Lurker > adjl

MartianManchild posted...

The same amount would have died if Hillary was president.

Sadly, this is probably more or less true. Trump has grossly mismanaged the situation as much as he's had the power to do so, but at the end of the day, he doesn't have THAT much power, and the whole crisis has been mismanaged at pretty much every level. Hillary likely wouldn't have actively discouraged believing in the virus by explicitly calling it a hoax, but a sizable chunk of the people stupid enough to believe Trump saying such things would also be stupid enough to categorically oppose everything Hillary said such that they'd refuse to believe in the virus anyway. She would have been on board with mask recommendations, but the same people would have refused to wear one because they view it as something only those pansy-ass lefties do.

Trump has made his mismanagement of the pandemic extremely public such that it's very easy to pick him out as a scapegoat for the entire country's failures, and he could very easily have done better in a lot of ways (like maybe not insisting that it didn't exist until it had already gained enough of a foothold to be undeniable), but it's just not that simple. This is a crisis that required decisive, restrictive action at every level of government and compliance from a populace that places some value in the safety of their fellow citizens, which means it was never going to go well in the land of "muh individualistic freedoms!".

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JigsawTDC posted...

Is there anything after ? Block yet? Not that I've ever reached anything passed Veteran and who knows if I'll get that far this time.

Just says ???? for me. I'm over 10 years off of that point (10,000 karma, 4067 to go), so it's gonna be a while before that becomes relevant for me.

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Revelation34 posted...

Even if you're taught to drink responsibly by parents it doesn't mean the kids won't drink irresponsibly in their teens.

Of course not. There are no guarantees in parenting. It can still help, though.

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zebatov posted...

False.

So you keep saying, but you're really not convincing anyone that you have a legitimate point.

zebatov posted...

Those people are on visitor visas.

And? The shape of the stamp in their passport doesn't change how contagious they have the potential to be. Anyone coming in - for any reason and from any place - should be isolating, and anyone who doesn't is a threat to public health.

zebatov posted...

I dont think anyone should be crossing any borders unchecked.

Checking doesn't amount to much, as much as it seems like a good idea. You'll catch the ones that are currently symptomatic, which is better than nothing, but you won't catch anyone that's incubating it and will become contagious at some point in the coming days. What's needed is two weeks of isolation upon arrival, regardless of test results or symptoms (well, unless symptoms necessitate hospitalization, obviously, though even then they end up isolated). That's the only way to actually prevent people from bringing in new cases.

zebatov posted...

Im glad to know that its basically only PotD that doesnt agree with me. Cant count how many people brought this exact story up today at work, and we all agree.

Well, if a bunch of your coworkers agree with you, then it must be a universal truth! How silly of PotD to suggest otherwise!

(That was sarcasm, by the way)

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keyblader1985 posted...

To my knowledge the only two that are connected are Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns, and that's a very loose connection.

I accidentally watched those two in the reverse order in immediate succession without realizing they were connected. Given the nature of the connection, I think that actually worked better, since it was pretty much just a matter of saying "hey, that's a fun cameo."

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dancer62 posted...

Put your glasses on. Blow your nose. Did droplets get on your glasses?

Uhh, no? Perhaps I'm just some kind of Kleenex magician, but that's not a problem I've ever had.

dancer62 posted...

We're not talking about blowing out candles. We're talking about aerosol droplets escaping through the open sides, as well as directly through the weave of cloth and paper masks. Who wears fitted respirator masks? Masks are symbolic, not magical.

Attempting to blow out a candle, however, very nicely illustrates just how much the air leaving your mouth is slowed down by the presence of any sort of barrier, however permeable (Bill Nye also demonstrates wearing a scarf, which makes it harder but not impossible to blow out the candle). Slow down the air, and you reduce the distance the droplets contained therein are able to travel.

Furthermore, you seem to be taking a very all-or-nothing approach to this. No, a cloth/paper mask will not provide 100% protection. Nothing short of a full-face SCBA will do that, and those aren't typical protocol for dealing with anything short of Ebola or Smallpox. That doesn't mean it does nothing, though, and the overwhelming opinion from the medical community (who generally understand a whole lot more about infection control than laypeople like yourself) is that the protection they do provide - however imperfect - is better than nothing.

