On Topic Discussion 2019 Coronavirus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2)

[KaraBulut]

Just like Portugal and Germany had done such a good job in shielding themselves from the covid-19 attack, or Sweden by doing virtually nothing to stop the spreading of the virus... or like Trump America, especially Texas, Alabama, and all those proud red states who had the virus under control back in May 2020... or Chile, with so many [dud] vaccines for everybody...

Because they always believe in the human capacity to adapt and evolve, yet never believe that any other organism can do the same.

I'm normally a patient person but I don't know if I can take hearing another white male say, "I have a strong immune system and I work out, so I don't need to take the vaccine".

 

[Telstra]

^ Ah! memories of the early 2000s..:

中華人民共和國在亞洲東部，太平洋的西岸。她是一個有幾千年歷史的文明古國，面積跟歐洲差不多。在這麼大的 一個國家里，到處都有美麗的山水，迷人的景色。它深深地吸引著世界各國的旅遊者。中國的山水不但很美，而且 總是跟中國的古老文化緊緊結合在一起。在遊覽名勝古跡的時候，你可以聽到很多神話傳說和歷史故事，還可以看 到古代文學家留下的詩和文章，欣賞他們的書法藝術。在風景最美的地方，還常常有很多古代的園林、建築和文物 。旅遊者就象走進了一座座文化藝術的寶庫，不但欣賞了那里的景色，而且了解了中國古老的文化。



And do not forget Bondi Beach Bathing Beauties in Budgies, in Little China Down Under!!

Until the virus rises from the dead like The Thing, or the Chinese forests, and then...

I can drive around Australia from south to east to north to west if i wanted to with endless scenery with not much people LOL

 

[Kulindahr]

Honestly, India has enough wealth to have a better healthcare system. They just have not invested the money into upgrading their system- either before COVID-19 or after COVID-19. There's a long history that explains why the India healthcare system is where it is but the best summation is that India has a two-tier healthcare system- one for the wealthy and another for the poor.

Both systems are unable to handle the volume of sick people. And because India has allowed the virus to spread, they have also developed their own unique variants, like B.1.617, which accounts for why the virus is spreading so quickly in India. So far, the Indian variant responds to the vaccine however it is less responsive to convalescent plasma (which means that people who were infected with COVID-19 previously are susceptible to infection with the Indian variant- getting COVID-19 a second time).

Why the COVID-19 Variants Spreading in India Are a Global Concern [Time]

India also has a government that is heavily into religious pseudoscience, which doesn't help at all.

 

[Kulindahr]

In NYC, we did but it was early. The scenario repeated itself in El Paso, Los Angeles, Miami... but to a lesser extent because those cities did learn from the NYC experience.

There was a period in the US where we didn't have masks for healthcare workers. It all happened so fast that we forgot how bad it was...

What infuriates me is how many people are practically prancing around in pride in their refusal to wear masks or get vaccinated, considering themselves superior.

 

[Kulindahr]

When I see what is happening in India....and then I go back to the origin of this thread....and my warnings about what would happen if it ever ran out of control in India.

I despair.

I know a couple of people who think what's happening to/in India is just great. They're just unhappy it isn't taking out tens of millions of people in China at the same time.

 

[belamyi]

What infuriates me is how many people are practically prancing around in pride in their refusal to wear masks or get vaccinated, considering themselves superior.

Might be as infuriating as all those people who believe that all people live socially according to their own and everyone else's good, while they do it according to their own comfort and, as the mask and vaccine thing clearly shows, their own sense of belonging: if something or somebody does not fit, they put it aside, or else put themselves aside from it.

 

[KaraBulut]

India also has a government that is heavily into religious pseudoscience, which doesn't help at all.

Which is a feature of autocracies and populism- like Russia, like Turkey, and in 2020, the US.

White Evangelical Resistance Is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort [NY Times]

Stephanie Nana, an evangelical Christian in Edmond, Okla., refused to get a Covid-19 vaccine because she believed it contained “aborted cell tissue.”

Nathan French, who leads a nondenominational ministry in Tacoma, Wash., said he received a divine message that God was the ultimate healer and deliverer: “The vaccine is not the savior.”

Lauri Armstrong, a Bible-believing nutritionist outside of Dallas, said she did not need the vaccine because God designed the body to heal itself, if given the right nutrients. More than that, she said, “It would be God’s will if I am here or if I am not here.”

