The Covid scam

theotherwaldo

Well-known member
_And then there's the ones that have to pick up the pieces - the first responders.
In my little border town we've had a wave of border-jumpers with covid.
About half of our Police, Fire Department, paramedics, nurses and Border Patrol test positive.
Even some of our city council members are down.
So I'm working from home... .
 

v35

Member
Well... it's not exactly a scam. It's real, and people die of it.

However, the fact it has been exploited by control freaks is beyond dispute, as is the fact said control freak's overreaction has resulted in widespread damage, misery and yes, more death than would have resulted if they had done nothing.

The first reaction among such control freaks is to "Do Something!!!™" which historically never leads to anything good. Look at NY, for having condemned old people confined to nursing homes an untimely death, deprived even of the company of their loved ones in their last days on Earth. That's unspeakably cruel, and that's government. It's what government does.

People die. That's a fact. CV is particularly infectious, and vulnerable people are particularly at risk of death. If you're vulnerable it's a good idea to take appropriate precautions and I'm all in favor of that. But this one-size-fits-all, shut down the economy, prevent us from living approach is pernicious and ultimately harms a population. Its devastating effects will be with us for decades.

I've been banned from other sites for calling out these politicians for being sadists, but their overreaction is proving my point. Certain governors and other people in positions of power are clearly deriving a sadistic pleasure from imposing their will upon others in the same manner as serial killers and rapists. They impose their lockdowns with glee. Have we had enough yet?
 

Ed Ames

Member
The problem with that view is that it’s actually more sadistic to set up a situation where even routine activities could lead to the death of yourself or your loved ones. If sadism was the goal, you wouldn’t want a lockdown, you’d want the disease to spread far and wide.

People want to go back to normal, but you can’t go back to normal when things aren’t normal. This isn’t a “government won’t let me” problem, it’s a “there’s a virus spreading uncontrolled and killing people” problem. Until you have a fix for that problem, things won’t be normal. Businesses that count on people going to them are going to close because people don’t want to die. People will lose their jobs. All of the bad things you think happen because of a lockdown will happen anyway. Just slower and with a lot more death.

I’m seeing this first hand in Texas. The state tried to reopen, and now anyone who can is simply opting out of doing anything that could lead to infection. And the people who can’t are getting sick. I have friends who are planning to move out of the state because they don’t feel safe. I personally won’t go do many of the things I enjoy, not because I am being stopped by the government or worried for my own health but my mother is in her 70s and I’m not a sociopath so her risk becomes my risk. And the actual risk is too damned high.

But I have friends in other countries. They had actual lockdowns...but now rather than 60,000+ new cases a day their countries have single digits of new cases per day, and their lockdowns are over. They can send their kids back to school, go to restaurants, and do all the other things that I can’t do.

That’s the thing: lockdowns, masks, etc. actually solve the problem. Not instantly, but over weeks and months. It has happened in countries all around the world. The disease dies out and you can go back to normal. It’s like if a person has appendicitis....surgery is unpleasant, the recovery afterwards is unpleasant, but it cuts the infection out and gives you a chance to go back to living your life. You need to have the courage to go under the knife, and the strength to see the process through, to get back to normal. If you don’t, if you decide to take your chances, there’s a really good chance you are just going to be miserable and eventually die.

Not to mention the issue that covid immunity seems to be short-lived, the after-effects seem to be long term, and many of the long term harms happen to be covid comorbidities, meaning it’s entirely plausible that everyone who recovers from covid will be vulnerable again in a few months, but the second time through they’ll be high risk and a lot more likely to die. If that proves to be the case, and we suddenly start seeing a second wave with a 25% case fatality rate instead of 4%, that’s going to suck...and that’s a situation I don’t want to find myself or my family in.
 

Grunt

Member
We now have the study that shows that the number of people infected is 8-16X higher than previously thought.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The overall death rate from Covid is the same or lower than that of the seasonal flu. If 8-16X more people have been infected then the death rate is 8-16x lower than previously thought.
 

Ed Ames

Member
In the U.S., for Oct. 1, 2019 – Apr. 4, 2020, the CDC estimates that there were 39 million to 56 million cases of flu, and that 24,000 to 62,000 people died from the flu.

There have been 3,902,233 cases in the U.S., and 142,073 people have died of COVID-19, as of July 22, 2020.

So let’s say that the 3.9 million is actually only 1/16th of the total infections. That would give us 62.4 million covid infections in the US. That’s only a 15% higher than the high estimate for flu...but the number of deaths is over 230% of the flu. So even in that estimate, COVID is around 2.5 times as deadly as the flu.

But then you have the detail that Covid is new. It went from basically US zero cases in December of last year, to by the 16 times the cases estimate more than 62 million infections...even with massive efforts to control the spread. What would have happened without those efforts?

Nobody had immunity, so a reasonable estimate is about 330,000,000 people in the US this year. That would extrapolate out to 752,000 deaths in the US. That’s about 700,000 more than die in a given year from the flu.

