CORONAVIRUS Death Thread

[Lune]

Originally Posted by Blingy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Mead

I'm watching from the opposite side of the fence. While it's sad and unfortunate knowing people are suffering in the hospital and possibly dying the other side of the equation is terrifying.

Six years ago my kids and I started working at a food bank. There were about 20 families that received a box of food every week. Average box had around $150-$200 worth of high quality food. Fresh produce, dairy/eggs, meat, dry goods, etc. filled with donated items. Most families had 2-3 kids, one had 6 kids. Most of these families were escaping some pretty hellish lives from outside our borders. Some families came to the food bank for only a short time, others for years. We also coordinated with 3 other food banks in the area to make sure all the families had at least basic necessities.

Along came covid-19. Even when the initial cases showed up here in the states we started having discussions about "what if" and the like. So when Washington shut down we had a rough guess about how we'd need more food......and we were WAY off. Our food bank had over 100 requests for assistance immediately, the other three were in a similar boat.

We got together with community leaders and other aid organizations. Scrambling to fill requests was exhausting. Yes there was food available but getting it from the farms/ranches/processing plants to the families seemed pretty impossible. The community was as responsive as could be but asking a software developer to drive their Ford F350 (with trailer) from Seattle to Yakima every week to pick up produce for months....yea, not happening. People would rather buy a case of corn and drop it off at a food bank than spend a day a week driving over the pass.

Volunteering at a food bank one day a week with a teenager once a week was a great feeling; today not so much. As time went on more and more people asked for assistance. Many of us are ready to collapse from exhaustion. Today our food bank is supplying food to 700+ families, area-wide we're helping nearly 3,000 families (about 12,500 people). These aren't lazy people but rather people that came to our country, got a minimum wage job but worked their way up to a better paying job only to have things shut down. Imagine going from a $60k/year (this isn't much in Seattle) job supporting your family to working 60 hours a week between 2-3 jobs at minimum wage cleaning carts?

This week is looking pretty abysmal for our "customers". Imagine telling a mother with 2 kids "Here's your 2 cans of corn and 3 packages of top ramen". Yea, that's what I'm going to head out the door to do in a couple hours. Our infection rate over the last 30 days is 1 new case out of 550 people. We're already telling healthy people they have to go hungry because 1 person out of 550 is getting sick.

But the economic catastrophe is worst in the US precisely because our infections are so out of control. You can tell the serfs to get back to the fields all you want, many people are reluctant or outright refuse to subject themselves to the stroke & lung damage lottery so the stock market can keep humming along. And that's not counting the millions of people who are elderly but not yet retired, or have cardio-respiratory comorbidities or diabetes, who have a very real chance of death from this thing. The current economic situation really isn't a result of the shutdown, which in the United States was very lax and short-lived (here in South Carolina, you could barely tell anything was "shut down" at all), but rather from a critical mass of well-justified avoidant behaviors on behalf of consumers and workers, which will remain as long as the infection is perceived as out of control.

Meanwhile in Italy, where their outbreak used to be as bad as ours, things are getting close to normal with some precautions.

"But the economy", oft used by the right to justify destruction of the environment or any number of things, is a horrible and reductionist refrain and I think it shows in this case. Many other people in this thread have admitted they don't really care who or how many die or get hurt from this thing and I think that's sick.

[Gwaihir]

Originally Posted by Woke Locc [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you get bronchitis and develop pneumonia from it and die, what did you die from?

You died from stupidity, for not having Fish Mox on tap while your 6000 a year mandatory health insurance prescribed PA refuses to prescribe antibiotics because "muh virus" and "antibiotic resistance".

17.99 for 100 500mg pills, breh

[Blingy]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

But the economic catastrophe is worst in the US precisely because our infections are so out of control. You can tell the serfs to get back to the fields all you want, many people are reluctant or outright refuse to subject themselves to the stroke & lung damage lottery so the stock market can keep humming along. And that's not counting the millions of people who are elderly but not yet retired, or have cardio-respiratory comorbidities or diabetes, who have a very real chance of death from this thing. The current economic situation really isn't a result of the shutdown, which in the United States was very lax and short-lived (here in South Carolina, you could barely tell anything was "shut down" at all), but rather from a critical mass of well-justified avoidant behaviors on behalf of consumers and workers, which will remain as long as the infection is perceived as out of control.

Meanwhile in Italy, where their outbreak used to be as bad as ours, things are getting close to normal with some precautions.

"But the economy", oft used by the right to justify destruction of the environment or any number of things, is a horrible and reductionist refrain and I think it shows in this case. Many other people in this thread have admitted they don't really care who or how many die or get hurt from this thing and I think that's sick.

How do you propose they get food? put gas in their car? pay other basic necessities?

[Jimjam]

Basic hygiene precautions, paid time off for sick leave.

[Lune]

Originally Posted by Blingy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

How do you propose they get food? put gas in their car? pay other basic necessities?

Well, in other wealthy countries they passed generous safety nets to both businesses and individuals to keep people on payroll until they got covid more or less under control and people felt comfortable participating in the economy again without killing grandma.

In the United States, we used barebone, short-lived levels of conditional aid as coercion to try to force people back into the workforce while the infection raged out of control in the leadership vacuum and grassroots science denial. Also the loans intended to prop up employment were further depleted by Republican-condoned theft when the Trump administration removed oversight of how the money was being dispensed.

