Author Topic: I was right.  (Read 8831 times)

Offline Cyborg

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I was right.
« on: March 23, 2020, 08:32:30 pm »
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/politics/what-matters-march-23/index.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/america-not-place-shutdown-trump-222523478.html

As someone who does have underlying health conditions, I'm on the short list. And I know we had some big forum argument, where I posited that Republicans and their followers were both evil and moronic. I also posited that voting was of paramount importance. I was right.

We have been sold to the stock market.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2020, 09:44:45 pm »
I've been having a(n intermittent) conversation with someone Elsewhere that the US might actually be a worst place to be right now than where he is (Italy, just outside of Milan).

Or that it probably will be in about a week (Italy's infection curve is starting to slow, whereas the US is about six days behind in terms of total number of infections and still accelerating....and we're about to hand over 500 billion of taxpayer dollars to Boeing and other large companies so they can enrich themselves).

Offline Cyborg

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #2 on: March 23, 2020, 10:07:15 pm »
Profits over people. We have been robbed blind before, such as that trillion dollar "tax cut." What makes this so outrageous is that people are literally dying, and that's seen as an opportunity to raid the vault yet again. And on top of that, only the Democrat governors are shutting down their states.

I'm so very sad and angry that our president-  that a political party is literally sacrificing their own people for the Dow Jones.

I called it all out years ago.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #3 on: March 23, 2020, 11:23:37 pm »
Mostly true. I know that Alabama has restricted gatherings and told restaurants to stop offering dine-in (take out and delivery only).
Not quite a "shut down everything" but its not nothing.

Offline x4000

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #4 on: March 24, 2020, 01:14:54 pm »
I, my wife, and my ex wife are all also on the shortlist.

I try to stay apolitical at work for a variety of reasons, one of which is creating some inclusivity for even people I disagree with.  If I want to go debate someone, I'll head over to reddit.

You're not saying anything I disagree with, and I've had the same feelings since the Bush administration, let alone Trump.  Yes, you called it.  I and a ton of other people also saw the writing on the wall a long time ago.

But I kind of have to ask: is this really what we want to do here?  It's personally not what I really want to do here.  I have family and a few friends with political beliefs that are directly opposite of my own, and I try to enjoy their company and what we DO have in common.  Rhetoric and tribalism and so on is so set in, and views are so entrenched, that rational discussion is not going to yield anything.  This isn't new information.

We can all get into a big argument here, figure out who thinks what and who disagrees with who, and it will change exactly zero minds.  This is the frustrating and depressing conclusion I've come to, over a span of years.  This isn't some grand new revelation.

So the question becomes: why do it?  Can we just get along despite our differences (not you and me specifically, as we're on the same page, but basically the people you're kind of baiting right now)?  Nobody's going to suddenly switch sides or admit they were wrong.  They're going to trot out misinformation, deflection, and alternative facts.  They're going to point to legitimately shitty things that the democrats are doing, as well.  It will circle and spiral, and nothing will come of it but a lot of anger.

That's... not really what I'd like this community to be, speaking for myself.
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #5 on: March 24, 2020, 02:41:41 pm »
Not intended to bait, actually. We all know you can't awaken people who quit reality a long time ago. And we're going to see that as the death numbers go up, as people who need ventilators can't get them, as people die amongst our family and friends. I don't feel the need to debate people in this thread. I don't have to, you can look at the statistics here:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
QED.

Like you, I have had to quickly arrange my estate. I'm preparing to die. In so doing, I can't help but remember the sneering, snickering attitudes. The willful ignorance and flight from responsibility. You know what I'm talking about. There are people who delight in folks who suffer, physically or otherwise. Because they are a different color, a different race, homosexual- name any stupid reason. There are people who checked out from any sense of responsibility. And some of those folks I remember as being here. Not everyone, not you, Chris. So I guess you could say, I have been doing a lot of I love you's, a lot of sharing of stories and appreciation for the positive things from the people in my life story. But there's just a few, where I just wanted to flip the bird. Not at you. But, you all know who you are.

It's a goodbye, not a debate. I'm preparing to leave this life, not of my own free will, but by the results of the actions and inactions of the above. Words matter. Actions matter. Reality matters. Facts matter.

So consider the bird flipped.

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Offline x4000

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #6 on: March 24, 2020, 04:50:06 pm »
In that context, then, you have my full support and agreement on flipping that bird.

Estate planning and wills and all of the above are... extremely necessary.  But I hope that you can keep some hope, and find a way through this despite the odds.  Statistically speaking, the odds may be something that are extremely not in your favor, and they are very much not in the favor of myself and a number of those close to me.  I am hopeful that my wife and I both make it through this, or at least her if I'm not able to.  Our own mortality is something a lot of us are staring in the face right now.

Even so, statistically, despite the stupidity of those in power and a ton of heartbreaking stories already, it's not certain that death is in any particular individual's near future.  Even amongst the most vulnerable populations with the most exacerbating of conditions (pollution, pre-existing conditions, etc), the mortality rates are something like 15% max (you're 75+ years of age and have a health problem), although that is something I'm suspicious of for a few reasons.  I think infection numbers are under-represented, so the mortality rates are probably much lower in reality.

