Coronavirus Craziness

For philosophical reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic. How can philosophy help us to understand it, to combat it and to survive it?

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Dontaskme
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Re: perspective

Post by Dontaskme »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:30 pm
hysteria

by the end of april: carona will be old news...

No one can know that..that's pure conjecture.

A million flies can't be wrong. No Shit!
uwot
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Re: I'm tellin' you

Post by uwot »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:36 pm by the end of april: carona will be old news...
Well again we'll see, and I hope you're right, but what do you base that assertion on?
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: I'm tellin' you

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:36 pm by the end of april: carona will be old news, its actual effect minor compared to garden-variety flu...the effects of dumbassery and hysteria, on the other hand, will be with us for a while longer
And in the meantime countless businesses will have been destroyed along with the world economy. I feel as if I'm missing something. I don't feel any more scared of getting it than I do the flu. There was none of this hysteria over swine flu, or bird flu, or SARS, or any of the other doomsday false alarms we've had in recent years.
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Dontaskme
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Re: perspective

Post by Dontaskme »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:31 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:13 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:04 pm

And as far as I can tell, the fuckwits who are stockpiling are not the elderly. Women can't get baby formula or paracetamol. No wipes for their babies. For fuck sake! People are stockpiling that stuff when they don't even have a baby!
That's why the army needs to step in and keep order, this is like the war times. Times like this is why we have an army. People are greedy and selfish and think only about themselves.

.
What's the army going to do? Shoot people for buying too much toilet paper? :lol: It will be enough for supermarkets to put restrictions on EVERYTHING. Put an end to stockpiling.
I meant the army can get on board alongside with the delivery drivers keeping the distributing of vital supplies flowing from the warehouses until the initial panic subsides within the supermarkets.

Sometimes we have to act in rather strange and unusual ways...especially when strange things happen.
Last edited by Dontaskme on Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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henry quirk
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Re: perspective

Post by henry quirk »

Dontaskme wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:41 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:30 pm
hysteria

by the end of april: carona will be old news...

No one can know that..that's pure conjecture.

A million flies can't be wrong. No Shit!
You mean like most of what you've posted on the subject?
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attofishpi
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US is fuked

Post by attofishpi »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:36 pm by the end of april: carona will be old news, its actual effect minor compared to garden-variety flu...the effects of dumbassery and hysteria, on the other hand, will be with us for a while longer
Hysteria? It is hysterical when YOUR prime bloke - the chump, stands up there at the mic attempting to tell the people of the most incarcerated land on planet Earth (O'er the land of the free!!) that the US is great ...the US is going to beat this...the US has the best everything!

...and all you $$$TAR$$$ & $$$TRIPE$$$ flag waving morons believe yet again in the bollocks that comes out of some silver spoon fed super rich simple fuck twats face.

You are all so brainwashed with everything is under control because you are in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!

Makes me puke when they introduce the twat - here he is THE president of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!! - Y dont they just introduce him as --- here is the PRESIDENT?

Because you are a pile of wankers...you all blow your load when you here that.

Well - your country has no way of reporting the true number of cases because your health system is so overly privatised. Bad news mate. U R more fucked than you real eyes.
Last edited by attofishpi on Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Dontaskme
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Re: perspective

Post by Dontaskme »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:53 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:41 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:30 pm
hysteria

by the end of april: carona will be old news...

No one can know that..that's pure conjecture.

A million flies can't be wrong. No Shit!
You mean like most of what you've posted on the subject?

No one knows jack shit about anything, we're all like headless chickens not knowing what to do when even the lightbulbs go out.

We do however have opinions.
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henry quirk
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Re: US is fuked

Post by henry quirk »

attofishpi wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:54 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:36 pm by the end of april: carona will be old news, its actual effect minor compared to garden-variety flu...the effects of dumbassery and hysteria, on the other hand, will be with us for a while longer
Hysteria? It is hysterical when YOUR prime bloke - the chump, stands up there at the mic attempting to tell the people of the most incarcerated land on planet Earth (O'er the land of the free!!) that the US is great ...the US is going to beat this...the US has the best everything!

...and all you $$$TAR$$$ & $$$TRIPE$$$ flag waving morons believe yet again in the bollocks that comes out of some silver spoon fed super rich simple fuck twats face.

You are all so brainwashed with everything is under control because you are in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!

Makes me puke when they introduce the twat - here he is THE president of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!! - Y dont they just introduce him as --- here is the PRESIDENT?

