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Covid Took My Grandfather. But It Wasn’t What Killed Him

51 points by belltaco 6y ago

jack_pp 6y ago
If you don't agree with your towns own risk management and you are in a life or death scenario why wouldn't you move somewhere else?
mborch 6y ago
Life expectancy + 10 years, not sure what the story is here. People don't live infinitely.
- jeffreygoesto 6y ago
  Wait till you are in an age like that and some dork thoughtlessly shrugs, pushing you over tve cliff...
  - khawkins 6y ago
    But we've been living with the reality that the flu does this every year, and yet now it's personal?
- shinyamagami 6y ago
  Some people always blame others to stay happy.
chance_bear 6y ago
“Our estimates imply that nationally implementing mandatory face masks for employees in public businesses on March 14th would have reduced the growth rate of cases and that of deaths by approximately 10 percentage points in late April. [...] We estimate that business shutdowns have roughly the same impact on growth rates as mask mandates, albeit with more uncertainty.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407620303468 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030440762... Covid is incredibly contagious. If you blame a pandemic on the outgroup you are a child.
- bsder 6y ago
  How about on an administration that had all the information back when it was first spreading from China? People like you seem to have forgotten "It's a liberal hoax." Remember New Orleans saying "If the administration had told us how bad Covid was, we would have skipped Mardi Gras." Remember Austin fighting with SXSW to get them to cancel? The Trump administration had the data and buried it. And then later stoked the "outgroup" against those who attempted to apply more significant shutdowns. Inaction at the beginning of a pandemic leads to an inability to contain it later. South Korea, Vietnam, etc. shows what happens when you take it seriously early. So, yeah, I do lay a significant chunk of unnecessary deaths on the "outgroup" as you call them. And I'm not going to allow people like you to get away with revisionist history.
- arrrg 6y ago
  Why are people not wearing masks despite it being effective? Yeah, you can blame those people. They are incredibly irresponsible. Masks are obviously not the only measure that should be used.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jmull 6y ago
  What is the “outgroup”?
  - netsharc 6y ago
    https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... Basically, the people who politically lean the other way. Nowadays the debate has become so toxic that "the other side" will be against whatever your side wants, just because it's what your side wants.
- netsharc 6y ago
  If someone drops a match in a dry field and a fire starts, and then I stand posturing saying "Don't worry, I've got this, the fire is under control", while trying to not be noticed as I stamp little patches of it with my feet, and as the fire grows I say "I've got it, it's diminishing" while still not doing the utmost, would you call me a fucking idiot for causing the fire to spread?
m0zg 6y ago
> With more than 230,000 Americans dead from a virus that could have been contained It could not have been "contained" in the United States. Half the (ineffectual) stuff we do now is unconstitutional. You cannot restrict religious or other forms of peaceable assembly under our constitution. We've observed quite a bit of that in the past few months. Moreover, 230K is 1/10th the projected number of deaths (2.2M). The "if we do everything almost perfectly" scenario according to Dr Deborah Birx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzl1E4x-k2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzl1E4x-k2w
- eecc 6y ago
  Hold on, the third surge is coming and your country doesn’t seem to be willing to take it seriously...
- w0utert 6y ago
  This part of the US perspective on covid-19 I don't understand. Everywhere I keep reading comments that suggest you pretty much deserved what you got and americans only have themselves to blame because 'if everyone just wore masks' it 'could have been contained'. Literally nothing suggests that, no other country in the world shows any statistics to back this up, and the situation is pretty much as bad as or worse in many parts of the world that did mandate masks and had lock-downs, while it is much better in other parts of the world that did none of these things. Europe is the prime example of this, there's so much variation in the measures that different countries took, but I literally see zero correlation with infection rates or deaths, not up until the point where countries go into lock-downs that dramatically limit the movement of people and the chance of getting in contact with 'strangers' that you would never get in contact with if you worked from home, did not go to bars or restaurants, did not use public transport, etc. But these measures are not sustainable long-term, so sooner or later they are relaxed and the infections start to go up again, with or without face masks, with or without people doing 'everything in their power to stop the virus' because they are traumatised by the first wave. Just look at Italy, one of the hardest hit countries in Europe in the first wave, and the place they are now in again. If anything, the countries that were the first to issue mask mandates and kept expanding them (Italy, France, Spain, Belgium) are now all at the bottom of the list in terms of covid infections and deaths in the second wave. I'll probably get downvoted into oblivion by saying as much because it's already clear to me that in the US wearing face masks is more like a religion or a political statement, but alas... The main point I wanted to make is that blaming yourself and others for the situation you are in because it 'would have been easy to contain, if only...' is not backed up by any evidence, and IMO just a form of self-torture.
exogeny 6y ago
