Huh. [https://kotaku.com/death-stranding-makes-more-sense-now-than-ever-1842356505]
True fictions ftw.
True fictions ftw.
Oh Kojima, you did it again!
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
- Start date
Eh? Its kinda' similar in that both Death Stranding and real life have people in it, and things happen, but outside that? I mean the world isn't actually broken, we're just not being stupid for a few weeks.
There's always people who mock Kojima, but he ends up right 85-95% of the time depending on the subject. Whelp, they can't mock Death Stranding for being too over-the-top now. I know Kojima is thinking "Now, who's laughing?".
How? In what way? We ain't got ghosts or time rain, we have a bad flu. And cities haven't blown up, we're not using brain dead babies as radar, the only people outside aren't just FedEx workers, reality isn't breaking and laser ziplines don't exist. We're just saying don't go to the bars for a week.CoCage said:
If all we're going with is Kojima thought of "Hey, what if something happened where people were isolated from one another?" kinda' like how the majority of history was, and then something not at all similar happens he's not much of a prophet.
Still doesn't change he was right in a roundabout way. Just replace all of his silly stuff with a virus. There ya go.Silentpony said:
The similarities are amazing though. Especially after reading the article.
Yes sure, if you replace ALL THE PLOT AND LORE of death stranding with the current virus scare, then yeah it is very similar.CoCage said:
Also if you replace all of WW2 history with the story of my 3rd grade winter's play about a lost moose finding Santa, then wow the Holocaust was very Christmas friendly!
Death Standing's isolation is A. Years long, B. not optional(cause ghosts will eat you), C. Underground and D. the result of entire cities blowing up and billions dead.
If anything this virus outbreak is incredibly similar to Conker's Bad Fur Day in which Conker just wants to go home 'cause he doesn't feel too good, and if that's not virus self isolation I don't know what is. Man that Robin Beanland is some kind of sorcerer for knowing about this 20 years ago.
Look, I know everything is not 1:1, I'm blowing off steam and having fun. So don't take it too personally or seriously.Silentpony said:
Kojima was SPOT-ON with MGS2, the Patriots were 100% right. Not sarcasm by the way, I feel like it'll read like that.
Uhh... It's going to be much longer than a week.Silentpony said:
Even if its 2, 3 or 4 weeks, its not decades. I guarantee you we'll be having drinks and seeing movies before 2050, instead of dodging ghost and time rainPhoenixmgs said:
Wait it was all Beanland's idea? Did he just go up to Chris Seavor one day and say "Oi- that rubbish Banjo Kazooie wannabe you've been working on. Let's completely overhaul it from the ground up [sub] and I'll do the music which will earn me a tasty BAFTA mwuhahahaha![/sub]"Silentpony said:
Actually I can kind of see it going down like that, to be honest.
If ICU's are full of people with respiratory failure(young people as well) I'd say it's more than just a 'bad flu'. Italy is hit so hard people are put in hallways of the hospital because of no more room many on artificial breathing machines. It's a deadly contagious virus for which no vaccine exists.Silentpony said:
I remember after the SARS outbreak in 2003 or so(of which the wuhan corona virus is 80% similar) the Chinese regime was urged to close down those 'wet markets' where people eat bats and shit and where sick people and animals are in close proximity to one another under the most disgusting conditions. They never did and this is the result.
As for Death Stranding it's not hard to see how (self) quarantine has emphasized the games thematic elements; a world mostly connected through social media and package deliveries. It's basically how society now sustains itself though the reason obviously not being an antimatter ghost bomb but a cold virus.
Though I think the similarity between the antimatter ghosts and the virus is that for both there exists no cure or scientific solution. People will die and/or get sick and for the first time since a long time humanity is made aware of it's place in nature and the animal kingdom of which it's part of(like the virus has shown). Same as the stranded whales and tar pollution in Death Stranding.
So, a very contagious flu? What a lot of people tend to forget is that the seasonal flu (or rather, the many variants of viruses that we call seasonal flu) kills millions of people world wide every year. The vast majority of those people will be elderly people with multiple other health issues but a small number will be 'young people' that also have prior health issues (often lung or heart diseases, also diabetes or some form of immuno-suppression, be it medication or disease).stroopwafel said:
What we are seeing now with Covid-19 is that it is really contagious and that the rapid spread is causing problems. People are put into ICU's every day worldwide because they caught a flu, people die every day from the flu. Covid-19 is only different in that it is infecting a lot of people really fast. That puts a strain of healthcare, who might be used to treating maybe 2-3 people in an ICU for the flu at any one time during flu season, but are now having to treat twice or thrice that number due to Covid's rapid spread. It is to be expected that hospitals will run out of rooms when a disease spreads rapidly, because hospitals are designed to accept a relatively stable number of patients spread evenly over many specialties, not for sudden hikes in patient admittance to specific wards.
