Coronavirus Hoax

It’s a pretty damn weak virus if it’s a bioweapon. IOW it’s an utter failure as a bioweapon, and given it’s long incubation period it would benefit no nation.

I have most likely just recovered from it. They stopped testing where I am so I just treated it myself at home. It was a flu, in my case, not an especially bad one. Some of the symptoms were new for me, not worse, just different. I don’t quite get the hysteria, it also seems like the economic effects are going to be enormous, which will lead to deaths and suffering also. It seems a cut off your nose to spite your face type of thing. I honestly cannot say where one should draw the line with the measures taken, but this seems an overreaction. We are trying to prevent problems by creating a sure thing problems perhaps for everyone. It also disturbs me how fast freedoms are being taken away. Now one could argue this is temporary and they will come back, but we should be very wary.

I did use a lot of alternative medicine on the thing, so pehaps I made it milder.

The corona virus is not a new virus. As early as 2013, it has been proven that this virus makes up about 10-15 percent of influenza viruses. It has also been known for a long time in veterinary medicine. This means that anyone who has had influenza in recent years has antibodies against corona in their blood and would therefore be tested positive.
So much for the test results. I live in Germany, and alone during the flu wave 2017/18 more than 25000 people died here. This will never be reported now. Instead, every doctor who tells the above mentioned facts is publicly called a liar and their YouTube accounts are being removed.

On the other hand :

cbc.ca/news/world/covid-19- … -1.5511026

And an exponential rise in infections.

Ever since President Trump came into office, a record high turnover and unfilled jobs have emptied offices across wide sections of the federal bureaucracy. Now, current and former administration officials and disaster experts say the coronavirus has exposed those failings as never before and left parts of the federal government unprepared and ill equipped for what may be the largest public health crisis in a century.

Source: NYT

I found what you quoted very unclear about what actually is happening at a statistical level. There’s no question lots of people are getting sick. The issue is whether the measures being taken are effective in stopping the spread of the disease, whether the measures are warrented given the potential effects on the economy. Right now people freak out when they get sick and many of them rush to emergency rooms. The percentages, which Gloominary posted, are still fairly low for most people and even people over 80 stand something like an 83% chance of surviving. People can self-quarantine if they are in vulnerable categories. I don’t see what you quoted as

on the other hand.

Nothing you wrote surprises me or contradicts my concerns, nor contradicts anything I wrote. As I specifically wrote, I do not know exactly what measures should be taken. My sense is that a hysteria has been created and more discussion of the cost of current measures should be considered and not considered taboo. I know from Italian friends the situation in Northern Italy which is much worse than in new york so far. I am not denying those effects. The 2012-2013 flu season killed 56,000 people in the US. This will likely be worse, but that was barely blinked over.

Governments are taking powers in a variety of ways, some extremely intrusive. In Germany I have friends, a married couple, who are not allowed to walk in the woods together. They have to keep a non-conversational distance from each other. The government has also set up ways to monitor people’s movements there. There are similar types of measures being taken in other countries.

Governments very reluctantly give up powers once they have them. The Patriot act is pushing 20 years old. Government surveillance has survived both Snowdon and Wikileaks.

What will the economic effects of this be? Whatever they are, they will hit the poor much harder than anyone else. They will hit the Third World harder than another else. Those effects will also likely lead to new government powers.

I am skeptical about how those with power view measures and weigh them when those measures increase their power.

That doctors in NYC are seeing some unnamed amount of patients and that these patients are experiencing unreported levels of mortality don’t change any of that for me.

I find it interesting that the distribution of masks was frowned upon in the US, for example. In Asia that was seen as an acceptable response. Get this: the reason given is that it is only helpful if you are sick for the protection of others. Well, gee. Given that nearly every virus is contagious before symptomatic - often it is only a day or two, but still - there is absolutely no reason to discourage this. Given the way the virus spreads right now it seems likely the the contagious period with Corona may be longer pre-symptom. Yet this measure was actually discouraged. For no reason.

I also occasional announcements about the lack of scienctific evidence for alternative medicine. Well, duh. There is no evidence for anything in relation to a new strain.

But things like garlic are proven to have anti-viral effects in general, but no, various agencies spent time arguing against the use of a very cheap known anti-viral.

Did they say anything about all the people emptying shelves of over the counter medications that drop fevers and reduce muscle aches.

No.

Silence.

Anyone know what a fever is for?

It’s part of the body’s way of fighting viruses.

Silence.

Millions of people buy these anti-immflamtories which will, I repeat, will reduce their bodies’ immune response
and silence.

And lo, a study in Europe has shown that some younger people who take those over the counter medications suffered worse illnesses. Silence.

This isn’t rocket science. People know what fevers are for, but the general public is often quite ignorant of such things.

Why no warnings to only use in cases of dangerously high fevers.

Why are responses that are not corporate/mainstream medicine attacked, when cheap alternatives would at least have done no harm and there is evidence that in general a number of alternative treatments can reduce viral symptoms and shorten illnesses.

