9 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

We also need people to take reasonable precautions.

NO Shirt

NO Shoes

NO Service

has been in store windows for decades.

Adding NO Mask to that doesn't violate people's Constitutional rights nor amount to tyrrany.

Sadly, society at large has been as much of a dumpster fire lately as this thread has been.

This is certainly more reasonable than complete lockdown. I think the most extreme and silly things I've seen are cops hunting down people camping in remote areas, with helicopters.

11 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

We also need people to take reasonable precautions.

NO Shirt

NO Shoes

NO Service

has been in store windows for decades.

Adding NO Mask to that doesn't violate people's Constitutional rights nor amount to tyrrany.

If a business owner chooses to have this implemented I'm fine with it.

I mean, honestly I'm talking about the rest of the world outside the US because you guys are just going utterly bananas over this and it's going to end in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But in the rest of world: we have to do it.

Ontario is doing a staggered re-opening on a month by month basis which looks promising as things are already on the upturn. Thankfully there are many programs in place in Canada to support people but economically we are ******. We can mitigate but there's no stopping what's coming now. I'd prefer that things stay closed for awhile to keep people safe but I also understand why people want things to open.

My one hope from all this is that the West bullies the **** out of China and knock them back a decade or two so they don't sprint to first place in anymore fields.

9 minutes ago, McFoy said:

Ontario is doing a staggered re-opening on a month by month basis which looks promising as things are already on the upturn. Thankfully there are many programs in place in Canada to support people but economically we are ******. We can mitigate but there's no stopping what's coming now. I'd prefer that things stay closed for awhile to keep people safe but I also understand why people want things to open.

My one hope from all this is that the West bullies the **** out of China and knock them back a decade or two so they don't sprint to first place in anymore fields.

China's economy is going to crash and burn very hard, worse than US by a factor of magnitude. Several provinces have unemployment in the high double digits already. It's hard keeping factories open with zero orders. They also have crop failures due to weather this year, corn prices are spiking, and corn is used for 60% of livestock feed. They're dependent on food import even on good years, and many countries are now hoarding their food to avoid famine. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a million Chinese starve to death, but they might be able to secure imports. China also lacks safety nets, so much for communism. People are living on their savings, if they have any. Many are broke and unable to buy food, pay rent, or utilities.

26 minutes ago, McFoy said:

My one hope from all this is that the West bullies the **** out of China and knock them back a decade or two so they don't sprint to first place in anymore fields.

How? What method do you advocate for to punish the leadership without punishing the people?

8 minutes ago, Do I need a Username said:

How? What method do you advocate for to punish the leadership without punishing the people?

There isn't one really. The best outcome would be economic sanctions driving to country wide Hong Kong style protests. From there the CCP leadership is ousted. Of course at that point another strong arm leader takes their place and the anger is redirected outwards and they start the cycle anew.

There isn't really an answer (moral that is) to China which is why not much of anything will happen.

I can give you what IMO is the most effective solution that upholds the western status quo if you want.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Because a business only works if clients/customers show up.

If consumer concern for getting infected outweighs the desire to shop/eat out/see a movie, an open but poorly-performing economy is still a recession.

And without the safety net of payroll protection, loan/rent/mortgage leniency, etc., a business that can be open but has no customers may actually be in worse straights than still being required to be closed.

So far, I haven’t seen too many businesses be able to capitalize on the safety net when other bigger entities consumed it all before they could even apply. On the other hand, I’ve heard more than one business owner saying how they need to be able to open soon or they will go under for sure.

If we open and some businesses don’t recover, that is tragic but the fact is most of those would end up going under anyway if they were forced to stay closed.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Adding NO Mask to that doesn't violate people's Constitutional rights nor amount to tyrrany.

If a business says that, that’s their business. I’ve seen people mad about it, but correct it’s not a violation of the constitution at all when it’s a private business making the decision.

I believe that if we opened everything up, some businesses would do this (some of them in the “permitted to be open” already have) and some wouldn’t. If not having that extra rule means less business, the stores will figure it out and adjust

36 minutes ago, Do I need a Username said:

How? What method do you advocate for to punish the leadership without punishing the people?

Frankly, that’s not my concern. Maybe more of them will work to overthrow their government if life sucks for them because of their leaders.

30 minutes ago, ScummyRebel said:

Frankly, that’s not my concern. Maybe more of them will work to overthrow their government if life sucks for them because of their leaders.

It's probably the only way short of military conquest.

1 minute ago, Cerebrawl said:

It's probably the only way short of military conquest.