Covid-19 is currently estimated to have about a 1% mortality rate, the vast majority (95%+) of those cases being elder elderly (80+) with underlying health issues. Of the other people infected another vast majority (approx. 90%) have only mild flu symptoms such as low fever, runny nose and dry coughing. Covid-19 is not anything like Ebola, Bubonic Plague or HIV/AIDS was at their peak of spreading. If you're a reasonably healthy adult, Covid-19 is very unlikely to be lethal to you. In fact, you are more likely to die in a traffic accident then you are to die of Covid-19. Just to put that in perspective.
Calling Covid-19 deadly is sort of accurate, because people obviously die from it, but it is not deadly in the every day use of the word. It is nowhere near the mortality of some actually lethal diseases such as aforementioned Ebola or even Depression (estimated 2-3% mortality due to suicide), even self-harm behavior during Emotional Instabile Personality Disorder (estimated 5% mortality) or Eating Disorders (5-15% lethality depending on the specific type). More accurate is to say that Covid-19 is an unusually contagious flu and that it will cause social problems due to its rapid spread and that risk groups (elder elderly with underlying health issues) are at an increased risk of dying, which is exacerbated by the strain on available healthcare resources.
As the British say: Keep Calm and Carry on. Covid-19 is nothing like acid rain, angry ghosts eating your face and people living in underground bunkers.
I'd say the rapid rate of infection transmission is exactly why it's so dangerous, because it is potentially destabilizing to healthcare systems even if only a small percentage suffers severe complications. Go say to an ICU doc that ''more people die in car accidents everyday'' when he/she is no longer able to administer proper care and may have to send patients away because hospitals are flooded with patients.Gethsemani said:
Ofcourse respiratory viruses are almost never as lethal as blood-borne ones but they are much more difficult to contain and have a far wider reach. Compare the current corona virus with the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Congo and you see what I mean. People sneeze and your're potentially life-threateningly sick. There is no natural immunity against the virus or vaccine available so you'll never know if you're the unlucky one. From what I understand the complication rate of 'regular' flu is also much smaller exactly because of this reason; humans co-exist with this virus for a much longer time and medical science also has much more experience with it. That is not even counting the vaccines available to protect the old, sick and weak.
A new 'novel' virus puts natural selection back into practice. People with strong immune systems and diverse antigens most likely survive and the weak and the old and the sick are at (much) higher risk of death. That is how it works in nature, but usually science provides an adequate buffer to disrupt it's destructive flow. Same with the Spanish flu a century ago with it's high mortality rate. The healthiest survived, procreated and birthed the strongest children. Many of the rest ended on the cemetery.
This is the relevant part. Covid-19 is dangerous, not lethal, on a societal level due to its rapid spread and causing symptoms necessitating that people stay at home from work and avoid contact with at risk groups. That's not the same as the alarmist "deadly contagious virus for which no vaccine exists" you first mentioned.stroopwafel said:
"Potentially" here is potential in the same way that I can "potentially" win the lottery and become a dollar millionaire. The mortality rate for people under age 60 is currently estimated at 0,2 percent. Or, if you will, 1 in 500. Those 1 in 500 are not previously healthy 20-40 somethings, but people with multiple serious health problems. Of those other 499 somewhere in the realm of 450 will suffer mild flu symptoms and 10 or so will suffer serious symptoms requiring some form of medical intervention (not necessarily hospitalization).stroopwafel said:
This is the case for most flus, really. The seasonal flu vaccination is mostly guess work based on which flu is trending that year and there have been years when the vaccinations have proven useless because some other virus broke out instead. Still, this is not in itself disconcerting. Us humans lack a natural immunity or vaccination possibilities against a lot of things.stroopwafel said:
Partially, yes. But right now Covid-19 is lethal at about the same rate as a pretty vicious seasonal flu. Keep in mind that seasonal flus have a lethality of between 0.5-3% of tested cases depending on which flu is seasonal. Covid-19 is currently slightly above that span, but when you factor in its rapid transmission and the inability to test everyone, it would probably hover there too.stroopwafel said:
