I take a slightly more holistic view of things. I feel that there is currently not enough disincentive for people to be ****ing morons, and a bit too much of the "well, that's just your opinion, man" going about. It's about time that the dumb-dumbs faced some consequences for being such.

Call it eugenics if you want, but I'm happy to sign my name to any program that has cretins directly experiencing the consequences of their idiocy. We should have more of it.

The problem in this situation is that it is not like some moron trying to imitate something they saw in the Jackass movies and splattering themselves. That idiotic behavior pretty much directly impacts only them in terms of general health. In cases like this, the person who was screaming about masks then screaming he could not breath acted without care of society, and he got infected likely by someone else who did the same, and good chance he infected others before giving his final salute on July 4th.

He was reckless, but while a lot of these dummies being so belligerent makes it a "glad it was them" reaction at first, the reality is that many of them were too stupid to know they were actually being as reckless as they were at the time, whether out of a lack of belief of how a virus works or just general obliviousness or perhaps a callous disregard of common sense. Just look at some of the posters (real ones, not fake trolls like joejoe) as an example. Many of them would have no idea they were driving their virus car in a reckless manner, and that they may have run over some people on the way to meeting their maker.

That is the sinister aspect of this. Dummies like the following:

https://listverse.com/2016/05/04/10-...cking-jackass/

have a minimal impact on other people's lives in terms of health. They were dummies, they did dummy stuff, and lost the dummy lottery. People being casual with this virus ie: "just staff up, we win!" represent a much bigger threat, and the reality that when one of these dummies dies it has for now minimal impact on other dummies. That will change as more and more dummies repeat this guy's story, but they are going to take out a lot of people in their wake in the USA #1.

To my point above, I wonder how people would feel if we lived in a society where identified Covid deniers were denied all care and told to self treat at home upping their death significantly?

I do think that SHOULD be the standard as i think it more wrong to force over worked healthcare workers to keep treating endless and unnecessary waves of these people when for X patients who are admitted, eventually Y healthcare workers and their family will die due to exposure of them.

No person, healthcare worker or not should be forced to take on the risk of death to help someone who willing yelled YOLO, exposed themselves and now is going to put you at risk.

And of course my statement is not an absolute tied to every dumb act, but in this case where this pandemic is SO known, and being played out over months, and likely years in the US with no abatement at tragic levels with Trumpsters refusing to do anything to help slow it, I find that to be the defining difference.

random local covid tidbits

Several more cases where my wife works. The last few have been in the wing where they have dementia patients who cannot ever leave their room.

When any resident tests positive, they are immediately sent to the hospital regardless of symptoms. We suspect this is why this particular facility hasn't shown up on any lists.

One guy was sent quite a while back. He has now tested positive for five straight weeks, with no symptoms. The hospital will not release him.

A different hospital has a patient that is showing symptoms, but not severe. They are trying to send him back to the facility. Quite a back and forth on this one.

If people didn't get treatment because they did something stupid that caused their illness hospitals would be nearly completely empty. I get the anger, I really do, but this just isn't thought out.

Love it. And the ****ing anti-vaxxers too. **** 'em.

Can we eradicate YECs by torturing this logic too, or is that taking it a bit too far? You're ok lagtight, you can stay, it's all the others that are the problem.

The focus on discharges to nursing homes is asinine and drives me up a wall. Something like 25% of nursing home workers tested positive in NYC. The virus came from the community, not from hospital discharges.

Contained facilities where people are smashed up against one each other are always sources of outbreaks. Prisons, nursing homes, **cough cough** schools, dorms, etc are always sources of outbreaks of any contagious illness.

There's flu outbreaks in nursing homes every. single. year. and it ain't from discharges from the hospital either.

Frankly, that focus is based much more on partisanship than anything else.

There is a big difference between doing something stupid, and having stupid political opinions. I smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day, and probably go through a mini vinery in a month. That is stupid. I don't claim that my health issues are down to liberal conspiracies. That would be having stupid political opinions.