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For that matter, no other country in the world is currently seeing case numbers like the US is in terms of raw numbers, and even if we look at per capita stats, they're among the highest. The US is THE Covid hotspot right now, as well as being the single greatest source by far of foreign nationals coming into Canada, even with the border ostensibly closed.

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Zeus posted...

You mean because Canada's blocked off the US?

On paper, but in practice, quite a few Americans are still coming in for various reasons. As alluded to earlier, one such American (travelling on a student visa) is single-handedly responsible for several clusters of new cases in Nova Scotia and PEI (the former of which had been case-free for 2-3 weeks, the latter for two months), which really leads to the question of why the border isn't more tightly closed when dealing with such a high-risk country.

Nova Scotia's now being considerably more stringent about self-isolation requirements, getting people entering the province to fill out a contact sheet indicating where they're going to be for the next two weeks and how to contact them. Based on that information, they'll be called daily to ensure they're still isolating, and if they miss three such calls, the police will be brought in to track them down and enforce compliance with the isolation order. Personally, I feel like that's too easy to lie one's way through and that they'd be better off just going with full-on house arrest bracelets, but I'm guessing they're going to wait and see how effective this strategy is before taking such a drastic measure.

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That sounds like a pretty reasonable way to be doing Early Access.

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On-topic, that does indeed look pretty cool, but not $5000 worth of cool. I'll be passing.

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I grew up with "Whipper Snipper," which I've heard almost nowhere else and I think must have been a brand name or something.

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The trailer contains further butt as well, but that is peak derriere.

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ReggieTheReckless posted...

Just looks like gungeon, which I'm super terrible at. Oof

That's my thought. I'm tempted, but then I remember just how badly I suck at Gungeon and feel like I should probably just stick to sucking at that game (while generally enjoying it because it's very good) instead of buying a new game to suck equally at.

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OhhhJa posted...

It's a fucking meme dude

And "I can tell by the pixels" isn't?

wolfy42 posted...

Bill Nye did.

That is why I brought it up. That video was a remarkably elegant demonstration of the concept, both in that it clearly illustrates the point and that it can very easily be tried by anyone at home. Classic Bill Nye, really. His old show was really very good for that kind of education.

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I wouldn't say this is working for Russia so much as it is working for Trump. This whole situation is making him look bad, so he's taking steps to prevent that. Pretty much his entire presidency has been about self-serving optics rather than trying to do anything genuinely beneficial.

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Not so much at kids' birthday parties or anything like that, but they'd sometimes have a drink or two at get-togethers where there were both adults and kids. Never so much as to get appreciably drunk, since that'd just be irresponsible, but something to enjoy with dinner or whatever.

Zeus posted...

Yes.

In some ways, adults who drink responsibly are arguably more useful as role models than adults who don't drink at all. Without responsible drinkers in their lives, teens are left to learn about alcohol and drinking responsibly from their peers/personal experimentation (since we all know that telling teenagers "this is bad never do it" accomplishes basically nothing), which generally isn't the best idea. Having a role model who doesn't need to drink to have a good time, exercises good judgement about when to drink, and doesn't drink more than is appropriate for the context is far more informative.

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Hoo boy.

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Whatever seasonings are in them, which varies by the type of sausage and who's making them. The proportion of fat is also pretty carefully controlled, and sometimes you get some manner of aging that contributes further flavours.

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dancer62 posted...

Well, since masks, unless they actually seal around nose and mouth, are just symbolic.

Ever try blowing out a candle with a mask on?

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Blightzkrieg posted...

Are TFWs even bringing covid into Canada? My understanding was that it was just spreading rapidly through them because their living and work conditions are shit. You see the same thing at pretty much all food plants.

That was also my understanding, but it also wouldn't surprise me to see the occasional one bringing a new case in. TC being TC, there's really not much reason to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's correct in this particular belief, but I'm feeling generous.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Most of the new cases are entering through the states.

Eeyup. Which is also a foreign country with alarmingly high case rates, but somehow, I don't think that's what TC's complaining about.

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Zeus posted...

Apparently you're very much mistaken, considering there was no use of lethal force.

