Our Covid Response

gorfias

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Okay, I'll spell it out very, very carefully for you: I was mocking your appeal to extremes. You were trying to imply that, since if we dedicated every human on Earth to curing COVID then society would fall apart, there was no point in dedicating extra effort to stopping COVID. I countered with the idea that if you dedicated every human being on Earth to anything, including something seen as necessary to a capitalistic society, that society would fall apart.

And if you think that I misread the intent of your statement, well....
We agree to NOT have such extremes. We have to apportion things according to need and demand. How do you apportion it? That is called an economy. Caring about having a functioning economy that feeds, clothes, etc. is not the same as not caring about human life.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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I write this, we have to know that economies do things. They get us food, goods, services. This shut down has diminished our supplies and access to services. How much and how much we can take is unknown at this time but I am certain it is there. I am hearing that nations already facing food supply stresses are going to be that much worse off.

Example I am reviewing, though this states the problem was worsening even before Covid:

" COVID-19 is estimated to have dramatically increased the number of people facing acute food insecurity in 2020-2021. "
What’s more important and transcends anything Covid-related is how much land (and therefore opportunities to grow food), transportation and energy resources are wasted razing livestock for human consumption. It’s also a carbon negative endeavor when considering all contributing factors so the only entity ultimately benefiting is the meat industry.

I mean, sure I still love a good burger but would also have no issue giving them up if the powers that be actually started focusing on better plant-based alternatives.
 
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Silvanus

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We agree to NOT have such extremes. We have to apportion things according to need and demand. How do you apportion it? That is called an economy. Caring about having a functioning economy that feeds, clothes, etc. is not the same as not caring about human life.
Luckily, a robust response to Covid doesn't necessitate severe damage to our ability to feed/clothe people. Case in point: countries that locked down quickly, and strongly, have ended up with less economic damage than those that put off locking down in order to "protect" their economies. Turns out economy vs. health was a false choice all along!
 

gorfias

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Luckily, a robust response to Covid doesn't necessitate severe damage to our ability to feed/clothe people. Case in point: countries that locked down quickly, and strongly, have ended up with less economic damage than those that put off locking down in order to "protect" their economies. Turns out economy vs. health was a false choice all along!
I imagine there are a lot of confounding factors with your stats. (Example: Some places that locked down vigerously also have a healthy, slim populace compared to the over-weight US citizenry). The real answers are going to be difficult to arrive at.

Example: https://archive.vn/EoNCo

We need something like this, but even if it happened, would we trust it and its conclussions?

 

CriticalGaming

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Be careful about making a concrete issue too abstract. Diminished which supplies? Access to which services? Why has "COVID-19" estimated to have dramatically increased the number of people facing acute food insecurity? Is it because there isn't food available or because people need money to buy it? Or is it some mixture of both? Are there other ways of fixing each problem that are consistent with reducing the spread of the virus? And so on. Right now, school districts are reopening and then quickly finding out that they're spreading coronavirus. Completely unnecessary to food security.
A lot of things factor into food and supply problems.

I saw a report somewhere in which farmers where wasted 80k gallons of cow milk a day for a while because there were no truck drivers available to deliver it before it spoiled.

It isnt just who makes the food or the item, but also who takes it from manufacturer to the store front. There are workers every step of the way in a web that spread out further than you can imagine.

For example they need drivers for the trucks. But they also need gas stations to fuel the trucks, but then they need people who refine the fuel, those refineries need people to maintain the factory, those maintenance people need another factory that makes the parts which replace broken equipment in the refinery. And on and on it goes.

One of the struggles of just shutting everything down for a little while is the insane task of restarting the system.

I work in souvenirs. I make coffee mugs that have National Parks and shit on them. During the lockdowns most of my customers basically went out of business temporarily. Which means they didnt order anything for their stores. So what had to happen when they could reopen? Well cant sell shit in an empty store right, so they all ordered a bunch of product to restock the shelves. Problem with that is, my factories shutdown too, which means i only had so much to offer. And when EVERY SINGLE STORE tries to restock at once, there simply isnt enough to supply everyone and since my factories are also trying to reboot my resupply system is also slow.

Its an incredible bottleneck the likes of which we have never seen before.
 
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Silvanus

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I imagine there are a lot of confounding factors with your stats. (Example: Some places that locked down vigerously also have a healthy, slim populace compared to the over-weight US citizenry). The real answers are going to be difficult to arrive at.
the US population is notoriously unhealthy anyway, sure, but it's not just the US. Countries across the world that dragged their feet or bungled their lockdown messaging (such as the UK) experienced very high infection and death tolls. And countries that fared better were not always ones with sparse or particularly healthy populations: Vietnam has neither, and borders China, yet locked down very quickly and ended up with a very positive result.

