That's just what a loser would say.
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That's just what a loser would say.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/9RTLDYCgrXQwo/source.gif
You know our deaths per capita are nearly double yours right?
USA shitshow: All flash and not enough shit.
Let's just for a sec assume this goes on the way most experts assume at this point. It's not going away, the vaccine is a year away. Keeping the R0 under 1 costs ~1.6% of the GDP per month (Finland's rough estimate), and losses without lockdown measures probably still are over 1%/mo. The countries who managed this the best (smallest amount of cases) are the most vulnerable when the next wave comes (at the latest end of the year), and will need similar measures to now to keep the R0 in check. What's the world economy going to look like with most countries taking a 15-20% hit on their GDP? Most countries will see a doubling of their national debt, and looking at massive budget deficits for the coming years. Will they start cutbacks or printing money, or both? That's gonna be post-WW1 level inflation in many places.
Guys this race is a marathon, not a sprint.
Now start imagining a world where the vaccines won't work.
Thing is, the economy is going to hurt no matter what we do. The idea that we have to choose between the economy and lives is vastly oversimplistic.
I'll be interested in seeing the relative economic pain that countries with a proper test-trace-isolate strategy suffer compared to ones that are just going from panicky lockdown to overoptimistic opening to panicky lockdown and on and on until there's (hopefully) a vaccine. I do think the countries with the fewest deaths will also experience the least economic pain; there is a best of both worlds out there (or least worst of both worlds, if you will).
Speaking of opening the economy, I haven't listened to this yet, but I'm guessing Osty is not going to saying "Let her rip!"
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/...nars/episode-8
Ignoring this was obviously much worse for the economy than just dealing with it would have been. I don't think there was a single rational thought behind the strategy Trump's team was pursuing. Trump just did what has always worked for him, and will continue to work: self-aggrandize, deny reality and eventually shift blame.
I see that it works, but I don't understand how.
Biden's new thing is absolutely hilarious: Trying to get a coalition of republicans to help him win in November. I wonder if anyone on Biden's team bothered to look at the numbers. Trump's approval rating is at a record high and consistently above 90 with republicans. There are no votes to gain from over there... These people's brains have been thoroughly ironed out. What Trump is doing seems to be ideal for his approval ratings. Nothing seems to matter as long as he's consistent on messaging. Objective reality doesn't seem to play any part in it.
I'd like to get Wuf's perspective once he's done trying to figure out how to get the light inside the body.
This is true with politics in general. If you trust your leaders, they're just better liars than the ones you don't trust.Quote:
Objective reality doesn't seem to play any part in it.
NHS Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion - £60k
NHS Climate Change Manager - £44k
NHS Staff Nurse - £30k
#ClapForTheNHS
I've got an idea. They could train me in equality legislation and climate change legislation, and pay me £30k to do both jobs, and then hire two more fucking nurses with change to spare.
Something to look forward to when this is all over - Chicken a la Chlorine.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...b6270384a98e17
I don't get what the fuss is about chlorinated chicken. For a start, what do people think make swimming pools safe from all the kids' piss and snot? Secondly, nobody is going to be force fed chlorinated chicken. It's a choice.
Just reject it when you do your shopping. Easy game.
Part of the problem is that it encourages poor treatment of animals during farming. The other is feedlot chicken tastes like shit.
Quote:
The reason US farmers [use chlorine washing] is because their animals are raised in such cramped conditions that the only way to stop them becoming diseased is to dunk them in chlorine,” he said. “It’s really an animal welfare issue here. If UK farmers want to compete against American imports they’ll have to lower standards or go out of business.” - Nick Dearden of Global Justice Now warning on the implications of the UK doing a trade deal with the US.
I don't think UK producers will have to lower standards or go out of business. Well, maybe some will go bust, but they're the ones producing cheap chicken anyway, so animal welfare is still an issue there. Corn fed free range chickens will still be the go-to for the majority of people.
idk why USA have such problems though, it's a fucking massive country, well enough room for free range chickens.
It's not that there isn't room, it's that it simply costs more to raise chickens in any way other than these massive sheds. Most people don't notice enough of a difference, so most people buy the cheaper chicken. And so the companies that raise cheaper chickens can raise them even cheaper due to scale discounts, and downward goes the spiral.
Also, I'd like to point out that, sure, you probably could beat a blind taste test of free range chicken vs feedlot chicken when given a piece of roast or poached meat-- but you can't tell the difference in any chicken "product", like McNuggets, etc, and I'd bet money that you'd do no better than chance in a dish like pad thai. The reason this is important is because these buyers are heavy hitters and will shape the market. Which label you chose at the super market is of little consequence. Some of the best fried chicken spots here buy cases of feedlot chicken because otherwise their food costs would be through the roof and unsustainable for a casual eatery's menu price point.
