Yeah. I don’t take it too seriously, of course I don’t have to live there. I remember seeing a few of their hit pieces a while back. From over here they seemed laughable.
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The really loony ones are like Alex Jones on steroids.
“The pandemic is weeding out the weak in spirit - faithless, unpatriotic, cowardly lapdogs of Western decadence, mongrels and traitors to the country and Party.”
Fucking funny as fuck.
The irony is that I only found that site because @chris_ottawa posted an article from there lol.
EDIT:
Shit it’s even funnier now I think about it. I found a crazy China site that no one I know in China has heard of because a Canadian dude posted a translated article claiming a zombie outbreak in the US and preparing for a potential war. I think it’s way up there in this thread somewhere.
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I was going to say that it was him who linked one, but I wasn’t certain and didn’t feel like verifying it. 
That is harsh, but also not sequestered to the CCP. I’ve seen strikingly similar sentiment expressed from some of the wanna be hard ass hicks here in Western PA. One was my brother in law.
Saw him in person last weekend. Not a peep out of him about living in fear or it only taking out the weak. He did seem a little nervous though.
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It gets even funnier.
I went and dug further. It(the zombie apocalypse article) was apparently written by a MALAYSIAN-Chinese dude who just wanted to make some side money from writing articles. He was laughing at how he pulled all the absurdity out of his ass on one of the forums written in Mandarin. Then he started asking how he could get money from the various youtube conspiracy theory videos that used that article which were obviously monetized.
I think most of the videos ended up being taken down due to copyright strikes by him, not “spreading fake news” like the OTHER conspiracy theory videos were claiming.
Oh! He thinks that’s funny, but he’s gonna get his whole village wiped off the map!
Er, I mean, reeducated.
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I find it pretty boring to talk about covid, maybe because I hear way too many people talking about it around me every day. However, I thought it could be interesting to talk about what’s been happening in Italy for the past week.
Since last Sunday, we are in de facto lockdown: while we have no individual lawful obligation of staying home, pretty much all businesses are closed and the very few that has received grace by the government are subject to extremely heavy measures.
What’s interesting is that the reaction from people, this time, has been profoundly different than that I observed in March.
Over the past couple of days, all the major cities, including Naples, Turin, and Milan, have seen huge protests, some of them orderly, some of them very chaotic. Tens of thousands of people marching in the streets, attacking the police, even smashing shops’ windows. This is something I’ve never seen happen in my country.
The purported goal of these manifestations was for businesses’ owners to voice their concerns and have the government acknowledge their critical situation: we have a big economical crisis going on right now and there’s plenty of business owners who invested a lot into making their business compliant with the new regulations that had been in place since the initial re-opening in May, and now they’re faced with another closure that will kick them in their grave after the first lockdown had digged it for them. There’s already been a case that made the news of a shop owner who commited suicide the other day.
After thinking a ton about these happenings, I have mixed feelings. For one, I think it’s a very stupid thing to do right now. We have a pretty steep curve of covid cases at the minute, and having thousands of people gather in a place is about the most idiotic thing you can think of doing.
On the other hand, if we take the ones who took part just for the sake of breaking things and making a mess out of the equation, the protests started from people that are being treated by the government like they literally don’t exist and that have no money left to feed their families, with no chance to make up for the situation in any way because it isn’t up to them even though they did all the had to do. I can tell you guys that from here, it really feels like the government couldn’t care less about helping out those in need, and they’re very much playing with the lives of business owners.
So yeah, kind of a rough situation here right now. Interested in hearing what y’all think.
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Ok, first, a daily dose of China Trump dissing:
Wife told me Trump allegedly said his son “defeated” COVID in 13 secs according to the media. Well, it did put up a good fight.
I’m just gonna say it’s rough, but it will pass with time, just like every other disaster in history. Don’t think too much about it(I KNOW it’s FUCKING HARD but TRY not to. Just TRY. That’s all I’m asking for. I’m someone who’s naturally highly unsusceptible to negative thoughts but I’ve also been affected mentally by this whole thing. I know it’s fucking hard.) and focus on doing productive things for the future when things go back to normal. This won’t last for too long in this day and age.
Try to find the humor in all this. It’s what I normally do to keep myself sane for most things.
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Queen Jacinda of New Zealand understood that you have one bullet in the chamber when it comes to lockdowns before you spend the goodwill of the people. That’s why you have to go all out and go to zero with a clear, transparent timetable.
Semi lockdowns prolong the economic hardships and exhaust the population. It’s either that or a repeat of Bergamo.
