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> those same authoritarian governments are the ones who played down the threat, lied, covered up to save face, imprisoned whistle-blowers, and refused to let in

> those same authoritarian governments are the ones who played down the threat, lied, covered up to save face, imprisoned whistle-blowers, and refused to let international experts in. I'm scared that it will become a lot worse than that. The pandemic gives them a real-life stress test and lessons to harden the surveillance state and further improve technical controls and tweak the technology to become more effective. It's another step on the road to integrating and normalizing intrusive and outrageous ideas for government to retain control. (-> both in China and the West!) From the videos I watched from Chinese pigs (aka LE) in uniforms beating old people not wearing a mask and welding the doors shut of giant apartment blocks where people live like ants (or slaves), I tell myself this will not happen in the West. Then I look at our current research and Europe's own ambition to create a central biometrics database (along with tweets from the UK LE which ask you to report anything people see online that may look like terror and all I think is "STASI!" neighborhood watch. These days I see a uniform and my first reaction is disgust mixed with fear, the sort of claustrophobic feeling normally only Orwell brings up in me. I get that quarantine laws (locking people in their homes, issuing a curfew, rations etc) can be harsh but important to combat a deadly problem. But looking at the authorities in charge in the West I wouldn't trust them for a second and think it's also a play with fire. There are lots of edge-cases everywhere for this to be a massive human rights violation (elderly care facilities, prisons, migrants, the homeless, and more power to the rigged justice systems and corrupt EU institutions and generally everyone already wielding lots of power) The CDC and WHO have utterly failed. Why are there no hand-outs of free face-masks and other PPE - oh because there are no stocks! - instead the problem is downplayed (by both WHO and the dear leaders). Why is there no transparency (constant news) about how many people an individual country is testing? Oh because we don't have adequate testing right now. Instead medical professionals were arguing on France24 yesterday whether the game between Juventus/Lyon should go ahead and they felt that they're not qualified to make a statement on a complex subject like this. Instead Italy and other countries are reminding us not to press the panic button just yet and media should be "more responsible in their reporting".

stef25 7y ago
What would have to take place for you to stop thinking this virus is going to push the entire world over the edge and fully in to 1984? CDC and WHO are probably not perfect but saying they "utterly failed" because you're angry over not getting a free face mask is a bit disrespectful toward the many people their working their asses off in times like these.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  > because you're angry over not getting a free face mask is a bit disrespectful toward the many people their working their asses off in times like these. my partner is a health care professional and there aren't enough masks for them (this is central Europe btw). but yeah tell me about how hard they work and how I don't appreciate them.
  - stef25 7y ago
    Here in Belgium it's almost impossible to find masks as well, except if you want to pay 70+ EUR https://i.imgur.com/dGd56Ng.png https://i.imgur.com/dGd56Ng.png I suspect Asian customers have been plundering online EU shops for a while. Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner.
    - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
      > Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner. it's the CDC's who acts on advise and recommendations made by the WHO. The WHO has in 2018 warned about a disease X[1], so the CDC and local health ministries would have had 2 years to prioritize and make sure there are enough stocks for PPE in the country. It's not only about the masks for a theoretical pandemic that may or may not play out. There are shortages in other areas as well on a daily basis which are more complex and require structural cahnges. Take Germany as an example that hires Eastern Europeans as health-care workers (mostly for disabled people and elderly facilities) with salaries of ~€600-€800/month where they are placed on contracts from Slovenia and Poland to avoid paying the local insurance. (so some of the people working in healthcare can be put on crazy shifts under what is for EU standards a slave-labor condition). I won't even mention the health-care facilities in Croatia, Romania, Slovenia where elderly facilities buy drugs illegally because they want to pocket the difference, or where somebody who is hired as a nurse has actually never had any training as a nurse. I know of some elderly care facilities in Croatia which are run by a lovely Albanian couple that branched out into this (their other businesses is bars/cafes). The wife of the entrepreneur/owner drives a fat Mercedes and goes on holidays to Paris, but the residents are lying in their own shit and swallow counterfeit drugs - also their employees are paid cash because they are usually elderly women themselves who have a lot of private debt - so this is the only way for them to survive. This isn't whataboutism but an example of the places which won't stand a chance when this disease really hits. They aren't rare either, we just don't see them because it's disgusting and easier to look away. As you said the price of masks has increased (in my experience by a factor of 10x !!) because people see an opportunity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_X
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
heartbeats 7y ago
Yeah, but if 2% of all the Chinese die that's going to mess their economy up real good. Considering the whole thing is a house of cards, I'm bullish on the coronavirus.
- whoevercares 7y ago
  For the virus the biggest challenge is if it survives the weather. If it’s in the same family as SARS, summer will kill it. The window is closing and My bet is it won’t have chance to infect more than 1M people within China. Btw I think 1M infected Chineses are bad enough to bring the economy down seriously, let alone 2% died of the whole population (280M dead people? Oh lord)
  - mishac 7y ago
    that would be 28M, not 280M (Which is still a huge number, obviously)
vxNsr 7y ago
> Chinese pigs (aka LE) This sort of editorializing immediately makes your whole opinion moot. If this is how you talk about people you don’t know it’s unlikely your opinion is valid or even remotely unbiased in any other regard.
- electriclove 7y ago
  Watch some of the videos on Twitter and it is easy to understand why those words were used.
  - vxNsr 7y ago
    You can make this claim about any group, minority or not. Every single group of people has bad apples and some groups are even 51%+ bad but trying to use anecdotal evidence from twitter as proof is really not great. Additionally using epithets and dehumanization of any group no matter what they've done is a road to more hate and violence and will never resolve anything. I find it pretty ironic that some on the left are ok with insults and dehumanization as long as it's of the right group of people that they've deemed "undesirable" even if that group of people really should stop what they're doing, using insults and animal comparisons is a road that takes you right back to what they claim to be fighting. This got kinda long winded and preachy... tl;dr calling cops "pigs" is a slur like any other and will only cause more problems.
    - tripzilch 7y ago
      > that takes you right back to what they claim to be fighting. ... is also the kind of editorialising we don't need, when describing political views that don't align yours. Shall we stop, or what?
      - vxNsr 7y ago
        it's not different than using "allegedly" which is kinda the point... we can't know what someone thinks all we can do is guess based on actions.
    - 7y ago
hempti 7y ago
So thats how panic looks like. Great.
perseusprime11 7y ago
You have a good reason for your paranoia. Even today, we have flights from Italy, South Korea, and Japan coming into U.S and nobody is bothering to contain this situation seriously. Unsure how Insurance is going to treat a spread in U.S. We are not set up for success.