Because you are a pile of wankers...you all blow your load when you here that.

Well - your country has no way of reporting the true number of cases because your health system is so overly privatised. Bad news mate. U R more fucked than you real eyes.
blah, blah, blah

go, wallow

I'm done talkin' to irrationals
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henry quirk
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Re: perspective

Post by henry quirk »

Dontaskme wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:57 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:53 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:41 pm


No one can know that..that's pure conjecture.

A million flies can't be wrong. No Shit!
You mean like most of what you've posted on the subject?

No one knows jack shit about anything, we're all like headless chickens not knowing what to do when even the lightbulbs go out.

We do however have opinions.
Indeed...informed & uninformed...calm & hysterical.
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Re: US is fuked

Post by attofishpi »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:59 pm
attofishpi wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:54 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:36 pm by the end of april: carona will be old news, its actual effect minor compared to garden-variety flu...the effects of dumbassery and hysteria, on the other hand, will be with us for a while longer
Hysteria? It is hysterical when YOUR prime bloke - the chump, stands up there at the mic attempting to tell the people of the most incarcerated land on planet Earth (O'er the land of the free!!) that the US is great ...the US is going to beat this...the US has the best everything!

...and all you $$$TAR$$$ & $$$TRIPE$$$ flag waving morons believe yet again in the bollocks that comes out of some silver spoon fed super rich simple fuck twats face.

You are all so brainwashed with everything is under control because you are in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!

Makes me puke when they introduce the twat - here he is THE president of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!! - Y dont they just introduce him as --- here is the PRESIDENT?

Because you are a pile of wankers...you all blow your load when you here that.

Well - your country has no way of reporting the true number of cases because your health system is so overly privatised. Bad news mate. U R more fucked than you real eyes.
blah, blah, blah

go, wallow

I'm done talkin' to irrationals
Well then, as I said you are fucked cos you are stuck with a land full of them.
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henry quirk
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Re: I'm tellin' you

Post by henry quirk »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:46 pm
henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 5:36 pm by the end of april: carona will be old news, its actual effect minor compared to garden-variety flu...the effects of dumbassery and hysteria, on the other hand, will be with us for a while longer
And in the meantime countless businesses will have been destroyed along with the world economy. I feel as if I'm missing something. I don't feel any more scared of getting it than I do the flu. There was none of this hysteria over swine flu, or bird flu, or SARS, or any of the other doomsday false alarms we've had in recent years.
Yep. That's what I mean by the effects of dumbassery and hysteria, on the other hand, will be with us for a while longer.

A whole whack of misery for nuthin' ('cept pushin' agendas and throwin' crap).
commonsense
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Re: perspective

Post by commonsense »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:46 pm https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch ... ed-to-what

Compared to what?
by Heather Mac Donald

On the misguided response to covid-19.

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Compared to what? That should be the question that every fear-mongering news story on the coronavirus has to start with. So far, the United States has seen forty-one deaths from the infection. Twenty-two of those deaths occurred in one poorly run nursing home outside of Seattle, the Life Care Center. Another nine deaths occurred in the rest of Washington state, leaving ten deaths (four in California, two in Florida, and one in each of Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, and South Dakota) spread throughout the rest of the approximately 329 million residents of the United States. This represents roughly .000012 percent of the U.S. population.

Much has been made of the “exponential” rate of infection in European and Asian countries—as if the spread of all transmittable diseases did not develop along geometric, as opposed to arithmetic, growth patterns. What actually matters is whether or not the growing “pandemic” overwhelms our ability to ensure the well-being of U.S. residents with efficiency and precision. But fear of the disease, and not the disease itself, has already spoiled that for us. Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of .000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to .12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.

By comparison, there were 38,800 traffic fatalities in the United States in 2019, the National Safety Council estimates. That represents an average of over one hundred traffic deaths every day; if the press catalogued these in as much painstaking detail as they have deaths from coronavirus, highways nationwide would be as empty as New York subways are now. Even assuming that coronavirus deaths in the United States increase by a factor of one thousand over the year, the resulting deaths would only outnumber annual traffic deaths by 2,200. Shutting down highways would have a much more positive effect on the U.S. mortality rate than shutting down the U.S. economy to try to prevent the spread of the virus.

