this thread. My thoughts about the virus: it was probably created in laboratory and accidentally ventured outside with some hapless idiot scientist or an animal.

After suffering economic damage, China decided intentionally to let virus get outside, so it could cause damage to the rest of the world, to keep status quo and made situation in the West even more messy. Having World Health Organization in their pocket allowed them to achieve their goal, and considering **** which going on in US, they might as well consider this a resounding success, so prepare for a new "accidental" viruses coming from China, I suppose.

[Allsparrow]

A friend of mine got it. It was no big deal for the first two weeks. They were chatting with us over facetime, and we were kind of laughing it off. She had a stroke last week, 2 weeks after she had been done with quarantine. Hard to know what to make of it.

[ABrown]

I guess we'll find out in about four years.

[IMJ]

There is actually a bigger debate here that everyone is disregarding. Maybe it's because it falls outside a domain of understanding, or maybe because some people think it's "pie in the sky thinking". But there should be a rallying cry for research into broad spectrum viral cures - I've mentioned this before.

Go read about DRACO. Seriously - go read the evidence for it and then even read the stuff from the smart people who say it may not be viable. And even after looking at both perspectives, you'll see that the next virus wouldn't be a problem probably at all as soon as we have broad spectrum viral suppressants that change the caliber of illness the way that anti-biotics changed bacterial illness.

But seriously, no one is talking about this. Maybe because there are a lot of people plodding through life out there who don't know the difference between bacterial sickness and viral sickness. And it's ridiculous because the conversation about it so be so publicly large and so publicly concerned that it turns government attention to broad spectrum viral cures.

Go read about DRACO. It will change the shape of this thread's content completely.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO

Yeah I'd say that's a good synopsis covering the bigger story over the years. There's a lot of stuff out there about how it works and so on - absolutely brilliant.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

Originally Posted by IMJ

Yeah I'd say that's a good synopsis covering the bigger story over the years. There's a lot of stuff out there about how it works and so on - absolutely brilliant.

I was surprised to see how little Wikipedia had on it, but it at least brought me up to speed for a quick "huh, okay, got it."

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

I was surprised to see how little Wikipedia had on it, but it at least brought me up to speed for a quick "huh, okay, got it."

Check out some of the interviews with the guy who invented it. Everyone here should. I'm not saying that it's a sure fire win, but it's really, really odd that with it's success rate and foundational stability the government isn't deeply behind this. But hey - there's less money in actually curing viruses than there is in treating them.

But see, that's not how smart people are supposed to think. Smart people are supposed to realize that you solve a problem for the greater good and it won't put you out of business because the next problem will arise to be solved.

But people don't think that way.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

And then it's gonna happen again EVERY time there's even the slightest hint of something bad happening. Where does it end? It doesn't.

And my thing, as I've said elsewhere, is that we tried it their way. At the start, the whole "stay safe/stay home" quarantine was touted as, "only for a month or two, to stop the curve"... well it's been 6 now. Time's up, back to work now. If you think "we need to wait for a vaccine!" then you're both a coward and a moron.

If the concern was truly "there hypothetically isn't enough beds and respirators to take everyone sick at once!" well, if the numbers are real numbers they're throwing out there everyday then we've already put a big dent in that.

I actually overheard someone at a gas station complaining, aghast to her friend that she saw someone driving with their top down. "During a pandemic! Can you believe it??"

[Allsparrow]

A study from July was showing that Covid stays pretty stable in the air for long periods of time. They measure the virus at different time spans, a few minutes, one hour, 3hours, and continued up to 16hours, which is where they stopped, because the decay rate of the virus was minimal, so they didn't continue to test further. I take that to mean it can live in the air for long periods of time. I can see how some people might freak out, and wonder why anyone is taking chances. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/9/20-1806_article

[Andrew NDB]

Yes, yes, and the pu$$y graphs trying to scare people as to how runners' "wake" as they're running can float around in a trail, carrying the virus to people around them. But nobody is getting sick like that. People are generally getting sick by up close, long-term contact with people who are infected.

[IMJ]

I went in on the Kickstarter on that awesome UV filtering mask. I swear to God those guys beat me to the punch - a buddy and I were saying that there should be UV face masks earlier in the year.

Anyway, the whole face covering thing is a bit of a joke for a myriad of reasons - proper use, proper material, lulled into a sense of security, etc. But a built in UV sanitizing filter? That is effective science there, baby!