[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Jesus Won’t Want You For A Sunbeam and won’t allow Kenneth Copeland To Blow You corono free if you keep making fun of him.

Jesus Cold Hard Sucka.

[Diesel]

Town centres are deserted post apocalyptic zombi movie sets, pure atmosphere. People are falling like flies but, every cloud...

[Skuj]

d3.

Been busy cleaning out the fucking garage. I have so much "stuff". Fuck me. I want to be a minimalist. Minimalism will be a good thing in the post-covid world.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Skuj

d3.

Been busy cleaning out the fucking garage. I have so much "stuff". Fuck me. I want to be a minimalist. Minimalism will be a good thing in the post-covid world.

not really, it won’t be

i came to my new apartment a minimalist and had to stock up in a motherfucking hurry when the shit hit the fan.

then again, clutter is bad.

but if you really wanna go with it, read fumio sasaki’s “goodbye, things” and check out his youtubes.

there are others, but he’s as extreme as it goes without being a dirty homeless hippy

watcha mean d3, aren’t you playing black?

[Skuj]

Oh I fucked up, sorry. I meant d6.

I have so much shit that I don't need. Of course, when it comes to books/CDs/Blurays, I'm a sucker. (Fuck streaming.)

[!@#$%!]

oh lol d4 then

you hate streaming?

you must hate books and cds and blurays too if you buried them in the garage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

Of course, when it comes to books/CDs/Blurays, I'm a sucker. (Fuck streaming.)

YEAH! FUCK STREAMING! Finally, someone with good sense around here! You are now officially my SYG hero. After Lee, of course.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by _tunic_

What I read is that especially people with obesity that get infected with Corona end up in the ICU

Are you saying Symbols is obese?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Are you saying Symbols is obese?

only in the penis girth. open wider.

[Skuj]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

oh lol d4 then

you hate streaming?

you must hate books and cds and blurays too if you buried them in the garage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No, those bitches are in my den. I must have a fucking den.

pxp.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

only in the penis girth. open wider.

Oyyy... That was way uncalled-for, come on.

 

[Skuj]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

YEAH! FUCK STREAMING! Finally, someone with good sense around here! You are now officially my SYG hero. After Lee, of course.

At first I read that as "Arthur Lee" and fainted.

These streaming services.....do they have old (and I mean OLD) films/music? Do they have foreign films? Can they change the way they do things at a moments notice?

Fuck that shit!! I want a library of books, music and films, which I can individually touch, feel and smell. I'm old fashioned that way.

Um.....on Covid 19, presently, I got nothin. But Easter is coming!!!

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

Um.....on Covid 19, presently, I got nothin. But Easter is coming!!!

Easter is coming indeed, and who cares about social distancing when you're looking for Easter eggs. I mean, the U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak Kills an American Every 45 Seconds... But dude, Easter eggs are the shit yo!

You said you were wondering whether the CDC can still be fully trusted. I think they were doing their best in spite of Donaldo, but it's a tightrope, they must be under a truckload of deranged pressure, and it seems they're barely maintaining their balance: now critical employees exposed to the virus can return to work. What? Yes, the new guidelines include a bunch of precautions that should be taken, but is this really the time to ease up on restrictions? NO, it fucking isn't.

[The Soup Nazi]

Zakaria's Global Briefing, April 8:

An Unequal Pandemic

Covid-19 is wreaking havoc in developed countries like the US, UK, Spain, and Italy, but commentators have argued with increasing unanimity that the virus is poised to hit some people and countries harder than others.

Inequality will only exacerbate the harm of Covid-19, according to a recent essay in The Lancet. The authors—Faheem Ahmed of the UK’s NHS, Na’eem Ahmed of a London-based NHS hospital trust, Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics, and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—note that poor people worldwide have more chronic conditions, less access to care, lower life expectancy, and a harder time “navigating complex benefits systems,” all of which puts them at risk. Poverty and Covid-19 will intersect dangerously, both in health and economics, they argue, as “unemployment rates will rise substantially and weakened welfare safety nets further threaten health and social insecurity.”

In a Financial Times essay on how Covid-19 will hit the developing world, David Pilling, Jonathan Wheatley, Andres Schipani, and Amy Kazmin suggest lower-income countries will experience the crisis in “reverse”: While rich countries have suffered outbreaks first, shutting down their economies second, Covid-19 could arrive in developing countries after they’ve already been hampered by a global economic downturn. “As capital is pouring out, remittances—the lifeblood of economies from the Philippines to Nigeria—are dwindling,” they write. “Many foreign workers in western cities, especially those working as hotel staff, chefs or drivers, have lost their jobs.”

