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Inevitable outcome in a society that is terrified of everything. And to think that our ancestors sailed across the oceans into the unknown and faced diseases, w

Inevitable outcome in a society that is terrified of everything. And to think that our ancestors sailed across the oceans into the unknown and faced diseases, war, famine, and worse. Now we are instituting a surveillance state in the name of a fairly bad flu virus with a 99% survival rate. We really need a new frontier. Hopefully space travel happens before human beings become completely domesticated.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
md_ 5y ago
> Inevitable outcome in a society that is terrified of everything. I agree. Lots of folks afraid to take a shot that's been well-studied and given to millions and is, in all probability, quite safe. ;) I chalk it up to the youth, who are selfish and only able to think about themselves and their Friendster ranks and how many YouTubes they have on the FaceSpace.
- kook_throwaway 5y ago
  >Lots of folks afraid to take a shot that's been well-studied and given to millions and is, in all probability, quite safe. ;) That's one way to describe it. Another less charitable way to describe it: a novel gene therapy being deployed by organizations with a long history of experimenting on the people they were meant to protect. Pfizer and J&J got the two biggest fines ever handed out by the US government, and moderna and biontech have never had a drug approved before. The US government's history of performing medical experiments on it's own (and foreign) populations speaks for itself. It is interesting how you characterize the lack of trust in these organizations as selfishness. Edit: Apparently I've been posting too fast despite my last post being over an ago, so I can't reply. This post has also been flagged, probably due to the gene therapy comment. Both Modern and the FDA consider it to be a gene therapy. "Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA."[1] [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285220000017/mrna-20200630.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285220...
  - md_ 5y ago
    I guess I'm just willing to live dangerously. Lots of folks are just too coddled and unwilling to take a risk, even for the greater good. Back in the good old days, we were really willing to take risks--to cross oceans, even, as the op wrote--to do new things that could benefit our fellow human beings. Now it's all about "Oh no, this is a novel therapy that might infinitesimally increase my personal risk". Really kind of sad.
    - kook_throwaway 5y ago
      >Lots of folks are just too coddled and unwilling to take a risk, even for the greater good. I'm not sure how you arrived here from my comment. If I was willing to dox myself you'd see that I have probably taken more risks for 'the greater good'™ than you or even most folks on this site. But those days are over, and this whole situation is setting off all of my finely tuned alarm bells. You should spend less time stereotyping and more time attempting to understand others. Letting others do as they please is also a risk 'for the greater good', by the way.
      - md_ 5y ago
        > I'm not sure how you arrived here from my comment. If I was willing to dox myself you'd see that I have probably taken more risks for 'the greater good'™ than you or even most folks on this site. But those days are over, and this whole situation is setting off all of my finely tuned alarm bells. Thank you for your service. In comparison, it seems to me the least I can do is get vaccinated, which is a tiny risk compared to the great deeds you have done. You've inspired me, sir.
  - Zambyte 5y ago
    > a novel gene therapy I recommend a 7th grade biology class. mRNA does not touch genes at all. Let alone modify them.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
1shooner 5y ago
> our ancestors sailed across the oceans into the unknown Some of our ancestors were almost completely wiped out from novel disease brought by those that crossed the oceans. They were probably also terrified.
- disneygibson 5y ago
  No, it isn’t comparable, because those diseases wiped out 3/4 of the population. That obviously isn’t the case with COVID, even if our terrified-of-everything populace thinks it is.
  - robmccoll 5y ago
    Have you considered that we took a lot of precautions that made it possible that as relatively few people died as did? Even with shutdowns, lockdowns, and extreme measures in healthcare, we lost about 0.2% of the population. If we had done nothing, we might have reached 1%. If a group was going door to door randomly killing 1 in every 100 people in your neighborhood, would you consider it reasonable to stop answering the door for a while until they left?
    - disneygibson 5y ago
      How does that have anything to do with the parent comment?
    - clairity 5y ago
      have you considered that if all we’d done was immediate quarantine the aged and infirm (with generously compensated volunteer caretakers), recommend indoor distancing, and perhaps recommend masks in homes, we’d likely be at a similar and possibly lower level, that all the “measures” were not about reducing spread but rather prolonging the time that the mediopolitical machine had to take advantage of the fear and uncertainty they continually manufacture?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
merrywhether 5y ago
Yeah, so many people see boogeymen around every corner, living in fear of deep conspiracies like chemtrails and nanobots and others. It’s amazing how much they’ve let fear overtake their brains.
