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The Coffee Shop

  • Thread starter The Fallen Angel
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I don't know the right action that leaders should take, but I know that it is not all lives on one side and filthy lucre on the other. Loss of jobs and income and social interaction have real costs in people's lives. See the following:

Knox County, Tennessee saw nine deaths by suicide within 48 hours this week as doomsday predictions over the novel Wuhan coronavirus panics an already anxious public and leaves millions unemployed and isolated.

In Tennessee, the crisis is taking its toll on those who were not physically sick but who appear to have fallen victim to the virus anyway. As of this writing, more people have died from suicide in Knox County than people have from the virus in the entire state, where there have been 6 fatalities from the disease, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
Knox County, Tennessee saw nine deaths by suicide within 48 hours this week as doomsday predictions over the novel Wuhan coronavirus panics an already anxious public and leaves millions unemployed and isolated.
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The connection between the two parts of that sentence is not so clear. We don't know that the suicides had anything to do with the virus (and the fact that they call it "Wuhan virus" rather than its proper name, COVID-19, strongly suggests a political agenda. It would be nice, if you are quoting to give the source) .

Is 9 suicides in a county of close to 500,000 people in 48 hours a lot? Sure, but I don't know what the baseline rate is there and suicides often cluster. Depressed people hear of someone killing themselves and it can push them over the edge. So, again, we don't know that the suicides have anything to do with the virus. As for 6 deaths in Tennessee from the virus, given that they have a similar case number to Ohio, which has 25 deaths, that number will rise. Deaths from the virus are a lagging indicator.

Look, it's undeniable that the measures taken so far have negative effects, including ones that may hasten death for some people. But what would you have us do? We know that there are asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people out there who are shedding virus and infecting others, so simply quarantining obviously sick people is not sufficient. Now there is a 5-10 min test and if people can do their own swabs at home, so we don't have people lining up infecting each other and health care workers, we might get a better sense of where we are. And antibody tests are now available that can find those who were infected and have recovered.

But until we can get a real handle on things, we can either adopt social distancing or just shrug and do nothing, which hasn't worked anywhere in the world ever...
 
windar said:
The connection between the two parts of that sentence is not so clear. We don't know that the suicides had anything to do with the virus (and the fact that they call it "Wuhan virus" rather than its proper name, COVID-19, strongly suggests a political agenda. It would be nice, if you are quoting to give the source) .

Is 9 suicides in a county of close to 500,000 people in 48 hours a lot? Sure, but I don't know what the baseline rate is there and suicides often cluster. Depressed people hear of someone killing themselves and it can push them over the edge. So, again, we don't know that the suicides have anything to do with the virus. As for 6 deaths in Tennessee from the virus, given that they have a similar case number to Ohio, which has 25 deaths, that number will rise. Deaths from the virus are a lagging indicator.

Look, it's undeniable that the measures taken so far have negative effects, including ones that may hasten death for some people. But what would you have us do? We know that there are asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people out there who are shedding virus and infecting others, so simply quarantining obviously sick people is not sufficient. Now there is a 5-10 min test and if people can do their own swabs at home, so we don't have people lining up infecting each other and health care workers, we might get a better sense of where we are. And antibody tests are now available that can find those who were infected and have recovered.

But until we can get a real handle on things, we can either adopt social distancing or just shrug and do nothing, which hasn't worked anywhere in the world ever...
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I started by saying that I didn't know the answer. Please read more carefully. I then stated we must remember that measures have costs which are real and effect lives. You seem to agree with that.
The virus started in Wuhan. The government there lied about it for almost two months, preventing efforts to contain it. I call them the Chinese government because that's who they are, not because of racism.
When I was 20, I got sick and almost died from a particularly virulent strain of flu which originated in Hong Kong and everyone called the Hong Kong flu rather than H315J or whatever the in-crowd knew it was. It wasn't a political or racial statement.
 
montycrusto said:
I think this is the pub sign. I look forward to pubs re-opening..
View attachment 841553
of course they could lower the pillory a bit, to show @Barbaria1 ‘s tight little off to its best advantage..
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You have obviously googled it,the pub now seems to have been gentrified and the old stocks/whipping post that had been there for centuries and were still there in the 50s have vanished.
Barb will be so disappointed.
 
