Sad News Reveling In The Drama

[TheNomad]

I am ashamed of "journalism" right now.  The stories are becoming more and more dramatic, images on some HIGHLY used news pages show people in almost hyperbaric chambers-like plastic tents, descriptions of the "horrors" of having the virus, images of lady liberty enshrined behind a window and weeping.

This shit has got to stop!

I was out today IN CALIFORNIA - on lockdown - and nothing has changed.  If anything, I am seeing a much calmer populace, ppl moving slower and easier, light traffic, courteousness.

And we are on lockdown.  Lockdown.  A heavily-traffiked news site says

California Awakens To New Reality

No.

I am here.  I am reporting to you ppl here in the forum.  Nothing has changed.  Ppl aren't going to work, but it is a Friday.  Normally at this time, the freeways are clogged but are not.  That's a GOOD THING not a bad one.

The shelves are empty still of toilet paper, and ppl are hoarding that and water and canned goods.  But that is due to external pressures like the national news sites I mention.  Even my preferred news outlet of CNN is destroying my faith in news.  This has become a GO TO news situation where, I think producers are being mandated to do that AND because we are being told we're all gonna die.  No one is saying it, but look at the news channels.

Anchors hovered in front of enormous screens interviewing ppl like Sean Penn to see WHAT ARE WE TO EXPECT from disaster.  It feels like being forced on a campout I don't feel like being on and told a narrative that, as an adult American with a mind, I don't know yet HOW to perceive it.  Fearmongering is at a premium, it just is absolute rubbish to me.

The bad experience we are ALL gonna have is from our scared neighbors that will have a garage full of TP when this is done, or, if not done, will be sitting in the house wiping their ass until they die, then leaving the unused stacks of it unused by those who needed it.

What Total Crap
I won't be afraid.

[Bob Butler 54]

Face it. You are blinded by your ideology. The precautions are necessary. The intensity is necessary to break through to people like you.

I am not particularly emotional, but I am taking what precautions I can.

[TheNomad]

(03-20-2020, 09:19 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Face it.  You are blinded by your ideology.  The precautions are necessary.  The intensity is necessary to break through to people like you.

I am not particularly emotional, but I am taking what precautions I can.

Why try to throw that word at me simply because you feel it is being used against you?  In the real world, that's called passive aggression.  I am not one of the kids partying on the beach you seem to want to spank dude.  I'm a real human being telling others what I am seeing and experiencing MYSELF instead of copying and pasting what I am seeing and hearing on a frantic and emotion-based news.

You say "the precautions are necessary".  You know nothing personally about the virus, you are just in front of the TV or screen and "reporting" what you see others telling you.  I'm not doing that.

I told someone today, if this was as serious as we are being led to believe (and I am NOT talking about the idea there is a virus and ppl are dying, many more getting sick than dying) there would be proper mandates to line ppl up 6ft apart while they wait outside a grocery store.

THERE ISN'T.

Think about that.  A state as large as California being told

do not go to work
do not shop
do not operate your small business
do not go in public in large groups

Yet, the lines for Costco are around the store, people are right next to each other and jabbering.  If one person in that line has the virus, and we can all die from it, EVERYONE IN THAT LINE HAS IT and has taken it back with them to whether they came from.

A hammer is being applied to swat flies.  Isn't it obvious?

What I just described (the idea the mandate is not specific enough to contain ANYTHING) is just one SMALL example.

We are being shown images of NYC Times Square is empty (unheard of) and reveling in the idea everyone has ALREADY been killed and these places are abandoned ghosts of what we know to be there.  It is an emotional DRAMA and the news loves it.  The news loves to have school shootings and Branch Davidian standoffs and towers collapsing.

Media loves the camera.  Mr Butler, you seem to love it as much.

I will add things I just noticed today:

no wiping of grocery carts
no wiping of the pin pad at checkout
no wiping of ANYTHING

And I am not saying this is a BAR or RESTAURANT.  This is an "essential operation that cannot shut" during this Crisis.  Why is the mandate not covering that?  How much easier is it to say

WIPE ALL PIN PADS

as opposed to

DON'T GO TO WORK

It's way more freaking simple.  Yet, how many more ppl will get infected by passing through the essential checkout line pressing the same green ENTER button.  And let's just assume everyone that comes through has a PIN similar enough to touch at least one number the same as the person before them. 

It's not right.  We are all passing the virus along as much as before.  Nothing has changed.  We were all gonna die before the lockdown happened, now just a few less will die.  Does that make sense to you, Rhett?

Really, the only thing that has changed is the fear level AND that yes ppl are not transmitting it AS MUCH as before. But there has been no authentic reality put in place for "essentials".

Fine, ppl aren't in the mall. Malls are huge indoor places where ppl roam. They touch things like clothing and countertops. I only keep thinking of ALL the people going through checkout lines infecting the person that comes after them. Does that make sense to you? How easy would it be for Govs to say to essentials "everyone uses a card, wipe the pads after every use". Forget about cash. The cashier then has it and the money has it and everyone that touches the change has it.

No, we cannot shut the grocery store, but please apply some sense to your argument when you next reply.

You also say you are using precaution, how do you feel about what I just described? Are you wiping the pin pad before using it? What about the plastic divider between your food and the other person? What about the plastic bag the bagger filled up your goods into? The cart? Fine if you do, but I saw none of that today at the store. If this is all so deadly, why aren't those things in place?

Instead, we have a general lockdown, bailouts coming, dread over unemployment and campfire news hours with sober tone and images of a world emptied.

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-20-2020, 10:20 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(03-20-2020, 09:19 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Face it.  You are blinded by your ideology.  The precautions are necessary.  The intensity is necessary to break through to people like you.