And in the US, CNN’s Eric Levenson reports, African-Americans could see disproportionate harm, given aggregate disadvantages in terms of chronic diseases and access to care.


How Conflict Zones May Fare

Conflict zones are at particular risk, Eleanor Gordon and Florence Carrot write for the Lowy Institute’s blog, The Interpreter. War-torn countries lack resources and trust in government (“i[n] Iraq, for instance, a depleted healthcare system that enjoys little public trust will not be able to respond effectively if there is a serious outbreak,” they write), and government measures like lockdowns can stoke fear that those in power will persecute select groups. Warring factions “can make political and economic gains by utilising the opportune moment presented by crises, as occurred during the Ebola outbreak resulting in heightened political tension in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,” they note, while Covid-19 will divert resources away from security and the treatment of other diseases.

Some cracks have already emerged in temporary Covid-19 peace agreements: As Gordon and Carrot note, the crisis initially prompted ceasefires “in Philippines, Cameroon, Yemen and elsewhere. While bigger threats can lead to cessation of hostilities, such as occurred in Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami, such crises of this scale tend to further undermine resilience, increase insecurity, and exacerbate the likelihood and intensity of conflict. Already, commitments to ceasefires have been broken within days and hostilities have escalated in Libya, and Yemen.”


Reexamining Economic Fairness, in Light of Covid-19

The pandemic should prompt a reexamination of social contracts the world over, the Financial Times wrote in a recent editorial, suggesting Covid-19 will reveal or exacerbate economic fissures. “Countries that have allowed the emergence of an irregular and precarious labour market are finding it particularly hard to channel financial help to workers with such insecure employment,” the paper writes. “Meanwhile, vast monetary loosening by central banks will help the asset-rich. Behind it all, underfunded public services are creaking under the burden of applying crisis policies.”


Just How Many Covid-19 Cases Are Asymptomatic?

As David Adam recently noted in the journal Nature, epidemiologists are missing critical data points on Covid-19, largely due to a lack of testing. Top among them: How widespread is the virus, really? What is its real mortality rate? And how many people who get it are asymptomatic? On the last question, there may be some encouraging signs in Chinese data, indicating—if the data are reliable and can be generalized out of context—roughly 70% of infected people show no symptoms. The figure is important, because it suggests many more people could have (or have had) Covid-19 than is known, meaning the disease’s fatality rate could be lower.

On April 2, the British Medical Journal noted that in a limited set of data on new Covid-19 cases released by Beijing—one day’s worth, as China had just begun to release data daily—China’s NHC had found that “130 of 166 new infections (78%) ... were asymptomatic.” The journal notes that China had begun “rigorously” testing new arrivals from overseas, but as epidemiologist Tom Jefferson of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford points out, it’s not entirely clear where the numbers came from, and the sample is small. Still, he told the journal, “even if they are 10% out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If—and I stress, if—the results are representative, then we have to ask, ‘What the hell are we locking down for?’”

At The Spectator, Cindy Yu followed up. Looking at six days’ worth of data, Yu wrote, “Follow the methodology from the BMJ study and it gives 624 new cases, of which 434 of those asymptomatic—giving a ratio of 70pc.” That’s good news for anyone hoping that the virus is less deadly than imagined, and as Jefferson says, it may argue against lockdowns. Then again, scientists lack another key data point: As Hillary Leung noted recently in Time, it’s not known whether those who have had Covid-19 and recovered, or who never showed symptoms, are actually immune—which would suggest that, until we know the answer, even the asymptomatic have a good reason to stay home.


How Covid-19 Could Accelerate a US–China Standoff

Officials from the US and China have already feuded over the origins and nomenclature of Covid-19, but at the Lowy Institute’s blog, The Interpreter, Nick Bisley argues more broadly that the “shock of the virus, seizing the global economy to halt its spread, may be just the kind of trauma that could catalyse a proper separation of the US and the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

Covid-19 could draw a sharper line between American and Chinese models of governance, Bisley argues: “[i]f, in response to the economic carnage, states return to earlier approaches to economic management, of the type before the neo-liberal fashion of recent decades took hold, then a highly politicised restructuring of the global economy may occur,” he writes. A sharper dividing line between liberal capitalism and state-run economics, Bisley suggests, “would provide decoupling the kind of political momentum it needs to make it real.” The crisis could also heighten the importance of a US–China standoff in the region by weakening other countries, he writes; India and Indonesia, for instance, are less developed and could be hit hard. “There is a strong chance that [Covid-19] will scupper their economic growth for many years and thereby further strengthen the grip that US–China relations has on the region as a whole,” Bisley writes.