The rates of hospitalization are another matter, and if the system gets flooded so that there are not enough respirators for those who need the ICU, then the mortality rates skyrocket because of people who died who could have been saved.  Aka, what is happening in Italy with most everyone over 65 who needs ICU support, unfortunately.

My point being, it's good to have our affairs in order, and if you take a group of 100 people such as us, it's entirely reasonable to think that anywhere from 6-15 of those people will die in the next year.  That's an enormous loss of life, and it's hugely tragic and will affect pretty much everyone the world over in indirect fashions.  But at the same time, it's not a definite death sentence for much of anybody, even those on the short lists... and amongst adults it's also not a guarantee that anyone NOT on the shortlist won't be one of those 6 to 15 individuals instead of someone on the shortlist.

So I mean... personally I'm mentally preparing myself for some people around me that I care about to die.  I don't know who, although I know which people it's more likely to be compared to others.  My wife, my ex, and myself are among the people who are more likely rather than less, which is not comforting in the least.  But it's also possible that all three of us will be just fine.  Someone perfectly healthy that I know and care about, who has no reason to be thought of right now, may instead be the one who goes.

I feel like the reality is it's going to be a lot of a giant mix of things, and all sorts of people are going to die, and it's going to be confusing and sad and a terrible time.  But it's not a guarantee who lives and dies, and I hope that we are both still seeing each other around for years to come here on the forums.  But the odds are very very high that several someones from the forums won't make it through the next year, and we'll probably never know who it was that didn't.

I dunno.  It's a lot to process.  Our own personal mortality, and those of everyone around us.  But that's how I've been thinking about things.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2020, 05:07:34 pm »
The rates of hospitalization are another matter, and if the system gets flooded so that there are not enough respirators for those who need the ICU, then the mortality rates skyrocket because of people who died who could have been saved.  Aka, what is happening in Italy with most everyone over 65 who needs ICU support, unfortunately.

Yeah, Andrew Cuomo is already saying he can't get enough ventilators from the federal government and Charlie Baker said his state is being outbid on critical medical supplies, losing to the federal government.

Offline Cyborg

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #8 on: March 24, 2020, 11:09:20 pm »
I have been writing letters and making phone calls, trying to organize my social groups to do the same, to urge and do all that I can. Also been working on trying to convince my company to do medical supply manufacturing. Trying, running into a lot of walls.

It's bizarre to me. I'm jumping up and down, pointing to DEAD BODIES, and I get blank faces and flat affect responses. It's so strange. Dead bodies. Dead #%!*%*g Bodies. People just turn away.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #9 on: March 24, 2020, 11:27:07 pm »
Don't die. We'd miss you.

Offline x4000

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #10 on: March 24, 2020, 11:37:14 pm »
The amount of indifference inside large medical institutions has been disgusting to witness up close. It's not universal, but there are a lot of heads in the sand.

I don't have the link handy (edit: link: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/23/antibiotic-resistance-hidden-threat-lurking-behind-covid-19/), but my wife was reading an opinion piece by a former head of the CDC talking about the risks of secondary infections to people who are hospitalized with coronavirus. Antibiotic resistant bacterial infections are likely to claim a lot more lives after coronavirus itself. The number of lives being lost each year to this is already something like 35k worldwide if I recall properly.

I don't remember her name offhand, she was the CDC director from 2002 to 2009. So that's going to complicate things. Just another matter we've been studiously ignoring as a nation, that is likely to bite us in the ass worldwide at the same time as the rest of this stuff.

Apparently there are about 80 different vaccines in various stages of development. But that won't help on the antibiotic front. The writer was noting that new antibiotics would take a billion dollars or so to develop, and then be wildly unprofitable because they should only be used sparingly as a last line of defense to avoid giving resistance to them. So there were something like three biotechnology firms pursuing these in the last few years who all went out of business.

Things like this that nobody is thinking about on a wide scale are only going to compound the problems of the original pandemic.

And I agree: don't die, if you can at all help it. I'll work on doing the same.
« Last Edit: March 25, 2020, 03:07:52 pm by x4000 »
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Offline x4000

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #11 on: March 25, 2020, 03:08:23 pm »
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #12 on: March 25, 2020, 04:29:49 pm »
There's a solution behind the antibacterial resistance problem. Not that companies have any interest in researching it either. And that's engineering a bacteriophage (which is harmless to humans) and growing it in quantity sufficient to use as a drug.

But yeah, a general antibiotic is very, very unprofitable.

Offline x4000

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #13 on: March 25, 2020, 05:16:03 pm »
Is a targeted bacteriophage really something that would be practical for us to engineer?  I'm thinking of all the beneficial gut bacteria that would be wiped out if this was too indiscriminate.  If there's nothing that remains to kill the bacteriophage once it's in your body, that could be absolutely fatal if it ever evolves to target things that you need to live.

I've read about some of this technology before, but it always seemed unreachably far away.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: I was right.
« Reply #14 on: March 25, 2020, 05:27:17 pm »
Not being a biologist, I have no idea!

But the point is, no one's even researching it. But we do know two things:
1) It would work
2) Bacteria can't be both resistant to antibacterials and bacteriophages.

 

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