I am not particularly emotional, but I am taking what precautions I can.

Why try to throw that word at me simply because you feel it is being used against you?  In the real world, that's called passive aggression.

Note under my name the words “values driven”.  To my way of understanding it, every human builds a model of how the world works.  This shows up as a world view and values.  It can be described in many other terms.  Collectively, when many hold onto similar values, it might be called a culture, an ideology, or your preferred Groupthink.  The two most common ones recently are associated with the colors red and blue.

I view values as a big part of S&H, which I think of as an explanation of how cultures change.  It is not intended to be passive aggression, but I view it as a primary goal of the site.

People tend to aggressively defend their world views and values.  To that end, it is common for people who have developed an ideology to be unable to perceive something that contradicts their ideology. Literally unable.  This is hardly unique to you.

[sbarrera]

I'm not sure what TheNomad's ideology is in this argument. He just seems to be complaining about over-dramatization in the media, and saying that the social distancing measures being taken are insufficient. I think, though, that closing non-essential businesses is going to help, even if people still wait in lines and touch the same pin pad at the grocery store. Just reducing the extent to which humans gather would reduce transmission. I don't think the idea is that it is possible to stop transmission altogether, just slow it down.

[Bob Butler 54]

He just seems to be fighting the Regeneracy in every way possible. It was if it were 1942 and he was complaining that his desire to order a new touring car should over ride the factory's being converted to produce tanks.

[pbrower2a]

I will need to do my banking through an ATM for another month or so... so I can expect to step out of the car and spray the pin pad with a disinfectant before using the pad. Does that sound like a good idea?

People out of work during the social lockdown can do housecleaning as never before, do some hobbies that they abandoned, plant gardens, and paint their houses. People with good work habits will find things to do. You might try honing some skill that might be useful on another job if the one that you had vanishes. Good work habits and a reasonable competence can result in some achievements that might redeem a nasty, unpleasant, and potentially ominous time.

If you can't go to the library you can go to Project Gutenberg and download a seemingly-endless array of public-domain literature. You can get much great music off YouTube. Maybe this time will be least-troubling for those most inner-directed (in this quarantine, Boomers may have an advantage.

The quarantine will be over, and we will be back to our old ways -- mostly. Remember that the political order and our economic system have serious faults, including the extreme polarization of public life.

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-21-2020, 06:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I will need to do my banking through an ATM for another month or so... so I can expect to step out of the car and spray the pin pad with a disinfectant before using the pad. Does that sound like a good idea?

Looks good.  Most ATMs are vaguely waterproof.  If you see what the Germans call spritzensparken, put your hands in your pocket, look innocent, and walk casually away,  

Most of the other proposed ideas look good as well.

[David Horn]

(03-21-2020, 07:03 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(03-21-2020, 06:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I will need to do my banking through an ATM for another month or so... so I can expect to step out of the car and spray the pin pad with a disinfectant before using the pad. Does that sound like a good idea?

Looks good.  Most ATMs are vaguely waterproof.  If you see what the Germans call spritzensparken, put your hands in your pocket, look innocent, and walk casually away,  

Most of the other proposed ideas look good as well.

99% of surviving this is simple, old fashioned commonsense.  Understand the basics of disease transmission (the vapor and aerosol due to breathing -- coughing and sneezing even moreso) and surface contamination (assume days not minutes).  Then use due-diligence to prevent being a disease vector to others and prevent others infecting you.  That's the basis for social distancing, handwashing and the use of sanitizers.  Let's also agree that 99% is probably the upper limit of how safe these practices can make us.  Perfection is, as always, unachievable.

Be safe out there!

[Bob Butler 54]

(03-22-2020, 08:58 AM)David Horn Wrote: 99% of surviving this is simple, old fashioned commonsense.  Understand the basics of disease transmission (the vapor and aerosol due to breathing -- coughing and sneezing even moreso) and surface contamination (assume days not minutes).  Then use due-diligence to prevent being a disease vector to others and prevent others infecting you.  That's the basis for social distancing, handwashing and the use of sanitizers.  Let's also agree that 99% is probably the upper limit of how safe these practices can make us.  Perfection is, as always, unachievable.

Be safe out there!

Agreed, but the key thing is the effects of the above, reducing the number of people each infected person in turn effects to less than 1. This is not easy, but it is necessary to keep the situation from exploding exponentially into a saturation disease. This requires stringent efforts.

I saw a Facebook entry saying that people who complain of the stringent response don't seem to realize that the less well they respond, the longer the response would be necessary. Perhaps that will effect the complainers more than the death count?

The alternative is to let a few percent of the world's population die. What is a very small percentage of 7.5 billion.

[TheNomad]

(03-22-2020, 01:20 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The alternative is to let a few percent of the world's population die.  What is a very small percentage of 7.5 billion.

I've not heard anyone say this in plain words yet, not really.  Before this, we all know the world is becoming to FULL.  There are too many people.  There are too many people in every American city.  WE cannot even deal with all of them.

Would it be so bad if this destroyed a big number of us?  If it's me, I don't care.  Would it help?  I am not so sure.  Our population would only rise again harder.  This has made me to contemplate humanity is possibly as scourge itself.  Look what happened.... we were all spared this type of ordeal until just about every person from every continent could just decide to travel anywhere else.  That's never happened until the last 50 years there about.

THIS ALSO is what worries me less.  It seems like a very natural process.  Whenever new peoples are introduced, they transmit things to the indigenous who die. 

However, this process is also continual.  It doesn't seem to stop. We have this now.... in 5-10 years it will be another.  The world cannot do this quarantine shit every so often.  We have decided to build our civilization on economy.  The world economy is going to be wrecked by all this.

Maybe it would have been better for 90% of the world to die and just return to living from the land.