I guess you're right. I mean I can tell the difference, but I very rarely eat processed chicken in things like nuggets. But I do realise a lot of people do.
People who are shopping for their Sunday roast, they're mostly buying good quality chicken. And I prefer to buy good quality eggs, too, but again most eggs will be in processed meals and cakes etc.
But still, if people are outraged by poor animal welfare standards, it's up to the consumer to change their eating habits. If they don't, then they have no right to complain about it. If you're against the mistreatment of animals, you have a moral duty to do your research. Not doing so is de facto acceptance of the status quo.
Sounds promising.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/05...e-doctor-says/
Yeah, I mostly agree, but again I'd like to point out how important market dynamics are. If there's a healthy market for ethical meat, it's at scale, and so the difference in cost is truly reflective of preference, then fine. However, if unethical meat reaches such a scale that it can be on the shelf next to the ethical stuff at 1/4 the price, people are being heavily incentivized to go with feedlot chicken. And I'm not sure I believe free range chickens' quality of life is increased to a degree that's commensurate with a 300% increase in price.
"Free Range" chicken in the US is misleading, anyway. Chickens are not clever animals. The chickens are kept in nearly identical conditions to non free range chickens, but there's a chicken door that leads outside. That door is not open 24/7, so the chickens are not really "free" to go in and out whenever. This means the chickens are not remotely familiar with the outside world, and are therefore scared of it, preferring the familiarity of their "normal" conditions.
Also, the chicken door's mechanism is often built to reinforce a fear of it, i.e. it makes a loud, mechanical noise that frightens the chickens when it opens or closes.
The chickens are technically free to go out onto the range, but in practice, they don't.
Here in the UK our regulations are much tighter. In 2017, millions of eggs temporarily lost their "free range" status due to being forced inside barns as a consequence of bird flu. Although it has to be said this was because of an EU law that states hens kept inside for more than 12 weeks were ineligible. Not sure if it will change when we leave. I hope not.
So long as ethical food isn't prohibitively expensive, it doesn't matter how cheap the alternative is. People have a choice. If you want to virtue signal about animal welfare, fair enough, it's better than most causes. But what matters to me is that people have a choice.
If I had a choice between paying a pound for half a dozen eggs from my local farm, or paying 10p for battery eggs, I'd take the farm eggs every time. I'd have to be pretty poor to buy the cheap eggs, and if it came to that I'd be grateful they're so cheap and wouldn't really give a flying fuck about a bunch of idiot birds. Chickens are basically food for humans. That's their purpose in today's world. If they didn't have this purpose, they'd be extinct because they're dumb and tasty. Every predator wants a piece of it. They're lucky we're clever enough to farm them instead of just brutally hunt them.
I honestly have no idea how pheasants have not gone extinct. They are morons. It uses a lot of energy for them to take flight, but they're dozy as fuck. They don't get out of the road very quickly, not like crows who have a degree of road sense. It's like they don't realise a fast moving hunk of metal moving directly at them is a danger until it's about ten meters away, at which point they amble off the road and basically hope the hunk of metal somehow slows down or change direction. And they aren't quiet, either. They make a really distinctive noise that when I hear makes me salivate a little, like Pavlov's fucking dog. The only reason they still exist here is because we farm them, then release them into the woods so we can hunt them.
Pheasant is my favourite meat.
I don't think I've ever had pheasant, and googled their range to see if they're even in the US.
They are, and StL seems to be on the boundary of their range, so I guess I'm surprised I haven't seen one.
I did a lot of camping as a teenager, too, so that only makes it more strange, IMO.
It's a bit like goose, but less fatty and richer. Goose is preferably to duck, which is preferable to turkey, which is preferable to chicken. All are good.
I've eaten partridge before, too. It's a bit small, feels like I'm eating a garden bird which kinda feels savage. Then again I don't think that when I eat duck, but they taste good. Partridge is nice but not worth killing a small bird for. I think that's my list of birds that I've eaten. I reckon swan would be nice but we're not allowed to eat them, apparently they all belong to the queen. Selfish bitch.
Oh yeah ostrich. That's pretty good, that's better than duck but not as nice as goose.
I've never eaten bat soup or pangolin curry though.
Back on topic.
The only time I see duck on a menu is either at a Chinese restaurant or at a really fancy restaurant (Duck a l'orange).
It's not available in the packaged meat section of any major grocers, and IDK if you can ask the deli dept for duck.
Americans are boring when it comes to our poultry. It's pretty much all chicken and turkey.
It's mostly chicken and turkey here to be fair. Duck is generally available frozen at the supermarket, goose is a rare treat, maybe Christmas, while pheasant I eat fairly often because it's not expensive and available frozen at the nice food shop in town where the posh people do their shopping. For the price of two loaves of bread, I'll get a meal and a sandwich next day.