Note that all of the above was based on numbers that show the highest risk for flu, and the lowest risk for Covid. That’s the most favorable case for your premise. If the infection rate is 8x cases you’d be looking at about 1.5 million dead in the US. If the fatality info is as undercounted as has been reported, that number would push towards 2 million.

Which is right in the range of my previous posts on this thread, meaning yes that 8-16x assumption was already baked into the numbers we’ve been talking about. The infection number being 8-16x higher than the case count doesn’t paint a rosy picture. It tells us that covid is a lot worse than the flu.
 

Alexx1401

Member
I work in health care. This Covid has been the biggest hoax ever pulled. Barnum would be jealous. I work for a VERY large system. Our ICU beds are almost full all the time now. Only a handful are Covid. All the rest are people who were lied to so much they were terrified to go to the Doc. So they let things go till they were in real trouble. This "lock down" was a scam from day one. City bus, airplane, pot shops, all fine. fishing was not? Going to the park was not? It has been amazing how easy it was to scam people.
 

Ed Ames

Member
I work in health care. This Covid has been the biggest hoax ever pulled. Barnum would be jealous. I work for a VERY large system. Our ICU beds are almost full all the time now. Only a handful are Covid. All the rest are people who were lied to so much they were terrified to go to the Doc. So they let things go till they were in real trouble. This "lock down" was a scam from day one. City bus, airplane, pot shops, all fine. fishing was not? Going to the park was not? It has been amazing how easy it was to scam people.

The lock down sucks. It’s not the way I’d have preferred it be handled. However, I can say first hand that not locking down hasn’t been any fun either.

Texas never had a hard lockdown. They had some limits but they bent over backwards to keep everything they could open, and rolled back the limits as early as they could. And frankly if people actually took this seriously and wore masks etc. that would be fine. But they don’t.

as a result, I had more options for what I could do during what passed for a “lockdown” than I do today. During the lockdown period I could do basically anything I needed to do with a small but manageable risk. Now the risk is higher so I am not doing as much. On the bright side for me I’m saving money. On the down side, bunch of local businesses that were getting my patronage in March and May aren’t getting it today, because the lack of mask wearing, or lockdown, means the risk (not to me personally but to my family) is unacceptable.

Nobody has ever said that city busses or airplanes are safe. They’ve said that some travel is necessary but please limit yourself to only what you absolutely cannot avoid, and they’ve traced a bunch of outbreaks to both. Pot shops being deemed essential can be blamed squarely on the prohibitionists...they banned pot, and medical use was the wedge that forced the states to ignore the federal law. Once it’s legally counted as medicine, logically you need to count it as essential. That could all have been avoided by never banning it in the first place. As for parks and fishing, those have been recommended activities throughout this whole mess. States (and other countries) have actively encouraged people to go fishing, hiking, or hang out in parks (with precautions).

As far as scam, the officially recorded death toll for COVID-19 as of today is higher than the high estimate of annual deaths from Flu. That’s after about half a year, with all the steps taken to reduce spread, and doesn’t take into account the fact that there is strong evidence that some countries (China, Russia, etc.) have drastic undercounts, and other countries (UK, US...most of them really) have evidence of less severe but still significant undercounts.
 

Alexx1401

Member
The lock down sucks. It’s not the way I’d have preferred it be handled. However, I can say first hand that not locking down hasn’t been any fun either.

Texas never had a hard lockdown. They had some limits but they bent over backwards to keep everything they could open, and rolled back the limits as early as they could. And frankly if people actually took this seriously and wore masks etc. that would be fine. But they don’t.

as a result, I had more options for what I could do during what passed for a “lockdown” than I do today. During the lockdown period I could do basically anything I needed to do with a small but manageable risk. Now the risk is higher so I am not doing as much. On the bright side for me I’m saving money. On the down side, bunch of local businesses that were getting my patronage in March and May aren’t getting it today, because the lack of mask wearing, or lockdown, means the risk (not to me personally but to my family) is unacceptable.

Nobody has ever said that city busses or airplanes are safe. They’ve said that some travel is necessary but please limit yourself to only what you absolutely cannot avoid, and they’ve traced a bunch of outbreaks to both. Pot shops being deemed essential can be blamed squarely on the prohibitionists...they banned pot, and medical use was the wedge that forced the states to ignore the federal law. Once it’s legally counted as medicine, logically you need to count it as essential. That could all have been avoided by never banning it in the first place. As for parks and fishing, those have been recommended activities throughout this whole mess. States (and other countries) have actively encouraged people to go fishing, hiking, or hang out in parks (with precautions).

As far as scam, the officially recorded death toll for COVID-19 as of today is higher than the high estimate of annual deaths from Flu. That’s after about half a year, with all the steps taken to reduce spread, and doesn’t take into account the fact that there is strong evidence that some countries (China, Russia, etc.) have drastic undercounts, and other countries (UK, US...most of them really) have evidence of less severe but still significant undercounts.