These are the people who love the drug war and the war on terror.

You shared your experiences with what you think is COVID-19. That gives the impression that it’s a minor disease. So I posted an account which shows much more serious cases.

Gloominary made up some statistics based on wild guesses. He ends up with a death rate of .25% which he pulled out of his ass.

I already discussed alternative approaches to dealing with the problem in another thread (ie. not shutting down the entire economy). I used Korea, Taiwan and China as effective examples. They did lots of testing and tracking. That may not be possible in North America. Our rate of testing is pitiful - Germany can do 500,000 tests per week, Canada does 21,000. Canada does not use cell phone data to track contacts or quarantine. I’m generally against surveillance but it may be a lesser and necessary evil.

If you’re into stats then go here :
ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

Death rate of about 4.4% based on confirmed cases as of March 26.

And they acknowledge the limitations of the statistics:

Phyllo, we rarely agree on anything however in this instance regarding the infection and mortality death rate we’re in total agreement.

I really don’t see the quarantine ending by Easter Sunday and if it does it would be horribly irresponsible, devastating, or dangerous for Trump to do so. I’m really starting to despise Trump supporters and I’m speaking as a socially conservative non-liberal by the way too.

Once again, not all people that oppose Donald Trump are democrats, liberals, or commies, some of us are very politically conservative on the spectrum.

You call wiping out 4 years of economic growth “weak”?

You’re out of touch with reality.

tradingview.com/symbols/TVC-DJI/

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UGV1Nfrayg[/youtube]

Quality of life/standard of living, which is as much of an intrinsic value as longevity, and worth factoring before making any decision, let alone decisions which’re going to affect billions of people, is intimately intertwined with longevity.
Millions of people have already lost their jobs, their careers, their small businesses (but no doubt big business will weather the storm, further monopolizing our already oligopolic economy), and millions more will lose them, and their homes, if we remain under martial law for many more months, or until a vaccine is developed, which’s what I think their plan is, since the virus is bound to make a comeback anyway shortly after lockdown is lifted.

A significant reduction in quality of life, a move from relative abundance to scarcity, will lead to a significant reduction in longevity.
Additionally, there’s going to be massive amounts of civil unrest and crime.
Not to mention loss of liberty.
Liberty for many including myself is also an intrinsic value, the freedom to live our own lives on our own terms.

No I fundamentally disagree, it isn’t always better to play it safe, in fact playing it safe in the short term, can actually make you a hell of a lot more unsafe in the long.

No I don’t think we should crash the economy (the crash is already here, doesn’t matter how much debt money they throw at it, millions of people losing their jobs, producing and consuming less, is itself a crash, the real economy is real people providing goods and serves for one another, money only helps facilitates that) and decimate billions of young and middle aged peoples lives to give 80+ year olds, most of whom won’t get corona this year before a vaccine is developed, and most of whom will recover if they do get it, even if you believe the official death rate, which is obviously massively exaggerated, a slight extension of their life expectancy, which is already irreversibly slight.

And I mean is no one worried about giving government massive amounts of power anymore?
Of course at least some of that power will be used against the people, overtaxing, overregulating and underspending on them, undertaxing, underregulating and overspending on big business, cracking down on civil liberties in general, not just to prevent the spread of this virus, just don’t expect corporate and government media to tell you that.

Government isn’t going to want to give all this power back easily after this exaggerated crisis is averted, it may not even be able to.
One crisis can lead to another.
An epidemic, real, or imagined, can lead to a political and economic crisis, and a political and economic crisis can lead to revolution and war.
This thing could very well spiral out of control…but maybe that won’t be so bad after all, after the dust has settled, if it ever does, because of how appallingly corrupt our system is.

You make it sound like the world had the luxury of knowing what the ‘safe’ response was. At the outset, lol, all of what, a month or so ago, which in political/state-terms isn’t even an eyeblink, all we knew was “new aerosol-dispersed killer disease coming out of china”. No-one was ever going to hold a press conference saying “pff, sure, the economy is more important, suck it up bitches.”

Imagine it hadn’t been a disease, but a meteor. Chinese observatory sees it, says, yup, this is gonna hit us and its big enough to maybe cause an extinction level event. Everyone else turns their telescopes and spectrometers in its direction and finds to the best of their ability to discern at that point, yup, that could be true. So they say well fuck, everyone party like its 1999. And plays Prince songs. Economic and social upheaval commences.

Then it gets a bit closer and we find ok, it’s big, but the interior is filled with vanilla icecream. Huge sigh of relief, but economically, the damage is already done.

And in the long run, what makes you think this is the last new disease…? Corvid-19 turning out to be more paper than tiger is a good thing, a wake up call. We have two options now, learn from this event, and take realistic precautions against future events of this nature - stockpiling, becoming independant in medicine manufacture, emergency funds for the less wealthy etc. Or go on a witch hunt which will only teach the governments of the world to NOT RESPOND TO THE NEXT THREAT, which could be an aerosol version of ebola for example.

