Resist The Authoritarian Response To The Coronavirus

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Ignoring the inane strawman that is the third paragraph of the quoted post below, I’d just like to draw attention to the almost cute naïveté of the bolded:

We listen to scientists. PERIOD.

If scientists are urging temporary authoritarian measures, we TEMPORARILY adopt them.

Are you more afraid of "temporary" measures not being temporary than millions of people dying of a preventable circumstance, then you're prioritizing an ideology over actual public safety in an incredibly dangerous way.

Taken to extremes, this means we shouldn't enact any temporary interventions.

If you think some preventative responses are justified, then you should consider the fact that caution and slow response will lead to people getting killed. Worry about reigning in power when the situation is contained. Otherwise you'll be dealing with a catastrophically worse situation.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

This minor (don't lie and claim otherwise) pandemic has served as a wake up call.
The vast majority of humans are blithering fools, willing to enthusiastically get down on their scrawny knees and pray to their government to strip from them of all of their invaluable freedoms and liberties, simply because the government narrative states that it "must be done" to "keep you safe." Americans, unfortunately, are not exempt from this.
I have been shocked and appalled by how so many people are coming out as being little more than thoughtless media drones. This is roughly equally true of people on the right and the left. No critical thinking, no reasoning, no rationality. Just brain-dead hogs who will gladly be dragged along by the nose ring to the slaughterhouse. Cheering and commending their killers all the way.
What's even worse is that they will not be contempt to lose merely their own freedom, but will bully and harass their fellow citizens into also giving us up. This whole event has been a sick frenzy, fueled by depraved, sub-human leaders and abetted by armies of millions of mindless dolts.
The lot of you have no respect for liberty, and it's a wonder this nation has managed to maintain any vestige of it for so long. Our actions, our rhetoric, bears absolutely no respect or love for anything that makes us free, that makes us American.
We really are no different than our ancestors -- human nature never changes. It's times like these that make this inherent truth so crystal-clear. You -- you, America -- are nothing more than bottom-feeding, self-loathing rodents, practically demanding slavery. We're no different than the Russian peasants who installed a government which would go on to exterminate millions of their own. One can hope that we or our descendants do not some day meet a similar fate, but there is little evidence to suggest that we will not.

Honestly this country might as well close up shop and abandon all pretense of governing with basic human decency and honoring basic natural rights. We are nothing. Bring on eternal martial law and dictator Nancy Pelosi because some folks are coughing and a few people in some nursing homes passed away.

2/10, way too overdone. You can do better.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

These are the types of enlightened individuals who would claim “FDR is a fascist” or “Lincoln is destroying our Democracy”.
This is a war, full stop.
Certain liberties need to be suspended.

I've had it with your insane Chickenschit Little dreck. Onto ignore you go and bad riddance.

Bodies are piling up in Northern Italy as we speak, hospitals are overwhelmed to the brink, and thousands are dying in a few days!!!
You are the real schithead (watch this post get deleted for using the exact same word as you) if you think this isnt a national emergency. America isn’t special, we will all suffer greatly from this apathy and “muh freedom even when people are dying”.

Lol.

Over 1,500 Americans die every day of heart disease.  
Over 1,500 Americans die every day of cancer.

Also, just to clarify your misinformation: 2,503 have died in Italy from the virus since the first confirmed case on January 31, 2020.  Please stop trying rile people up by posting misinformation.

My dude cancer and heart disease are (typically) long-term conditions. Heart disease in particular is something that takes years (including years of various lifestyle conditions) to emerge.

The median COVID death takes about a month. This is a totally nonsensical comparison.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Lot of dumb shit in this thread but I'll hone in on two frustrating things:

- Is anybody in this thread actually going to bat for the CA bans? Even in most of these cases (outside of SF) the "shutdown" still allows people to go outside.

In general the hysterical arguments in this thread are people probably talking past each other because they think they're fighting an ideological battle rather than a practical one (shocker). I don't think anybody is actually arguing about absolutes; they're arguing about where the line should be as if they were arguing about absolutes.

- People who are downplaying the virus because so few people are infected right now... do you realize how exponential growth works? Like, at all? You are aware that we're in the early stages of infection and testing, and that if trends continue, the number of infected people and deaths will get much larger, right?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

- Is anybody in this thread actually going to bat for the CA bans? Even in most of these cases (outside of SF) the "shutdown" still allows people to go outside.

I don't think anyone is going to bat for looser restrictions (except perhaps Mr. R when it comes to non-urban Virginia)! Everyone is at least satisfied with the status quo being used in most of the US, it's just that some people think we need significantly more including at least San Francisco measures.

I agree! That's, in part, why I made the post.

- People who are downplaying the virus because so few people are infected right now... do you realize how exponential growth works? Like, at all? You are aware that we're in the early stages of infection and testing, and that if trends continue, the number of infected people and deaths will get much larger, right?

I don't think anyone is downplaying it based on the current numbers. We are downplaying it on the quote of 10,000 dead based on the current measures. I'll even say 10-40k is a range that would be relatively harmless and go unnoticed (for the US alone). This is not based on the 100 we have already lost, we are indeed forecasting exponentially. On the other hand, you have fools up-playing it by saying the number of dead will be 25% of World War II (i.e., nearly 20 million dead bodies - I won't quote him on 50%) if we fail to make drastic changes and copy the France/Italy model. I would wager half my worth that we are a heck of a lot closer to accurately estimating the impact.

Eh... I was referring to posts like this:

You really expect me to poke someone with a yard stick any time I have to help with a customer at the counter or hand someone a piece of paper? You are demanding that we shut down over suspicion. Medical Mccarthyism is insane. Whats next, mandatory thermometer readings before someone can enter a bathroom. News is reporting mob violence against suspected infected people. This is NOT an OK way to react to a disease that does not kill 99% of infecteds and has not infected 99% of people. This is going to go down as one of the biggest mass panic overreactions in modern times.

I have no idea where this "mob violence" against infected people is coming from (perhaps Stormfront?) Hard to tell. But I think anyone who is talking about percentages, especially if it's a cumulative percentage ("has not infected 99% of people"), is ignoring the fact that we have documented cases of community transmission that had been happening for potentially weeks, combined with a lengthy incubation and transmission period, and the fact that we didn't start taking any precautions to mass-test or prevent transmission until a week ago. Anyone who says that, at this point in time, the disease has only done X is fundamentally misunderstanding how transmission works. The quote above is not the only post I've seen that makes an assertion like this.

FWIW you are not one of the people I was thinking of as being a problem in this thread.