stef25 7y ago

What would have to take place for you to stop thinking this virus is going to push the entire world over the edge and fully in to 1984? CDC and WHO are probably not perfect but saying they "utterly failed" because you're angry over not getting a free face mask is a bit disrespectful toward the many people their working their asses off in times like these.

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
> because you're angry over not getting a free face mask is a bit disrespectful toward the many people their working their asses off in times like these. my partner is a health care professional and there aren't enough masks for them (this is central Europe btw). but yeah tell me about how hard they work and how I don't appreciate them.
- stef25 7y ago
  Here in Belgium it's almost impossible to find masks as well, except if you want to pay 70+ EUR https://i.imgur.com/dGd56Ng.png https://i.imgur.com/dGd56Ng.png I suspect Asian customers have been plundering online EU shops for a while. Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner.
  - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
    > Having said that, I don't think it's the responsibility of the WHO to distribute masks to health professionals like your partner. it's the CDC's who acts on advise and recommendations made by the WHO. The WHO has in 2018 warned about a disease X[1], so the CDC and local health ministries would have had 2 years to prioritize and make sure there are enough stocks for PPE in the country. It's not only about the masks for a theoretical pandemic that may or may not play out. There are shortages in other areas as well on a daily basis which are more complex and require structural cahnges. Take Germany as an example that hires Eastern Europeans as health-care workers (mostly for disabled people and elderly facilities) with salaries of ~€600-€800/month where they are placed on contracts from Slovenia and Poland to avoid paying the local insurance. (so some of the people working in healthcare can be put on crazy shifts under what is for EU standards a slave-labor condition). I won't even mention the health-care facilities in Croatia, Romania, Slovenia where elderly facilities buy drugs illegally because they want to pocket the difference, or where somebody who is hired as a nurse has actually never had any training as a nurse. I know of some elderly care facilities in Croatia which are run by a lovely Albanian couple that branched out into this (their other businesses is bars/cafes). The wife of the entrepreneur/owner drives a fat Mercedes and goes on holidays to Paris, but the residents are lying in their own shit and swallow counterfeit drugs - also their employees are paid cash because they are usually elderly women themselves who have a lot of private debt - so this is the only way for them to survive. This isn't whataboutism but an example of the places which won't stand a chance when this disease really hits. They aren't rare either, we just don't see them because it's disgusting and easier to look away. As you said the price of masks has increased (in my experience by a factor of 10x !!) because people see an opportunity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_X

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

heartbeats 7y ago

Yeah, but if 2% of all the Chinese die that's going to mess their economy up real good. Considering the whole thing is a house of cards, I'm bullish on the coronavirus.

whoevercares 7y ago
For the virus the biggest challenge is if it survives the weather. If it’s in the same family as SARS, summer will kill it. The window is closing and My bet is it won’t have chance to infect more than 1M people within China. Btw I think 1M infected Chineses are bad enough to bring the economy down seriously, let alone 2% died of the whole population (280M dead people? Oh lord)
- mishac 7y ago
  that would be 28M, not 280M (Which is still a huge number, obviously)

vxNsr 7y ago

> Chinese pigs (aka LE) This sort of editorializing immediately makes your whole opinion moot. If this is how you talk about people you don’t know it’s unlikely your opinion is valid or even remotely unbiased in any other regard.

electriclove 7y ago
Watch some of the videos on Twitter and it is easy to understand why those words were used.
- vxNsr 7y ago
  You can make this claim about any group, minority or not. Every single group of people has bad apples and some groups are even 51%+ bad but trying to use anecdotal evidence from twitter as proof is really not great. Additionally using epithets and dehumanization of any group no matter what they've done is a road to more hate and violence and will never resolve anything. I find it pretty ironic that some on the left are ok with insults and dehumanization as long as it's of the right group of people that they've deemed "undesirable" even if that group of people really should stop what they're doing, using insults and animal comparisons is a road that takes you right back to what they claim to be fighting. This got kinda long winded and preachy... tl;dr calling cops "pigs" is a slur like any other and will only cause more problems.
  - tripzilch 7y ago
    > that takes you right back to what they claim to be fighting. ... is also the kind of editorialising we don't need, when describing political views that don't align yours. Shall we stop, or what?
    - vxNsr 7y ago
      it's not different than using "allegedly" which is kinda the point... we can't know what someone thinks all we can do is guess based on actions.
  - 7y ago

hempti 7y ago

So thats how panic looks like. Great.

perseusprime11 7y ago

You have a good reason for your paranoia. Even today, we have flights from Italy, South Korea, and Japan coming into U.S and nobody is bothering to contain this situation seriously. Unsure how Insurance is going to treat a spread in U.S. We are not set up for success.