Florida Family Indicted for Selling Toxic Bleach as Fake “Miracle” Cure for Covid-19 and Other Serious Diseases, and for Violating Court Orders [US DOJ]

Defendants Accused of Attempting to Avoid Government Regulation by Selling Products Through a Company They Deceptively Named “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing”

$1 Million in Toxic Bleach Sold as ‘Miracle’ Cure, Officials Say [NY Times]

Leaders of a business masquerading as a church sold a toxic bleach solution as a religious sacrament and marketed it as a “miracle” cure for Covid-19, cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s disease and more, federal prosecutors said.

A federal grand jury in Miami has indicted Mark Grenon, 62, and his three sons, Jonathan Grenon, 34; Jordan Grenon, 26; and Joseph Grenon, 32; all of Bradenton, Fla. Prosecutors said on Friday that they violated court orders and fraudulently produced and sold more than $1 million of their “Miracle Mineral Solution,” a dangerous industrial bleach solution.

The solution contains sodium chlorite and water. When it is ingested orally, it becomes chlorine dioxide, a strong bleach used in industrial water treatments and in bleaching textiles, pulp or paper, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said...

Jim Humble, a church founder and a former Scientologist, has claimed that he is a billion-year-old god from the Andromeda galaxy. Mr. Humble, who was not charged in the case involving the Grenons, said that he asked “to be put in the part of the space navy that watched over Earth,” according to an investigation last year by ABC7 in Los Angeles...

Prosecutors said the Grenons also threatened a federal judge presiding over the civil case, saying that if the government stopped their solution distribution they would “pick up guns” and instigate “a Waco,” a reference to the deadly 1993 siege by federal agents of a religious sect’s compound in Texas.

 

[unloadonme]

I posted this in the death thread, but the guy's stupidity deserves wider recognition. This is a doctor from Kenya who campaigned against Covid-19 vaccines, only to go and catch it and die.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56922517

 

[cityboy-stl]

I posted this in the death thread, but the guy's stupidity deserves wider recognition. This is a doctor from Kenya who campaigned against Covid-19 vaccines, only to go and catch it and die.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56922517

It is hard for me to feel any sympathy for people like this. This is the consequence of their own obstinacy, stupidity, and willful disregard for factual reality. Sorry, but it is also hard for me not to wish this would happen much more often to a certain group of people, and I do not like feeling like that.

 

[KaraBulut]

I know a couple of people who think what's happening to/in India is just great. They're just unhappy it isn't taking out tens of millions of people in China at the same time.

In addition to the karma factor of thinking in this way, it also shows ignorance about how contagions work.

It is hard for me to feel any sympathy for people like this. This is the consequence of their own obstinacy, stupidity, and willful disregard for factual reality. Sorry, but it is also hard for me not to wish this would happen much more often to a certain group of people, and I do not like feeling like that.

The fundamentalists and orthodox sects that continue to insist on mass gatherings are a problem. And the courts' refusal to allow restrictions of the crowd size has been a problem.

The news of from Israel about the 44 Orthodox men killed in a stampede was confounding, not only for the irrational act of walking down a cramped, slick ramp but also for the stupidity of getting together in a packed room with thousands of men acting like they are a rave. It's like an exercise in Darwinism.

 

[belamyi]

I know a couple of people who think what's happening to/in India is just great. They're just unhappy it isn't taking out tens of millions of people in China at the same time.

Stone-throwing from glass houses.

 

[belamyi]

The news of from Israel about the 44 Orthodox men killed in a stampede was confounding, not only for the irrational act of walking down a cramped, slick ramp but also for the stupidity of getting together in a packed room with thousands of men acting like they are a rave. It's like an exercise in Darwinism.

Thank God for fundamentalists... as long as they do not plan on marching on everyone else.

 

[belamyi]

The fundamentalists and orthodox sects that continue to insist on mass gatherings are a problem. And the courts' refusal to allow restrictions of the crowd size has been a problem.

Ah, the perks of multiculti and of lenient democracies.

 

[Kulindahr]

It is hard for me to feel any sympathy for people like this. This is the consequence of their own obstinacy, stupidity, and willful disregard for factual reality. Sorry, but it is also hard for me not to wish this would happen much more often to a certain group of people, and I do not like feeling like that.