Some of the sociopaths in the comment section (on the article, not here) are truly mind-blowing. It is scary to be confronted with the fact that not only are those people out there, but they are likely more numerous than you think.
- pjc50 6y ago
  We're definitely in the era of the internet sociopath, people who engage in whatever the opposite of virtue signalling is (viciousness signalling?). They're quite happy to post how all sorts of people deserve to die.
  - mcv 6y ago
    Vice signaling. But you're absolutely right. I'm baffled by how many people are eager to announce how much they hate people who never did them any harm, how people deserve misery and suffering, why it's fine to let thousands die. In the past at least there was the pretense of morality, even if it was frequently hypocritical. Now it looks like all the hypocrisy is gone and all that's left is open hatred. I really hope this shocks enough people to turn it around.
- glerk 6y ago
  I am much more afraid of hysterical over-socialized empaths trying to guilt-trip others into submission. At least with sociopaths you can reason.
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    They're not empaths at all; the way they talk about people of a different political persuasion is .... dehumanizing and bonkers. This written-in-mourning screed is a great example of that. "Republicans killed my grandpa." No, cupcake; old age did. Noticing an 86 year old has exceeded his allotted three score and ten is hardly sociopathy. The story is disgusting and sad though: the US health care system is pretty fucked up, and her grandpa seems like he was a cool dude.
- krageon 6y ago
CyberRabbi 6y ago
He was in the high risk group... 60+ with existing health complications, why didn’t he stay at home? Instead of blaming others she could easily say his own irresponsibility killed him. Either way I wouldn’t blame anyone. For people like him death is the rule, not the exception. If an unusually high number of people in their prime were dropping dead maybe she’d have a point.
- sgift 6y ago
  "Why didn't he stay at home" - I recommend reading the fine article, the reason he didn't "just stay at home" is in there.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    I think you missed my point about him already being in the high risk group. She implies throughout the article that someone in his small Appalachian town who didn’t wear a mask is responsible for killing him yet he was already unhealthy and in and out of the hospital. It’s a large stretch. By her logic, she should be blaming the hospital but that wouldn’t make sense either.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Seems to have been a hospital-acquired infection? Those are a nasty problem at the best of times. Remember MRSA?
TooRightKite 6y ago
Yes, she's right that her grandfather was 'sacrificed' for political gain. By her. I understand she is grieving but this is a confused mess trying to find something to blame. Trump. Voters. Capitalism. Whatever might make her feel like her loved one's death wasn't entirely in vain. Whatever might stick. Whatever she wants an excuse to be more angry about. She needs polite condolences and time. She doesn't need people indulging in this nonsense and encouraging her.
- arrrg 6y ago
  All those things are to blame, though.
  - CyberRabbi 6y ago
    Anyone who thinks capitalism is a cause of our societal woes should really look into materialism, its philosophical foundation.
  - TooRightKite 6y ago
    If you share her political views, you probably share her bogeymen too.
_wldu 6y ago
The article has some valid points. This was my favorite, "a middle-class life threatened on all sides by catastrophe." That's exactly how it is in America. When it comes down to it, you're pretty much on your own. If it weren't for charities, donations and religious groups helping people, many Americans would be ruined.
throwaway204040 6y ago
Nice article ... about the US medical system in general, though. Not about Covid. Always wondered what happens over there if you get Covid but have no insurance. Insta die?
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  Well, I have a plan of fasting and resting that will start the moment I feel a little sick. If you're unlucky enough to have to go to the hospital, you won't die per se... But, you might lose: your savings, your house, fall behind on bills. If you're lucky, you will burden your family for money, otherwise, you might live in a shelter for a while. Also, if you're very lucky, you might get some medical bills "forgiven" if you meet certain criteria (young enough, in school, has children, etc.)
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
What does this story tell us? Nothing. No matter how good the government is, there would be definitely be one preventable death. Also looking at her previous posts, this is like she found the perfect story, or it isn't unlikely she is making up the details. This story wasn't related to Trump at all and yet reporter mentions trump 16 times by name and many more by pronoun. I hope HN stops upvoting clickbait stories like this just because this anecdote agrees with what you want to read about.
- BrianOnHN 6y ago
  Yet another person I hope that doesn't get elevated by this platform. Sad
- b0sk 6y ago
  Maybe if our COVID response was like Germany, a lot of lives would have been saved, like her grandfather. Why isn’t it the fault of Trump who was focused on his re-election and did the bare minimum? “no matter how good the government is..” classic strawman. it’s like saying no matter how good the vaccine is, there would be one preventable death, so why blame anti-vaxxers.
  - YetAnotherNick 6y ago
    "Maybe if our COVID response was like Germany" This is classic strawman. What I said is true, that this one anecdote doesn't tell anything. I am not saying Trump's response is good, just that this story doesn't prove anything just a zeal against trump.
khawkins 6y ago
