Pandemic Thread (CoronaVirus etc.)

[neanderthal]

The tearing has stopped for me, but nose was kind of runny for a while due to the nasal trauma. Still feeling a little sluggish, like the snot was beaten out of me...or yanked out.

Hopefully I never have to get tested again, but if I do I will definitely opt for the tongue swab. It’s only available at the top hospitals downtown I think. I don’t care how far I have to drive, no way I’m sticking a giant Q-tip up my nose again.

Zinc. Vitamin D. Vitamin C. Ginger. Echinacea. Give your immune system a fighting chance.

Fingers crossed.

[Tom Servo]

The city of LA just issued a new order, including "All travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit is prohibited, subject to the exceptions in Paragraph V".

Paragraph V is 12 pages long. It includes golfing, pickleball (whatever that is), tattoo parlors, going to the mall, etc etc etc.

We're going to lose this because our leadership is so intensely stupid. *Especially* since, according to the mayor's spokesperson, this was just intended to match the county orders that came in last week. So this insanely hard to follow order was, by their own definition, entirely unnecessary - we're already subject to the county orders if there are no superseding city orders. Just more unneeded confusion for literally zero benefit.

[Rikadyn]

So what's not given an exception?

Honestly the lack of any federal guidance has really lead to a lot of hands being tied and security theater with no real enforcement or punishment for violation of these orders.

If the medically informed response to a viral pandemic cause such economic hardship that has potential to be more deadly than the virus, you change your economic system not your response to the virus. Condemning people to die of a preventable disease so others don't die from engineered poverty is disgusting.

[Yw-slayer]

Sandy, welcome to my swine flu test from 2009. My covid nasal test was much less painful, though. Almost ticklish.

Why do Billi and pals not refer to swine flu as "American flu"? Hmmm. I wonder... :roll:

[Rikadyn]

Sandy, welcome to my swine flu test from 2009. My covid nasal test was much less painful, though. Almost ticklish.

Why do Billi and pals not refer to swine flu as "American flu"? Hmmm. I wonder... :roll:

Swine flu is the Spanish flu from 1918 epidemic, so...

[Crazed_Insanity]

Calling it swine flu doesn’t mean I’m a pigist!

Calling it Spanish flu doesn’t mean I hate the Spanish.

Likewise calling it Wuhan chinese flu doesn’t meant we’ll have to disrespect and be mean to Wuhan Chinese.

Yes, on the right, there are definitely asshole racists, when Trump used it, he definitely meant China disrespect, but on the left, there are also BS woke people who’d get offended easily if you used an unauthorized word...

Anyway, speaking of the Spanish flu in 1918, America went thru pretty much the same thing... there were antimaskers and businesses didn’t want to comply and there were even sheriffs defying orders...

Moral of the story is that we didn’t learn any lessons, or perhaps the lessons learned were forgotten because it happened so long ago...

Masks for sure flatten the curve then and now, but Americans continued to value freedom over threat of death. I think we’d have similar problems at home even if Trump were not the president.

So some people will die, but we’ll get over this one way or another. Virus is scary and governments suck, doesn’t matter who you wish to blame, let’s all just try to be responsible for our own lives.

[Yw-slayer]

It wa H1N1/09 and is generally known as swine flu as it originated from pigs in America. So why isn't it referred to with such glee by him as American Flu? Could it be that he's just a double-standard Trumper at heart given that he insists on calling covid-19 "the China virus"? Hmmm...

[Crazed_Insanity]

If outsiders could investigate in China and determine the true origin and use science to lift all the mystery, maybe we could just call it a batshit flu!

Also, weren’t you an actual victim of swine flu? If you think the US govt did you wrong, you could definitely gleefully call it the American flu if you want.

Why would I do that? I honestly don’t even recall any disruptions on my life with the swine flu... if I did find wrongdoing on the part of US govt, I’m not the type who’d just shut up just to be patriotic.

[Tom Servo]

Heh, and the Spanish flu probably also started in the US, but it was the Spanish media that first actually started raising alarms about it so they got stuck with the name.

[Tom Servo]

So what's not given an exception?

The main things I can see are a prohibition on getting together with anyone not in your household (good luck enforcing that - even with our IDs, you only have to replace them every five years and *not* when you move, so for the past four years my ID said I lived somewhere different from where I actually did, so how will you prove that people don't live together?), and that places like offices are closed if it's possible to telecommute. My work just opened up their new office a week ago and have a "you can come in if you need to, but nobody's expected to" policy, that just shifted to "don't come in."