Westerly

The NRA takes on a lot of flak, but they do in fact have an important mission. The right to protect yourself with a firearm absolutely is a right that should not be abolished. I can give you a perfect example as to why. My wife and I life on a certain east coast state not know for friendly gun laws. Basically, you cant even carry a knife if it's too scary looking. Well she used to ride her bike to work daily for exercise, but she had to go through a certain area that had a lot of homeless people. Fine, whatever. However, on one certain day she was attacked and sexually assaulted. What a fucking dictionary-perfect example of why people should be able to carry a weapon. But she cant, because it's a felony. She cant even carry a taser or mace. Nothing. She cannot legally carry any type of weapon other than a small knife which is largely useless. So now she just doesent ride her bike anymore thanks to the ass muchers who made it illegal for a women to protect herself against sexual assault, rape, ect. So yes, I support the NRA because weapons carried by competent individuals who are correctly trained and proficient in their use can and do save lives, and everyone should have the right to defend themselves up to and including the use of deadly force.

15 hours ago, markharju said:

Like when "consent of the governed" became codified.

Lol you think that the government dident have rule back in the days of the B.C.? The main difference between now and then is back in the B.C. days the king could say and do whatever the fuck he wanted and if you decided to play the 'I dont have to listen to you' card, then a knight would cut your head off in the middle of the town square.

6 hours ago, markharju said:

Like when "consent of the governed" became codified.

ah yes, the whole it's only illegal if I agree with it, but if I disagree then it's communism argument. I guess society should only make laws that everyone agrees with. Good luck with that one.

This reminds me of the 90s when people lost their shit because the government made it illegal to drive a car without wearing a seatbelt. So many bullshit claims about how it's safer to be 'thrown from the car' in case it 'explodes' were made. Of course now we all know those claims were total garbage and everyone understands why seatbelt use is mandatory, and no one complains about it.

Not wearing a mask is like the bullshit counter seatbelt argument of the 90s. In 10 years we are going to look back at masks and say 'remember all those idiots who made those bullshit arguments about how it was safer to not wear a mask'.

Except the difference here is not wearing a seatbelt only kills you. Not wearing a mask harms other people.

6 hours ago, markharju said:

When elected officials demand that we plebs have to lock ourselves away and wear masks in our own homes, while they party and get their hair done...

LOL when has that ever not been the case? Like any time in human history?

4 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

The burden is not shared equally. I am barely affected financially at all. As a matter of fact I am better off because I am saving money. In the spring shutdown copious amounts of cash were spread around to ease the pain. Some of that was wasteful. But now there is real damage being done to many people and a better system has not been implemented. 

My feeling is that another thick spreading of cash should be done now. I know it can't go on forever, but the vaccine is nearly here and it will be a game changer. Real damage can happen if too many people get squeezed too hard.

 In the spring many people were making more money on unemployment than they did working full time. Why would anyone go to work when they get paid more not to? I think people should get normal unemployment benefits paid at the normal rate, but the duration should be extended longer since this is a long-term problem. That's exactly what happened in 2009. Normal rate, but unemployment lasted for a year instead of six months. As far as a single payment of $1200, that's nothing honestly. That doesent solve any problem past a week. They need to focus on something more long term.

I get it, businesses need to make money. People are losing their houses due to economic damage. But at the end of the day, if your business is resulting in people dying, then the government is right to step in and stop that. Houses can be replaced, lives cannot. Also, everyone makes their career choice. When is the last time nurses and doctors werent in demand? How about IT professionals? Hint, hint.

22 minutes ago, SkyDekker said:

Of course at the current time we also don't know what the long term effects are of the various vaccines. No mRNA vaccine has previously been approved and human testing of mRNA vaccines is not extensive at all.

Whatever it is, pretty sure it's not worse than COVID. So what, just dont get vaccinated and get COVID instead? is that the plan? 

2 hours ago, gowlerk said:

Dr. Fauci is saying today that it is beginning to become clearer that as may as 20-30% of people who have recovered are problems that weren't there before they were infected. This is happening even in many people who did not get very sick.

What is 'recovered"? As in 20-30% of those who got the virus, or 20-30% of those in the ICU? Pretty sure it's not 30% of those with the virus because upwards of a fifth of people dont even have symptoms.

