I’m saying 4-6 weeks of a pretty hard shutdown. Then slowly start reopening things with mitigation efforts in place. Remember, the goal is to slow the spread to a managable level, not prevent the spread.
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Trump appears to be the most outwardly narcissistic, piece of shit US president I’ve ever encountered… Perhaps Nixon, his misconduct was primarily behind the scenes. With Trump you see him spouting BS, openly breaking laws left right and centre… God knows what else goes on behind the scenes… My opinion though. I must go to sleep now though… Seriously
I’ll allow it.
I’m gonna warn you all not to fall into the trap of comparing the West with these countries without taking their politics and cultures into account. They are the examples China will use to spread the idea of the failure of Western Democracy.
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That’s racist.
/s
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I’m fully aware of this (I’m being sucked back in to the convo, I don’t have the willpower to stay out)
Australia is thinking of implementing harsh, borderline authoritative regimes to make sure people stay home (police checks)
Extreme times call for extreme measures. Italy, whilst being out of control has mitigated the spread through its Nationwide lockdown (% of new cases daily has decreased).
I rarely, rarely advocate for authoritarianism, I’m what i’d call a left leaning libertarian… However with a dumbass, uneducated populace (and a ton of kids) that won’t listen to reason, I think we need to take drastic precautions for a few weeks. I’m talking about Australia now btw, the bogans, the kids refusing to adhere to social distancing… Now we have a Nationwide lockdown
Seriously it’s almost dawn, I need to sleep. Will resume convo tommorow.
I prey China doesn’t end up becoming far more powerful than it already is in response to this pandemic…
These are temporary measures allowed for in the law of most countries when the country is in a state of emergency. It is not exclusive to places like China, nor is it a shift towards authoritarianism UNLESS people let the government start changing existing law or adding NEW laws out of fear. If the foundation of the law is built on solid principles, the shift back to normalcy will not be a problem.
I think that ship has sailed. I don’t know if we will be able to slow it to a manageable level at this point, whatever manageable even means.
And even Japan may not have been as honest about their situation.
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I don’t think any country is honest about their situation or they haven’t done the required testing of the populace. India just declared a complete lockdown despite having only declared 500+ cases.
That’s a nation-wide lockdown of 1.3 billion people.
From what ive seen a lot of the panic buying was from first time gun buyers. People that really dont really know anything about guns or were on the fence about owning them. Most gun owners are already prepared and have been.
I stopped by a local shop the other day and got some magpul back up sights, the store was cleaned out. Anything AR, AK, or shotgun was gone. Only thing left were bolt actions. 556 and 9mm gone.
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It’s reality TV meets US politics. And a lot of people like it too.
Outside of Italy and New York it seems to be at a manageable rate for the moment. The question is how long it will stay like that.
The funny thing about this is that while some businesses might never reopen and a lot of people will be out of work, some other businesses are doing better than ever. A lot of it has to do with the fact that many people are just stupid. My wife was watching some news thing where a guy was saying that he bought so much food and didn’t know what to do with it all and now he’s been eating more than ever in his life. Does binge eating increase immunity?
Just for people who keep bringing up other past politicians, when we’re dealing with THIS politician right now, and he’s spreading more misinformation than anybody else.
Trump: “Anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. They have the tests. And the tests are beautiful.”
^ that right there is exactly the type of random, incoherent, fluffed-up bullshit that this man has said literally any time he takes the microphone. Beautiful, tremendous, huge, wonderful, amazing, incredible, blah blah blah, it’s just random crap, and it’s also a flagrant lie.
Pence: “We don’t have enough tests.”
He also said he was demanding that car companies make more ventilators, and tweeted about it to those car companies. But he never actually invoked the act. They’re not making ventilators, despite what he said. They just aren’t doing it. That’s another lie. And a dangerous one, too.
I’m not gonna defend any other politicians - bring up anything you want. But this isn’t part of the ‘blame Trump for everything’ thing, this is part of his literal compulsion to go on TV and ad-lib whatever the fuck he wants when he wants to do it in a way that he feels suits him, despite what anybody says, because he knows better than everybody about everything. He’s directly contradicting a physician who has been director of the NAID since 1984 over and over and over again.
These occurrences aren’t defensible. They just aren’t. If you want to support Trump because of his handling of the economy and you like that about him, go for it. Support him. Your choice, and I don’t judge about that. But don’t walk around talking moral equivalency and bringing up other shit other people did when people point out that in THIS particular case, with THIS pandemic, this man is literally talking out of his ass and has been doing so since the first time this virus rolled onto his twitter feed.
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Some news from the South of Italy via my father: it is nowhere as bad as the north illness wise. But they have strict restrictions on people’s movement. You may be stopped by police and asked to show the proper documents that allow you to be out. You can still buy food but they limit how many people can enter the store at one time. Restaurants are take out only. I asked if he wore a mask in public and he said there are no masks. He is also scared when it comes to leaving the house. He has a refrigerator full of food and is within walking distance of a market. It’s a small town.
That very article still refers to the administration’s failures as ‘grave’. Nobody could handle this perfectly, and what I’m talking about isn’t a ‘hindsight’s 20-20’ thing, it’s that RIGHT NOW, the immunologist in charge of providing critical information is being directly contradicted over and over again by somebody who is literally lying. But again, I ask for people to not bring up moral equivalency and 3 minutes later, an article ‘it wasnt just Trump’ appears. Of course it wasn’t just him. Water’s also wet.
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The problem with Trump, right now not two months ago, is that he can’t help but be Trump. He still thinks he is negotiating some deal and can bluff and lie and sweet talk his way to “winning.” He hasn’t figured out this is a virus, not a banker. So when he says that we’ll get through this quickly, and now that means a week, someone should ask him if the virus agreed to that.
You make a good point, never has someone who constantly says incoherent, nonsensical things been taken so seriously. What he will actually do or what others might have done is another story, but it is true that he is just talking a bunch of nonsense.
In his press conference yesterday he was even joking about the virus. He has no awareness.
POLICY-WISE, I don’t consider Trump a disaster of a president. Some people want to hate him for everything, but I don’t disagree with everything he’s done. And I’m NOT saying “Trump screwed up and everyone else did it right.” I’m saying exactly what you said - he’s just doing his ad-lib crowd-talking, but it’s not a rally, it’s a national emergency and people’s lives are at stake. Everybody HERE, in this thread, no matter whether they support opening the economy or closing it, cares about human lives. I think it’s been suggested that people don’t care, but I don’t think that’s the case. There should be a unified outrage about referring to coronavirus tests as ‘beautiful’ and plentiful when they’re not (and seriously, how can you not laugh when he calls the virus ‘incredible’ or a test ‘beautiful’). It’s not even about his policies right now - he can just shut up for once and let his physician tell people how serious it is or isn’t, and stop making the guy’s job so fucking hard.
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