Brandishing a gun is threatening lethal force. That's what guns do. Whether or not the gun is actually fired doesn't change the fact that you're threatening somebody's life to get them to comply.

Zeus posted...

I don't know what your streets are like, but they were in downtown California. Given how congested those roads get, a skateboard can often be faster than a car.

If you can pull a u-turn, the streets aren't that congested. Regardless, staying in the car is generally going to be safer, given that the skateboard is going to lose if it gets into a fight with the car.

Zeus posted...

Both actions are defensive measures, though, because (and you should really know this by now) people react to threats in terms of FIGHT or flight.

That doesn't mean that "fight" is always a reasonable response. That's just a catchy oversimplifcation of the physiological response to sympathetic nervous system activation, not carte blanche to respond to stressful situations with unnecessary violence.

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Nothing on the go right now, but I definitely play some older ones here and there. I was playing Minecraft a couple months ago, which I'd count as pre-2010 (official release wasn't until 2011, but I bought it during the beta). A sizable chunk of my Steam backlog is older than that (heck, a rather alarming amount of that backlog was purchased in or before 2010 >.>), to say nothing of GOG.

LB1 posted...

2010 wasn't even that long ago

It doesn't seem like it, but it's been a decade. 2010 is halfway between the release of the PS2 and the current date. Pre-2010 refers to an era when digital distribution was unusual instead of the norm, and the worst industry practices we had to worry about were roughly limited to Horse Armor. Smartphones were only just starting to be a thing, as were indie games.

That said, most modern gaming conventions had crystallized by then. Pre-2010 games don't feel nearly as dated as older ones simply because how games are designed hasn't changed that much compared to prior decades (monetization aside). Controllers have basically been standardized since the PSWii60 era (as much as the Wii tried to buck the trend), and that's had a big influence on stuff feeling like it hasn't changed that much. The shooter trend of the early- to mid-2000's also hasn't really gone anywhere, though the explosion of the indie market has helped to diversify what's available. I understand why you wouldn't feel like it's been that long, since so much of gaming feels the same as it did then.

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This looks photoshopped. I can tell by the pixels, and from seeing quite a few photoshops in my time.

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zebatov posted...

No. I meant what I said. Id explain how youre wrong, and youd still just make up some bullshit like you always do, so Im not going to waste my time.

And by "make up some bullshit," you mean "form a cohesive counterargument that I can't refute." We understand, dude. You don't have to pretend.

zebatov posted...

Love how nobody responded to #20 because they cant organise their feelings like that.

I actually quite agree that more needs to be done to isolate people coming into the country (testing wouldn't actually do much, given the incubation period and resultant need for everyone to isolate regardless of test results). My home province and one of the neighbouring ones has also had several clusters spawned by some foreign jackass from a shithole country that can't control Covid, who failed to isolate when he arrived, and that's especially annoying because they'd both been case-free for weeks prior to that. The difference, though, is that I'm not using that incident to justify barring all Americans from entering the country. Just to highlight the importance of enforcing self-isolation guidelines for travellers.

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IronBornCorps posted...

I think if kids are ready to see hetero relationships, they can see queer ones.

*Edit* obviously these relationships would not be sexualized or explicitly displayed, but it's not a big deal for a character to have gay parents or something to the affect in a kids show.

This. Having a gay relationship doesn't have to involve "sexualizing" the content any more than having a straight relationship does. You can indicate it just fine with "these are my dads" or "this is my wife" or a kiss/hand-hold or the like.

keyblader1985 posted...

I mean there's already plenty of gay characters and couples in mainstream kids' shows. Movies wouldn't really make much difference.

Now, yeah. In the early 2000's? Much less so. Bear in mind that that was well before gay marriage really started to gain traction anywhere in the world, let alone the US. Massachusetts was the first state to legalize it, and that was only in 2004, 2 years after this movie came out. Nobody else really started following suit until legislation finally made it through in California in 2008, and then support gradually spread from there. Including a gay relationship in a kids' movie in 2002 would have been a pretty significant deal, as trivial as it seems now.

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zebatov posted...

Except most of it was wrong, Im just not going to bother responding to it because I dont feel like arguing with someone who willingly stays wrong.