So yea, I don't have a solution for the millions of Americans who sell their labor to survive because the US had so many chances to minimize Covid's impact and we squandered all of them.

[maskedmelon]

Hysteria has been far more damaging than the virus itself. Hysteria is what prevented many from leaving their homes and worst, what compelled others to remain at home. Those who are too afraid to face the world should be allowed to hide as long as they like, but under no circumstances should they be empowered to deny others their livelihoods. Every person who wants to work should be free too pursue that desire. That doesn’t mean that they should be guaranteed a job, just as those who wish to stay at home should have no guarantee of income.

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

but rather from a critical mass of well-justified avoidant behaviors on behalf of consumers and workers, which will remain as long as the infection is perceived as out of control.

I think trying to argue that the economy is in sad shape primarily because people are refusing to work or shop is a non-starter.

The only people I hear don't want to go back to work are teachers, and I wonder where their well-funded perceptions come from because everyone else I know is really really eager to get to work - I mean I'm being facetious everyone knows chaos and dumb kids are good for Democrats and teacher unions are the Democrat Party personified.

Also, while personal income growth dropped 4.2% in May, consumer spending rose 8.2% so people definitely want to shop in spite of having less money.

I think people are really having a hard time with the idea that most Americans are just getting used to it and don't care to exhibit the level of panic or care that they should. People are dying, but people are always dying. They're doing it in the hospitals not in the streets so what do they know except what they see on the news? And the news tells them something else every day. Put your mask on! Take it off! Put it back on!

Covid fatigue has set in.

There were too many conflicting stories, too much panic and then non-panic and then panic again.

Lastly, and I apologize for the huge chart, I think it's valuable to look at the case-mortality ratio. This is your chance of dying if you get Covid.

Cases and mortality by country

Yemen 27.90% <-- lol omg
United Kingdom 15.30%
Belgium 15.10%
Italy 14.30%
France 13.90%
Hungary 13.60%
Netherlands 11.70%
Mexico 11.30%
Spain 10.50%
Chad 8.20%
Canada 7.80%
Sweden 7.20%
Ecuador 7.00%
Ireland 6.80%
Barbados 6.60%
Liberia 6.40%
Sudan 6.30%
Niger 6.10%
San Marino 6.00%
Syria 6.00%
Andorra 5.80%
Switzerland 5.80%
Slovenia 5.70%
Trinidad and Tobago 5.70%
Guyana 5.40%
China 5.40%
Iran 5.30%
Romania 5.20%
Egypt 5.00%
Burkina Faso 5.00%
Greece 4.90%
Indonesia 4.90%
Mali 4.90%
Peru 4.80%
North Macedonia 4.60%
Denmark 4.50%
Germany 4.40%
Finland 4.40%
Algeria 4.40%
Lithuania 4.10%
Tanzania 4.10%
Iraq 4.00%
Poland 4.00%
Bahamas 4.00%
Kyrgyzstan 3.90%
Guatemala 3.90%
Antigua and Barbuda 3.90%
Angola 3.90%
Sierra Leone 3.80%
Brazil 3.70%
Bolivia 3.70%
US 3.60%

European countries bolded. The reason I think this chart is important is because it negates the perception of how severe the outbreak is. For example if you're in the UK if someone you know gets it there's a roughly 1 in 7 chance you'll never see them again. In the US that chance is 1 out of TWENTY-7. Welcome back Jack, sorry about the slight brain damage, hope it doesn't make you vote for Trump twice.

So in the US people are being bombarded by the news but they don't see people dying. Sure the per/capita rate might be high, but people aren't seeing the mortality. Oh he got sick yeah nothing happened. Not gonna worry about it myself.

People in Italy were and are more compliant because they smelt the bodies. Ours are in some hospital or out back.

[Nirgon]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

People are over estimating Trumps impact on C19 in the US. He is a scapegoat.

The US has an incredibly unhealthy workplace culture. People are incentivised to work when unfit to do so (spreading infections, causing workplace accidents, lowering productivity) and aren’t provided the care and support they need to recover promptly to once again become a productive worker generating worth.

Social pressures means workers will come in when they shouldn’t as employers run skeleton crews as they see employees as a cost to be minimised, not a profitable asset.

Tying healthcare to employment is fundamentally sound, but insurance needs to cover paid time off and conditions for cancelling a workers employment need to be fair.

America would deal with the virus much better if workers weren’t being made to choose between Blingy’s food line now because their employer dismissed them as they wanted to isolate and got made unemployed or Mead’s Cleric Epic cos they kept attending work despite being exposed to C19 risk.

The books are cooked. Proven multiple times in this thread.

Combined with the obvious political agenda, hypocrisy of other promoted agendas by the same side and what their activities involve (mass gatherings)... you come to an extremely obvious conclusion. This one isn't hard at all.

[BlackBellamy]

Originally Posted by Nirgon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The books are cooked.

You know what's interesting? The international recipes. In the US we bake that Covid all day until it's all swole up and everywhere. In China they just eat it raw trying to put it away as fast as possible, like it wasn't even there.

[Woke Locc]

Originally Posted by BlackBellamy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You know what's interesting? The international recipes. In the US we bake that Covid all day until it's all swole up and everywhere. In China they just eat it raw trying to put it away as fast as possible, like it wasn't even there.

Would the economic damage be worse if we had taken it raw?

What about the death tally?