Or you can read about the Spanish Flu and various historical plague outbreaks.
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You’d be surprised at what I can find funny when I really want to preserve my sanity lol.
But, yeah, this has to be taken seriously as in one needs to act accordingly to what NEEDS to be done and put priority on the collective interests of other members of society. I’m just saying try to separate the mind from the actions.
He’s a computer science dude. He’s understands the concept of exponential growth.
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I really appreciate the advice and the sympathy. Luckily, I don’t feel very much affected by this. I’m very focused on my priorities at the moment, namely university, and I never let all of this take away from the work I put in. If anything, I have benefited from the increased time I have for myself to put in more work into what matters to me.
I felt the need to discuss this because sometimes I wonder, to be honest, if maybe I should be caring more. As you can see, I’m making the opposite argument of somebody who lets this affect them too much. I have found my protective bubble in a sense; I feel like I have a mission for myself and a path to follow, which keeps me on track no matter what. So sometimes I get this thought (I know this might sound very weird as it’s basically the opposite of what’s commonly observed): am I maybe doing something wrong by caring so little about what’s happening around me? I know there’s nothing I can do as an individual besides following the rules and doing my best to stay safe, but that’s all everybody else can do too; so why is everybody else here constantly talking and talking and talking about this?
Hope this made some sense.
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This is something I found very hilarious by the way. If only it weren’t actually true.
This is our prime minister and the meme reads:
“put on protective glass
Move the tables farther away from each other
Reduce the number of clients
Sanitize well
Track clients
Done everything? Good, now close.”
This is a very accurate recollection of what happened over the last two weeks.
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It’s not sympathy. It’s empathy. Don’t get it mixed up lol. I’m not at a higher status than you.
Yeah it did.
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Right, my bad. I got the words mixed up, not the concepts though.
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Finally some good news! Trump has ended the pandemic! See here:
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-6bc5-d2df-adff-6fdfff5c0000
This is great news not just for American’s but for all the citizens of the world. I don’t know why Trump is ONLY running to be President of the U.S. He should be elected as the World Leader since he ended the pandemic!
Meanwhile: U.S. sets single-day record for COVID-19 cases during new surge | Reuters
I’m so confused.
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Smacks of Xerxes punishing the sea after a storm that destroyed his bridges, as recorded by Herodotus.
Xerxes was enraged and had those responsible for building the bridges beheaded. He is then said to have thrown fetters into the strait, given it three hundred whiplashes, and branded it with red-hot irons as the soldiers shouted at the water.[4]
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What is the Italian government doing to help people and businesses financially? Over here if you aren’t working much or at all then you get $2000/month, which is roughly equivalent to minimum wage. There are also some programs for businesses, but with restaurants not being allowed to seat customers inside for the second time around now in Ontario and Quebec that is one business sector that is going to die fast. Basically, in Canada the people at the bottom are not much worse off and in some cases doing better than before but anyone who had a good job and lost it or owns a business is getting totally fucked over.
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Nothing. To my knowledge, there is only a monthly payment of € 400 (approximately $500), that some people are getting under specific conditions. That’s about it.
Edit to add: this payment isn’t anything new that they started using due to covid. It’s always been in place for when people lost their job or couldn’t work temporarily due to force majeure.
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They’re subsidizing businesses in the form of paying a large portion of employee wages here. The government gave me a one-time handout of $500. Woohoo!
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No wonder they are rioting, I would be too. Only problem over here is that we will have to pay it back later, but from what I hear Italy was already heavily in debt so that might partly explain why the government isn’t too generous. Its fucked up though, a virus that doesn’t even produce symptoms in 86% of people (UK study found this) has whole economies falling apart due to restrictions meant to stop the virus. There has to be a better way than this.
They have something like that here too for businesses that can’t afford to pay their employees but aren’t totally shut down, except it’s up to the business to apply on behalf of their employees and some don’t care so a lot of people are getting screwed over. I do have to say, Canada appears to be much more generous with COVID benefits that the rest of the world.
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I’d like to recall this event that took place during the first lockdown to give an idea of how well our government works.
Around April, they announced a € 500 (I think) payment would be handed out to business owners affected by the lockdown.
When the time came, everyone connected to the government website to request it, and the website shortly after crashed due to too many visits. It took I don’t know how many weeks to restore it (and I can tell you since this is my field that it does not take that long to get a website back up and running, if the cause is excessive traffic). Meanwhile, there was also the rumor (don’t know if it was confirmed) that, after the first few thousands of users signing up, they simply ran out of funds.
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