What a horrible world this sort of thinking wants to build. Nearly everything in civilization balances safety with freedom. She wants to hold a grudge against large swaths of the population because she believes them not deserving of the freedom to make decisions about their own behavior. Do we want to live in a society where ...every person driving a vehicle shares the blame for creating an environment where pedestrians get hit and killed? ...every person who refuses to wear a mask around people shares the blame for people dying from the flu? ...every person who engages in casual sex shares the blame for spreading deadly STIs like HIV? ...every person who might contribute to the depression of a child shares the blame for suicide? COVID is a natural disaster, just like an earthquake or a hurricane. Lashing out at your political opponents helps no one, and no, it's not Trump's fault or his supporters' fault your family member died.
dalu 6y ago
2 or 3 days ago I had an argument in an online game. MMO people are usually on the short end when IQ and social IQ were distributed. I was complaining in guild chat about I'm sick of people who don't wear masks on public transport. And the silly person claims that you have the right to not wear a mask. I'm thinking, "you dumb b.... you have the right to infect other people potentially killing them?" Then 3 people "stood up" saying that masks aren't effective. YES MASKS ARE FUCKING EFFECTIVE - WEAR THEM! ffs It doesn't matter if they filter 100% or 75% if everyone on the bus/train/etc wears a mask the risk is a lot lower to get infected than if no one wears a mask. Then the silly person said that the virus is a lot smaller than what a mask can filter... always the same lies. Well how the fuck is that virus transported? I hate when people are uneducated and stupid and refuse to learn and think they know it all. Usually you can ignore those but in public transport you have to deal with them EVERY FUCKING DAY. And fight with them to wear a mask. Especially teens act like you don't exist when you tell them to wear the fucking mask. Some people are friendly and say thanks, some don't have money to afford masks and I give them one of mine. She also claimed "you know when you're infected" NO you fucking DON'T know when you're infected. That's the whole fucking point of this pandemic and the lockdowns (you stupid c...). Governments should distribute masks for free. And not just the nurse masks but FFP2 or better. What are we paying up to 70% of our income for (in most EU countries)? In Germany as a single, un-married person about 50% is robbed from you by the state, so you earn let's say 5k/m 2.5k is stolen by the state and on the rest you even have to pay VAT of 19%. And they don't want to produce or distribute masks to people? Instead they gave you up to 9k one time if you were self-employed or an entrepreneur and ONLY if you spend that money on your expenses. And now they want to do away with encryption after they already effectively criminalized hosting companies with Article 17 (ex Article 13). You ask me why I'm mad? Because the corruption in the EU and worldwide, because 99% own 1% of all money and some people barely have enough to eat while the bureaucrats throw away OUR MONEY with 10k-15k€/m wages and ridiculous expenses like moving from Brussels to Strasbourg and back each month costing 180m€. But they can't afford to supply the population with masks? Why am I mad? Because the heap of shit that stinks to heaven. And don't get me started on climate change. So a few assholes have bigger numbers on their accounts with money they can never spend in their whole life we're killing our base, polluting us and our environment. Society is sick and corrupt. China, an autocratic regime has eliminated COVID19. Of all governments, China. While Mr. Orange Dickfarts refuses to leave his seat in the US and claims "there is no virus the election was a lie". WTF WTF?!? A few days ago I read we've passed the point of no return, irreversible damages to the climate have happened and we can't do anything about it anymore. No matter what we do we're fucked. We knew it 30 years ago and nothing was done and we know it now and nothing is being done. Are you calling a few windmills something? Are you saying E-Cars will change that? Time to learn Chinese, if only it wasn't so damn complicated to learn
mathgenius 6y ago
> a top-down emphasis on productivity over humanity. It's not top-down. I think this is a trap that people fall into. We are operating a massive distributed message passing system (the financial-political system) with no top-down authority any more. No one is in charge. We are _all_ King Louis XIV, sitting around waiting for the minions to deliver trinkets. Meanwhile the guillotine is on its way.
- MagnumOpus 6y ago
  > No one is in charge You might have forgotten in the last four years of "I don't take responsibility for anything" but the President is supposed to be that authority. Armed with the bully pulpit of being on every TV channel if he needs to be, armed with millions of people at his direct beck and call, with the tools of executive orders and being able to declare national emergencies. Every other head of goverment has used some of these tools, even failures like Boris Johnson. That the US didn't is an indictment of the president and indirectly the US voter base.
redis_mlc 6y ago
This is a silly, long-form article that attempts to blame lack of mask-wearing on killing an 86 year-old man. Corona is a highly-contagious disease. Everybody in the US who doesn't have a successful vaccination will get it, mask or no mask. And this guy wasn't immortal - he would have died of another cause sooner rather than later. There's worse things than dying, like being in pain, immobile or vegetative. I had to confront these life and death issues when my father was about the same age and had blood cancer for 2 years. At that age, there's no "getting better" - their time is just up. I was fortunate to have plenty of time to process his death, but in the end, nobody gets out alive. Wanting a relative to live with serious illness beyond their 80's or 90's is not about them, it's about you.