I put reactions like that to being human and being emotional, but of course they are impractical other than as some contrived movie plot.

Here is the thing. I cannot feel deeply sad for the guy who's death became a meme. I am not laughing at him, but I cannot feel bad. He was (without intent) killed by another person who likely shared his callous and careless approach to this current health situation. He likely infected others as well, so who knows how many people are going to be sick or die because of him and how many they will spread it to as well.

He does not deserve the title as much as others (Trump for instance), but he represents just about everything wrong with how a good chunk of the USA#1 is handling this situation, so I will not waste time mourning him or his bad choices, but I will be frustrated that his death will pretty much be meaningless for now as likely his clones out there will not be swayed much as it has not yet happened to them.

The problem of course with a virus that spreads like this is that more and more will be that guy, and eventually the USA#1 in parts will have to lockdown or else just continue to charge ahead and punch the virus in the unmasked face and just clean up all the bodies and accept a huge need for healthcare expenses moving forward. Most if not all of that could have been avoided if the behavior of these dummies was not as commonplace as seen in the USA#1, and that is without question why USA#1 is USA#1 instead of too much testing, geography, democrats, Lizard People, or whatever else the cult wants to blame than their own reckless approach.

I guess I've just known and seen too many people die from this. I think if you guys saw that you'd feel the same.

I just can’t believe the NBA and Disneyworld are opening today. Side by side in one of the epicenters of this pandemic. When cases are at an all-time high.

It feels wrong and we are seriously testing the fates. Governments/people that have been respectful have done well. Those that ignore the virus or downplay it have been punished. Severely.

Next few weeks are critical.

This is a sobering thought. I have definitely noticed that the more ridiculous I try to make it, the more serious responses I get. Probably similar to the reaction to straight trolling. Like, that Karl Rove argue the air out of the room **** works, man.

Anyways, it’s the weekend so start gettingready to bust out your 3 day rolling averages!!!

I'm not going to posit whether it's a cause, an effect, or a correlation, but one thing I have found that is invariant amongst all right wingers is that they are incapable of assimilating ideas or concepts unless they can relate them to personal experience.

Did you see Smuger's posts? Your satire is like Reuters to his Onion. And he's not being satirical.

No, I thought it out. There is a distinction you are missing.

We know pandemics are becoming more common and increasingly hard to deal with.

Imagine the next pandemic is a mutated strain of ebola that has the same deadly results for those who contract it but has the longer 'hidden' infection curve.

People are bleeding out in horrific fashion and a high number of healthcare workers and their families are dying.

Society completely shuts down and institutes other measure and orders people to to stay home outside of 'necessitated outings', as the best way to end the death.

But State to State enough 'muh freedums Trumpsters' refuse to abide by it. They call it all a hoax and this horrific pandemic, in the US, alone amongst 1st world nations, cannot only not get this under control but it is growing.

it is growing to a point, where we can clearly see by the tracking statistics, it will be out of control and hit a saturation point in the population that it will be near impossible to pull back. All you can do then is separate the survivors from those who die and let the death rate take its toll.

You cannot compare this to other 'dumb' acts that might put a person and his rescuer and/or hospital worker at risk.

These Trumpsters are putting the rescuers and hospitals workers and THEIR FAMILIES at risk as well as putting all of society at risk.

A more apt analogy for what these Trumpsters are doing would be...

- you have a suicidal person who tries to kill himself, but survives and now his rescue requires the rescuers to take on a really deadly risk to save him.

- that is what they do, and we call them a hero for that

- saved this man tries again, finding himself in the same spot and needing the same type of perilous rescue. This time a rescuer dies but they do rescue him.

At a certain point if this PATTERN continues do we stop expecting the rescuers to die to save this guy???

That situation is not exactly the same. The YOLO Trump idiots are also putting the families of their 'rescuers and the community' at risk, so they are worse.

The US needs to engage in a serious discussion about this post Covid and before the next pandemic.