Ostrich I had when I was in Austria, of all places. I don't think the country is named after the animal, but in their language it sounds like it.
Yeah, I don't disagree, but I guess I'm just trying to point out that it's not a static market, and I believe enough droolers will go "10p for eggs? SOLD!" causing the ethical egg market to shrink, increasing price, downward spiral, and we end up having $1.75/dz eggs vs $7 eggs. Then there's the issue MMM brought up that I was avoiding to keep things simple: regulatory shenanigans make it very hard to trust that there's really any ethical difference between the cheap eggs and the ones that cost 4x.
Another wrinkle is that traditional producers have bought up free range/organic/whatever producers and integrated the operations. So when an organic dairy cow gets sick, they simply drive it across the street to the conventional operation, pump it full of antibiotics, and keep the milk flowing. This means their "ethical" operation is subsidized and dependent on their conventional operations-- meaning an independent ethical operator will always been priced out of the market-- meaning the market only has the illusion of the possibility of being ethical, but will forever be underpinned by unethical production.
It's fairly easy to buy ethical eggs in a small country like the UK. I would estimate there's at least five farms within a two mile radius where I could buy fresh farm eggs for £1 half/dozen. There's a farm shop next door, currently closed due to covid but it's on my doorstep. I don't see the price of these farm eggs increasing for any reason other than pure inflation, even if crap eggs were given away for free. The droolers are all in cities where it's a different way of life entirely. I remember once someone from Birmingham saying to me they would rather buy Tesco Value eggs than farm eggs because the Tesco ones have the "kite" stamped on them, which is an assurance it's been treated for salmonella. They actually think the Tesco egg is healthier, even though it's many days more old and of inferior nutrient value. It's like they don't know that cooking eggs kills salmonella anyway. People in the countryside don't want crap eggs because they know they are inferior, and also want to help support the local farming economy. That support isn't going anywhere, and it's also why farmers don't take the piss with their prices. £1 for h/dozen big eggs is cheap, better than the top range of eggs at supermarket and better in quality, too. The cheapest eggs in Tesco are 85p for h/dozen, and they are as small as chicken eggs get.
It's hard to have a discussion about ethical food without acknowledging that humans need feeding. Our treatment of animals always has to come second to our need to eat. As a species it would be incredibly difficult, I would go as far as to say impossible, for us to maintain such a population with purely ethical methods of farming. For a simple example, there isn't enough space in the UK to create the volume of eggs that we eat if every egg is free range. Unethical food production is a necessary evil. It's not just about market forces, it's about the sheer volume of humans too.
America seems fucked up though, and I hope our regulations are not going in that direction. We're well regulated right now and that is in large part due to the EU. This is one reason why I hope we do have a trade agreement with the EU... because our regulations will need to be mutually acceptable, it will provide a direct economic disincentive to deregulate.
So Ong, you stil keen to defend this guy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLTLDBEP5sg
btw, this the kind of adversarial discussion the US gov't needs. If all the POTUS has to do is talk shit to the press, that's not good enough.
Sweden is doubling down. In april their chief epidemiologist Tegnell said they have around 15-20% immunity rates in Stockholm already, and reaching herd immunity in june. This week they got results and around 7.3% of Stockholm's population have antibodies. Tegnell's response, "a little lower than we expected but not by more than a few per cent". Currently they have more cases and deaths than the rest of the Nordic countries combined.
The US might be winning, but Sweden is still in the running.Code:cases deaths %cases %deaths
SE 32172 3871 53.5 78.8
DK 11380 561 18.9 11.4
NO 8309 235 13.8 4.8
FI 6493 233 10.8 4.8
IS 1803 10 3 0.2
Total 60157 4910
I'm in no hurry to say "omfg" and get myself to Twitter when I can whore my opinion for likes.
I mean, all I got from that is that there are problems with testing in care homes. I don't know what these problems are, how they can be solved, if anyone is to blame for these problems, if Boris himself could have done something, I just haven't a clue. This is why I'm not angry with the government for what's happening. idk, I guess during such stressful times I'd rather potter about in the garden than work myself into a state over politics.
The only thing I can guarantee is that if Labour were in charge, if the Tories were the opposition, the Tories would be moaning about Labour's incompetence. Whether you like Boris or not, it doesn't matter. There's no viable alternative, just the same waste of oxygen from different faces.
What makes you think Keir Starmer is any more competent than Boris? Being in opposition is an easy gig. All you have to do is moan about the government. There's always something to moan about. Good work if you can get it.
What's the point about speculating whether X would do a better job than Johnson? We can never know that. All we can say it's hard to imagine anyone doing much worse of a job really.