Ah yes, military mobilisation. A totally valid method of economic stimulus for some governments.

And indeed, a prime export.

9 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

Ah yes, military mobilisation. A totally valid method of economic stimulus for some governments* .

And indeed, a prime export.

*banks.

I'd much rather see the people of China overthrow their tyrants anyway, but the only way that's happening is economic hardship. The "contract" between the CCP and the people has for decades(since the 80s) been "The party keeps the economy growing, and in return gets to stay in power." That has now been broken, and protests/riots are happening already. Let's hope they overthrow their tyrants, and if they do, I hope the west rewards them with renewed investment(just not to the degree as before, with most of the world's medical production).

11 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

...honestly? I really wouldn't joke about that at the moment.

It's only a matter of time before the words like "blame", "responsibility" and "held accountable" start being flung around.

I was trying to bring a little MUCH needed Levity to this thread..

7 hours ago, Naerytar said:

I never liked that statement and I'll explain why.

From where i first remember hearing that statement, it was in relation to a civics class, on WHY We have free speech. Someone asked the question "BUT what if someone says something that offends me, or irks me off".

The Teacher made that quote, to show that the first amendment was made to protect all speech, not just those speeches we may agree with.

That's all i was trying to showcase..

4 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

Nobody's going to enjoy starving to death to "save the old" either. There's a point where lockdown is counterproductive. Already in the UK they're having more excess cancer deaths because of canceled/delayed treatment because of covid, than they've had covid deaths. In the US food production is shutting down, meat rationing is already happening. The unemployment is also on track to kill more people than the disease, look up "deaths of despair".

I've also heard of people, in canada who supposedly died, waiting for medical treatments, after being turned away from hospitals, as the hospitals were saving space specifically for Covid patients.

NOT YET VERIFIED THAT though, but if true, its scary...

4 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

Between 2000-2011 there were about 45,000 suicides a year attributed to unemployment. Unemployment has quadrupled as a result of the pandemic, so we should expect ca 135k more deaths of despair from unemployment 2020, if unemployment rates stabilize at the current level(they won't). Covid has reportedly killed 80k.

Oh and it'll take longer for the unemployment rate to go back to normal than the disease... the unemployment is going to be killing people for longer.

That is a point i made to a comrade in arms, who's still in. Many studies, show roughly 15-20% of folk, who are unemployed try or succeed in committing suicide. So if we have 30 million folk unemployed for too much longer, that POTENTIALLY could be a solid 3 to 4 million folk, killing themselves, due to depression.. As a result OF being unemployed.

NOW WILL IT happen? I hope to **** not. But even if its only 300K, that may, that is much higher than the 80% who've died from Covid so far...

3 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

Places with lockdown aren't having substantially less new cases than places without lockdown, if at all.

Very true. A # of places which did NOT lock down, are not seeing hellatiously more cases than those who DID totally lock down.. Even with the fear-mongers saying "IF you don't it will mass spread"..

3 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

You've got to be kidding me. Where the heck do you think they're going to get the money for that?

And with our nation already BEING in 23 TRILLION IN DEBT, adding more to that, is NOT going to do anyone any good...

3 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

I don't trust those numbers as far as I could throw their country. They're blatantly false.

Even with a Super-sized dosing of super soldier serum, i'd STILL not trust China's figures any more than i could 'throw' their country..

3 hours ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

The same place they got the money for the 2017 tax cuts and the first round of checks. They will borrow it. The economic recession is happening no matter what. There’s no way to policy our way out of it by sacrificing grandmas.

3 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

Yes the lockdowns that have already happened have done irrevocable damage, keeping them in place will cause more irrevocable damage.

Grandmas aren't being saved by people being kept from working either. Grandmas are saved by limiting contact with them, specifically. Lock down the old folks homes, not the jobs.

That's what i wish we'd have done in the first place. QUARANTINE the sick, and old. NOT the entire nation.

To answer the question from the original post, as a relatively healthy middle-aged man, I stand a pretty low chance of dying if I catch Covid-19. However, "pretty low" is non-zero, and playing X-Wing just isn't worth that risk. I'll hold off on risky behaviors like that until I'm convinced it's safe. GenCon is definitely a no-go this year. I worry about NOVA Open. We'll see if Worlds happens: that's about the earliest I think I'd feel comfortable about gathering again. Even then, I'll probably be masked up (and expect everyone else there to be too).

