sounds like he made it out pretty much unscathed though, so I’m guessing he could still take a few more loads to the face and be fine
It's impossible to deny this kind of science. This virus is extremely dangerous to people that can't routinely handle legendary-sized loads to the face.
Fun conversation at work: "If people won't wear a mask, why the hell would we think they will obey an evacuation order?" Is it too late for me to become a gigolo or something safe?
Oh for fuck's sake Florida, How can people be this stupid? And I would sue the hell out him and whatever county he works for. https://people.com/health/florida-s...tate-set-new-daily-record-for-covid-19-cases/
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-53730372 1500 fatalities yesterday. That's about how many folks died in Hurricane Katrina.
I keep circling around this with folks at work, and we keep crashing against these points: -health is a fluid concept for Americans. We think of 300 lb. offensive linemen as healthy athletes. I often hear someone as being healthy if they are particularly active or sporty, ie "He's very healthy, he goes to the gym a lot." I've heard this from overweight women: "health is a feeling". So, since it's a fluid concept, we look for signals. -health is an area of personal responsibility, because so many of the causes of poor health are based on personal choices. Ie, no one else made you fat. It's very hard to get cancer from any one thing, except (apparently) from smoking, etc. -public health, especially public health's success, is largely invisible to most people. It's a broad, invisible form of preventive medicine. I think about all the information I got about heart disease and cancer. No one ever told me dick about how to avoid mumps, they just gave me a vaccine back in the day and that was that. There's no awareness to go "hey, thanks, government for making sure I don't get polio today". It also means that my good health is thanks to my excellent choices and hard work, not something the government enabled at all. -some people respond poorly to public health countermeasures, because they associate being sick with being poor, dirty, or from a different social class. Like, if I see someone wearing a hairnet, it's a good indication they don't work in the c suite, they work with their hands. It feels like they are being forced to adopt countermeasures they associate with people they find....distasteful, or that makes them feel like they are being denigrated in some way. "I don't need to wear a mask, because I'm not infected. I read that most of the infections happen to black or Latino people, and I'm neither." -since poor health is the result of poor choices, it's insulting to some who believe they made excellent choices in life (or that they occupy a particular branch in a social pecking order) that they have to adopt countermeasures. Also keep in mind, given our system, health requires money. So, visible signs of poor health would indicate poverty. -on the machismo side, poor health is a weakness, which must be avoided at all costs to maintain ultra-super-high test-turbo macho status. It's similar to using "gay" as an insult. Masculine good because masculine strong. Feminine weak. So, bad health or being overly cautious about health=weakness. This is all lizard brain response, very little of it involves critical thinking at all. But I think explains why we are where we are. So, we're now seeing public health suddenly intrude on American life in a big way, for the first time in most of our lives, and it's not going well. We've been conditioned to hear things like "epidemic" on opioids and AIDS, but those hinge on personal choices. We've also loosened a lot of the common threads that make our society fit together. Ask people, "what is your civic duty?" on the streets and see the responses. It's awful. So, when you're asking folks to make health decisions, on behalf of their fellow Americans, it's understandable why there's some balking going on. Every other health decision is personal, and no one thinks they are the spreader. Also, it's so much easier to dismiss this as overblown, when you hear statistics that are tactical, granular or in some cases, made up. This is the first time where your average American could be endangering others' health and it's through no fault of their own. We're used to thinking poor health is the result of poor choices, and in this case, you can do everything right and get sick. I also think there's a very important discussion to be had on "how much is too much" to sacrifice. I think reasonably people are saying "be careful with our children". They are quick to say "fuck retail staff, lol, suck on this Rona cock and scan my coupons", and that's a problem that will bite us in the ass very soon. Sports, vacations, movies, events being cancelled to avoid spreading and maintain safety are kind of on the bubble, and the ultimate accountability is with local leadership. That's....not going all that great in some places, and in some it's working fine. That's another issue that's hurting us: the lack of unified leadership means that we are playing whack a mole. https://www.polygon.com/2020/8/12/2...-to-watch-characters-covid-pandemic-parallels is an interesting read that got me thinking. This has revealed exactly who is willing to put you in harm's way to continue to earn money, and in some cases, the absurd excuses they have for doing so. Forgiveness will be hard to come by as this continually gets worse going into fall, then winter.
I'd wager if I were to ask a random person on the street what their civic duty was, they'd answer "what civic duty? I don't owe anyone anything." Though keep in mind, I am related to, though not by blood, two ladies who spent significant time in jail for not paying taxes, as they felt that the requirement to do so was illegal and violated their rights as individuals. Sovereign citizens before that was really a thing people were aware of.
I was a huge fan of both the movie and the novel as a kid, and it's interesting how the two differ in regard to the points in the article. In the novel, Hammond (and to a lesser degree Wu) are much more overtly ambitious and focused on advancement and success. There isn't a hint of the kindly grandfather in Crichton's Hammond, and the notion of disaster a a result of the pursuit of greed is even stronger in the novel with them. In contrast the Gennaro of the novel is, far from the selfish coward of the movies, a decent and resourceful character who assists both Muldoon and others at great personal risk to himself; in the end it is Gennaro who advocates for the island to be destroyed, damn the cost to the investors.
Where did this mentality come from? When did that set in? Like...how did we get to the point where we don't give a shit about other people, and how our actions might impact them?