We're about to pass ITA into fifth worldwide in deaths/capita (third if you exclude city-states). So either you have to accept the gov't deserves some blame or you have to adopt some conspiratorial thinking to blame it on something else.
The fact that they keep trying to blame it on scientists without actually publishing what the SAGE scientists are/were telling them is a bit suspicious to say the least.
So this douchebag drove his sick wife and kid 260 miles to stay with his elderly parents while he and his wife had CV, in defiance of the lockdown orders.
A couple questions apart from the obvious 'wut, the rules don't apply to him?' one: He drove hours while deathly ill with CV? He thought the best way to protect his family was to take them to stay with his elderly parents?
Obviously he should resign and just as obviously he won't. But, the bigger problem is the effect this will have on the public who will feel like they shouldn't have to follow the rules members of the gov't itself won't follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03fbVfcX7Ds
The point is that it explains my apathy towards this kind stuff. And it's very easy to do a worse job. Imagine if I were in charge. Spliffs and tea all round, that'll cure us all.
I'm not really interested in this blame game. If I was, I'd start with China. But, unless they have acted deliberately, I'm not really that bothered about them either. All I expect is they learn from their mistakes. Same with our govt, and this would be true in either case. If Labour won the election, I'd cut them some slack too, because this is unprecedented and I'd expect mistakes to be made.
I'm in no doubt that had we done this instead of that, less lives would have been lost. It goes without saying that we need to understand if the mistakes we have made should have been avoided, and if so, who is accountable and to what degree. And, more importantly, what measures need to be taken to ensure the same mistakes are not made in the future. The forthcoming inquiry is not just about accountability, it's also about learning to be better prepared in the future.
On a side note - it's interesting you point out city-states have a higher death rate per capita. Why is that do you suppose? Fun fact - the UK is the 14th most densely populated country in the world with a population greater than 10 million. Italy is 21st. We should expect to be more severely hit than Italy.
If Cummings did indeed drive his family 260 miles knowing he was ill with covid, then yes he certainly should resign, and probably will be forced to.
Just reading this Cummings things. The govt are saying it was essential for him to arrange childcare. Fair enough. Taxis are a thing. My housemate is a taxi driver and during lockdown has driven from Ludlow to York (170-odd miles) and to Heathrow (150 miles) to take people where they need to go. A 230-mile taxi is going to cost around £250, £300 at most. Expensive, but not unaffordable, and when normal people are paying what they have to, there's not much sympathy for politicians.
He needs to go. Can't see him surviving this.
Of course the taxi fare is offset by the amount you spend on fuel driving yourself. The real cost of a taxi is going to be well under £200, plus the bonus of not having to drive for the entire fucking day while ill.
This excuse isn't cutting it.
Absolutely, density makes a big difference, but it's not everything. The UK had 2 weeks' more warning than ITA, and a weeks' more than a bunch of other countries like SPA, SWZ, FRA , and so had we had our act together, could have done a much better job of preparing.
Instead, we've had a late and relatively soft lockdown, and now have loosened it with no TTI in place.
In another week we can expect to see deaths start to go up again. What's the plan going to be then I wonder?
No. 10 is backing him up, said the trip was "essential."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52782913
Apparently they went while his wife was sick but he was still fine, but he was assuming he would get it and no-one would be able to look after their kid.
Obvious problem is the rules don't allow you to make trips based on what you're worried might happen.
Also, to hear his wife tell it they never both had it bad (i.e., bed-ridden) at the same time.
Our lockdown is relatively soft, but is that the fault of government, or the people? I've made two lockdown journeys to buy weed. That's me breaking the law, not just in buying drugs, but making what the government would deem to be a non-essential journey. So If I catch covid while I'm out and about, is that the govt's fault? Or mine?
The lockdown is as soft as the people treat it. As for it being late, I can understand a controlled method. Maybe it was too long, but in India's case it was four hours notice, and people are STILL walking home from the cities to their villages because they didn't have the time to prepare. There's clearly an optimal way to impose a lockdown... India was too fast, maybe we were too slow, I'm glad it's not me that has to decide how to go about such a task.
And the longer we're in lockdown, the more serious the problems associated with it are. We've talked about it already, but there's a balance between health and economics. If we become a third world country, we can expect a lot of people to die from nutrient-based illnesses. There comes a point where the economic cost is costing more lives than the virus. Again, I'm glad it's not me that has to weigh up these factors.
Do you understand yet why I'm reluctant to get into the political blame game? I couldn't do a better job, and neither could you, as much as you might like to think you could. If I can say one thing about Boris, it's that he seems to be dealing with the stress pretty well for someone who has also just been ill. He's not crumbling under the pressure. I think he's a world class politician, like Ronaldo/Messi standard. This isn't a measure of trust, this is an observation based on my low opinion of politicians. I'm basically saying he's a good orator, a fantastic liar, brilliant at diverting attention from his own incompetence, and a complete and utter sociopath. I have more faith in such a person to make cold decisions than someone who is too nice for his own good, like Corbyn, who imo would be more likely to make popular and emotional decisions that end up doing more harm than good.