So how many cases is it going to take before people start taking this seriously? 400k a day? what do you think? Funny, we were all about doing lockdowns when the USA only had 5k cases a day, but now that we are at 200k it's no big deal.

12 hours ago, ryoder said:

Andrew Giuliani, a special assistant to President Donald Trump and the son of Rudy Giuliani, announced Friday that he had tested positive for coronavirus.

Well Rudy was all over TV sweating like a mofo, so my money is Rudy is positive as well.

However, we dont need a vaccine to fix this in the interm. It's simple. Anytime the positivity rate is over 7.5% in a community, enter into lockdown for a minimum of 4 weeks or until positivity rate drops below 5%. No non-essential services. Then let the market decide. Want to keep your job and business? Then do your part and be a part of the solution. Dont give a shit and want to chose 'freedom' instead? Then have the freedom to not have a job. Unemployment benefits are capped at whatever the usual is for the state. Once you're out, you're out.

7 hours ago, gowlerk said:

I just delivered a load of lumber to a pallet manufacturing plant in Gretna Nebraska near Omaha. It looked like there would’ve been about 150 people working there today. The only mask in sight was the one on my face. I’m on my way to Kansas City now to get a reload at a warehouse. We’ll see if they’re doing any better there.

They are just trying to keep the money local by ensuring that the hospitals get plenty of business, that's all. Support small businesses and all. After the hospitals get their business, the bankruptcy attorneys will be next in line for an inrush of business. Not until the ER bill shows up in the mail that is though.

HA!!! Dr. Fauci just gave a public speech on the new vaccine development. His exact words: Fauci defended the quick vaccine development process. “The process of the speed did not compromise at all safety, nor did it compromise scientific integrity,” he said.

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-11-19-20-intl/index.html

Suck it!!! I freaking told you this could be done quickly. Now go ahead and tell the families of all those who are dead that 'good thing we took our time and did things slowly'. Freaking unbelievable. Dragging our feet more will just result in more deaths. Current projections show as many as 650,000 dead by March. That is more deaths than the single leading cause of death in the USA. If we get that many, COVID will be the #1 cause of death in the USA.

On 11/17/2020 at 2:14 PM, Pirate0321 said:

Ridiculing others who aren’t scared and prefer freedom is not the answer and doesn’t make you better or more intelligent. If you dont want to go to a boogie, don’t go. Nobody is requiring you to participate. 

That is equivalent to saying if you dont want to get killed by a drunk driver, never drive a car. Clearly you havent figured this out yet, but we are all in this together. This is a GLOBAL pandemic. As in, it affects everyone. When you and your homes to out to the bar and end up getting infected, you risk other's lives when you start walking around in public as a virus factory. Maybe you walk by an old lady at the grocery store and then she gets infected from you and dies.

How exactly do you think COVID is transmitted? By a bunch of super sick people who are out in public sneezing everywhere? It's transmitted by people who dont know they are infected and they are moving around in public unknowingly spreading it to everyone.

With regards to being scared, the virus doesn't care if you're scared of it or not. The ICU and morgue are full of people who weren't scared of the virus.

5 hours ago, billvon said:

 

Reminds me of all the Trump supporters who said we wouldn't hear about COVID-19 after November 3rd,

 

They said it was just a few people coming in from China and it will be gone. Then they said it will be gone by Easter. Then it was it will be gone by summer once the heat kills it. Then it was it will be gone by the election. Now it's it will be gone by Jan. Interesting strategy. Never admit you're wrong, just keep moving the goal post further out until eventually you're right.

It doesent get much more ironic than this.


https://www.wjtv.com/news/nurse-says-some-patients-deny-covid-19-is-real-even-as-they-die-from-it/

I used to think skydivers were smart, cool people but this pandemic is making me realize a lot of them are actually not very intelligent and they are actually pretty uncaring towards others. Take for example my local DZs. During the peak of COVID in the last wave our state was hit hard. Harder than most. A lot of people died and the hospitals were overwhelmed. Yet all the DZs were carrying on as total business as usual. Many had absolutely no mask requirements at all and if you even so much as suggested COVID safety you were cast out as some hippy liberal tree hugger that needs to 'stop watching fake news' or some BS like that. Now that we are headed into what is already a record for the entire world and will continue getting even worse, the local DZ is planning a huge Thanksgiving and Christmas boogie with tons of beer, live music, and a 'week-long party'. In other words, literately the stupidest possible thing you could be doing right now. That bullshit is exactly what caused the mess we currently are in, but no one cares. Thus my conclusion is skydivers are not special. Many of them are uncaring all-about-me's the same as most other people. It just happens that we share a common hobby, but said share of a common hobby doesent actually make them a good or intelligent person.