burntwater 5y ago
I never understand this whole "99% survival rate" being presented as if that's low. I don't know about you, but if I'm around something that has a 1 in 100 chance of killing me, I'm going to do everything I can to not let it, because those are NOT low odds. It also conveniently ignores the known and unknown long-haul effects from Covid, which impacts a significant percentage (20%?). I, for one, like staying in relatively good health.
- disneygibson 5y ago
  Like I said, your ancestors had 99% more courage and confidence in the face of danger you can’t even begin to imagine. But, we are a terrified people and so we continue to build a safety space cocoon around ourselves.
  - ramphastidae 5y ago
    And those ancestors would switch places with us in a heartbeat. You are romanticizing.
    - disneygibson 5y ago
      No, they wouldn’t, considering that they explicitly set up difficult lives for themselves according to their values. And no, you can’t read the minds of long dead people either. Is it really so difficult to consider that we live in a scared, lazy age?
      - chickenpotpie 5y ago
        The idea that people made their lives intentionally harder in the past is absolutely ludicrous. Almost every person in history would swap places with me right now in a heartbeat.
        disneygibson 5y ago
        It may seem hard to believe, but not every civilization throughout history has put consumerism and comfort above all other values.
tolmasky 5y ago
The average lifespan for the period you are describing (say, 1492-ish since we're talking about sailing) was their mid-thirties (and probably lower for the people that actually got on those boats). So I think I like our strategy better. And it's not even about "but at least they truly lived!", their lives were miserable. It's a lot easier to "face the unknown" when the "known" is itself often religious persecution, famine, or worse. I might have gotten on those boats too if where I currently was kept switching between Protestantism and Catholicism depending on who rose to the crown. Consider that perhaps the best way to honor those "fearless" risks is to not waste the world they made possible for us by unnecessarily cutting our own lives short. I certainly hope my descendants have even longer lives than I do! But perhaps that's just my selfish genes talking.
- disneygibson 5y ago
  That wasn’t the average lifespan of people who reached adulthood. Infant mortality was simply higher.
  - tolmasky 5y ago
    It wasn't much better if you reached adulthood. Seems like mid-forties up to the 1400s, and early fifties up to 1600s, for the nobility in England. So, you know, not the people getting on those boats probably.
    - Gibbon1 5y ago
      I think the mortality rate for teens and adults was something like 3-4 times higher than today. People also lived through epidemics that would cull 5-10% of the population every 20-30 years. Also my grandmother mentioned that when she was young girl just a 100 years ago old people were absolutely broken. Today a lot of people spend their sixties and seventies in very good health. Also I remember reading about grave site on a bluff in California that was eroding away. Contained the graves of sailors that died when a ship sank in the 1880's. Before reburying them higher up on the bluff they looked over their bones. They weren't in very good health despite being in their 20-40s.
chapium 5y ago
Coronavirus is not influenza. 600-800 thousand deaths in the US so far makes "fairly bad" seem like a bit of an understatement.
kbos87 5y ago
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to be afraid of a virus that has killed 700,000 people in the United States and leaves ~30% with long term side effects and sometimes serious, permanent disability.
- pbaka 5y ago
  Where did you get that second number from ?
jpambrun 5y ago
The terrified of everything portion of you comment still applies if we change "fairly bad flu virus with a 99% survival rate" to "extremely safe vaccine with 0.007 risk of adverse effects".
- disneygibson 5y ago
  Yes indeed it does. But I am criticizing the draconian enforcement, not the taking of the vaccine itself.
019341097 5y ago
Our new frontier is trying not to overload our medical system to capacity by trusting science and being proactive and not selfish. We’re failing miserably.
atkailash 5y ago
99% on average. Does not take into account individual circumstances. And viral shedding loads and exposure time change that significantly. Plus with a diverse workforce who knows who might be taking care of an immune compromised person at home they might simply carry it to. Then there’s long Covid as others mentioned.
lamontcg 5y ago
The ICUs are filling up and people who just need a kidney transplant are dying. That is with just a small fraction of the population actually getting infected. The hospitalizations are also resource intensive and require an ICU bed for 2 or 3 weeks. This isn't just a "bad flu virus". Once around ~10,000 people get infected in a week that's enough to knock over a metropolitan hospital system sending hundreds of people into the hospital.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

md_ 5y ago

> Inevitable outcome in a society that is terrified of everything. I agree. Lots of folks afraid to take a shot that's been well-studied and given to millions and is, in all probability, quite safe. ;) I chalk it up to the youth, who are selfish and only able to think about themselves and their Friendster ranks and how many YouTubes they have on the FaceSpace.