51 points by belltaco 6y ago

If you don't agree with your towns own risk management and you are in a life or death scenario why wouldn't you move somewhere else?

mborch 6y ago

Life expectancy + 10 years, not sure what the story is here. People don't live infinitely.

jeffreygoesto 6y ago
Wait till you are in an age like that and some dork thoughtlessly shrugs, pushing you over tve cliff...
- khawkins 6y ago
  But we've been living with the reality that the flu does this every year, and yet now it's personal?
shinyamagami 6y ago
Some people always blame others to stay happy.

chance_bear 6y ago

“Our estimates imply that nationally implementing mandatory face masks for employees in public businesses on March 14th would have reduced the growth rate of cases and that of deaths by approximately 10 percentage points in late April. [...] We estimate that business shutdowns have roughly the same impact on growth rates as mask mandates, albeit with more uncertainty.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407620303468 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030440762... Covid is incredibly contagious. If you blame a pandemic on the outgroup you are a child.

bsder 6y ago
How about on an administration that had all the information back when it was first spreading from China? People like you seem to have forgotten "It's a liberal hoax." Remember New Orleans saying "If the administration had told us how bad Covid was, we would have skipped Mardi Gras." Remember Austin fighting with SXSW to get them to cancel? The Trump administration had the data and buried it. And then later stoked the "outgroup" against those who attempted to apply more significant shutdowns. Inaction at the beginning of a pandemic leads to an inability to contain it later. South Korea, Vietnam, etc. shows what happens when you take it seriously early. So, yeah, I do lay a significant chunk of unnecessary deaths on the "outgroup" as you call them. And I'm not going to allow people like you to get away with revisionist history.
arrrg 6y ago
Why are people not wearing masks despite it being effective? Yeah, you can blame those people. They are incredibly irresponsible. Masks are obviously not the only measure that should be used.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jmull 6y ago
What is the “outgroup”?
- netsharc 6y ago
  https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... Basically, the people who politically lean the other way. Nowadays the debate has become so toxic that "the other side" will be against whatever your side wants, just because it's what your side wants.
netsharc 6y ago
If someone drops a match in a dry field and a fire starts, and then I stand posturing saying "Don't worry, I've got this, the fire is under control", while trying to not be noticed as I stamp little patches of it with my feet, and as the fire grows I say "I've got it, it's diminishing" while still not doing the utmost, would you call me a fucking idiot for causing the fire to spread?