So you did consider taking an agricultural job to fill your free time? And you do believe that most Canadians would have done the same? Or that the agricultural industry could just not have workers for a few months and everything would have been fine? Or that isolating incoming workers for 14 days is all that's necessary to eliminate whatever risks they might be bringing with them and that that's the only adjustment the TFW program needed to accommodate the current pandemic (which didn't happen and that's bad)?

What you actually mean is "I don't know how to argue against what you said, so I'm going to insist that you're wrong without saying anything you might be able pick apart." Common mistake. Don't feel too bad, I've seen it a thousand times.

Revelation34 posted...

Pretty sure James Gunn was fired before he apologized.

Off-hand, I don't remember the details, but that is the first case that came to mind writing that. If his apology didn't come until after he'd faced real consequences for it, that does suggest a certain degree of insincerity, and further repentance is in order before feeling that he's earned forgiveness. If he got fired before he had a chance to apologize and/or demonstrate that he's no longer the person who made those tweets, then that was a knee-jerk reaction that shouldn't have happened because people deserve a chance to atone for their mistakes. Either way, it could have been handled better.

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zebatov posted...

to take jobs from us while Canadians without COVID were out of work.

When you were laid off from your job for Covid, did you at any point think "hey, maybe I'll use this free time to go work in agriculture to help out with the labour shortage they always face!"? Somehow, I doubt it, and you're very much not alone in that. Sure, it would have been nice to staff every business that has used TFW's since the shutdown started with laid-off Canadians, but in practice, that was never a plausible alternative, and suspending the TFW program in hopes that that might catch on would just have resulted in the collapse of the agriculture industry (among other essential jobs).

By and large, the TFW program is used to fill necessary positions that Canadians just aren't interested in. It has no shortage of problems (some of which started under Harper and Trudeau hasn't fixed them yet, some of which are new under Trudeau) and is routinely abused by unscrupulous employers who care nothing for the living conditions of the workers they hire under it (which contributes significantly to the risk of Covid transmission), but for the most part, it's not taking jobs away from Canadians. Canadians are giving those jobs away because they don't want them.

zebatov posted...

people from foreign countries with high cases of COVID

If executed properly, there's no reason TFW's should present a risk of Covid transmission in the areas where they're used. The problem arises not in that they're coming from high-risk areas, but that the people employing them aren't interested in funding the two weeks of isolation they need to undergo upon arriving to render their origins irrelevant. That would mean two weeks of not working while being supplied with all the food and necessities they'd need, as well as a translator to overcome the problem of language barriers (even native English speakers have trouble with the concept of "asymptomatic transmission" and the need to isolate despite feeling fine), which is a non-trivial amount of money to be spending on workers that employers are trying to cheap out on. That really should have been a requirement for the TFW program this year.

zebatov posted...

Trump made mistakes in his past and people still hold him accountable, Mead.

The key difference being that Trump seems uninterested in repenting for or learning from said mistakes. Somebody dressing up in brownface in 2001 then welcoming tens of thousands of middle eastern refugees during a major crisis in 2016 has repented for the former mistake (and also explicitly apologized). Most of Trump's mistakes, he denies making, deflects from, or gaslights people in an effort to convince them that the mistakes were trivial, which is why people keep trying to hold him accountable.

Quite simply, if people account for their mistakes, you no longer need to hold them accountable. That work has been done already and you should move on. If people seemingly aren't interested in accountability, that's when you keep pushing the issue.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Gladly. Demanding that people lose jobs or otherwise be erased from the public eye over past conduct that they've grown beyond and/or apologized for is ridiculous. They still need to face justice for any actual crimes committed, and depending on the severity of the mistakes, repenting may take a whole lot of work, but past wrongs can and should be forgiven if the person has put actual effort into earning forgiveness.

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I'd say they're worth playing. They're among the worst Zelda games, but they're still decent in their own right.

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Carpe diem: Seize the day
Carp y denim: There's a fish in my pants

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It's marginally more offensive than Spaceballs, which is to say, not really that bad, A lot of its humour, though, relies on tongue-in-cheek racist jokes that actually poke fun at racism more than promote it, but that kind of subtlety might be lost on modern mainstream audiences.

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OhhhJa posted...

