Germany has a R of larger than 1 again ... reducing the lockdown really works .... not.
It has been 0.65 on Wednesday.

Having the government pronounce totally mixed messages, and then various regional muppets contradict the government 'just because', the UK won't be far behind you !

Better than having the federal government outright lie about the severity of the virus, the president firing various task force members for contradicting him on the virus, and just about every state in the union is gonna be reopening way too soon because they don't want to pay the unemployment money to the people. Welcome to America, indeed.

I'm wondering if Donald is in fact playing a game of Pandemic, but getting it wrong & thinking that more cubes is the way to victory ?

loooool

Donald Trump almost seems decent every time I read news about his Brazilian counterpart.

Last weekend he called for a nation-wide open barbecue in the streets and the worst part is that a whole bunch of complete fucking idiots followed the call.

I know Michigan was saying they were running out of money for unemployment and were gonna need Federal help.

What an absolute SHIT, but utterly believable reason to risk American lives.

The company I work for took our health insurance away from us. During a fucking pandemic.

My sister was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and has been medically advised to work from home to avoid exposure to covid. After trying this out for a few weeks, and it seemed to work well enough, her employer has just ordered her back into the office or be dismissed. Pretty sure this violates something in Canadian employment law...

Yep. Think of the savings if they get rid of her! Think of the productivity spike if another set of hands are brought in! Why should anyone be paid to sit at home??!!!!

/s

I have no idea what government agency you’re supposed to call in Canada over something like this, but she needs to call them and call out her job for being ratfuck pieces of shit that are needlessly endangering a worker.

The range of symptoms displayed, and organs affected, by this disease is kind of staggering.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... rc404=true

In a sane reality, this would mean indefinite lockdowns until a vaccine is available, or until real herd immunity is achieved, whichever comes first. Unfortunately, especially for those of us in America, capitalism refuses to allow human safety to come before profit margins, therefore everything's gonna reopen by the end of May and tens of thousands more will die than if we had just stayed locked down.

Oh, and the economy is gonna be wrecked no matter what. In fact, reopening might actually speed bankruptcy along for many places, as business will be infinitely slower than it was before the lockdowns began and states may begin to cut off emergency business aid (but only for small businesses, as corporations will get their bailouts no matter what).

I think gambling addicts are really getting rich with this lockdown. Like my brother. He's working hard as always, but because all casinos are closed, so for the first time in like a decade all the money he makes has nowhere to go and stays with him. Was funny going to the store with him the other day and he searched through this big bundle of banknotes to pay cash, weird sight to see from someone I only know perpetually broke.

If I had any kind of political power I'd find some excuse to keep casinos on lockdown for years.

I dont say anything. Found this article by google search:

https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc ... hs-winter/

"CDC: 80,000 people died of flu last winter in U.S., highest death toll in 40 years"

Salcon.com

Really? Who would have thought.

Us "Michiganders" are really giving Florida a run for it's "stupid" money.

Here in Australia pokies machines (slot machines) are a massive problem, but the COVID-19 pandemic has shut that shit down. I’ve read articles saying that the shutdown here has saved billions of dollars that would otherwise be pissed away on those machines. Those sorts of machines are disgusting and predatory so I’m glad nobody can use them.

I'm not gonna pass judgement about stupid until Saturday when the German football league resumes after a two month break and one of the very first matches is one of the most hotly emotional pairings of arch rivals that hooligans love to go nuts over, no spectators allowed in the stadium but I'm just gonna bet people are gonna act stupid outside and around the stadium.


That shit is worse than heroin so I definitely consider it the number one upside of this whole drama.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down that state's stay at home order. Depending on local rulings, this opens the entirety of Wisconsin to reopen and begin resuming "normal" activities ASAP.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics ... index.html

Thank you. You actually made me look at the matches' setup for Saturday. I hope you are happy.

Good news everyone:
University medical centre in Hamburg

Covid 19 infects multiple organs, including kidneys, liver, heart, brain and the blood. Second of most it is the kidneys that are affected. It can be so severe that they can shut down completely and stop working altogether.

Actually ... this is terrible news.

I look forward to this great news when I'm forced to go back to work on Monday.

I don't know about the US but this is how many people die because of flu in my country (Italy that would be). A mere 200 each season.



Besides, I don't remember flu ever throwing ICU wards on the verge of collapse nor killing 150+ doctors

I notice the regular Swedes are suddenly quiet here. Recently I got Swedish citizenship (to add to my Swiss and South African citizenships <if that is even a word), and it couldn't have come at a worse time. I see what Sweden is doing, like, I get it, we're going to live with this virus for a long time, so fuck shutting anything down etc etc, but when it comes to the point where you even question how it was handled with old people (which was fucking poorly) and then get shut down with downvotes by hordes of "I am not a nationalist but fuck you if you criticize Sweden you non-Swedish fuck!" svennor then yeah, fuck you Sweden because you're just as bad as Trumpists.

Sweden, the tolerant country! But the most socially conservative country. Swedish exclusionism is a thing, but sadly, you are still not better than anyone else. Stick to trying to be lagom you useless twats; your death toll and the subsequent government response is a fucking disgrace. Fuck any Swede that defends it (which obviously includes myself, obviously).

You can say whatever you want but truth is more likely Covid19 virus is a big lie, hoax to make our lives more miserable and slavery. Do you own re-search and use your brains.