m0zg 6y ago

> With more than 230,000 Americans dead from a virus that could have been contained It could not have been "contained" in the United States. Half the (ineffectual) stuff we do now is unconstitutional. You cannot restrict religious or other forms of peaceable assembly under our constitution. We've observed quite a bit of that in the past few months. Moreover, 230K is 1/10th the projected number of deaths (2.2M). The "if we do everything almost perfectly" scenario according to Dr Deborah Birx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzl1E4x-k2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzl1E4x-k2w

eecc 6y ago
Hold on, the third surge is coming and your country doesn’t seem to be willing to take it seriously...
w0utert 6y ago
This part of the US perspective on covid-19 I don't understand. Everywhere I keep reading comments that suggest you pretty much deserved what you got and americans only have themselves to blame because 'if everyone just wore masks' it 'could have been contained'. Literally nothing suggests that, no other country in the world shows any statistics to back this up, and the situation is pretty much as bad as or worse in many parts of the world that did mandate masks and had lock-downs, while it is much better in other parts of the world that did none of these things. Europe is the prime example of this, there's so much variation in the measures that different countries took, but I literally see zero correlation with infection rates or deaths, not up until the point where countries go into lock-downs that dramatically limit the movement of people and the chance of getting in contact with 'strangers' that you would never get in contact with if you worked from home, did not go to bars or restaurants, did not use public transport, etc. But these measures are not sustainable long-term, so sooner or later they are relaxed and the infections start to go up again, with or without face masks, with or without people doing 'everything in their power to stop the virus' because they are traumatised by the first wave. Just look at Italy, one of the hardest hit countries in Europe in the first wave, and the place they are now in again. If anything, the countries that were the first to issue mask mandates and kept expanding them (Italy, France, Spain, Belgium) are now all at the bottom of the list in terms of covid infections and deaths in the second wave. I'll probably get downvoted into oblivion by saying as much because it's already clear to me that in the US wearing face masks is more like a religion or a political statement, but alas... The main point I wanted to make is that blaming yourself and others for the situation you are in because it 'would have been easy to contain, if only...' is not backed up by any evidence, and IMO just a form of self-torture.

exogeny 6y ago

Some of the sociopaths in the comment section (on the article, not here) are truly mind-blowing. It is scary to be confronted with the fact that not only are those people out there, but they are likely more numerous than you think.

pjc50 6y ago
We're definitely in the era of the internet sociopath, people who engage in whatever the opposite of virtue signalling is (viciousness signalling?). They're quite happy to post how all sorts of people deserve to die.
- mcv 6y ago
  Vice signaling. But you're absolutely right. I'm baffled by how many people are eager to announce how much they hate people who never did them any harm, how people deserve misery and suffering, why it's fine to let thousands die. In the past at least there was the pretense of morality, even if it was frequently hypocritical. Now it looks like all the hypocrisy is gone and all that's left is open hatred. I really hope this shocks enough people to turn it around.
glerk 6y ago
I am much more afraid of hysterical over-socialized empaths trying to guilt-trip others into submission. At least with sociopaths you can reason.
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  They're not empaths at all; the way they talk about people of a different political persuasion is .... dehumanizing and bonkers. This written-in-mourning screed is a great example of that. "Republicans killed my grandpa." No, cupcake; old age did. Noticing an 86 year old has exceeded his allotted three score and ten is hardly sociopathy. The story is disgusting and sad though: the US health care system is pretty fucked up, and her grandpa seems like he was a cool dude.
krageon 6y ago

CyberRabbi 6y ago

He was in the high risk group... 60+ with existing health complications, why didn’t he stay at home? Instead of blaming others she could easily say his own irresponsibility killed him. Either way I wouldn’t blame anyone. For people like him death is the rule, not the exception. If an unusually high number of people in their prime were dropping dead maybe she’d have a point.

sgift 6y ago
"Why didn't he stay at home" - I recommend reading the fine article, the reason he didn't "just stay at home" is in there.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  I think you missed my point about him already being in the high risk group. She implies throughout the article that someone in his small Appalachian town who didn’t wear a mask is responsible for killing him yet he was already unhealthy and in and out of the hospital. It’s a large stretch. By her logic, she should be blaming the hospital but that wouldn’t make sense either.
pjc50 6y ago
Seems to have been a hospital-acquired infection? Those are a nasty problem at the best of times. Remember MRSA?