I’m not sure you have a very good definition of what an ‘appallingly corrupt’ system really is. Are we talking ‘Stalin and Mao, hmm grandma is looking tasty today and we’re so hungry’ corrupt, or just “gee-whizz those guys are richer than me and its not fair” corrupt…?

If… at the very least, an opportunity is taken to clean up the scum, whom are now evidently roaming and accumulating on the streets, then that’s a big positive… hope the police are out tomorrow to round them up, and using this time of transparency wisely.

How does that reggae song go again :confusion-scratchheadyellow: Oh yeah! Police and thieves in the street… etc. etc. etc. Who doesn’t player-hate on a cracked-out pimp :confusion-shrug:

This is about more than just a virus, but it obviously is a virus, and many are obviously dying from it that normally wouldn’t die from such. How does that other reggae song go again :confusion-scratchheadyellow: Oh yeah! Bad boys bad boys, what ya gonna do, what ya gonna do when they come for you.

Levelling up?

I agree. We don’t know. I have made the points I’ve made out of a concern that people consider the economic effects and the powers the governments in general are weilding. Whether they are overreacting and whether their measures are good ones, well, it’s too early to tell. Oddly I am in a country that has come with a minimal response. For good or for ill it will function as an experimental control. Heck, the schools are still open, even. As opposed to say Germany where you can’t walk in the woods beside your spouse or leave your house for any but a few reasons. IOW pretty much martial law. How these countries will fare with these really quite extremely different approaches should be rather informative.

I wouldn’t put a critique in the more certain terms Gloominary uses. However I think it is excellent that people are critical and skeptical.

Sure, I get your point, hindsight is 20/20, or at least closer to being 20/20 than forecast.
The crisis, whether it be a virus, terrorism or a meteor, may end up being better, as bad or one hundred times worse than expected.
My point is shutting down the economy and massively restricting our civil liberties isn’t erring on the side of caution, it’s not something we should take lightly either, in the long run it can lead to mass poverty, (further) corruption, civil unrest, crime and millions of deaths as well.
All things being equal, we have to be every bit as cautious about the loss of liberty as we do about the crisis itself.

The fact that government and the media think nothing of shutting down the economy and society, that the other side of the coin isn’t being explored in the MSM at all, is alarming, it tells me the powers that be unsurprisingly don’t care about democracy, freedom and our prosperity.
Even if it’s necessary, even it’s the right move, they should be assuring us that.
Instead they ostracize, censor, deplatform and dox anyone who expresses concern about the loss of liberty in the media.

It’s assassinate Jeffrey Epstein before he exposes the child sex rings operating at the highest echelons of society, government and economics, corrupt.
If you think it was just the catholic church operating child sex rings, think twice.
Government, the financial elite and the royal family are participating in this too.
Again, just don’t expect government subsidized and corporate sponsored media to tell you that, you’ve got to read between the lines and turn to alternative, grassroots media.

And everything else that’s been happening people should be aware of; fractional reserve banking, corporate bail outs, deregulation, subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes, anti-white racism, misandry, mass (illegal) immigration, offshoring, medical and psychiatric tyranny, assassinations, illegal and unjust wars, the wars not on but for drugs and terror, the impoverishment of the working and middle classes, stagnant wages, debt, inflation, rising food and housing costs, the erosion of civil liberties, national sovereignty and social services…

I agree, there is scum. But were they always doomed to become scum…? How about the police just quietly round them up and shoot them…? That’s a solution. But to me, scum are symptoms of a society level failure. Shoot this crop, there’ll just be another one generation later because the conditions that demanded a demographic to be that way still remain. I’m not entirely opposed to shooting them all tbh. but there’s always a price. And we’ll all pay it.

Hey Gloom,

Oh God yes I agree absolutely, we’ve sacrificed far too much freedom already, though we’ve done it mainly because we were too damn lazy to actually use what levers of power democracy gave us properly. In our defence I suppose, the odds were against us on that one anyway. It’s not like we were ever taught this shit in school overtly, or ever had the leisure time or money to all take degrees in politics.

Back later - real life stuff.

Even if this is a real crisis, why should crisis = loss of liberty?
I think liberty is the best way to deal most crises.
I trust individuals, families and communities with this more than I do government.
If anything, during most crises, government should get further out of the way the people, so they can best determine what’s wrong and how to avert it.
The solutions may be too complex, dynamic, intricate and nuanced for a cumbersome, top-down approach.
Give people the liberty to assess the level of danger to themselves, their families and communities, for themselves and respond accordingly.
And insofar as we do act collectively, it should be democratically, the government should be asking us for feedback about what it ought to think and do, it shouldn’t be merely telling us what to think and do.

We tried it that way. The dumb fucks would not self-isolate and they would not conform to the quarantine conditions. Now we are stuck with this.