Again, the airplane, and city bus was "safe", fishing and walking the dog at the park was not. This tells you who was telling the truth and who was lying and still is lying to you all. The "deaths" are another great scam. How many of the deaths were nursing homes? Where the people lying to you now did nothing to help, rather they caused the problem? At this point it all but pointless to try to reach people who no longer want the truth. They will now make excuses for the lies they are being told. <shrug>
 

Ed Ames

Member
Again, the airplane, and city bus was "safe", fishing and walking the dog at the park was not.

According to who? I’ve been watching this whole thing since it began and nobody has actually said those things.

They’ve said that some parks needed to be closed briefly because they were attracting too many people, leading to overcrowding...but at exactly the same time (sometimes in the same sentence) they made it clear that the activities were safe if not done in an overcrowded way. They actively encouraged people to go walk their dogs in the parks, just not elbow to elbow.

And nobody has said that airplanes or busses are safe. They’ve said they are necessary, and that’s different. It’s like grocery stores...nobody has actually said they are safe, they’ve just acknowledged that people need to eat.

This tells you who was telling the truth and who was lying and still is lying to you all.

Well, you are the one claiming things were said that were not actually said...but I don’t know if that’s a lie or just being wrong.

The "deaths" are another great scam. How many of the deaths were nursing homes? Where the people lying to you now did nothing to help, rather they caused the problem? At this point it all but pointless to try to reach people who no longer want the truth. They will now make excuses for the lies they are being told. <shrug>


The numbers vary but between 40-60% (depending on area) of deaths are in nursing homes.

But that’s been in the dialog since the very beginning. The very first publicized deaths in the US were in nursing homes. And, again since the beginning, the public health position is that the risk of spread isn’t primarily for young healthy people, but for older and vulnerable people. That’s why you close schools, et cetera. It isn’t to keep the kids safe. It’s because those kids go visit gramma and gramma visits her friends at the senior center and suddenly you have a bunch of dead people.
That’s the whole point of doing a lockdown of everyone, it has been central to the messaging to 20-somethings, it has been part of the dialog for months: you may not be at high risk, but your parents, grandparents, teachers, neighbors, et cetera ARE, so you need to take precautions to keep from getting sick - not because getting sick will kill you - but because it will keep the virus going and lead to other people dying.

That’s one of the ironies of all of this: the Baby Boomers and other old people are the ones who have been bitching loudest about the lockdowns, but they are the ones society is trying to protect.

To say that some anonymous “they” “did nothing to help” when “they” tried to use techniques that have been effective around the world is just absurd. Most of the problem in the US is that the people, meaning you and people like you, get upset over the least inconvenience to yourself, regardless of the stakes for anyone else. “Going to a party might lead to an outbreak that causes people to die? Fuck’em they’re not me I don’t care.”
 

theotherwaldo

Well-known member
My county is now over 15,000 positives and 433 dead.
Even our dog catchers have been exposed and are home for two weeks.
Since the hurricane passed through over the weekend, there are a lot of loose dogs running around... .
 

str8_forward

Well-known member
I work in health care. This Covid has been the biggest hoax ever pulled. Barnum would be jealous. I work for a VERY large system. Our ICU beds are almost full all the time now. Only a handful are Covid. All the rest are people who were lied to so much they were terrified to go to the Doc. So they let things go till they were in real trouble. This "lock down" was a scam from day one. City bus, airplane, pot shops, all fine. fishing was not? Going to the park was not? It has been amazing how easy it was to scam people.
and here is the additional cost to society, and of course, nobody is being held responsible:

 

George P

Well-known member
Yep, if the first fear/scare tactic isn't working, create a more severe one to keep the citizens scared while you take their freedom
 

roscoe

Well-known member
Your ability to travel, run your business, your right to breathe free, your right to assemble, your right to freely worship - just for starters.

No, 'they' aren't taking those things away. The virus is. If you think 'they' are just looking for excuses to prevent people from traveling or assemble, you are just a conspiracy theorist. Why would 'they' want you not to travel? Why would 'they' care?

When enough people get vaccinated to lift restrictions, all of this will literally evaporate. Until then, try to keep it together.
 

George P

Well-known member
No, 'they' aren't taking those things away. The virus is. If you think 'they' are just looking for excuses to prevent people from traveling or assemble, you are just a conspiracy theorist. Why would 'they' want you not to travel? Why would 'they' care?

When enough people get vaccinated to lift restrictions, all of this will literally evaporate. Until then, try to keep it together.
Bullshit; try looking past the ;eft wing media circus for the real truth; they will NEVER lift restrictions; communists operate that way, they manufacture one crisis after another to keep sheep like you in line. You sound like one of those idiots that wears a mask while driving alone "because they SAID so"
 
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