I have the same response. It surprises me how people think it's sad when someone deliberately does something stupid and suffers the consequences. When people here who have refused to wear a mask catch the virus my only sympathy is for the people they exposed by their selfish idiocy. I see little difference between that and the kid a number of years ago who died falling off a cliff into the surf: I had no sympathy because he had to pass a warning sign, a"Keep Out" sign, and an "Extreme Danger" sign, while crawling under or through two fences to get to where he fell from -- my sympathy for the parents was basically nil as well, since they were the idiots who raised such a fool.
But at least in the case of someone plummeting off a cliff he darned well knew he shouldn't have been on, people refusing to wear masks and/or get the vaccine are endangering more than themselves. Something my roommate said after a report of such a person in the area said reminded me of an old sci-fi saying:

THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION​

The only tragedy is that it isn't just the fools who get what they asked for who are thinned from the gene pool.

 

[KaraBulut]

More religious Darwinism:

9.1 million thronged Mahakumbh despite Covid-19 surge: Govt data [Hindustan Times]

At least 9.1 million pilgrims visited Haridwar for the Mahakumbh this year, the event’s organisers announced on Thursday, underlining the risk of infection at the mega event that was widely criticised for rampant violation of Covid-19 protocols and massive overcrowding during an alarming surge in cases that inundated hospitals and sparked critical shortages of medical supplies.

The Kumbh Mela Force, a government body, said 9.1 million pilgrims took the holy dip in the Ganga from January 14 to April 27. The bulk of this -- at least six million people -- congregated in April, coinciding with the worst surge in the second wave of the pandemic.

The highest gathering of 3.5 million was reported for the Somvati Amavasya holy dip, or the first shahi snan, on April 12. On March 11, for Maha Shivratri, 3.2 million pilgrims arrived for the bath. 1.3 million pilgrims gathered on Mesh Sankranti-Baisakhi, or the second shahi snan, on April 14. For the third shahi snan, on April 27, the numbers plummetted to about 25,000, though there was little adherence to any Covid protocols.

 

[belamyi]

^ Just like American Indians: they are all the same everywhere

 

[frankfrank]

^ I actually thought, and still think to some degree, that going to the "Sturgis thing" (in South Dakota) would be interesting, even though in no way shape or form am I a Biker...and it's probably fairly heavy with MAGA-types. It's like one of the largest parties on the planet.

Florida Family Indicted for Selling Toxic Bleach as Fake “Miracle” Cure for Covid-19 and Other Serious Diseases, and for Violating Court Orders [US DOJ]

Oh, something about this whole things just feels like it's so...Floridian.

 

[belamyi]

^ Is the selling or the buying, that Floridian thing?

 

[rareboy]

Honestly, what is happening in India was a surprise only because it looked like India had dodged the bullet last summer when they locked down. The assumption was that they had enough developed enough herd immunity before the lockdown and they wouldn't see a super-surge like they are seeing now.

This missed the fact that they have their own Trump. Modi is more interested in getting stadiums named after him and holding political rallies and getting re-elected than he is in governing. Sound familiar?

Now they not only have the more contagious UK variant, India has a also developed a unique double-variant that is resistant to the antibodies that their population developed last year in their summer surge.

Here's where I get worried: the Indian variant has showed up in Israel, in children where the adults in the household have been vaccinated.

Israel did a very good job in their vaccine rollout. But they did something stupid. They only vaccinated Jews. The government of Israel took the position that the Palestinian Authority was responsible for vaccinating Palestinians. Israel has allowed unvaccinated travelers to enter their country without incoming 10 day isolation at a time when there's a large portion of the Palestinian population that hasn't been vaccinated. Guess what happened...

Indian COVID Strain Spreads in Israel, Also Among Vaccinated [Haaretz]

In the US, white evangelical men are refusing to get vaccinated. Vaccination rates among Democrats are around 70%. A recent study found that about 45% of Republicans say they will never get vaccinated. Guess what will happen if this continues...

It was...but it wasn't.

The person I am mentoring knew what the downfall would be.
.

He was marrying and over 1000 people would be be invited to the nuptials.

How could this not go wrong...,.this is India...this is what they do. They gather by thousands and hundreds of thousands.

I saw this disaster coming over a year ago.

Cassandra.
Modi et al would be arrogant enough to think they could return to populist politics and allow the kinds of massive group interactions that India is famous/infamous for

 

[Kulindahr]

I know a couple of people who think what's happening to/in India is just great. They're just unhappy it isn't taking out tens of millions of people in China at the same time.

Stone-throwing from glass houses.

Not sure what the glass houses bit is about.

These guys believe the world's population needs to be reduced by a billion or two, and they figure the densest populations are the biggest problem. Of course that one is a "White Pride" type explains a bit; the other is mixed race but believes that the different races need to be equal in numbers. What they really like is a death toll over a billion that reduces the ethnicities that have an "unfair numerical advantage".

It may be worth pointing out that both are fans of Ayn Rand.