Coronavirus

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

If you want a non-conspiracy conspiracy plot, ye can mull over this one. He bungles the presentation a bit by lumping flu viruses in with coronaviruses, but what he intends to say is that a certain percentage of what people seasonally get and generically call "the flu" were already something else. Anyway, since many angles should be considered, albeit critically...

https://youtu.be/p_AyuhbnPOI

[astfgyl]

Not a bother Alphonsus, I enjoy the back and forth and I'm very open to the probability of being wrong.

I think the age of mass manipulation is certainly upon us and has been for a long time, but is being done more and more insidiously in general and reaches more and more people now that everybody is so connected to instant updates and information. I'm saying that in a general way though, not directly relating to the current situation. Even the likes of conspiracy theorists could be influenced by sending them down certain paths of serving them up whatever secret information it is that they want to believe, ie somebody who mistrusts the national government is fed something to reinforce their belief that national government is or has been lying to them all along, thus leading them into some other sort of manipulative misinformation, but it is now supplied by the trusted source who told them everything they wanted to believe in the first place. There you would have it, a non believer now ripened for indoctrination.

Say then, by using such techniques, a general feeling in the public is cooked up by misinformation, which then influences governmental decisions as a reaction to public unrest. The possibilities are endless.

Those are the sort of things I feel are probably going on in general in all parts of the world at all times anyway regardless.

And I'm a great believer in the idea of democracy myself, I just think that the whole idea can be very easily twisted in this day and age no matter what one's beliefs and leanings happen to be.

As regards politics, I don't believe anybody gets into it to do anything other than to try change things for the better but then when they get there, the financial rewards are often fantastic and to quote Jaz Coleman:

"The only way is up the only way is up
But when you are up you have to try and stay there
So you stamp and cheat on people"

So democracy is a fine idea, but capitalism often gets in the way of it as we see time and time again in a place like Ireland when so many of our political leaders have connections to private businesses and investors.

Right, a little bit stream of consciousness there to be fair but for the most part I don't know what to believe anymore is the general takeaway from my last couple of posts. I won't bring any of that up any more in this thread because it's all rather difficult for me to properly elucidate anyway and is of fuck all consequence to the situation we find ourselves in right now. For what it's worth, I'm doing what I'm advised and taking all of the general precautions I can

Back on topic, does anybody here know anyone who has tested positive, and how is that working out for them? I feel like a lot of people wouldn't go public if they did test positive, due to the general hysteria surrounding the whole situation. And how many people will suffer it out at home rather than face the testing and the stigma it will bring on themselves and their families I wonder.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

If you want a non-conspiracy conspiracy plot, ye can mull over this one. He bungles the presentation a bit by lumping flu viruses in with coronaviruses, but what he intends to say is that a certain percentage of what people seasonally get and generically call "the flu" were already something else. Anyway, since many angles should be considered, albeit critically...

https://youtu.be/p_AyuhbnPOI

Notably, he provides no form of solution or better path to solution than those being pursued; slow it down til we find a vaccine. In that sense, even if he is right, he's right only about a datum! Which I guess makes him feel smart but isn't otherwise all that useful!

[astfgyl]

If you want a non-conspiracy conspiracy plot, ye can mull over this one. He bungles the presentation a bit by lumping flu viruses in with coronaviruses, but what he intends to say is that a certain percentage of what people seasonally get and generically call "the flu" were already something else. Anyway, since many angles should be considered, albeit critically...

https://youtu.be/p_AyuhbnPOI

Very interesting video there (and pretty much reinforcing what I want to believe!).

Before I even pressed play I got to thinking about my young fella who was hospitalised twice with a form of unspecified viral pneumonia and really frightened the shit out of me both times to the extent I wouldn't leave his side for a solid week.
Basically the doctors at the time told me the same thing that this guy is saying that there are new and unspecified viruses every year, and his case was simply another one of those and would have to run it's course. If it was to happen again this minute how differently he would be treated. Probably the full isolation and hazmat suit treatment. Actually not probably, definitely, and even before it was determined what type of virus exactly it was he had, in stark contrast to the treatment he did recieve at the time which was in the childrens ward in Clonmel in a room with other kids, and the docs and nurses did a great job looking after him. And nobody practiced their social distancing techniques on him, thankfully.

That is sort of what I was trying to get at with the Cambridge Analytica comment earlier but I don't always have the most wonderful means of expressing myself. I have had a feeling of something not being quite right with this ever since it was specifically traced back to the fish market. In a city of 11 million people. Something in the reporting of this is weird. It is obviously really a thing, but is getting somewhat skewed in the panic.

And then again maybe it isn't simply that and it really is a cause for global panic. I don't know

[Snare]

But who's going to take the horse to France now?

[Carnage]

Findus.

[jobrok1]

But who's going to take the horse to France now?

Finally!
Someone asking the right question...

[Pedrito]

You may or may not like him, but Russell Brand has a way with words that might just get your juices flowing. I have found him to be everything from an annoyingly smug twat to someone geniunely deep and interesting with a whole lot to offer the world. He puts into words here what I think many of us can `FEEL is happening around us at the moment, what has lead up to this event, the questions we all have in our collective un/subconscious. It is interesting that much of the language he uses is psychological/Jungian and from the little I have read of Jung, these ideas that everywhere in our media, our art, our music etc almost have been pointing towards an event like this coronavirus outbreak..essentially we knew this was coming because we know we are so imbalanced as a society in our relations with nature, the spirit etc etc. Who knows? Worth a watch though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1sbp5oyVh4

[Eoin McLove]

I feel similarly about Russell Brand. A sometimes irritating, usually interesting, sometimes both at the same time kind of dude. I'll have a look at the video in a bit.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Now, if they were doing this everywhere, you'd be justified in getting your tinfoil hat ready. Good ol Israel, always ahead of the curve:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/israel-to-track-mobile-phones-of-suspected-coronavirus-cases

[Juggz]

Worth a read for anyone into some detailed analysis, conclusion spoiler below.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge  capacity  limits  of the  UK  and US  healthcare systems  being  exceeded many  times over.  In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care  requirements that we  examined.In  addition,  even  if  all  patients  were  able to  be  treated,  we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US.

In the UK, this conclusion has only been reached in the last few days, with the refinement of estimates of likely  ICU  demand due  to  COVID-19 based  on  experience  in  Italy  and  the  UK (previous  planning estimates assumed half the demand now estimated) and with the NHS providing increasing certainty around the limits of hospital surge capacity.

We therefore conclude that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social  and  economic  effects  of  the  measures  which are needed  to  achieve  this  policy  goal  will  be profound. Many countries have adopted such measures already, but even those countries at an earlier stage of their epidemic(such as the UK) will need to do so imminently.

[Pedrito]

Frightening that report. Fuck me.

[Airneanach]

Brand's a  good'un. He's a professional at putting his foot in it, and the Brits seem to give him the disdain we reserve for the likes of Bono, but he seems to be nothing short of a decent soul.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

His thinking points there are where I've been at the last week or so, but like him I haven't fully been able to formulate them. The fact that normal functioning capitalism is basically going to have to liquify in order to deal with this very real crisis really highlights, for me, just how much of a hindrance it is to consequential change in general, like with the climate crisis. This is the central notion of "capitalist realism", whereby a virtual instrument by design becomes a real shackle in practice. The economy should be grounded at base in real resources not virtual instruments. It is modern humanity's greatest, most over-arching folly that it is not so.

[Juggz]

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0317/1123774-taoiseach-to-broadcast-to-country-on-covid-19-at-9pm/