We just had our first reported case in a few days, this city has almost half a million. Our city region has a total of 632 confirmed cases. You go out now, 75% of people are wearing masks even in places with dregs like Wal-Mart. People are playing the game well. I am personally relieved to see that a majority people here embrace the advice of what SMART people say. Even our hardcore Conservative Ontario premiere has largely kept his opinions to himself and let researchers/doctors do the talking through him. As it should be.
I don't think a lot of Americans really appreciate the damage that bipartisan politics is doing to you when it comes to COVID reaction. It is literally killing people. Across the board up here, our leadership has said, "we're listening to what the doctors and professionals are saying". They did have a bit of a delay, but man, once it became clear that shit was real, they are pushing hard for everyone to do the right thing. We're doing everything we can to open back up as quickly as possible, but in the end, it's going to take time. Period. We have stupid people up here too, but by and large we are telling them to STFU. Very public case in point: https://globalnews.ca/news/7142153/mask-refusal-toronto-hospital-video-coronavirus/ So yeah, you guys aren't being smart about it, generally speaking, so we don't want you anywhere near us. Funnily enough, it's the exact same reaction you had to China when it first happened and they were spiking and spreading shit. Show us that you'll get your numbers pointing down across the board, stop having some of your citizens ignore shit and just vacation in our country like nothing is happening, and then maybe we'll change our minds. I mean, fuck these guys in particular, but to us, they ARE Americans: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coron...-breaking-canada-s-quarantine-rules-1.5011388
Related: “In the end, Trump did what he said. He built a wall around America and made the world pay for it. He just never told Americans they’d be stuck inside.” https://medium.com/@indica/the-plague-states-of-america-53b20678a80e
Oh sure NOW you think controlling one's Southern border is a good idea. I'm off to work on my amnesty claim. The "leader" of the country is trying to kill me. Plus I need some of that sweet sweet free healthcare.
So I've had my notice to move activated as the border between NSW and Vic has been closed, complete shitfight. We stayed a day and a half at one base, thumb up bum doing nothing because we had no details, we're now at another base in isolation because a couple of guys may have been exposed when they went out for dinner the night before we left. Not one question about dietary requirements so I missed out on lunch yesterday and we still have no idea what the plan going forward is.
The moment I saw it on Facebook, I knew. Some dipshit, in Florida I think, said at a press conference that if a person died, no matter the causes, and they'd tested positive for CV19, their cause of death would be listed as Covid-19. Cue to conspiracy people, the people who think this is all bullshit, reposting that and crowing how they were right, it's all over-hyped. Even if in some cases that happens, there are 134,000 deaths from Covid in the US. These people believe that tens of thousands of death certificates were filed inaccurately or intentionally incorrect for money or to make Trump look bad? ( BTW, the CDC reports that in 2018-2019, there were about 34,000 deaths from influenza.) My point to all this is, I'm done... fuck it. People want to be ignorant, let them. They want to perpetuate the idea that this is "just the flu", fine. When they or their loved ones are on a vent, maybe then they'll see they were wrong. Though I doubt it.
Those stupid fucks give the government, writ large, WAY too much credit for organized behavior. I understand being wary of your government willfully hurting its populace. This is not a new thing, especially if you're a minority. But you have to temper that diligence with critical thought and a bit of humanity. With even the bare minimum of scrutiny it's easy to conclude that there's no fucking way doctors across the country are conspiring to falsify COVID numbers. Especially when they're performing what's essentially battlefield medicine against a threat in which the long term is only 6 months or so. Couple that with not giving a shit about any of your fellow countrymen and you've struck out on both fronts. I really wonder if the dipshits that won't wear masks understand that they barely protect the wearer, but rather protect those you come in contact with. Maybe it's poor communications that resulted in ignorance, because everyone on the goddamn planet has been put in the privledged position of doing some good in the world while only needed to muster up the bare minimum of effort.
I'm going to come out and say it, social media is doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed do. Instead of connecting people together over large distances, it's just recreated high school cliques over large distances and amplified the signal of people who are easily manipulated into this groupthink without any sort of individual thought. Yesterday, Wayfair the company was trending on Twitter because someone put forward the idea they are trafficking children through the sale of weirdly high priced items in their online store. This was not 5 or 10 people. This was trending on Twitter for hours yesterday with 10's of thousands of people agreeing with it and calling for action against the company. These are the type of people we are seeing buy into elaborate government run conspiracies into faking Covid cases, inflating testing numbers, and thinking this is a man made 5g Bill Gates vaccine plot to take over the world. It would almost be funny if it weren't so ridiculous.
When we do it, we're racist xenophobes, cruelly denying people the opportunity for a better life. They do it, and they're just trying to protect themselves from dangerous outsiders. We just can't win, I tell ya!
An instantaneous, 24-7 Town Hall was never a good idea. Instead it brought out everybody’s inner taddle-tale, especially once phone had video cameras put into them. It will one day be looked back on as a horrible thing that ruined countless lives.
I swear I wasn't this stupid when I was young. https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/07/10/texas-doctor-says-man-died-attending-covid-party/
Death comes at you fast. “Bad” news? The way I see it your traffic problems just improved slightly. Remember what we said about stupid people clogging up everything?
There are always going to be stupid people being stupid, pandemic or not. Covid deaths are up, but on-the-job accidents, drunk driving fatalities, and college/ high school kids dying of alcohol poisoning are probably down. It's a wash.