"Italian Government call for arrest of Bill Gates"

https://youtu.be/QnsYcsCjLWI

And 200 is too little deaths from normal COMMON COLD flu/influenza. It takes many thousand lives by year even in a "smaller" countries. Everything that mainstream media, deep state elitist puppets told is a lie. There is no Covid19 just new world order and slavery. Sorry about bad english, not my native language. I think it was supposed to be questioning things and somekind rebel attitude amongs metal heads, but maybe "new normal" is the thing nowadays, this ugly Orwellian society full of fear and paranoia. And now listen to some SLAUGHTER (Can) & Twisted Sister..

Beware, man, the pedo Illuminati lizard-people are here, they monitor this place. They could send you to Nibiru for spreading the truth. Hopefully you have your tinfoil hat on so they can't locate you with their 5G-powered telepathy.

I dont see anything wrong with freedom and never have to wear tinfoil hat or masks and nowadays death is more than welcome, welcome death (Bulldozer) and dont know what pedo-lizards you are talking about. I know what paid whores and stupid people are still. It feels like if mainstream media says Pet Shop Boys is/was Beherit, people take it as truth nowadays, without questions.

Lol, k.
...

In other news, in the real world, my place is opening up. I have mixed feelings: looking forward to go places, but still worried about my parents. Small groups are allowed only outside, so still no gaming group...

Wellor, unless you're reading pubmed and actually looking at the medical publications coming out on this topic, you're completely unqualified to assess whether this is true or false. It's OK to say "I don't know" and be skeptical of the mainstream media- in fact, especially with this topic, I'm skeptical of about everything that's released on major publications (particularly because a lot of these people aren't scientists). But saying that it's probably false is flat out wishful thinking. It's practically no different from young earth creationists proclaiming the world is only 6,000 years old and Jesus rode a fucking velociraptor.

I really encourage you to take a look at this reddit thread if you don't wish to read anything from medical journals. Maybe they're too wonky for you, or way too detailed, I don't know/care. But there are people that have had their lives seriously hurt by this virus, and they don't need a fucking news outlet to make their voices heard.

Due to the misinformation spread around the current virus and previous ones, I read two books on the Spanish influenza. One would also be in English:

Laura Spinney -- Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World

The similarities are interesting and also the reaction to the virus. H1N1 stayed with us until the end of the 1950s, which is quite remarkable. So, those hopes that all will go by soon, well ... this might not be happening. Anyway, I found it fascinating to see how the world reacted back then and to how the same mistakes are being made again. Yes, the world has changed a lot and we are far more able to deal with a virus than one hundred years ago. But it somehow feels as if there are not many lessons learned.

^Well, not exactly; the actual epidemic of 1918 passed by after less than a year. There were outbreaks of H1N1 virus in the following years that were less virulent and dangerous however, as the virus evolved, people evolved resistance to it and the virus itself became less dangerous. There were H1N1 outbreaks far more recently than the end of the 50's- ten years ago the H1N1 swine flu broke out and while it was a particularly nasty strain, it was still far less lethal than what we have going around now- it was not worth shutting down the entire planet for. That may ultimately happen with this virus- it may actually become no more than "just a bad cold" and be far less dangerous (or at least, dangerous to far fewer people) than it is right now.

I guarantee that people will NOT spend the next 30 years afraid to leave their homes, cancelling public events, wearing masks in public places, etc. virus or no virus. There is no way people will let that happen, because ultimately people will reach a point where they will rather take their chance with catching it than live as literal hermits for the rest of their lives.

Yeah, and also, our knowledge about this virus is increasing rapidly, at a rate we've never collectively seen before due to the sheer volume of scientists working on researching it. I'm pretty optimistic that the 1-1.5 year mark for a vaccine will occur. I could be wrong, but so far everything looks hopeful.

We found out today that my mother-in-law has the virus. She got it from a coworker at the pizza shop she works at, and she'd been working through the pandemic up to now even though her job kept telling her to just go on unemployment until further notice. She has asthma, so this could potentially get very bad very quickly for her.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/20/sweden-becomes-country-highest-coronavirus-death-rate-per-capita/

OMG really ... so their experiment has failed?


(highlighting by me)
Wow ... that is quite a large time span that being used to back up this statement.

News today.

Yep. This seems like such an obvious thought after reading it, but my dumbass never came to this realization.

Which methods failed or didn't can only be evaluated when it's over. Sweden's relative openness may as well have reached a high death rate quicker due to having more people getting the virus quicker. The more closed countries will of course catch up in number of cases and deaths as they open up, since staying this closed for years isn't an option.

There are also differences in how countries count their cases.

Maybe I should have added irony tags next time.

The second quote of my original post is the important one.

Sweden's experiment definitely failed. There is official protocol that directed doctors to limit giving patients oxygen treatment and opt for palliative care, even if some of them are dying. A functioning healthcare system shouldn't have to do that. With stricter lockdown measures this could have been prevented, and in fact the purpose of lockdowns is to prevent healthcare workers having to decide who gets to live and who doesn't.

We get the "it's like the flu" argument here too. The flu doesn't 9/11 us every day. They always go by how many people the flu kills in a year, and disregard the point that the flu is already everywhere. Corona is killing as many people, including people who wouldn't normally be killed by the flu, in a shorter time, under lockdown conditions which is slowing the spread... If there had been no measures taken we'd have been at triple 9/11s a day even earlier. People just don't want to believe it can be so, I guess... I dunno about other countries, but Americans truly do have a magical belief that bad things just can't happen here.