Topic: Corona Virus Panic/Discussion Thread

Not about to go into the music thread for this but I need to get it off my chest how disappointed I am to find out Van Morrison has released a trio of anti-lockdown songs. He's easily in my all-time top ten artists and I really could have gone the rest of my life knowing nothing about his politics. Sigh.

@zupertramp Yeah, I think I mentioned this somewhere on the articles before but I know a guy who grew up in his street. He’s not well liked. Cranky old bugger. But hey, there’s been rather a few ones come out with anti-lockdown nonsense. Ian Brown from the Stone Roses and Noel Gallagher from Oasis also came out spouting nonsense. I guess there’s the dude from the Corrs but who even likes The Corrs? I dunno, Morrissey’s a tw*t but I still listen to The Smiths.

Cranky seems about right but I guess I just didn't expect him to be some kind of Covid truther. Nor was I expecting to hear him in a new song talking about being enslaved by the government. But he's got a right to his opinion same as anyone else. If I can still listen to Kanye, I'll manage with Van.

A colleague of mine tested positive and I got a call from my boss this morning telling me to stay off, oh well looks like I have some free time to game/read and watch a load of movies/t.v. Seriously though hope I haven't got it and am not holed up in the house for long!

@MightyDemon82 Enjoy it while you can and hopefully you're not incurring any financial loss while being away from work. Also hope the colleague has no issues.

@zupertramp Thanks, I'll still be getting paid so that's not a problem. As far as I know they are fine. Just feels weird getting told not to come into work when I feel absolutely fine. Better safe than sorry I guess!

Looking like it’s going to be tier 3 for all of England. Hope you lot south of the border get by alright.

lol
So, yesterday, the U.S. hit 101.4K new cases in one day (according to Worldometer, at least; CNBC is saying 99,321). And we still have Republican politicians publicly questioning the existence of the virus, and others threatening cities that try to lockdown in hopes of slowing the spread a bit.

And in the midst of all this, the president is hosting superspreader events every single day, and threatens to hold back federal aid from states that try to push back against this.

It's so fun living in a country that's being held hostage by a fascist death cult.

@Ralizah Apparently he who shall not be named actually teased Laura Ingraham about wearing a mask. Somehow we've gotten to the point where Laura Ingraham isn't sufficiently loyal to the cause.

I'm just staying in as much as possible, trying not to spend any money, and hoping election day/week doesn't get us all killed. So not what I was expecting from 2020.

@nessisonett Tier 4 actually

Such a farce though as this has been coming for ages but yet again the government have delayed making any decisions and crossing their finger. And then Boris has the audacity to push the press conference back to during the rugby!

From a personal perspective, I'm meant to be moving house a week on Thursday so want to know where that leaves us, especially as our first move fell through because of the first lockdown :/

@Thrillho Tier 4... wow, they’re inventing new tiers to really show the severity of their own making. At least the Scotland rugby’s already done and we won!

What's really remarkable to me about the "herd immunity" people is, even if you had 10x the number of confirmed cases each day in the States as we apparently had yesterday, it'd still take the better part of a year for it to infect enough of the population for transmission of the disease to truly die out.

Herd immunity isn't a strategy to opt for, it's the worst case scenario, and would require a sustained and unprecedented level of failure from all of our social institutions to happen without vaccines. Sadly, for those of us in Freedom Land, that remains a possibility, depending on how things go in the next few weeks.

@zupertramp I was watching Rudy Giuliani utterly lay into some Fox News person who was very mildly pushing back against the conspiracies he's been peddling, pretty much demanding she grovel and beg for his forgiveness in a live interview, when it really struck me how far gone these people are. We've never seen this level of vile, open corruption and disdain for our institutions before. What truly terrifies me is that this minority administration reflects the worldview of a terrifyingly large fraction of the American electorate.

I'm at least grateful I live in a small community where violence is very unlikely to erupt.

@Ralizah yeah on the one hand that 30% seems insignificant, at least electorally speaking*, but then I do the math and realize it's maybe 40-50 million people. All who hang on his every word and don't believe in germs or science or any of that pesky liberal nonsense apparently. That's definitely the most worrying aspect of all this.

Like you I take some comfort in the fact that I'm relatively secluded. Though I do worry, being in a minority majority area, will communities like mine become targets? Sounds paranoid until you remember a guy drove through the night to mow down Hispanics at a Walmart.

*This also ignores the rather ridiculous amount of influence rural America has on our presidential outcomes due to the electoral college but still, 30% does not a coalition make.

Edit: originally, i factored 30 percent of the total population but this is incorrect because the total population doesn't vote. i've corrected for that though it's a lot more of a guesstimate now.

@Ralizah This is the madness of power hungry despots. They pull people along with them with kickbacks - dividing and conquering. A ton of the Trump supporters do benefit from him being in charge, wherever that's through tax breaks, additional support in their areas and more importantly supporting and encouraging their darker beliefs.

It's morally bankrupt of course but the Republicans are too far down that path now. When the likes of Roe Vs Wade is regurgitated as a current day issue America has gone backwards, it's an awful topic and extremely personal to someone seeking assistance.

The weird part of this conservative ethos is they prefer less government intervention and less constraint. Yet want to take away choice (possibly the hardest) from women. Some proper dark age rubbish right there.

Just heard out about this incoming lockdown, you go hard and early Boris. Too late and reactive as always.

I'm in a Tier 3 area and the rules are killing business and not really protecting anybody. As I noted a few weeks ago loads of people are effected here, most of my colleagues now know friends and family who have been effected. It's now got to the point customers are openly coming in to our showroom openly spluttering and visibly ill. Without financial backing on a person by person basis scousers have thrown in the towel and are cracking on with life. Lockdown was inevitable.

@themcnoisy Hard and early Boris might explain all those kids out in the wild.

@themcnoisy couldn't agree more, we have watched cases double every 10 days, hospital admissions and deaths keep pace and sod all happen. In trying to preserve the economy by keeping everything open too long in March and by repeating it again, they harm the economy more. Longer closures in the end coupled with no consumer confidence are killing small businesses. Lool at New Zealand, increadibley strict early border controls, minimum deaths, continuity of other healthcare provision, a service industry that continues to live and breath. Christ I saw pictures of recent rugby match there where there was 40,000 in a stadium jammed in together. If only we lived on an island without Rupert murdoch controlled media. Instead what do we get? A serial liar in charge who couldn't protect himself, 10 billion spaffed up the wall on privatised test and trace staffed by unqualified, untrained kids and a media thats so partisan large sections of it haven't even covered the fact an English centre forward has had to campaign for skint kids to be fed. ***** bleak mate, gutted we are in this sorry state.

It’s almost as if every country that’s come out the other side followed the East Asia SARS model and every country that’s utterly f**ked is following the flu epidemic model.

@nessisonett maybe we can make the split based on which countries politicians had seen contagion 🤦‍♂️

@R1spam Agree on all points.

Fortunately the thinking is this will be the last lockdown. I reckon the challenge trials for the vaccine will be brought forward to December rather than the current date in January. Then we will have mass rollout January 2021.

@themcnoisy Aye, the last lockdown because we’ll all be dead by Christmas 😉