There have been 5,123 deaths worldwide so far—also a fraction of traffic deaths worldwide. And unlike coronavirus, driving kills indiscriminately, mowing down the young and the old, the sick and the healthy. The coronavirus, by comparison, is targeted in its lethality, overwhelmingly striking the elderly or the already severely sick. As of Monday, approximately 89 percent of Italy’s coronavirus deaths had been over the age of seventy, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sad to say, those victims were already nearing the end of their lifespans. They might have soon died from another illness. No child under the age of nine has died from the illness worldwide. In China, only one individual in the ten-to-nineteen age group has succumbed.

Comparing the relative value of lives makes for grisly calculus, but one is forced to ask: are we missing the forest for the trees? If the measures we undertake to protect a vulnerable few end up exposing them, along with the rest of society, to even more damaging risks—was it worth the cost?

An example: there were 34,200 deaths in the United States during the 2018–19 influenza season, estimates the cdc. We did not shut down public events and institutions to try to slow the spread of the flu. Yet we have already destroyed $5 trillion in stock market wealth over the last few weeks in the growing coronavirus panic, reports The New York Times, wiping out retirement savings for many.

The number of cases in most afflicted countries is paltry. As of today, 127 countries had reported some cases, but forty-eight of those countries had fewer than ten cases, according to Worldometer. At this point, more people have recovered from the virus than are still sick. But the damage to people’s livelihoods through the resulting economic contraction is real and widespread. Its health consequences will be more severe than those of the coronavirus, as Steve Malanga shows in City Journal. The people who can least afford to lose jobs will be the hardest hit by the assault on tourism. Small entrepreneurs, whether in manufacturing or the service sector, will struggle to stay afloat. Such unjustified, unpredicted economic havoc undermines government legitimacy.

President Trump has been criticized for not being apocalyptic enough in his press conferences. In fact, he should be even more skeptical of the panic than he has been. He should relentlessly put the coronavirus risk into context with opioid deaths, homicide deaths—about sixteen thousand a year in the United States—flu deaths, and traffic deaths. One might have thought New York governor Andrew Cuomo a voice of reason when, a few days ago, he tried to tamp down the hysteria in a press conference, saying: “This is not Ebola, this is not sars, this is not some science fiction movie come to life. The hysteria here is way out of line with the actuality and the facts.” And yet since then he called a state of emergency in New York, and he and Mayor Bill de Blasio have all but shut down the New York City economy. They, like most all U.S. politicians nowadays, have shown an overwhelming impulse to be irrationally risk-averse.

Rather than indiscriminately shutting down public events and travel, we should target prevention where it is most needed: in nursing homes and hospitals.

It is hard to imagine that the panicked leaders and populace of today would have been able to triumph in the last century’s World Wars. America’s colleges sent off thousands of their young men to fight and die in those wars; those students went off with conviction and courage. Currently, colleges and universities are shutting down with no hint of the virus in their vicinity. Would today’s panicked leaders and populace be able to triumph in the face of a World War, or some other legitimately comparable threat? Let’s hope that we do not have to find out.
Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of The Diversity Delusion (St. Martin’s Press) and The War on Cops (Encounter).
Thanks, HQ, for your well-researched, effectively composed post.

You mentioned “an overwhelming impulse be irrationally risk-averse.” So very true. I’m thinking that the exaggerated fear is due to the expectation that Covid 19 is an invisible monster against which we are helpless, rather than any objective comparison.
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Re: Coronavirus Craziness

Post by Skepdick »

Dontaskme wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 12:58 pm The problem with the stay away strategy is like a game of whack-a-mole. Eventually the mole has to come up for air, so who do you think will be around to see the last mole die? God only knows.

It is what it is...
If you don't see a moral distinction between 1000 infections a day and 1000 infections a week; if you don't think that the former is worse than the latter then it's very difficult to help you.

Human-animals get really ugly to each other when they end up competing for finite necessities. Like doctors. Or hospital beds. Or medicine. Or vaccines.
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Re: Coronavirus Craziness

Post by Age »

commonsense wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 3:49 pm
Age wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 9:25 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Mon Mar 16, 2020 8:13 am
I mean humans don't have immunity to covid-19.
So, to you, those humans who do actually have an immunity to covid-19 do not exist?
Those humans who have recovered from Covid 19 will have a natural immunity to the virus that made them ill.
So, this would mean that there is SOME humans who do actually have an immunity to covid-19, correct?
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Re: Coronavirus Craziness

Post by attofishpi »

This is a really nice account of someone that has\had it -- off of the cruise ship in Japan.

Early symptoms of corona virus & dealing with the disease - David Abel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2E1t3yMXgE&t=1717s
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