BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I remember the "let'r'rip" sentiment from the pre-vaccine days like this was just a common cold or something. Horrible idea back then.

Did we all forget what it was like in March 2020?

This is 2022. Almost 2023. We have effective vaccines. Not as much need for apocalyptic triage. People have to be vaccinated though.

There are still a million and a half dead Americans from COVID despite our vaccines. A few hundred die each day still too.

If China goes soft on their Zero COVID policy, despite their best effort to vaccinate everyone, there will still be plenty of deaths. And Chinese people are no smarter or better than westerners in their ability to direct blame. Many of the same people complaining now about Zero COVID would also howl if their grandma died of COVID once Zero COVID policies are withdrawn.

I have no love for the CCP but there are no good choices here.

You live in Korea. You are sleeping with the China's enemy. I know your solution. It is the final solution to the Chinese question you have in mind.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

You live in Korea. You are sleeping with the China's enemy. I know your solution. It is the final solution to the Chinese question you have in mind.

i'm sorry, but i am not stating anything controversial to say that there is a happy epidemiological middle ground between the twin poles of chinese dystopia and full-spectrum american insanity. you guys lost your minds over covid. people were getting slapped in public for wearing a mask. please do not act all sober-faced and say 'there are no easy options here' as if america's example is the global mean.

koreans aren't really vexed about chinese relations, by the way. korea was a client state to middle kingdom china even during their 'golden years' of the joseon dynasty. and koreans take a great deal of pride in being a better neo-confucian model society than even confucius's home china could muster. it's japan they have the real beef with because of the toxic imperial legacy. there's been a millennium of mostly cooperative cultural exchange between china–korea (glossing over a lot of shifting allegiances with local korean statelets). most animosity towards china nowadays turns on the usual things like pollution/bad air quality coming across the yellow sea, or rich chinese buying up real estate, and the poor manners of mainlander tourists staggering and spitting their way around myeongdong. pretty global and generalised complaints tbh.

korean-chinese are one of the largest 'non-native' minorities here. and there’s a very large subpopulation of chinese migrant workers. it’s typical american ignorance to assume that north korea or the cold war is the most salient thing in modern korean’s attitudes or politics.

Last edited by uziq (2022-11-28 17:56:13)

https://twitter.com/wallstreetsilv/stat … YnWpeuZbIg

this is totally dystopian.

to recap: people have burned to death inside of their own homes because of lockdown restrictions affecting access to their premises. either they were physically locked in by local govt or the emergency services couldn’t get permission to enter, in any case.

alternatively, people who are declared code yellow in public can’t go home. they’re stuck either in the premises that has a detection or they’re effectively homeless. no apartment complex association will let a yellow resident re-enter. the workplace won’t take them. businesses are terrified of them because it’ll mean they might have to shutter for weeks, too. 

all this insane focus on reducing every reporter cluster to a baseline of 0 cases … for what? xi’s political PR. no endgame or off-ramp in sight. the virus isn’t going anywhere. it keeps popping up in chinese cities, and has done continuously, despite closed borders and heavily restricted public life. beyond that, covid is thoroughly pooled in multiple animal species. if we can’t perfectly control human population movement and contagion, how do we control birds? deer? mink? city rodents? good luck, master engineers of the universe, devising that system.

widespread protests across multiple cities. each of them which have put up with ~3 years now of indefinite lockdowns. the most draconian measures. incidentally, most of these cities have populations 5x or 10x dilbert’s whole state, the paradise he keeps using as his exemplum, in his highly original and effective ‘well it worked for me/and i’m alright jack’ epidemiology.

hopeless.

i mean this is the crux of it, really, even allowing for translation issues and some diplomatic tact.

they don't have any offramp for zero covid. they haven't been using the time for anything other than to tell the chinese citizens how lucky they are to be protected by big daddy xi. they haven't developed new or better vaccines. they haven't put in place any better targeted systems. it's just city-wide lockdowns and going without food or supplies for weeks/months at a time -- forever. and if you disagree or raise trouble, the boa constrictor of the technologized security state tightens around you and your family even more, making life yet more intolerable for you.

you've got to give some justification or long-term vision to the people you're de facto imprisoning for several months of the year. zero covid doesn't have a long-term payoff. because as soon as you begin to lessen it, especially in a population as little vaccinated and underexposed as the chinese one, you're just unleashing a flood of devastation.

i'm yet to hear from dilbert the 'zero covid' champion anything about the actual practical strategy here. just the usual infantile wailing over spilt milk. 'b-b-b-b-but if only we had done things perfectly, globally, in 2019'.

uziq wrote:

i'm yet to hear from dilbert the 'zero covid' champion anything about the actual practical strategy here.

Well I did, your aero-brain can't remember.

If 4.5million Chinese could stop being unfair and just get on and die that would open up my travel opportunities a lot

Exactly

just the usual infantile wailing over spilt milk.

Not so much 'spilt milk' as the nation's milk supply deliberately poured into a field so morons could wallow around in a milk/mud bath.

uziq wrote:

If 6 million chinese could just shut up and choke to death I could plan my next tourist trip.

What if I told you - students incubate the virus and transmit it to vulnerable people.
You've probably done it yourself.

You don't know if you've had covid, or transmitted it.

Vaccines and boosters do exactly 0 to reduce transmission.

Dilbert_X wrote:

You don't know if you've had covid, or transmitted it.

Vaccines and boosters do exactly 0 to reduce transmission.

recent boosters do reduce transmission. this has been established since the first-generation of vaccines. does it drop off quickly with new mutations and time? yes, it does. but boosters do reduce transmission. that's an established fact. stating it does 'exactly 0' is exactly wrong. how are you so illiterate about this?

okay, maybe i've had asymptomatic covid. or maybe i've lived in a country with stringent covid regulations in place, excepting the need for lockdowns, and have taken all good precautions and, you know, not caught covid.

sorry dilbert, but on this you are simply an hilarious hypocrite. you got covid because you started going back into the office and rejoining public life, presumably without wearing a mask all day long. why do you go to the office? 'because i like to have the social life'. LMAO. i work in isolation, by myself, for the bulk of my time here. our lifestyles are simply different -- and, get this, yours is a higher risk one than mine. hahahah.

https://www.health.gov.au/topics/immuni … -service-0

wow this vaccine is shit doesnt prevent all deaths and transmission. useless.

Cybargs wrote:

https://www.health.gov.au/topics/immunisation/immunisation-services/meningococcal-immunisation-service-0

wow this vaccine is shit doesnt prevent all deaths and transmission. useless.

Completely different kind of disease and vaccine.

uziq wrote:

i’ve never had covid.

Fact is you have no idea.

uziq wrote:

you got covid because you started going back into the office and rejoining public life, presumably without wearing a mask all day long.

I went back to the office for over a year and took stringent precautions, wore a mask all day etc.
Eventually it got me.

i mean uzique oculd get a blood test but honestly who gives a fuck anymore.

i can guarantee i've had more PCR tests and have been subject to longer periods of self-isolation than 90% of people. that's what living in korea meant for my first 1.5 years. i had to self-isolate for 15 days, twice, simply because i was in the same vague area as an identified positive case/cluster. none of my close friends ever came back as positive. still, i gave 1.5 months out of 12 to sit out various quarantine periods.

but apparently my lifestyle is risky and i'm selfish. from the guy who wants to go to the office because he misses perving at the poor asian interns and making his huge cost-savings on 'free coffee'.