As for this other nonsense, Covid-19 is serious, and the impact of it on the economy and people's lives is complex and unique for everyone. Listen to experts like doctors and actual epidemiologists, and not rando right-wing blog redhat morons. Just because someone is saying something that will make your personal life easier, doesn't make it true.

57 minutes ago, LTuser said:

That's what i wish we'd have done in the first place. QUARANTINE the sick, and old. NOT the entire nation.

That horse had already left the barn before the federal admins started moving.

As someone from Washington state, there has been a lot of conversation about that back when we were the point of exposure. Your idea is only a possibility up to a point; once its past that containment is no longer a possibility and you have to fall back to mitigation.

Quarantining only the infected and the vulnerable falls under containment. We were well past that by the time the Trump admin stopped acting like, "It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear." Once it had breached any possibility of containment, you have to move to mitigation, which is where we are with everyone.

Mitigation is the only path left to slow the spread and prevent the medical system from being overwhelmed and needless deaths.

Quote

When a small number of infected patients are in concentrated locales, containment strategies (ie, quarantine) can halt the spread of infection by isolating infected or exposed individuals from the general population.4 However, disease containment requires the use of airborne isolation rooms, personal protective and other disposable equipment, and significant numbers of health care personnel. As COVID-19 spreads both in the US and around the world, it may not be possible to care for all patients in this manner.

excerpt from Containment to Mitigation of COVID-19 in the US

Quote

The advent of multiple new COVID-19–positive cases in the US who lack identifiable travel history or exposure signals that community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has started and is occurring outside the containment zones of hospitals.

One of the big issues is you can be contagious while being asymptomatic which means "quarantine only the sick" doesn't work because its not only "the sick" that are actually spreading it. People who are not "sick" yet are.

As a person living in the US, seeing others within my own country complain of tyranny in regard to our tragically lax response to COVID deeply saddens me. We frankly aren't doing enough in my humble opinion. I am not in the medical field, but I do trust people with degrees on the subject of infectious diseases, which is why I cannot agree with the idea that we must reopen the country immediately, after all, where I live we barely closed at all. In my home state we had dine-in restaurants closed for a few weeks and businesses voluntarily reducing hours and employees if they chose to do so, and now we're more or less returning to the status quo albeit with a requirement that many locations reduce their normal max occupancy by half and with social distancing being encouraged but not in any way required or enforced. My office spent several weeks getting everyone in my building laptops and extra equipment so we could work from home, but never acted on it meaning all of us were coming in to work everyday as if everything were normal. This is a situation that was fairly common for business throughout my home state. Some places in the US took real action but for the most part we've treated this global pandemic as nothing more than a farce. I'm worried for my grandparents, my mother who works with the elderly in assisted living, my little brother and sister who live at home with my mother, and more.

Whats more the reactions many have had to this very real danger shows me just how entrenched people have become in the way things are. Too few are seeing this as the reason Americans need to demand real social services like healthcare or basic income. Too few are seeing the massive bailouts that they paid for and getting angry with how that money is used. Too few are acknowledging the massive amounts of resources we continue to squander on our military when those resources could be better used to care for our citizens who have lost their jobs from this virus. We are a country that seems far too in love with a status quo that encourages us to see ourselves as disposable resources who exist solely to serve the economy lest it turn on us. I feel less like I live in a country that wants to protect it's citizens and their rights, and more like I'm an employee of the American economy. As long as the Economy lives and my employers get to stay wealthy and comfortable, what happens to me and my family is irrelevant.

To @Stay OT Leader , I am sorry that the title of this post is slandering you so aggressively now. While the title of this thread seems to suggest you spiraled it into it's current state, I personally suspect that would have happened regardless due to the amount of misinformation that is floating around regarding COVID-19. I think you said some things that out of context, or without clarification, are incredibly inflammatory, but that's no reason to deride your character. You are correct that unfortunately many of us must take calculated risks in order to continue living. I myself must continue to work because my wife's hours were cut completely for about a month (she's in childcare and a number of businesses did switch to work from home for a time causing the hours at her daycare to dry up for all but a few employees) and unemployment wouldn't pay us because of the fact that they are too inundated with requests to service them all. I think you were attempting at one point to advocate voluntary euthanasia (which is how I think the whole eugenics conversation started), which is something I personally believe should be permitted by the law and be possible to have carried out in a controlled environment such as a hospital, however a discussion about a virus is not the place to advocate this stance. Some may accept death and go to it on their own terms, but this is a discussion that requires us as a society to assume every life needs to be preserved to the best of our ability, because dying horribly of a virus like this isn't how most would choose to end their lives. Getting killed because someone you encountered by chance was careless or wasn't permitted to minimize their risk because of the financial situation they find themselves in is obviously not your fault, but sadly that is the situation we are in and that we must acknowledge it as such. If I am wrong about your meaning, as based on your responses many have been, I sincerely apologize. I would however like to remind you that stating people should "stop being selfish and die" will start a fight just about anywhere. I chose to interpret that as advocacy for ending ones life willingly on their own terms, but others clearly didn't see it that way, and your refusal to elaborate beyond stating that people should accept death as a part of living certainly didn't help the matter.