Politicians need to figure out where 'm'uh freedums' end and where 'public safety mandate' begin.

Again using my mutated 'Ebola with Covid transmission tail' example as a baseline, the US has to, and i mean HAS TO, have a way to balance 'm'uh freedums' with 'you are killing mass numbers of others and ruining the economy' and that needs to be decided outside a pandemic.

Because if now the gov't tries to DEMAND people stay home in the next and worse pandemic, you would see people rush out purposely to defend 'm'uh freedums' in defiance because of this precedent, even if they were inclined to otherwise stay home.

I like when racist murderers die. Can't help it.

Gov. Abbott warns if COVID-19 spread doesn't slow the next step would be a lockdown

DOD Medical Task Force Deployed as Texas Battles Rise in COVID-19 Cases


@WaitingOnAP

As these self inflected surges get out of control the governments who poured the gas on them are counting on being able to surge in first line workers from across the country to help them deal with the problem, they are fostering.

These healthcare workers often look at themselves similar to how soldiers do. They understand their lives are at risk to do the jobs they accepted but they expect people not to foolishly create situations where they are at risk.

As these Front Line workers surge in, they know of more and more deaths of their peers and their family members. They know their odds get worse each and every time they are called upon to do this.

But they do their jobs, heroically.

But as the first State fire is quelled, they see the next foolish State boiling up. And so and so on. And they see the States they quelled not changing behaviour, meaning by the time they lap the circuit, a State they helped get under control is now cuing up for disaster again.

At what point would you say it ok for ALL these parachute healthcare workers and those in the local system to tap out to save their own lives and that of their families? Do you have one?


(I am not asking this to be provocative. I am genuinely interested in this line of debate at how much 'sacrifice' we expect others to make and 'how many times')

To the above, in the face of such impending disasters in Texas and FLorida right behind them, why do they not immediately cut testing in half or by 2/3rds and thus instantly, over night they would only have 1/2 to 1/3rd the problems?

I cannot understand why such a simple move would not be taken to save lives and knock this back to the levels in Europe, Canada and elsewhere where they are in better shape simply because they test less.

(taking @d2_e4 point to heart re the level of real ******ness we see here, this IS intended as satire)

That’s the point man!

I think I’ve said this before, but the vast majority of my current coworkers and peripheral social contacts are basically real life Smudgers, so I get a lot of exposure anyways.

Honestly, I don’t have the nerve to mock them to their faces, so making stupid joke posts here is kind of cathartic.

I have a coworker whose kids got it, and then he got it, and is totally fine so he’s been saying JUST THE FLU every day. He pointed out that 400 people die a day in Texas, and only 40 died one day. I say - Dude that a 10 percent increase in deaths, that’s insane! Next response is how the numbers are being faked anyways.

What I'm more concerned about is how these kids get transported back to school. 675 kids under 12 years of age were killed in car accidents in 2017 (the latest year I can find on CDC). Meanwhile 30 kids between the ages of <1 and 14 have been killed due to covid (stats from Feb 1-->July 4, also found on CDC).

I hope everyone can walk to school.... but then 157 kids under the age of 13 died as pedestrians hit by vehicles in 2018 (stats from IIHS). This is quite the conundrum. Special plastic bubbles for all kids? It's the only way to be completely safe I guess.

RIP GTO 2.0, let's have a toast to our fallen brother. I guess why he felt the need to end it all will forever remain a mystery.

Wow, no counter to that point at all. Guess Covid aint too bad, except for the minor part where kids will help spread it, and not everyone in schools are kids (unless the teaching, cleaning, support staff etc are all kids). Of course most of the kids have parents who are not kids. Hmm, I guess you tell me - you see any potential offsetting numbers here, because I am way too distracted by your fantastic point. Thanks!

All the best.

Victor, do you realise you are the one left winger on this board who is giving all the right-wing ****heads an excuse to point and shout "look, the left is batshit insane too!"?

FWIW, they don't need an excuse and do it anyway.