@GasMaskGuy98  
WOMP WOMP

This picture in Derpibooru didn’t ages well, but this new image came in :
 

I wonder if the drinking Bleach Meme is partly based the ending of that Looney Tunes cartoon (which was often edited in different ways depending on the TV channel) where Daffy Duck performs a magic trick by drinking different types of dangerous chemicals and saying “shake well” after drinking them causing him to explode on stage?

i mean… cant have covid if ya dead

@Background Pony #7CAE  
It’s playing out a lot more like the Corrupted Blood Incident.

Contagion 2

One other thing – the human costs of the shutdown pushed by the shutdown fanatics.
 
Ignoring Trick Question’s gratuitous red herring, let’s just focus on the facts. It’s not just coronavirus that kills, the shutdown costs lives, too.
 
If you want to open up, they say, you want people to die.
 
Here’s the real intellectual dishonesty of the alarmists. They don’t even ask whether the human cost of the shutdown is worth paying because they pretend there isn’t one. Stopping coronavirus infections is the only absolute imperative. Nothing else matters.  

@Trick Question  

@GasMaskGuy98  

@Trick Question  

Alright then, let me use the past two weeks or so as an example.
 
Again, take a look at the death counts, which have definitively slowed. June 21 we saw only 297 deaths, very low even when accounting for a slow reporting day. At the time the seven-day rolling average was under 600 and headed down in a fairly linear fashion.
 
All the caveats about how positive tests are incomplete, how deaths are probably incomplete, etc., apply. But the trends were clear enough: case counts were rising, rapidly in some spots, and deaths were dropping. Deaths weren’t even rising all that much in states where cases were flying.
 
Now, you have a point to a point. Deaths are a lagging factor: you catch the coronavirus, you get sick, for some that sickness progressively worsens, and then you die. But cases started to rise in some states as much as four (at the time) weeks ago. The lag should have caught up to the extent that we’d at least see some rise in deaths. Yet we have not. And though this was a little over two weeks ago, falling deaths could or even should continue even as cases go up.
 
@TexasUberAlles  

@GasMaskGuy98  

 
Sigh. I accidentally read some of the words, and against my better judgment, will say something that should be obvious.
 
It takes time to die of COVID: the deaths lag the infections by two full weeks. Just be patient.
 
Additionally, a full 20% of people who get COVID symptoms (which is most of the people who get tested) should be hospitalized. If the hospitals are filled due to a surge in cases, those death numbers will go way up, which is why reacting to the increase is a good idea. That lag is also why pulling back on measures meant to alleviate the spread of Sars-COV-2 too quickly is a bad idea: by the time you realize you’ve made a tremendous error in judgment, it may be too late to prevent unnecessary deaths.

@GasMaskGuy98  

 
So I’m guessing all of those cases which go unreported due to strokes, heart attacks, pneumonia, etc. being caused by COVID-19 but not being attributed to it– because the zeitgeist hasn’t realized yet that it’s not actually a respiratory disease – those are just a massive global conspiracy or something. Also there have never, ever, EVER been any instances of corrupt governments at the national, state, and local level deliberately faking their numbers so they can get back to their official policy of pretending there’s no pandemic in Ba Sing Se.

@Background Human  
Hmm… if there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s the fact that the death rates are not going up, despite the increase in cases. And as we’ve discussed, that’s what really counts. Are we getting people who are really sick and dying, and we’re not. And when we look at the hospitalizations, yes, hospitals are more crowded, but that’s mainly due to the re-installation of medical care for non COVID-19 patients.
 
Using Texas as an example, 90+% of ICU beds are occupied, but only 15% are COVID patients. 85% of the occupied beds are not COVID patients. I think we have to look at the data and be aware that it doesn’t matter if younger, healthier people get infected. I don’t know how often that has to be said; they have nearly zero risk of a problem from this. The only thing that counts are the older, more vulnerable people getting infected. And there’s no evidence that they really are.
 
Consider that the hospitalization length of stay is about half of what it once was.
 