I don't mean soft in the sense that some people aren't following it. I mean soft in the sense that people coming into country weren't being tested or told to isolate. That's one thing. It was also soft compared to ITA, where people were told not to leave the house unless it was absolutely necessary. They may have been too hard, but without any information it would have been better to be safe than sorry. It was also soft in what it considered essential work. When the tube is still crowded after a lockdown, it's not a very effective lockdown. The tube is a fucking petri dish.
Finally, they didn't impose mandatory masks, like places such as Austria did. So there's another way it was almost certainly too soft. And if you compare how our death rates after lockdown are to Austria's (as an example), it's pretty grim. You can't put all that down to density.
I don't understand the question. How is the gov't supposed to force 100% compliance? The fault is yours obviously.
The irony here is that what we're doing is probably worse for the economy than either extreme would have been. If we had gone in early like SKO, GRE, GER, AUT and done proper TTI, we'd be much better off now. If we'd gone the way SWE did, our economy might be marginally better but we'd prolly have a lot more deaths. What we're doing with our half-assed approach is getting most of the death with little of any possible economic benefit.
I assume it's because the gov't is pro-Brexit and rah rah Britain, and so you're reluctant to be critical of them.
I could do a better job in so many ways relating to this. To be fair though, I am a scientist and so I am better qualified than Boris or his cronies to grasp what others are telling me.
Yeah good thing we have a sociopath in charge instead of someone who cares about people. That's the last thing you want in a global health crisis. Sheesh.
Also, your continued bleating that "a labour gov't would be worse" isn't just irrelevant, it's super lame. How much worse could it even be than it is now?
btw, UK has lost 2m jobs so far, GER has lost 375k. So if we're worried about jobs (and we should be) maybe we should do what GER and other countries have been doing.
This is an incorrect assumption. I mean I'm not even that patriotic, you just imagined that because I'm pro-Brexit. I'll critisise the Tories when it suits me, such as when they go "waaaaa Russia". And I'll be critical of them if an inquiry implicates them.Quote:
I assume it's because the gov't is pro-Brexit and rah rah Britain, and so you're reluctant to be critical of them.
It's because I despise knee-jerk politics, and this pandemic is rife with it.
You'd have resigned already because the weight of your mistakes would be too much of a burden.Quote:
I could do a better job in so many ways relating to this. To be fair though, I am a scientist and so I am better qualified than Boris or his cronies to grasp what others are telling me.
Imagine if instead of Churchill, we had someone who "cares about people", like "let's not bomb the Nazis too much, remember they're also just soldiers with families, doing their jobs".Quote:
Yeah good thing we have a sociopath in charge instead of someone who cares about people. That's the last thing you want in a global health crisis. Sheesh.
During a global health crisis, you need someone in charge that is decisive and doesn't give a fuck what people think about him.
It could be a lot worse. But that's not what I'm saying about Labour. I simply said that I have more faith in Boris than Corbyn to handle this better. That faith might be misplaced. And I was moaning about opposition in times of crisis. If Labour were in charge, things would probably be exactly the same except it'd be the Tories moaning about Labour instead of the other way around.Quote:
Also, your continued bleating that "a labour gov't would be worse" isn't just irrelevant, it's super lame. How much worse could it even be than it is now?
What, fiddling the numbers? If what they're saying is to be believed, then we're not the only country that should be asking "what did Germany do that we didn't?". According to the data, they have fared much better than reasonable comparisons, such as France, Spain, Italy and the UK. This group of four have a similar amount of deaths. Germany is WAY behind. I'm more inclined to think they are counting deaths differently to the rest of us, like people are dying from diabetes instead of covid. Maybe a similar "accounting trick" is at play with regards unemployment, maybe we're counting people who worked under 16 hours (casual) while the Germans are not. idk, but the difference between Germany and its peers is incredible, to the point of suspicious. So huge pinch of salt.Quote:
btw, UK has lost 2m jobs so far, GER has lost 375k. So if we're worried about jobs (and we should be) maybe we should do what GER and other countries have been doing.
You say that but your go-to response in all this is "Labour would be worse."
Does not compute.
It's also not necessarily pollitical to criticse the gov't. I can criticise the bus driver who doesn't stop when I ring the bell without it being a larger statement about his politics. I don't even care that their leanings are one way or the other right now. I really wish they had done a much better job. But I care that they fucked up and they're still fucking up.
Uh huh.
If only Johnson and some of his cronies had that attitude.
In a pandemic you don't HAVE to kill people, in fact you should be trying your best not to.