TooRightKite 6y ago

Yes, she's right that her grandfather was 'sacrificed' for political gain. By her. I understand she is grieving but this is a confused mess trying to find something to blame. Trump. Voters. Capitalism. Whatever might make her feel like her loved one's death wasn't entirely in vain. Whatever might stick. Whatever she wants an excuse to be more angry about. She needs polite condolences and time. She doesn't need people indulging in this nonsense and encouraging her.

arrrg 6y ago
All those things are to blame, though.
- CyberRabbi 6y ago
  Anyone who thinks capitalism is a cause of our societal woes should really look into materialism, its philosophical foundation.
- TooRightKite 6y ago
  If you share her political views, you probably share her bogeymen too.

_wldu 6y ago

The article has some valid points. This was my favorite, "a middle-class life threatened on all sides by catastrophe." That's exactly how it is in America. When it comes down to it, you're pretty much on your own. If it weren't for charities, donations and religious groups helping people, many Americans would be ruined.

throwaway204040 6y ago

Nice article ... about the US medical system in general, though. Not about Covid. Always wondered what happens over there if you get Covid but have no insurance. Insta die?

BrianOnHN 6y ago
Well, I have a plan of fasting and resting that will start the moment I feel a little sick. If you're unlucky enough to have to go to the hospital, you won't die per se... But, you might lose: your savings, your house, fall behind on bills. If you're lucky, you will burden your family for money, otherwise, you might live in a shelter for a while. Also, if you're very lucky, you might get some medical bills "forgiven" if you meet certain criteria (young enough, in school, has children, etc.)

YetAnotherNick 6y ago

What does this story tell us? Nothing. No matter how good the government is, there would be definitely be one preventable death. Also looking at her previous posts, this is like she found the perfect story, or it isn't unlikely she is making up the details. This story wasn't related to Trump at all and yet reporter mentions trump 16 times by name and many more by pronoun. I hope HN stops upvoting clickbait stories like this just because this anecdote agrees with what you want to read about.

BrianOnHN 6y ago
Yet another person I hope that doesn't get elevated by this platform. Sad
b0sk 6y ago
Maybe if our COVID response was like Germany, a lot of lives would have been saved, like her grandfather. Why isn’t it the fault of Trump who was focused on his re-election and did the bare minimum? “no matter how good the government is..” classic strawman. it’s like saying no matter how good the vaccine is, there would be one preventable death, so why blame anti-vaxxers.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  "Maybe if our COVID response was like Germany" This is classic strawman. What I said is true, that this one anecdote doesn't tell anything. I am not saying Trump's response is good, just that this story doesn't prove anything just a zeal against trump.

khawkins 6y ago

What a horrible world this sort of thinking wants to build. Nearly everything in civilization balances safety with freedom. She wants to hold a grudge against large swaths of the population because she believes them not deserving of the freedom to make decisions about their own behavior. Do we want to live in a society where ...every person driving a vehicle shares the blame for creating an environment where pedestrians get hit and killed? ...every person who refuses to wear a mask around people shares the blame for people dying from the flu? ...every person who engages in casual sex shares the blame for spreading deadly STIs like HIV? ...every person who might contribute to the depression of a child shares the blame for suicide? COVID is a natural disaster, just like an earthquake or a hurricane. Lashing out at your political opponents helps no one, and no, it's not Trump's fault or his supporters' fault your family member died.