The economy needn't have suffered anywhere nearly as badly as it did, even with a lockdown. An early, properly implemented lockdown would not need to be anywhere near as long as the one we got. Had it been implemented when the virus was relatively new and not geographically diffuse, then it could have nipped this in the bud before it became a pandemic. And even in lockdown, jobs and businesses could have survived far better with adequate government support. But neither of these things happened. And as a result of this, we have the worst of both worlds: high death toll and high economic cost combined.
 

CriticalGaming

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the US population is notoriously unhealthy anyway, sure, but it's not just the US. Countries across the world that dragged their feet or bungled their lockdown messaging (such as the UK) experienced very high infection and death tolls. And countries that fared better were not always ones with sparse or particularly healthy populations: Vietnam has neither, and borders China, yet locked down very quickly and ended up with a very positive result.

The economy needn't have suffered anywhere nearly as badly as it did, even with a lockdown. An early, properly implemented lockdown would not need to be anywhere near as long as the one we got. Had it been implemented when the virus was relatively new and not geographically diffuse, then it could have nipped this in the bud before it became a pandemic. And even in lockdown, jobs and businesses could have survived far better with adequate government support. But neither of these things happened. And as a result of this, we have the worst of both worlds: high death toll and high economic cost combined.
Well we should have banned travel to and from countries that had infections when the virus was first starting out but that was racist so we couldnt do that. And frankly it was too unknown at how transmissable and dangerous the virus would end up being.

That is why when the zombie virus finally happens we are 100% doomed. There is too much to gain from politically manipulating the virus for the people in charge to ever take appropriate action.

We have a power sturcture that doesnt serve the people and only serves itself and until that changes (it wont) then nothing like this will ever be handled correctly.
 

CriticalGaming

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What’s more important and transcends anything Covid-related is how much land (and therefore opportunities to grow food), transportation and energy resources are wasted razing livestock for human consumption. It’s also a carbon negative endeavor when considering all contributing factors so the only entity ultimately benefiting is the meat industry.

I mean, sure I still love a good burger but would also have no issue giving them up if the powers that be actually started focusing on better plant-based alternatives.
Of all the things that have a climate effect cow farts are extremely low on the list.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Of all the things that have a climate effect cow farts are extremely low on the list.
Actually it’s higher than one might think, especially compounded by everything else -


That’s not some vegan site or anything either; it’s just advocating better food industry practices.
 
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CriticalGaming

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2nd position on the list is low?
There is a lot of creatures on the planet almost all of which fart. What makes a couple million cows to the trillions of other farts?

Id sooner deal with factories in china in which their emissions literally darken the sky.
 

Kwak

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There is a lot of creatures on the planet almost all of which fart. What makes a couple million cows to the trillions of other farts?
Humans account for about 36 percent of the biomass of all mammals. Domesticated livestock, mostly cows and pigs, account for 60 percent, and wild mammals for only 4 percent.
 
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Baffle

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There is a lot of creatures on the planet almost all of which fart. What makes a couple million cows to the trillions of other farts?
Cows are ruminants, so they produce a lot more methane than, say, people or cats, and because they're specifically and deliberately bred for meat production there are far more of them than there would naturally be. Hence it being a problem.
 

CriticalGaming

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Cows are ruminants, so they produce a lot more methane than, say, people or cats, and because they're specifically and deliberately bred for meat production there are far more of them than there would naturally be. Hence it being a problem.
Well i guess i better eat more cows. They dont fart if i eat them.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Well i guess i better eat more cows. They dont fart if i eat them.
The conundrum there is they still need to be fully grown to get you the meat to eat from them.

*Thinks*

I may have an idea though. We could attach biodegradable fart bags (made from recycled materials) to their buttholes, then when filled just load ‘em up and bring ‘em to waste treatment plants. But not for disposal, because somewhere some scientists should probably be smart enough to turn the bags’ contents into an energy source which would be abundant enough to power the plants.

BOOM. *somewhat* carbon-neutral shit shacks.
 

Silvanus

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Well we should have banned travel to and from countries that had infections when the virus was first starting out but that was racist so we couldnt do that. And frankly it was too unknown at how transmissable and dangerous the virus would end up being.

That is why when the zombie virus finally happens we are 100% doomed. There is too much to gain from politically manipulating the virus for the people in charge to ever take appropriate action.

We have a power sturcture that doesnt serve the people and only serves itself and until that changes (it wont) then nothing like this will ever be handled correctly.
Let's be honest: absolutely none of the people in charge of immigration laws were even remotely motivated by concerns of racism. They were concerned about money lost through tourism and trade. Concerns of racism played zero part in the decision-making process.