Regardless, “Asia will be a more dangerous place” after the crisis, he predicts, advising that “the US and its allies will need to dig in for a long-term contest with an emboldened Beijing.”

[_tunic_]

Translation of an article in Dutch press:

Black US community hit harder by corona

President Trump himself acknowledged it in his press conference last night: there are a disproportionate number of corona deaths in the black community in the United States.

For example, only 30 percent of Chicago's population is African American, but 70 percent of fatalities are black. Similar relationships are reported in the cities of Milwaukee, New Orleans and Detroit, as well as in rural areas of southern America.

See image:
https://mobile.twitter.com/CTULocal1...362369/photo/1

The coronavirus does not discriminate. It does not choose sides or skin color, but the effects of an infection hit the black population harder.

Gary Harrell of Louisiana lost ten black friends and family members because of the corona virus. "It never occurred to me that it wasn't a diverse group of people," he says.

(see video in original article, link above)
US black community hit harder by corona: 'never occurred to me'

There are several reasons why relatively many black Americans fall victim. First, there is great income insecurity and poverty. Many black inhabitants of cities live in worse living conditions than white city dwellers. Their houses are often worse, the residents often have to go to work by busy public transport and in their neighborhoods there are often no good facilities such as supermarkets with healthy food.

Essential profession
As a result, the number of black people with obesity, stress and high blood pressure, liver disease and asthma is also higher than the national average. And those are the people who are especially vulnerable to the consequences of an infection, with lower chances of a cure.

The person who has a job often has a so-called essential profession. These are the jobs that are still carried out during this crisis and that cannot be done at home. Think of supermarket employees, parcel deliverers, hospital staff and taxi drivers. They have to keep working to keep their jobs and therefore have a greater chance of being infected.


A bus driver in Detroit: relatively many working black Americans have an essential AFP profession


In addition, parts of the black population do not have health insurance, because it is linked to a job in the US. Whoever loses his job also loses his health insurance.

As a result, people without a job and health insurance do not dare to go to the hospital if they feel sick, for fear that they cannot afford the care. This means that there is a chance that they will infect others without wanting to.


old school teacher
@DalphonMy
4 of the areas on the map with the highest #of cases are also in areas served by hospitals that are not trusted by the folks living in the neighborhood. I live in one of them and my neighbors will RIDE THE BUS 5-10 miles to get to a decent hospital. HELP!!!!! https://t.co/3JQxyXAdMz
one day ago

It is getting louder from the black community that black patients are not treated equally in these times of shortages in hospitals. Doctors would not take complaints about chest pain and shortness of breath seriously. This would cause unnecessary more deaths among the black population.

Thus the corona virus leaves a racial trace that can be traced back to the age-old fault line between black and white America.

[Skuj]

The only reason I mention Easter is because Numbnuts, just 10 days ago, was promoting that timeframe for the so-called reopening of the economy.

I cannot help but think of Kennedy's early 60s speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the 60s.

What is it about Kennedy and Trump that caused such wide disparities in their goals/predictions, he asked mockingly?

[The Soup Nazi]

Black US community hit harder by corona

As I mentioned: Katrina again, but exponentially worse in terms of lives lost.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

The only reason I mention Easter is because Numbnuts, just 10 days ago, was promoting that timeframe for the so-called reopening of the economy.

I know - that's why I replied facetiously.

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by Skuj

The only reason I mention Easter is because Numbnuts, just 10 days ago, was promoting that timeframe for the so-called reopening of the economy.

I cannot help but think of Kennedy's early 60s speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the 60s.

What is it about Kennedy and Trump that caused such wide disparities in their goals/predictions, he asked mockingly?

But they did do that

[_tunic_]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Wimbledon 2020 canceled for first time since World War II due to coronavirus outbreak in UK

Both Wimbledon and the British Open golf tournament have insurance against Corona. Wimbledon can claim 117 million Euros, however it remains to be seen whether they will get the full amount. The British Open has a premium of 1.7 million Euros a year.
Normally there is insurance for known diseases but after the SARS outbreak in 2003 which had infected a ballboy, the policy for Wimbledon was adapted to include also unknown diseases.

Source in Dutch