@TexasUberAlles  

@GasMaskGuy98  
If no one’s getting COVID-19, no one’s dying of COVID-19.
 
The reverse isn’t true, obviously. Countries with worse health care systems will see more deaths over a similar case load. And that does give the advantage to our Third World challengers. But as long as our outbreak isn’t under control, we’re still in the game.

@GasMaskGuy98  

@Background Human  
I said any major country, not necessarily those in the top ten. I didn’t mention Sweden, Ireland… or San Marino or Andorra, obviously, since those can hardly be considered major countries (even though they take first and third place, respectively; including countries with such minuscule populations would be kinda silly).
 
Even then, I was speaking in terms of mortality rate… at first. Then you started talking about the number of cases per day in a list of countries by mortality, for some reason.
 
And that’s what really matters — the number of lives being lost. As we’ve discussed, the number of cases statistic actually measures the number of tests, so it’s not the whole picture.
 
I’m not trying to downplay the impact of this virus, but I’m also not going to pull a Rachel Maddow and claim that America is the largest coronavirus disaster in the world “by a million miles”. Even The New York Times isn’t that deceptive.
 
America is not the largest coronavirus disaster in the world. Potentially? Maybe, but as it currently stands? Nyet.

@GasMaskGuy98  
…of the countries already in the top ten. You were comparing us to places like Spain and the Netherlands, places that did have horrible numbers but got better. If you’d rather compare us to such paragons of good governance as Brazil, India, Russia, and Mexico, then more power to you.

@Background Human  

@GasMaskGuy98  
All those other countries are on the back end of this. They had their first wave, and there is no evidence of a second. Even Italy, with its horrific outbreak, is down to under 300 cases a day. The only countries left with a real chance to climb the high score table are us and… Sweden, also famous for its LEEROY JENKINS! approach.

I still occasionally hear in the news about people doing this.

@Trick Question  
345 words totaling 2,020 characters, if I am not mistaken. Not counting the stuff next to the address signs, of course.
 
And BTW, you’re missing a capital L. And a period.

@GasMaskGuy98  
look at all those words

@Scp-3125  
Well, given my namesake, that bit’s completely inconsequential to me. I am not called Gas Mask Guy because I like the way it sounds.
 
@TexasUberAlles  
I did say any major country apart from Germany, did I not? Think Belgium, Spain, Italy, UK, France, and The Netherlands. Though admittedly, the US has recently overtaken the last one, so… well done, everyone?
 
Also, keep in mind that America’s population is bigger than all of those countries put together. A better comparison is with Western continental Europe. And on that basis, it turns out, there are many thousands more cases in countries not run by Trump.
 
But even that’s not the whole picture because the number of cases statistic actually measures the number of tests. So, why don’t we compare what really matters - how many lives are being lost.
 
There’s the actual data, deaths per 100,000. And hell, it’s not like our whole population is at risk. We know from the data that over 80 percent of those infected have mild or zero symptoms.
 
Coronavirus is bad enough, so here’s the question: Why would anyone want to make out that it’s worse than it is?
 
Because of this reckless, manufactured climate of fear, people are terrified of even catching this virus. That’s ridiculous! The focus should be on protecting the vulnerable. But no, they pushed fear, and the US now has a human catastrophe from the shutdown.
 
Millions upon millions have lost their jobs, their health insurance, and their hope. Most of them, by the way, are the exact same people the moralizing media grand standarders saying they speak for. Guess who has been hurt most by the shutdown? Hispanic-Americans. It turns out their biggest threat wasn’t from the racist Trump, but the fear mongering media.
 
Misinformation has a human cost. It breeds fear. Fear stops people from going to the hospital, even when there are empty beds. Fear stops people from going out, even when they’re not at risk.
 
Fear costs jobs and livelihoods, yes. But it also costs lives. So please, stop this dangerous divisive misinformation.  

@TexasUberAlles  
Fun fact: if you discount every single case in New York State–keep the population, but ignore the cases–we’re still at 302 deaths per million, just above Brazil on the high score table. And no one’s praising their response to the ’rona.