By saying its okay to gather up to 100 people, they are encouraging them. I don't know how else you can spin that. If they weren't encouraging them, they should say something along the lines of "protesting is discouraged but wear a mask if you feel the need" instead of saying "go ahead and form groups of 100 people!"

It's a neutral statement, not an encouraging one. Encouragement is an act of its own, not merely the absence of discouragement. If anything, the fact that they're placing limits at all indicates that there is some danger, which is more discouraging than anything else.

OhhhJa posted...

And what if all the stay at home protesters wear masks? Is it OK then?

From a public health perspective? It'd help. From the perspective of the organization issuing medical advice? They'd probably still object to protests against that medical advice. Again, the CDC is not a legislative agency. They're a bunch of doctors saying "please stop protesting against the best medical advice we have because you won't change that fact." They're not making anything illegal, just telling people to stop interfering with the response (note that many of the anti-lockdown protests have including harassing medical staff, which the CDC obviously needs to object to).

OhhhJa posted...

People have really transformed science into religion now huh? Science is apparently deciding that one protest of 100 people is ok despite the CDC and WHO still determining how this is being transmitted.

No, science is the one saying that staying home reduces the risk of transmission, which in turn is informing stay-at-home orders. People protesting stay-at-home orders are therefore protesting science. Protests against science are foolish and futile, and in a pandemic situation where protesting comes with a cost to public safety, that means they aren't okay. By comparison, protests against things which people can actually control are decidedly less foolish and futile, and it's therefore potentially possible to justify them against the public safety cost of having them.

The 100 person thing is indeed arbitrary, particularly where pretty much everyone has been surprised by how little transmission has been seen at these protests. That's not what I'm referring to when I say that science justifies differentiating protests like this.

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OhhhJa posted...

Imagine being so stuck up your own ass that you think your protests are ok but others aren't.

I don't have to think that. Science thinks that for me. I just have to listen to science. Empirical reality is fun like that.

OhhhJa posted...

Considering the CDC and WHO are still trying to figure out how the virus is transmitted it seems a little disingenuous to be encouraging protests of any kind

But they aren't encouraging them. They just aren't condemning them, while also giving advisories for how to conduct yourself safely if you do feel the need to participate in one. That's both their responsibility and the extent of their authority.

OhhhJa posted...

It was either the CDC or WHO that said asymptomatic people aren't likely to transmit it like 2 weeks ago my dude

I'm still not entirely clear if that was just looking at fully asymptomatic people or if it also included presymptomatic ones (people who are not currently displaying symptoms, but later do). The possibility of the virus being airborne and not relying purely on droplet transmission has also been bounced around lately, which would make a/pre-symptomatic transmission more of a risk again. The CDC's finding from a couple weeks ago sounds nice and I hope it pans out, but given how rapidly the situation (and therefore our understanding of the disease) is evolving, I'm generally inclined to err on the side of caution for any recommendation they make. It's still going to be safest to limit my unprotected contact with other people to people that I can trust haven't been exposed, rather than simply asymptomatic people.

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He's not wrong in that there's definitely a bit of a race to see who can support the cause better than everyone else, but the attitude that sports should be an escape from reality that ignores current issues isn't altogether valid. Sports give athletes platforms from which to champion causes they believe in. Expecting them not to use said platforms because some people would rather spend sports time forgetting that the world isn't perfect is unreasonable.

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wolfy42 posted...

That is freaking crazy. Just goes to show the freaking infinite time loop my life has become, an endless procession of days where I wake up, watch tv shows/play games and surf the net and go to sleep broken up by occasional trips to the store. I really thought it had only been a few weeks.

Time basically has no meaning anymore. I had some sense of what day it was when I was still buying turnips in Animal Crossing, since I had to keep track of Sundays for that, but since making enough money to stop doing that, I don't really know anything anymore. Even going back to work hasn't helped because my schedule's only part time and very inconsistent.

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OhhhJa posted...

If I decide to protest against government overreach (while wearing a mask) that should be ok then.

Not when that "overreach" is the aforementioned empirically justifiable public health restrictions. You can't protest science. Science doesn't listen to you. It doesn't matter how much you complain, the factual reality of the matter is that those restrictions will continue to be the best available option. All complaining does is pressure the government to ignore science and act against everyone's best medical wishes, which really is not a very good idea.