This is the exact opposite of what Johnson was. If anything he was more like Chamberlain when all the warnings were coming in, pretending nothing was wrong, than Churchill.
Grasping at straws here.
The excess mortality rates say we're the ones undercounting by about 20k. When it all washes out we'll have the most deaths in Europe, 2nd or 4th worldwide in deaths per capita depending on who counts as a country.
I mean you keep defending the gov't like there's something there to defend, like it's possible more could have died under some fantasy scenario where someone else was in charge, so therefore they weren't in the top one percentile of incompetence.
Or, like we shouldn't crticise them. Sorry but that's the kind of thinking that gives the retard kid a medal just for showing up at the track meet in kiddie school. The gov't has to do better than that, and if they don't, they have to put on their big boy pants and face the criticism.
Lol. This is either the best hit job ever or the worst quarantining hypocrisy ever.
Either way,:popcorn:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...P=share_btn_tw
It's not, you're just massively simplifying things, and not even accurately. I'm pretty sure I've said the word "inquiry" a fuck ton more than I've said "Labour" during this discussion. My main go-to response is fuck the media, I want an inquiry. The fact I don't trust Labour when it comes to economics is a minor factor, and that's the main reason I think it would be worse under Labour. But what the fuck do I know about economics? I might be wrong on that point.Quote:
You say that but your go-to response in all this is "Labour would be worse."
It's the only function of opposition. If the Tories said they were going to nationalise the railways, Labour would find a way to moan about it. That's what opposition is all about. It's tiresome, the constant political bickering and moral point scoring.Quote:
It's also not necessarily pollitical to criticse the gov't.
I understand critisism is important, but the way we go about it is tedious and causes social division.
Then we'd be in an even bigger mess. I mean the worst thing that can happen right now is a fucking election.Quote:
If only Johnson and some of his cronies had that attitude.
You still have to make cold and potentially unpopular decisions that might have grave consequences for some. It helps to be a sociopath, and it's why the job only attracts a special kind of person.Quote:
In a pandemic you don't HAVE to kill people, in fact you should be trying your best not to.
I'm pretty sure we were all going about our business as though nothing was happening while Italy was getting hit. But for me he has been largely decisive, it's just that he hasn't been making the right decisions. I'm just not prepared to judge him based off social media outrage and gutter press propaganda. I want to wait until people are under oath and obligated to answer questions. That's when we find out if decisions were made with full knowledge that it was an inferior strategy.Quote:
This is the exact opposite of what Johnson was. If anything he was more like Chamberlain when all the warnings were coming in, pretending nothing was wrong, than Churchill.
Yeah, we haven't counted care home deaths yet and neither have France. Not sure about Spain and Italy, but that only increases the gulf between us and Germany. It doesn't make any sense to me. Something isn't right.Quote:
The excess mortality rates say we're the ones undercounting by about 20k.
I can forgive you for thinking I feel passionately about this, but the truth is I don't. I literally only discuss this with you, largely because it's something to talk about, it doesn't occupy my thoughts when I'm not logged into FTR at all.Quote:
I mean you keep defending the gov't like there's something there to defend
I'm defending the govt to the point of saying that the critisism should wait until this is over and all the facts are known. That's it. I know Boris is lying through his teeth, I know he's masking his incompetence, but he's the man in charge and right now he's probably the best man for it. Even if he's not, now is the worst time to put him under political pressure. More so when that pressure is coming from indignant moral snobs who are subconsciously trained in knee jerk outrage at every opportunity by the opposition.
That's what inquiries are for.Quote:
The gov't has to do better than that, and if they don't, they have to put on their big boy pants and face the criticism.
You act like all the deaths we're having were inevitable and any country that isn't having them is either lucky, or covering up. There's plenty of countries out there that are outperforming us on this. There's even countries in Europe that have fewer deaths/capita right now than Germany (Norway, Greece, Austria, most of Eastern Europe to name a few), despite being hit at roughly the same time.
They're the ones who took things seriously from the start and had their shit together. They stopped people at the border and gave them a test, or if they didn't have enough tests, they made people coming from outside their country stay in quarantine until they had a chance to test them. We did none of that. Ever.
When they found someone with CV, they traced all the people that person had been in contact with and made them quarantine until they'd had a test too. Meanwhile we were having Cheltenham and football matches and Boris going to hospital shaking hands with people.
I mean, I really don't get why you keep acting like it's some mystery, like no-one ever thought about what to do in case of a pandemic and countries are just randomly doing shit and hoping it works. Just because we seem to be doing random shit doesn't mean everyone else has been.
Maybe this will help you understand why different countries are where they are. Certainly is a big part of it.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYuzqJrW...jpg&name=large
That graph is bollocks. 1.5m cases when we went into lockdown? We're two months into lockdown and there are just over 250k cases. You're drawing conclusions based on a highly speculative number. I mean I'm sure some effort went into these estimates, but they're basically about as provable as God. You're taking those numbers as an act of faith.
