The vast majority of poker players are recreational and do not even know what the rake is, never mid caring much about it.

I agree with this... however the "scary" numbers people throw around with respect to COVID-19 are over time too... at least the reputable ones. That original study which threw out the 2MM+ deaths in the US and 500K deaths in the UK figures was over the course of two years, if memory serves. This is certainly more of a near-term public health situation than any of the other things mentioned, but it is not as near-term as some make it out to be.

Car polution kills millions of innocent people, go look at bejiing or other huge capitals which are constantly heavily smogged. Same with alcohol and cigarettes which u still see advertised everywhere since they have a multibillion dollar lobby. Youre right though its not in a short amount of time.

For the lobby stuff, its been hard to keep money out of politics, it probably always will be. Politicians will continue to accept the money as long as it leads to them still getting elected. Since those are slow bleed problems, their constituents will probably not care/be concerned with some of those issues at all leading to them getting the benefit of the money to get reelected without having massive outrage against them. As outrage grows for an issue, you see money slow down or stop from those sources as they begin to lose their grip. Other times the political influence is so great that millions of deaths is not important anymore as the system can still process the deaths, and even the will of the people is not enough to stop it. Even in the worst scenarios you will most likely have 10-40 percent of the population be in a state of disbelief/apathy/or entrenched in politics that are against the science/problems at hand which slows solutions. Removal of the political structure in those places would be the only chance at a fix.

But during an immediate issue like this, where hospitals run out of space to store bodies, and have to put them in trucks, public outrage builds quickly and the visible results are obvious if there is no action taken. This is threatening to their reelection now, so they will try their best at the moment(some of them , usually at the local level) to try to ease the problem. I don't mean to sound like I think all politicians are soulless though.

I wouldn't be surprised if, given the levels of air pollution have dropped like a stone over the past month, that the coronaplague is actually a net positive for the population count

No one is denying that. He was pointing out that Covid was a sudden existential threat.
Car safety and pollution control has evolved over the course of a century. Covid was only discovered three months ago, and had the potential to kill millions of people within weeks, so swift (and extreme) action had to be taken in order to buy some time.
If alcohol or tobacco had only been discovered in 2020, you can be sure that they would have been limited or banned, at least until "safe" consumption amounts could be established. (See also the moral panic about vaping, or even autonomous vehicles; a couple of potentially dangerous new technologies that will probably turn out to be safer than what they are replacing). Since nicotine, alcohol, and pollution, have been around for hundreds of years, and are an established part of the culture, the problems associated with them can only be mitigated. Covid appeared to be way too dangerous for a "wait and see" approach to be taken.

They should work in an online series, just like Poker Masters have done.

Every major poker room is upgrading their series to feed the hungry field.

Just get a connection with 888, Party or PokerStars, create 100 online tournaments and work in a real world series. Right now they have the Las Vegas Series of Poker.

Since I'm brazilian I have to travel every year to compete in Vegas. But USA players can't leave the couch, their beers and hamburguers to play a World Series out of their backyard.

This is what we need: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/6...nship-1765522/

As far as tobacco and alcohol, they fall into a completely different "threat" category in the public's eye because everyone knows the risks associated with those extracurricular activities. The public can tolerate these sort of threats because the victims are almost entirely the direct users.

I think societies accept the dangers associated with vehicles because of how integral they are to society and the economy. There are laws and regulations geared to minimize their harm to society, but I think all societies have accepted vehicles as a net-positive and are willing to live with the consequences.

But a virus that rapidly comes out of NOWHERE threatening every single human on Earth and bringing the world to its knees within 6 months?? Something almost every single government in the world was unprepared for, and something where there is no cure or vaccine anytime soon. You don't see why there might be much greater public interest and concern over something like that?

It's not strictly the death rate that has shocked so many people. It's the fact that something seemingly so small could shatter entire governments/economies/healthcare systems so quickly.


This is something that transcends bottomline death totals because it will have long-lasting and devastating effects on world economies and will also re-shape the way people think and the way society moves forward.

Against my better judgment, I'll bite.