OhhhJa posted...

Somehow I think it wouldn't be.

I mean, it's still legal either way. The CDC condemning people protesting against the best available medical advice is not a legal penalty for doing so, it's simply doctors and epidemiologists saying that protesting against medicine and epidemiology is dumb. They're well within their rights to express that opinion.

OhhhJa posted...

Let's also not mention that at least when its your friends or family gathering, you can actually ask if anyone is sick or not and decide whether or not to meet with them

If you want to rely on self-diagnoses for an illness with a sizable presymptomatic transmission period and substantial symptomatic overlap with many common trivial illnesses, sure. That's not necessarily the most reliable, though, especially when you consider that a "social gathering" larger than 12 people is very likely to have people you don't know well enough to know their recent medical history. Keeping it smaller enables you to do exactly what you're suggesting, since then you can feasibly talk to everyone and find out how cautious they've been lately.

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By the time September rolls around, I'll be back in Nova Scotia, where things are mostly under control. They were down to 0 cases for a couple weeks, but then an American travelling on a student visa failed to isolate properly and triggered a couple new clusters that have since been tracked down. Based on how it's been going, I'd expect them to get back to 0 by September, in which case there's really nothing to worry about and I'd be okay with kids going back to school. If that doesn't get under control, though, or similar incidents in the future cause a resurgence in cases, I'd be more reluctant.

If I were still going to be in Ontario in the fall? Nope. It has generally not been well-contained here, mostly due to the sheer population density of Toronto and the surrounding area, and as such I expect that reopening schools would result in that getting worse (I don't actually know what the plan is right now). That's just not a problem I'd want to contribute to. Maybe by October or November, if things go well until then, but not September.

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Washington Crimsonhides

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BlackScythe0 posted...

Depends on what middle class means now days...

Realistically, if you're in a position to buy a reasonable single-family house for yourself/your family, you and five friends of similar SES could buy a mansion together instead of buying individual houses. If we say $200k for a single house, that'd be $1.2 million together, which can definitely buy something large enough for six people if you aren't looking in absurdly inflated areas.

Far-Queue posted...

Absolutely. Why wouldn't they?

Just as with athletes and movie stars and musicians, some may feel that their income is grossly inflated, but they earn what the markets permit them to earn. Should they turn down money that's available to them?

And, just like athletes and the like, even that seemingly-inflated income is a fairly tiny percentage of the revenue they actually generate for their publishers/whatnot. There's ample room to argue that they actually deserve a bigger cut, given the percentage of the product they provide, which just highlights how absurdly inflated entertainment is.

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That's EA for you.

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Fantasia 2000. The only other one I can remember off-hand is Avatar, but there may have been others since.

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OhhhJa posted...

That's a whole lot of words to make excuses for this obvious bs contradiction.

To summarize, friends hanging out and being comfortable with each other is generally going to entail riskier, less cautious behaviour than going to a protest with a bunch of strangers that you're more wary of, so the double standard makes some degree of sense.

OhhhJa posted...

And then saying one protest is ok but another one isn't.

Most would consider police brutality to be a bigger problem than empirically justifiable public health restrictions, so it's not really surprising that protests against the former are being regarded more highly than protests against the latter. Especially where those attending the former are generally better about distancing and wearing masks than those who are protesting against those very guidelines.

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BlackScythe0 posted...

Don't do this you could be charged with terroristic threats or something.

Yes, don't actually do it. That would be bad. That said, if he's effectively cold-calling people with fundraising requests regardless of their affiliation, I'm expecting it to happen.

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Rotpar posted...

Some games do sabotage the pirate releases; like Arkham City screwed up the glide controls, and people laughed when the pirates cried on the forums about the broken game.

My favourite is still Game Dev Tycoon: If you play a pirated copy of the game, piracy gradually becomes a larger and larger problem for the game you're developing until it eventually becomes insurmountable and you go bankrupt. People asking how to overcome piracy on that game's forums got a rather quick lesson in self-awareness.