Flash is dead. Official end of life in in a month. It's a massive security risk. If you have it you should uninstall it.

4 hours ago, ryoder said:

Interesting report came out from Marine Corps bootcamp.  Now bear in mind these were 18-20 year-olds who had passed a physical.

Among Marine Corps recruits, approximately 2% who had previously had negative results for SARS-CoV-2 at the beginning of supervised quarantine, and less than 2% of recruits with unknown previous status, tested positive by day 14. Most recruits who tested positive were asymptomatic, and no infections were detected through daily symptom monitoring. Transmission clusters occurred within platoons.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717

So apparently among young people, looking for symptoms is useless. We need comprehensive testing.

Well that is nothing new. It's long thought that the total number of infected within any given day is easily double what the 'official' results are on the premise that many people are asymptomatic and therefore do not get tested. It's easily possible that the actual number of infected per day right now is over 300k. Random testing could tell us for sure if this is true or not, yet eight months into this and still no one seems to have thought of that or cared enough to actually do it. The best study we could possibly do right now is if a state firmly mandated that its citizens were randomly tested and supplying a test sample is not optional. That would give us more insight.

It sounds like some of you need to pull out your diary and write some crying thoughts in there. This is the Internet incase you dident notice. Back on track, COVID....

So back on track, Covid... How many cases per day we need to get to before people realize 'business as normal' doesent exist anymore. How many thousands of news articles are out there titling 'rewound COVID denier dies from COVID'. The nice thing about science is it doesent care what your opinion is, facts remain such regardless of your willingness to believe them.

180k cases today. We set the oven to broil now. I knew we would get to 200k, I just dident think quite this fast. I am now thinking that 300k might not even be the top of this upcoming peak. Right now it's mostly just all numbers. Wait until Dec when those 200k+ cases a day start to become hospitalizations and deaths. Suddenly a whole lot of people are going to start wishing that they took more precautions. Regret will be on the menu for three meals a day.

2 minutes ago, billvon said:

7.5%?  As in 7.5% of people get new infections every day?  (easy to measure)  Or 7.5% people total have infections? (very hard to measure)

But let's go with the easy to measure number with a more realistic threshold, like 8 per 100,000 people new infections per day.  That's what California has done.

Oh, I think they'll just get mad at the government.  (Which is what's happening here.)

7.5% positivity rate. Percentage of positive tests relative to negative. That's been the golden standard for determining severity of spread in the USA. They can go ahead and get mad. The government doesert require you like it. People also got mad at the gov. for making them wear a seatbelt.

On 11/12/2020 at 10:38 PM, billvon said:

Good example.  Solution?  We get people to wear seatbelts.  We have politicians urge people to do it.  We have fines for people who don't do it.  And it works - seatbelt use is up to 86%.

If everyone wore a mask AND distanced AND improved hygiene - it would absolutely be enough.  Re would go below 1 and the pandemic would die out.  Add testing/tracing and it would die out very quickly.


 

Yep, but that will never happen.

This is where the government should step in. People want less government. Okay, I can make that super easy. The government doesent impose ANY restrictions except just one--anytime the infection rate climbs above 7.5% in a city, that city will order a shutdown for a minimum of two weeks or until the infection rate falls below 7.5%, whichever is longer. So let the market decide. Take shit seriously and stay open or say screw it, have shutdown after shutdown and kill the economy through your own doing. That's both minimum government and sufficient government to keep people safe all at the same time..

Do that and I think everyone including all businesses will suddenly be a lot more motivated to not get sick which collectively solves this problem of people not caring. Either that or the unemployment rate is going to be 30% and we can learn the hard way.