No, but just in the last 50 years we have added safety belts, air bags, safety restraint systems, crumple zones, high-level third brake lights, anti-lock braking, blind spot information systems, tire pressure monitoring, lane-departure warning systems and autonomous emergency brakes.

No, but we have instituted nationally mandated drinking ages, installed alcoholic beverage control organizations, instituted stricter legal limits for blood-alcohol content levels, enacted "dram shop laws" and laws against public intoxication.

Funny, I haven't really thought of this, and I came up with all of that.

Also, why do so many people have a whole "why do we worry about A when we should be worried about B" mentality? Do these people not realize that it's very possible – especially when we're talking about collective millions and billions of people – to think about two issues at the same time?

It came out of Wuhan and you would need to define "threatening". The virus itself is not going to shatter governments/economies but government reactions certainly might. I am in no way downplaying the reality of the situation but I infer many of your posts to have a doomsday/end of times vibe. At the end of the day this virus is incredibly infectious and deadly to high risk individuals but that is where the danger from the virus ends and the danger from hysteria and overreaction kick in. This too shall pass.

I don't see how they do any seniors events again as long as the possibility of this virus re-emerging exists.

We reacted like 9/11 was akin to Pearl Harbor and we're reacting like Covid is the Black Plague. We bankrupt ourselves fighting fairly non existential threats and the results we get are marginal because the threats are marginal ones.

Are you Martin Kläser?

Tell that to the Doctors and Nurses that are losing their lives for people like you

Any updates for the WSOP this summer?

I really want them to make this an online tournament series this year

911 was akin to Pearl Harbor, exce[t the dead were civilians.

Marginal threat my ass, CoVid threatens whole, identifiable segments of the population. Do you consider people over 60, or with pre-existing medical conditions like heart issues, lung issues, diabetes, to be "marginal" people ?

Today, the projected death toll in the US, if the measures recommended are followed at 100,000 ro 200,000 Americans. To you 200,000 lives are "marginal" ?

What number of deaths do you consider appropriate to shoot for, if any ?

Georgia, U.S. (grim report that includes two testimonials from individuals who are currently tending to patients).

Oh didn't expect to get so many answers.
Sorry guys, but you should know the virus is a mental, psychlogical issue in our modern world. News and also Fakenews are overwhelming us with information about Covid19..
What kind of information are true, and what is the purpose of this?
Do you guys or many of you truly belive we (the normal people) get all the information???
I belive not!!
We are getting manipulate the whole day long over and over again..
I don't belive anything what are media telling me. Maybe weather or sportnews but that is.
I have my own approach to the world of information.
Most of Information lead us to a certain direction.
If you want stay out if this whole ****, just shut it the TV down, just don't look at internet and you will beginnt to realize how wonderfull you life is whitout all the news..
Think about this now.

Even if you want to take a contrarian hot take stance on this you have to realize that for a conspiracy to be happening here that all of the world's countries have to be conspiring together. What's more likely? All countries can and are working together for the end game of ???? or there's actually a pandemic out there that should be taken seriously?

Nobody knows what the right answer is, but focusing just on how many people have died so far, and comparing it to something else makes little sense.

Even if you take human lives out of the equation, preemptively shutting down the economy would still be on the table. The downside to just letting the virus do it's thing is the economy collapses on it's own and takes generations to recover instead of a few years.



Google 'air pollution crisis'

What is their angle in this? April 20.??? We are not even close to peak in US, actually it may be around April 20. as it is. After peak it takes several weeks of numbers going down before things start to go back to normal, not to mention casino is probably the last thing it will open.

Why the hell are they doing this? So they qualify for bailout?

Sad to see WHO display this level of corruption in a time of crisis.

https://twitter.com/HKWORLDCITY/stat...65641448169474

April will be the make or break month for it.

I get your point Arty. And you are right cars alcohol and tobacco couldn't even enter any market if introduced today. They would probably allow e- cars only. Still I find that hypocracy amusing. And Africa...or other 3. World countries people are dying. 100% > 1% ...

This is not meant to downplay the virus it's very serious imo.