kook_throwaway 5y ago
>Lots of folks afraid to take a shot that's been well-studied and given to millions and is, in all probability, quite safe. ;) That's one way to describe it. Another less charitable way to describe it: a novel gene therapy being deployed by organizations with a long history of experimenting on the people they were meant to protect. Pfizer and J&J got the two biggest fines ever handed out by the US government, and moderna and biontech have never had a drug approved before. The US government's history of performing medical experiments on it's own (and foreign) populations speaks for itself. It is interesting how you characterize the lack of trust in these organizations as selfishness. Edit: Apparently I've been posting too fast despite my last post being over an ago, so I can't reply. This post has also been flagged, probably due to the gene therapy comment. Both Modern and the FDA consider it to be a gene therapy. "Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA."[1] [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285220000017/mrna-20200630.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1682852/000168285220...
- md_ 5y ago
  I guess I'm just willing to live dangerously. Lots of folks are just too coddled and unwilling to take a risk, even for the greater good. Back in the good old days, we were really willing to take risks--to cross oceans, even, as the op wrote--to do new things that could benefit our fellow human beings. Now it's all about "Oh no, this is a novel therapy that might infinitesimally increase my personal risk". Really kind of sad.
  - kook_throwaway 5y ago
    >Lots of folks are just too coddled and unwilling to take a risk, even for the greater good. I'm not sure how you arrived here from my comment. If I was willing to dox myself you'd see that I have probably taken more risks for 'the greater good'™ than you or even most folks on this site. But those days are over, and this whole situation is setting off all of my finely tuned alarm bells. You should spend less time stereotyping and more time attempting to understand others. Letting others do as they please is also a risk 'for the greater good', by the way.
    - md_ 5y ago
      > I'm not sure how you arrived here from my comment. If I was willing to dox myself you'd see that I have probably taken more risks for 'the greater good'™ than you or even most folks on this site. But those days are over, and this whole situation is setting off all of my finely tuned alarm bells. Thank you for your service. In comparison, it seems to me the least I can do is get vaccinated, which is a tiny risk compared to the great deeds you have done. You've inspired me, sir.
- Zambyte 5y ago
  > a novel gene therapy I recommend a 7th grade biology class. mRNA does not touch genes at all. Let alone modify them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

1shooner 5y ago

> our ancestors sailed across the oceans into the unknown Some of our ancestors were almost completely wiped out from novel disease brought by those that crossed the oceans. They were probably also terrified.

disneygibson 5y ago
No, it isn’t comparable, because those diseases wiped out 3/4 of the population. That obviously isn’t the case with COVID, even if our terrified-of-everything populace thinks it is.
- robmccoll 5y ago
  Have you considered that we took a lot of precautions that made it possible that as relatively few people died as did? Even with shutdowns, lockdowns, and extreme measures in healthcare, we lost about 0.2% of the population. If we had done nothing, we might have reached 1%. If a group was going door to door randomly killing 1 in every 100 people in your neighborhood, would you consider it reasonable to stop answering the door for a while until they left?
  - disneygibson 5y ago
    How does that have anything to do with the parent comment?
  - clairity 5y ago
    have you considered that if all we’d done was immediate quarantine the aged and infirm (with generously compensated volunteer caretakers), recommend indoor distancing, and perhaps recommend masks in homes, we’d likely be at a similar and possibly lower level, that all the “measures” were not about reducing spread but rather prolonging the time that the mediopolitical machine had to take advantage of the fear and uncertainty they continually manufacture?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

merrywhether 5y ago

Yeah, so many people see boogeymen around every corner, living in fear of deep conspiracies like chemtrails and nanobots and others. It’s amazing how much they’ve let fear overtake their brains.