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If you want to really be a douche about it, you could send the envelope back with a bit of flour or baking soda in it and nothing else, but unfortunately that would just end up panicking some unpaid volunteer and not anyone with actual power who might deserve such a scare.

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Clench281 posted...

Fact of the matter is, the number of people participating in protests is insignificant compared to the working population at large.

This is something a lot of people don't seem to grasp. Yeah, the protests are a lot of people, and when dealing with something like this, that's not a good idea (at least it doesn't seem to be, even if actual results have defied that expectation in some cases), but compared to everyone in the country going back to work/school/church/bars/whatever? It's a drop in the bucket, especially where the protests are relatively isolated events and not something that happens for 8+ hours a day every day.

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I legitimately can't tell if that's a scam or not. Congratulations, America, your president's inane ramblings are indistinguishable from those of the average Nigerian Prince.

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Looks like mine defaults to 4:3, so that.

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darkknight109 posted...

but it also means it's understandable that they're occasionally going to get things wrong and we shouldn't necessarily be getting super-upset about that.

And it especially doesn't mean that we should ignore what they say and make up our own understanding of the virus based on what sounds most convenient to us. Even if the experts make mistakes, they are still the best source of information and advice that we have. Anything else is going to be idle armchair speculation from people desperate for any information that might validate their hope that it's not a big deal.

streamofthesky posted...

I saw a few weeks ago someone pointing out that Japan hasn't been too bad. Despite people still packed in subways/trains and how densely populated and elderly the population is. But they ALL wear masks. It's considered normal there and they actually give a damn about protecting other people.
Here, we have an idiot reality tv reject president refusing to wear one and railing against them and his followers emulating him.

I've seen it suggested that that's why it didn't rip through China as badly as one might expect, too (though China's specific numbers are largely meaningless). East Asian countries had a pre-existing culture of wearing masks to help combat the inevitable public health consequences of their high population density, which means there hasn't been the kind of adamant resistance to mask-wearing recommendations that we're seeing in the US in particular.

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dedbus posted...

I image it's young people who went and are more likely to be asymptomatic not getting tested.

There have been a few articles bouncing around about protesters proactively getting tested in large numbers shortly after the protests and those tests overwhelmingly coming back negative. It's a weird result, for sure, but it seems that many of these protests conclusively haven't resulted in spikes in cases (not all of them, since not all of them were tested so rigorously), not just that a spike hasn't been detected due to inadequate testing or anything like that.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Being outside and wearing a mask causes the risk of infection to drop like a rock.

Which honestly makes some degree of sense. Masks already limit what's in the air pretty dramatically (both in terms of total volume and in terms of particle/droplet size), and when you throw in sunlight effectively disinfecting everyone's masks and faces while they're outside and the fact that anyone choosing to wear a mask for this probably washed their hands when they got home, I can believe that the combination of those factors amounted to pretty effective infection control.

Unbridled9 posted...

If large gatherings where hundred people are packed together for several hours has 'no discernable impact' but a person opening a business in which they enforce social distancing is a health threat worthy of the police, then something isn't adding up. Either they're lying about how it's spread or they're lying about what's going on with the protests.

The bottom line is that the protests were/are concerning, but there's not a lot that can be done to stop them without committing political suicide and/or staging a full-on military offensive. Shutting down businesses for being too risky is a lot more feasible, both practically and politically. Shutting down businesses that are implementing adequate protective measures, however, shouldn't be happening. I agree with that.

The fact that the protests don't seem to be as much of a problem as was expected is weird. I don't think anyone saw that coming (except the people who have been insisting the virus has never been an issue, but that's an example of a stopped clock being right). There are almost certainly going to be lessons to be learned and some new conclusions to be drawn from that result, which will inform public health policy moving forward, but it's too early to expect that just yet. It's been less than a month since this result became really apparent, and science just doesn't move that fast.

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LinkPizza posted...

My co-worker recently got tested. He got the test Monday morning. And the results didnt come back until Thursday...

That was my experience, but my girlfriend got hers back the next day despite being tested at the same time. The way it's done around here, results are uploaded to an online system, but they're linked to your provincial health card number. Where I don't have a health card for this province, she was able to access hers online, but I had to wait a few days for my results to be sent to the local public health authority so I could call in and get them.

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