Anyway, my depression/anger rant is over. To any that read this far, I thank you and salute you for reading through this long tangled mess of a thread. To any in the US who disagree with my first two paragraphs, try for just one minute to see where I'm coming from. I'm a scared man who's often been living paycheck to paycheck, with one less paycheck to make ends meet now, who still wants to see the country closed. I will struggle even more with my households income further reduced, but I do not want to see people die because I needed to go into work.

... so about those poll results, is it just a mobile thing that I can't view them or...?

I’d like to leave this here for people to think about. The deadliest pandemic in history was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. You can research online and find pictures of fans in the stands at football games wearing masks during the outbreak. This was also during the end of World War I. It seems to me if it was safe for people to gather masked up during this time it should be the same again. It seems between WWI & WWII our great grandparents and grandparents were called on to save the world and during our time we’ve been called to sit on the couch. Some of us seem more content to sit there than others. There’s no guarantee of a tomorrow for any of us, you could be killed crossing the street, in a car accident, fire, illness other than corona, or any number of other things. Several people I’m aquatinted with have passed in the last few weeks, shocker here, not a single one from coronavirus. As far as my choice goes I’d much rather live my life than cower in fear not going out, something is going to eventually catch up with every single one of us. To coin the old phrase, you shouldn’t take life so seriously, you’ll never make it out alive. Now this is going to offend somebody somewhere, but then it’s impossible not to offend someone these days.

I really can’t believe this thread hasn’t been locked and deleted. I wish they would lock it, I can’t seem to stop coming back in and taking a look.

48 minutes ago, Vykk Draygo said:

The deadliest pandemic in history was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. You can research online and find pictures of fans in the stands at football games wearing masks during the outbreak ... It seems to me if it was safe for people to gather masked up during this time it should be the same again.

9 minutes ago, kris40k said:

I’m sure that means something...

to somebody....

somewhere. 🤷‍♂️

1 hour ago, Vykk Draygo said:

I’d like to leave this here for people to think about. The deadliest pandemic in history was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. You can research online and find pictures of fans in the stands at football games wearing masks during the outbreak. This was also during the end of World War I. It seems to me if it was safe for people to gather masked up during this time it should be the same again.

Wait...

deadliest pandemic in history...

Maybe the sports games weren't the best place for people to gather in large numbers then? I don't think that's a conclusion we can draw at all.

For the greater audience: This is such a complex topic. We can all keep spouting off our opinions but very few people here are actually experts in economics, public health, or another related field. I don't try to perform open heart surgery and I don't ask my financial manager to come fly an aircraft. Opinions are fine, sure, but there's a lot of people acting like they know what they're talking about (here and in the great big world) who likely don't have a clue.

I try to have an informed opinion but I also realize when its not fact.

Its possible (and, frankly likely) that there is not a right answer to this. It sucks. We do our best to minimize the suck through balancing all these factors we're all arguing about, but there's no winning hand here. There's just getting through it as best we're able.

Have your opinion, absolutely. Just realize when its an opinion is all I ask.

1 hour ago, Vykk Draygo said:

I’d like to leave this here for people to think about. The deadliest pandemic in history was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. You can research online and find pictures of fans in the stands at football games wearing masks during the outbreak. This was also during the end of World War I. It seems to me if it was safe for people to gather masked up during this time it should be the same again.

Ah, grandma used to tell me stories about the N95 Rag she used to wear. She could never remember how many microns large the Spanish flu was, though.

She didn't have much info about the Black Death, the world's worst pandemic, however.

11 hours ago, Vykk Draygo said:

I’d like to leave this here for people to think about. The deadliest pandemic in history was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918. You can research online and find pictures of fans in the stands at football games wearing masks during the outbreak. This was also during the end of World War I. It seems to me if it was safe for people to gather masked up during this time it should be the same again.

While people were going out to sports events wearing masks during the Spanish Flu, more than 50 million people died. Our ancestors from 1918 probably aren't the best example to follow for effective outbreak control.