burntwater 5y ago

I never understand this whole "99% survival rate" being presented as if that's low. I don't know about you, but if I'm around something that has a 1 in 100 chance of killing me, I'm going to do everything I can to not let it, because those are NOT low odds. It also conveniently ignores the known and unknown long-haul effects from Covid, which impacts a significant percentage (20%?). I, for one, like staying in relatively good health.

disneygibson 5y ago
Like I said, your ancestors had 99% more courage and confidence in the face of danger you can’t even begin to imagine. But, we are a terrified people and so we continue to build a safety space cocoon around ourselves.
- ramphastidae 5y ago
  And those ancestors would switch places with us in a heartbeat. You are romanticizing.
  - disneygibson 5y ago
    No, they wouldn’t, considering that they explicitly set up difficult lives for themselves according to their values. And no, you can’t read the minds of long dead people either. Is it really so difficult to consider that we live in a scared, lazy age?
    - chickenpotpie 5y ago
      The idea that people made their lives intentionally harder in the past is absolutely ludicrous. Almost every person in history would swap places with me right now in a heartbeat.
      - disneygibson 5y ago
        It may seem hard to believe, but not every civilization throughout history has put consumerism and comfort above all other values.

tolmasky 5y ago

The average lifespan for the period you are describing (say, 1492-ish since we're talking about sailing) was their mid-thirties (and probably lower for the people that actually got on those boats). So I think I like our strategy better. And it's not even about "but at least they truly lived!", their lives were miserable. It's a lot easier to "face the unknown" when the "known" is itself often religious persecution, famine, or worse. I might have gotten on those boats too if where I currently was kept switching between Protestantism and Catholicism depending on who rose to the crown. Consider that perhaps the best way to honor those "fearless" risks is to not waste the world they made possible for us by unnecessarily cutting our own lives short. I certainly hope my descendants have even longer lives than I do! But perhaps that's just my selfish genes talking.

disneygibson 5y ago
That wasn’t the average lifespan of people who reached adulthood. Infant mortality was simply higher.
- tolmasky 5y ago
  It wasn't much better if you reached adulthood. Seems like mid-forties up to the 1400s, and early fifties up to 1600s, for the nobility in England. So, you know, not the people getting on those boats probably.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    I think the mortality rate for teens and adults was something like 3-4 times higher than today. People also lived through epidemics that would cull 5-10% of the population every 20-30 years. Also my grandmother mentioned that when she was young girl just a 100 years ago old people were absolutely broken. Today a lot of people spend their sixties and seventies in very good health. Also I remember reading about grave site on a bluff in California that was eroding away. Contained the graves of sailors that died when a ship sank in the 1880's. Before reburying them higher up on the bluff they looked over their bones. They weren't in very good health despite being in their 20-40s.

chapium 5y ago

Coronavirus is not influenza. 600-800 thousand deaths in the US so far makes "fairly bad" seem like a bit of an understatement.

kbos87 5y ago

I think it’s perfectly acceptable to be afraid of a virus that has killed 700,000 people in the United States and leaves ~30% with long term side effects and sometimes serious, permanent disability.

pbaka 5y ago
Where did you get that second number from ?

jpambrun 5y ago

The terrified of everything portion of you comment still applies if we change "fairly bad flu virus with a 99% survival rate" to "extremely safe vaccine with 0.007 risk of adverse effects".

disneygibson 5y ago
Yes indeed it does. But I am criticizing the draconian enforcement, not the taking of the vaccine itself.

019341097 5y ago

Our new frontier is trying not to overload our medical system to capacity by trusting science and being proactive and not selfish. We’re failing miserably.

atkailash 5y ago

99% on average. Does not take into account individual circumstances. And viral shedding loads and exposure time change that significantly. Plus with a diverse workforce who knows who might be taking care of an immune compromised person at home they might simply carry it to. Then there’s long Covid as others mentioned.

lamontcg 5y ago

The ICUs are filling up and people who just need a kidney transplant are dying. That is with just a small fraction of the population actually getting infected. The hospitalizations are also resource intensive and require an ICU bed for 2 or 3 weeks. This isn't just a "bad flu virus". Once around ~10,000 people get infected in a week that's enough to knock over a metropolitan hospital system sending hundreds of people into the hospital.