Praefectus Praetorio said:
The government there lied about it for almost two months, preventing efforts to contain it. I call them the Chinese government because that's who they are, not because of racism.
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The Chinese government lied about it and failed their own people and the world miserably. But we haven't exactly gotten truth from the government here either. "It's totally contained and cases will be at 0 soon..." Not to mention Senators selling stock (thanks for letting me know :D)...

The key, my friend is testing, testing everybody. Then we can quarantine the infected and let the uninfected go about their lives with some lesser precautions. But we aren't there yet and blaming suicides on measures to control the virus is rank speculation.

Speaking of Tennessee, they've done such a bad job that Kentucky is advising their citizens not to go there https://www.wbir.com/article/news/h...sitive-covid-19-tests-as-kentucky-why-is-that Note Tennessee has a population only 50% larger than Kentucky.

Oh and if fears of the virus and restrictive measures cause suicides, where is the huge spike in suicides in NYC?
 
As to the nomenclature of a massively infectious disease, I find that the recommended policy of not naming it according to the area or country in which it occurred to be a reasonable one. We already have not a few instances of Asian people being shunned or even attacked because of the virus, so I think it's only a prudent thing to avoid making the situation worse by giving the virus an 'Asian name'. And it has already became a pandemic, so there's no point in calling it a 'Wuhan virus" anymore, when it's now a concern for almost every one of us, regarless of where we live.

That being said, I believe we should try not to make it a political matter, especially when we haven't been able to contain the disease yet. The policy is something new and we are all accustomed to such names like "The Spanish Flu", "Japanese Encephalitis", or "The Hong Kong Flu", and so on. So, while it would be a prudent thing not to call a disease using such a name at least until it is fully contained, I don't think that failing to comply with such a guideline would automatically make the person either a racist or one with a hidden political agenda (although there are indeed such cases, unfortunately).
 
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fallenmystic said:
The Spanish Flu
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Concerning 'the Spanish Flu', the name is derived from the fact that the pandemia broke out near the end of World War One. Many of the belligerent countries tried to keep things down. Spain, however was a neutral country, and gave open and correct information. Hence the naming, since, due to the censorship of the countries involved in the war, it looked like that the disease was largely around in Spain first, and then spread to the other countries. Much of the spreading was due to demobilised troops returning home.
 
Loxuru said:
Concerning 'the Spanish Flu', the name is derived from the fact that the pandemia broke out near the end of World War One. Many of the belligerent countries tried to keep things down. Spain, however was a neutral country, and gave open and correct information. Hence the naming, since, due to the censorship of the countries involved in the war, it looked like that the disease was largely around in Spain first, and then spread to the other countries. Much of the spreading was due to demobilised troops returning home.
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I learned the fact from this video only a few years ago:


I highly recommend the channel to anyone who is interested in history. It's such a gold mine of the subject, along with another one dealing with the WWII which is hosted by the same person (Indy Neidell).

As to the Spanish Flu, however, probably the series from The Extra History could be more thorough and entertaing (if I can be justified to apply that term to one that deals with a disaster of such a scale - but who can blame me when even viruses look so cute in that channel :p) than the episode I mentioned.
 
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Barbaria1 said:
Why does that grenadier look so bored?
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Because he was expecting to be guarding a comely scantily-clad wench, not some old fart in a weskit and breeches.
twonines said:
the old stocks/whipping post that had been there for centuries and were still there in the 50s have vanished.
Barb will be so disappointed.
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We can’t have that! :eek:
I believe the whipping post may make a comeback as a means of dealing with those who hoarded toilet rolls.
 
montycrusto said:
Because he was expecting to be guarding a comely scantily-clad wench, not some old fart in a weskit and breeches.

We can’t have that! :eek:
I believe the whipping post may make a comeback as a means of dealing with those who hoarded toilet rolls.
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Hoarding? Me? How many rolls constitutes hoarding? I only have a hundred.
 
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