Whatever mistakes we've made, we're not alone. I could kind of understand the outrage if we were the only nation in Europe struggling to contain this, but that isn't the case. Nations like Austria and Greece are incomparable to the UK, they are much smaller, both being roughly the same population as London. The only reasonable comparisons in Europe are France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and with the exception of Germany, we're in the same boat. You make it sound like we're the only country in Europe struggling. That is patently not true.
Cheltenham is an interesting issue. Who made the decision for that to go ahead? Did Boris himself think "fuck it, let's do it" or were his hands tied by forces out of his control? If he personally orders it to not go ahead, do you people start calling him a dictator? Cheltenham was a mistake. Whose mistake was it? When we find out who was making these decisions based on what information, that's when we start assigning blame and demanding accountability.
The problem there is corruption, and that is deeply ingrained into our economic and political system. The gambling sector have very powerful lobbyists, and I'm not sure if the PM is capable of taking these lobbyists on. If that's the case, blaming Boris is just too easy, because it's the system that's rotten, and it has been for a very long time, through both Tory and Labour governments, with a splash of Lib Dem coalition thrown in.
I think what you call incompetence, I call corruption. The government are just pawns, they're replaced regularly yet the system never changes. Boris is just the next mouthpiece for the system. I happen to like him more than previous mouthpieces, because he's kinda funny. He has bags more character than all his predecessors in my lifetime. He's not the system, he's just the guy we voted to make us believe we're a democracy.
So if you must start blaming people, try going for those who will still have power in a decade or two, rather than the faces that come and go.
https://twitter.com/Glenndalmas/stat...98673616449537
You've gotta laugh at all the journalists outside Cummings' house harassing him for flouting lockdown rules. No irony intended, just absolute jaw dropping moron gutter press.
I think you misread the situation. His neighbors were out heckling him too. People are seriously pissed, as they should be.
Even the BBC is having a go.
And yeah, like I said, no resignation and no sacking from Boris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPgpFQsiJIo
I really don't understand why you're dying to blame anything and anyone but the gov't, but ok whatever.
I think you missed my point. idk about his neighbours, but the press were bothering him with questions about his conduct while completely failing to observe social distancing. It's ridiculous. Let's not forget I think Cummings should walk. I'm not defending him here, but that clip sums up very nicely everything that is wrong with the MSM. Ambush someone at home, fuck anyone who doesn't want a media circus on their doorstep, be completely oblivious to one's own hypocrisy, whatever it takes to get views. All the better if it's a politician or rich celebrity, the greater sense of indignance people have.
And your second post completely misses my point too. I'm not dying to blame anything and anyone. I'm not assigning blame at all.
Take your time reading that and try to understand what those words mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by ong
I'd have a degree of respect for the man if he replied to that woman "ok Karen".
She is the walking definition of "indignant".
I think what you mean is you don't want to assign blame to the gov't. Germans fudging numbers, corporations controlling the gov't, the press, people on twitter, etc., are all fair game. Next you'll be blaming Obama.
A "BooForBoris" is planned for tomorrow at 8pm. People are fed up.
I'm guessing this will have better attendance than the "ClapforBoris" we had after he managed to get himself infected with cv.
No, that's just what you want me to mean.
idk about the Germans fiddling the numbers, I'm just suspicious. Corporations do control the govt, wake up dude. The press are a joke, wake up dude. Twitter is a joke, wake up dude. And Obama? He's irrelevant.
I get why you want to believe I'm defending the govt. I represent the opposite of your views. That's the social division I was talking about earlier. You're like this guy...
You just want to put people in a box. Your mindset is "it's us vs them".Quote:
Why is it that if you know someone's position on climate change, you also know their views about Brexit, teaching with phonics, ending the lockdown, and (in all probability) capital punishment?
I'm not defending the govt, they're cunts. I'm refusing to assign blame for their incompetence with regards to an event that they were not expecting and not trained for, at least until the time is right for formal accountability. You have to spin it to mean something else so you can put me in your "Tory boy" box.
Maybe you're just jealous that I'm not angry about this, maybe you wish you had the same level of apathy as I do. I'm definitely curious why you're so eager to tell me what I mean. There's a reason you don't accept my position.
All I'm saying is it appears you're looking for excuses for them. This surprises me because it's blindingly obvious to anyone who does even a little looking how bad a job they've done. But I guess you'll be waiting for the inquiry to tell you that. Ok fine.
For someone who's so apathetic you sure seem keen to jump in too.