Yes, but Covid-19 is not that. Both SARS and MERS were much, much more lethal and struck harder against previously healthy people. Covid-19 kills really weakened people at a slightly higher rate (and those people would most likely have succumbed to a regular rhino virus) and the rest of us walk around with a mild flu. This is not some Contagion-style event, this is not the next Black Death. It is, in effect, an unusually contagious seasonal flu and the best way to deal with it is to focus on preserving social function and keeping your head cool. Talking up its' deadliness is not only counter-factual but also a great way to sow panic. And comparing Covid-19 to the apocalyptic events of Death Stranding is outright stupid.stroopwafel said:
Well no, I said no vaccine exists to those who are at higher risk, like with regular flu. Infact it could be argued flu vaccines diminished some immune function by inhibiting activity of white blood cells that don't have to be called into action because vaccine antigens did all the work for them. It is one of the rare risks of flu vaccines that now with the global pandemic has come into fruition.Gethsemani said:
Yeah, potentially for a lot of countries but not for example Italy where the situation is out of control. It is not a baseless assumption. That Italy has a sudden spike of people with respiratory failure due to corona virus complications on a scale that overextends their ICU care and necessitates all Italians stay at home is hardly in the same realm of probability as ''winning the lottery''. You try to incorporate a relative causality in your arguments that makes zero sense.
Sure, ''guess work'' that is accurate most of the times. It's true the flu virus is often deadly for people who are very old or very sick but the corona virus hit a disproportionate amount of younger and ostensibly healthy people as well. Medical science also has more experience with the flu and access to anti-viral medications or preventative antibiotic use for pneumonia risk. For Covid-19 there is no such treatment strategies available or understanding of the virus, just patients with lung failure on artifcial breathing machines sometimes so many at the same time(as the case in Italy) ICU's are barely able to handle it. The rate of infection and complication rate is also much higher.
Covid-19 is specifically named for it's corona virus/SARS2 complication risk for which no treatment exist, which is the specific respiratory failure. Which fortunately don't occur in the vast amount of infections but is still a disproportionate risk compared to regular flu.
You keep missing the point and thinking only old, frail and sick people can die from the virus who would have died anyway if you as much as sneezed in their direction. This couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, obviously they are at much higher risk but young and healthy people are at risk as well, case in point the very eye doctor who discovered the virus. ICU's have a relatively high amount of younger people as well due to corona complications though fortunately their chances of succumbing to the virus is lower than that of a senior citizen.
I am not missing that point, I am ignoring it because the chance is so very tiny (less then 1 in 500 right now) that you aren't making a point. You keep trying to play it up, but there are a lot of things in society that has a much higher chance of killing you then Corona has right now. That's the point you keep missing: The mortality rate of Covid-19 in otherwise healthy people is incredibly low. You've got a higher chance of getting cancer prior to age 50 and dying of that then you've got of dying to Covid-19. I keep putting this in perspective, because you keep hyping up the dangers of what amounts to a flu.stroopwafel said:
Besides, do you really trust China, the communist dictatorship, to honestly report on the doctor that blew the whistle on their attempt to cover-up a budding epidemic? I'd bet money that the chance is higher that he was unceremoniously murdered by secret police then the chance that he actually died of Covid-19. This is the country that is currently running concentration camps on minority populations, abducts citizens of other countries (Gui Minhai) and has a history of running over students with tanks. That they would let a whistle blower live after he told everyone of a government cover-up is almost preposterous.
I never disagreed there are more probable causes of death than Covid-19 but dismissing this as just another flu also diminishes the gravity of the situation. Espescially with so many unknown variables, the rapid infection rate and high complication risk. Organizations like the WHO don't give the most severe warnings if this was just a seasonal flu.Gethsemani said:
What would be the point of that? The regime initially tried to pretend nothing was wrong(the usual reflex) but when the cat was out the bag Xi immediately rehabilitated the doctor and took the most drastic measures possible, many of which might be of questionable conceit but did display the full awareness of the situation's severity. Modern China's integration in the international economy is of crucial infrastructure so for them to prioritize health issues over strategic or economic ones by endangering the long supply lines the world economy is dependent on is ample evidence of where the regime's priority lie in this issue. It tried to contain the virus at all costs. Why murder the whistleblower in an attempt to 'cover up' if the regime itself is screaming from the roof about the crisis?