I was just listening to a teacher being interviewed and it struck me how *normal* it's become that we expect teachers to spend their own money on school supplies. It's a joke, a meme. Forget the budget, and FUCK raising taxes to pay for education, if those lazy ass teachers with their summers off need more pencils they can fucking well buy them or they can sell candy to fundraise. You know what I mean? That denigration of they and their profession I think translates directly to how we perceive the "product" they put out. "Lazy teachers" become "liberal commie professors" out to corrupt good American kids, and education as a whole takes this severe step back in the list of national priorities. Suddenly it's not so important that you learn critical thinking, just go to a trade school so you can earn that good money and buy that nice starter house, don't worry about that big picture stuff, all politicians are crooks anyway, except for ours. It's a whole generation of tribal peoples. EDIT: This is my nice way saying we've raised a bunch of stupid, selfish assholes who can't see past their own needs and wants. The kind who immediately bristle at the mention of "social studies", because social = BLM or something.
Cases here in our county ( Upstate NY ) continue to climb a few a day all this week. The initial uptick is from a family gathering with someone from down South somewhere. I still will not be surprised if they decide to go all remote learning in NY before Sept. 8 or shortly thereafter, just looking at what's happening in other places school is opening. The real litmus test will be our neighbors 15 minutes away, Pennsylvania. In other news, the school situation is going to be interesting. Our district is doing a hybrid model, Group A goes Mon. and Tues., then Group B goes Thurs. and Fri. with all students remote on Wed. Approximately 30% of families in the district said their kids will do all remote, the other option. I was told yesterday that at one elementary school, out of 300 kids eligible for busing, only about 30 will be taking the bus to school, at least for the first half of the year. If we can extrapolate that out to other schools, it's completely nuts. But, it will help ensure we have two staff on every bus as planned I guess.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/7/21357400/anti-mask-protest-rallies-donald-trump-covid-19 Interesting read. "Among those I spoke with, however, I noticed that while the conversation might begin with contradictory messaging and doubts about efficacy, it often devolved into conspiracy theories. The mainstream media was lying, they said, asking whether I’d seen this video on YouTube or followed that person on Twitter. Jacqueline’s Facebook timeline was filled with posts the platform had flagged as false, and with diatribes that the company was censoring her. She told me she hurt her hand several weeks prior, and that she had weighed going to the emergency room but decided against it: She’s 65 and believes she’d automatically be given a positive Covid-19 test and placed on a ventilator to likely die." This is scary. She's dangerously misinformed, if she thinks she would be placed on a ventilator for a hand injury and left to die. It's easy to dismiss this as "well, she's stupid". That's kind of contingent on what she's being asked to understand (ie, I might be smart as shit when it comes to the internet porn, but dumb when it comes to rocket surgery). And no one is going to sit there with a fountain of information 8" from their face that they check 256 times a day and believe they are the stupid one. And we're damned sure not changing anyone's mind by saying "you're stupid for believing that". This is the crux of the issue, I think. Early information was inconsistent, changed frequently and there was no standards imposed on the "experts": you had doctors that were not really any more informed than the rest of us being asked to provide advice, and some of them were too egotistical to say "I haven't directly studied this virus, and I'm operating off of the guidance issued by the CDC/State Health Department and other public health experts who have studied it or worked with it directly. Also, the inconsistencies are infuriating. I get pissy when I see someone wearing a mask around their chin in the gym, when I feel like I'm slowly being waterboarded trying to breathe through mine. The protests were allowed to go, technically because they were supposed to be 6ft apart and remain outside, but that turned out to be complete bullshit and if they were ok, then why couldn't we have our normal events? We, I think, innately, do not like the inconsistency because it feels unfair. Also, people overlook: you as an individual can protest all you want, per a Constitutional right and no one wants to deal with that lawsuit, but a company or organization operating an event has no Constitutional right, and if they want to make money, they have to stay on the right side of those authorities. I think most of them just decided it wasn't worth the risk, especially not given the likelihood of a change in posture during the lead time. But no one thinks that, they see the protests and go "fuck them, if they can do that, why can't I go to my thing?" The "government mandate" argument isn't without merit. It's ill-informed, because the government clearly has a ton of power to impose public health and safety measures (see, seatbelt and helmet requirements). They just haven't imposed any recently, and given the early inconsistency it feels reactionary. If the experts were so wrong at the beginning, why do the local officials suddenly have so much confidence in this recommendation? It's a very chilling realization: our government is immense, powerful and only superficially responsible or representative. It's a massive, monstrous thing, and if it does something you don't like, you have practically no recourse. So, it stands to reason that every imposition be loudly combated...and it's not like our history isn't littered with despicable shit our government has done, often in secret. I shudder to think of what happens when we get a vaccine available for COVID, because...yeah, you will likely require it for kids to go to school, and it'll be pushed aggressively (I felt like a heel for not getting a flu shot, but GOD DAMN...). Can the government require it for everyone? I don't think so. I think they will likely require it for issuing passports, registering for school, and I can certainly see it for public service. So, if you truly believe your liberty isn't worth the jab, your world will narrow.
I had a gentleman (From Texas) inform me today that social distancing is not necessary if you wear a mask. He explained that he works in a government building and they don't social distance because they wear masks. This was in response to me telling him the Covid protocols for our Texas offices. I so wanted to tell him "Yeah, I see in the news y'all in Texas have that Covid thing well in hand."