Jump in? You mean talk about it to one person on the internet? By "looking for excuses for them", what I'm actually doing is keeping an open mind. If you want to assign blame to someone, you kind of have to "look for excuses for them" in the sense you have to question if the decisions that have been made are justifiable. The fact you're not "looking for excuses for them" shows you are biased. Your "blindingly obvious" comment reinforces this. It might be obvious to me that mistakes have been made. What is not obvious is if those mistakes can be justified.
I missed those last couple of posts of yours before my recent one...
I don't think one man making a journey warrants a formal inquiry. You're being inane.Quote:
What, without an inquiry???
Well you can't both not care and keep jumping in to defend them, even if it's with just one person. But whatever.
So you don't think I've looked for reasons they might be excused? Of course I have. Early in Mar. I assumed they knew what they were doing and had some legitimate reasons for delaying the lockdown measures.
It's just that as time has gone on it's become more and more clear how badly they've been fucking up. Sure, I acknowledge they're human and can make mistakes. I just think they should own up to them if they do - at least I could respect that. Instead, they're going full Trump, telling us what a great job they're doing, how it's not their fault (but it is the scientists we should be blaming) and that if one of them break the rules it's ok 'cause you know he was following his instincts.
And every one of their lies is getting exposed, like how the advice was to shut down NOW and not in a week or two weeks' time, but they kept dithering. That's just one bit of advice they ignored as long as possible - there's a long list but I don't want to keep repeating it over and over to someone who doesn't care.
So yeah, I've run out of excuses for them.
Well I haven't run out of excuses for them. An immediate lockdown was not an option. India did that and it was stupid. We did it in stages. I can understand why someone might think that is the best way to do it. It doesn't even mater if I agree or not. What matters is that they did what they thought was the best thing to do. That's acting in good faith. I'd probably ignore someone who says shut down NOW. I'd be concerned about the panic it would cause. We had panic buying anyway, imagine how much worse it would have been if we had 24 hours notice. So many people would swoop on the supermarkets it would be counterproductive.
If they fuck this up beyond an acceptable level, they pay the price for it. Either people resign when this is over, or they get booted out next election.
And you're basically saying that by having an opinion I care. That's not true. I have an opinion on lots of things, like which cars are better... TVR or Porche, but I don't care about it.
This Cummings presser is a gold mine.
tl;dr for anyone not British. Cummings is Boris' chief advisor. It was reported 3 days ago he broke his own lockdown rules by driving 260 miles to visit his parents while he, his wife, and his 4 year old kid were sick with suspected cv. Today he came on TV to tell his side.
So far, he's:
1) admitted returning to work with other gov't officials after going home to visit his wife who he assumed was sick with CV.
2) claimed he couldn't get his hands on a cv test for his wife or himself, despite being the PM's chief advisor.
3) claimed he drove 5 hours to Durham without stopping, and with a four year old in the car.
4) claimed his wife was worried about his eyesight being blurry, and so he took her and the kid on an hour round trip to a nearby castle to check his vision.
5) blamed the press for all the kerfuffle.
6) showed absolutely no contrition whatsoever.
lol, this is so bad it's good.
I can not care about any issue and still call out bad logic / poor reasoning someone else throws out vis-a-vis that issue.
'Cause I care about forming beliefs based on sound reasoning.
... and Poop, you are very quick to jump to conclusions about people based on things they haven't said.
Like a bit ago when I said nothing about being annoyed with anything, and you jumped to conclusions about what annoys me.
I said something to the effect, "So long as POTUS isn't abusing their authority, I don't care what they do."
And you said it was a high bar for being annoyed.
You attributed emotions to me that I never mentioned. I believe this is called projection in your field, right?
You project almost constantly in your posts, here.
I said if the only thing that bothers you is if someone abuses their authority that's a pretty low standard.
What about that is inconsistent with what you said?
I don't remember what thread it was in, and given the emotional stuff I'm going through, it's possible I'm not remembering exactly the wording.
I looked a bit, but gave up, 'cause I thought what I posted was close enough to remind you of the conversation.
I do remember that I never said the word "annoyed" and you then used that emotion to describe what I was saying.
At any rate, maybe it's better if I say this,
When I read your posts, I often see you extrapolating ahead of what you're replying to, which in itself is fine, but the fact that you almost uniformly extrapolate into something you disagree with seems unfair to the person you're talking to.
Ong deals with it rather well. I don't.
The reason I don't engage in long conversations with you is because I don't feel like you're upholding your side of the unwritten social contract of communication. I.e. that words are imprecise, and we are minds trying to use imprecise tools to transfer something intangible from our heads to yours. The contract is that we all understand this hurdle and do our best to see the intended meaning, and nothing more or less.
EDIT: Even in the post above, you inject the emotion "bothers" into your response. I said nothing about that. Maybe it's the right word, maybe not... the point is you're projecting an emotion onto me that I didn't state.