dalu 6y ago

2 or 3 days ago I had an argument in an online game. MMO people are usually on the short end when IQ and social IQ were distributed. I was complaining in guild chat about I'm sick of people who don't wear masks on public transport. And the silly person claims that you have the right to not wear a mask. I'm thinking, "you dumb b.... you have the right to infect other people potentially killing them?" Then 3 people "stood up" saying that masks aren't effective. YES MASKS ARE FUCKING EFFECTIVE - WEAR THEM! ffs It doesn't matter if they filter 100% or 75% if everyone on the bus/train/etc wears a mask the risk is a lot lower to get infected than if no one wears a mask. Then the silly person said that the virus is a lot smaller than what a mask can filter... always the same lies. Well how the fuck is that virus transported? I hate when people are uneducated and stupid and refuse to learn and think they know it all. Usually you can ignore those but in public transport you have to deal with them EVERY FUCKING DAY. And fight with them to wear a mask. Especially teens act like you don't exist when you tell them to wear the fucking mask. Some people are friendly and say thanks, some don't have money to afford masks and I give them one of mine. She also claimed "you know when you're infected" NO you fucking DON'T know when you're infected. That's the whole fucking point of this pandemic and the lockdowns (you stupid c...). Governments should distribute masks for free. And not just the nurse masks but FFP2 or better. What are we paying up to 70% of our income for (in most EU countries)? In Germany as a single, un-married person about 50% is robbed from you by the state, so you earn let's say 5k/m 2.5k is stolen by the state and on the rest you even have to pay VAT of 19%. And they don't want to produce or distribute masks to people? Instead they gave you up to 9k one time if you were self-employed or an entrepreneur and ONLY if you spend that money on your expenses. And now they want to do away with encryption after they already effectively criminalized hosting companies with Article 17 (ex Article 13). You ask me why I'm mad? Because the corruption in the EU and worldwide, because 99% own 1% of all money and some people barely have enough to eat while the bureaucrats throw away OUR MONEY with 10k-15k€/m wages and ridiculous expenses like moving from Brussels to Strasbourg and back each month costing 180m€. But they can't afford to supply the population with masks? Why am I mad? Because the heap of shit that stinks to heaven. And don't get me started on climate change. So a few assholes have bigger numbers on their accounts with money they can never spend in their whole life we're killing our base, polluting us and our environment. Society is sick and corrupt. China, an autocratic regime has eliminated COVID19. Of all governments, China. While Mr. Orange Dickfarts refuses to leave his seat in the US and claims "there is no virus the election was a lie". WTF WTF?!? A few days ago I read we've passed the point of no return, irreversible damages to the climate have happened and we can't do anything about it anymore. No matter what we do we're fucked. We knew it 30 years ago and nothing was done and we know it now and nothing is being done. Are you calling a few windmills something? Are you saying E-Cars will change that? Time to learn Chinese, if only it wasn't so damn complicated to learn

mathgenius 6y ago

> a top-down emphasis on productivity over humanity. It's not top-down. I think this is a trap that people fall into. We are operating a massive distributed message passing system (the financial-political system) with no top-down authority any more. No one is in charge. We are _all_ King Louis XIV, sitting around waiting for the minions to deliver trinkets. Meanwhile the guillotine is on its way.

MagnumOpus 6y ago
> No one is in charge You might have forgotten in the last four years of "I don't take responsibility for anything" but the President is supposed to be that authority. Armed with the bully pulpit of being on every TV channel if he needs to be, armed with millions of people at his direct beck and call, with the tools of executive orders and being able to declare national emergencies. Every other head of goverment has used some of these tools, even failures like Boris Johnson. That the US didn't is an indictment of the president and indirectly the US voter base.

redis_mlc 6y ago

This is a silly, long-form article that attempts to blame lack of mask-wearing on killing an 86 year-old man. Corona is a highly-contagious disease. Everybody in the US who doesn't have a successful vaccination will get it, mask or no mask. And this guy wasn't immortal - he would have died of another cause sooner rather than later. There's worse things than dying, like being in pain, immobile or vegetative. I had to confront these life and death issues when my father was about the same age and had blood cancer for 2 years. At that age, there's no "getting better" - their time is just up. I was fortunate to have plenty of time to process his death, but in the end, nobody gets out alive. Wanting a relative to live with serious illness beyond their 80's or 90's is not about them, it's about you.