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[Greiger]

https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1260949102617075712

Well that's practical, and helps keep the medical workers safe should a covid patient indeed die in the bed.

But at the same time the patient's mental health is important too, so I imagine if something like that does get put into use it's going to have to be well hidden from the patient.  I can't imagine how someone's mind could wander when bored in a hospital room with nothing but a tiny TV perpetually tuned to the 24/7 all Jesus all the time channel knowing you are potentially sleeping on your coffin.

Its a great thing if people can keep quiet about them and keep them well disguised, but I can see a PR disaster coming should certain parts of the media get evidence about a hospital having the coffinbeds.

EDIT: I overimagined, I fixed it.

[Bumber]

They're made out of cardboard, which you can't disinfect.

[Starver]

So what if your hospital bed looks like this?

(Is it just a coincidence that account belongs to "Amy Wilson". Is she Jim's sister?)

[Frumple]

Doesn't the rona die off after like a day or something on cardboard? It's apparently one of the better materials vis a vis the crow plague, iirc. Not really sure what actually stops you from disinfecting cardboard, tho'. Might have to let it dry a bit or sit out in the sun or something, but *shrugs*

Mind, those don't look like they're exactly intended to be super reusable. Plus if you're dealing with a bed and coffin shortage bad enough to want dual purpose cardboard icu beds, the downsides are probably less relevant :V

I can't imagine how someone's mind could wander when bored in a hospital room with nothing but a tiny TV perpetually tuned to the 24/7 all Jesus all the time channel knowing you are potentially sleeping on your coffin.

By the time you're actually at a crisis point, you're probably intubated (and significantly sedated, because that sucks giant donkey balls and you flailing around could cause problems), iirc. You're going to be entirely too fucked up at that point to worry about it, and probably too fucked up to watch TV. Intubation et al saves lives, but without that it'd just be a good torture method

[Max™]

Back up to 5 days in a row with 1k+ deaths, it's probably safe now guys, let's go back to work!

Close enough to just call it 1.5 million cases and 90k deaths now, still holding steady around 33% of global caseload and 28% of global deaths.

We're number 1, we're number 1!

Oh, Naxza, at the current rate we'll be over 100k deaths next week assuming it holds around the 1.5k/day number it did this week.

Why the fuck would anyone in their right mind wish to go back to an unfulling and tedious grind so they can devote huge portions of their life to making a few assholes a tiny bit richer?

This is such a generational difference in world view.

I'm gonna be 40 this 9/11 you know, I'm what they call a tail-Xer, my mom was one of the first Gen X kids, there aren't many of us, and our politics got skipped over by boomers hogging everything. When you grow up watching Reagan suck corporate balls on national tv, learn what "deregulation" implies by the time you're 11, and were actually young enough to be happy about getting a minimum wage job just when it was getting raised to $5.15 an hour--where it remained for the next ten years--you don't suddenly become a big fan of bootstrap arguments when they're presented unironically.

How about seeing the unfulfilling and tedious grind as a way to enable yourself to do something less tedious and more fulfilling, despite the fact your employer may profit?  That's the worldview I was brought up with...  yeah maybe you make your employer some profit, but you give yourself enough profit to quit that job and do what you want, or if the job is what you like, then enjoy it!

Oh hey, look, an unironic bootstrap argument!

Incidentally, when your labor is sold below market rate* and you accumulate savings here and there by sacrificing whatever you can do without, that isn't called profit and getting ahead, it's called earnings and trying to catch up.

*As in, a hypothetical ideal market that doesn't exist would value it at a certain amount, while the real market is manipulated and controlled to disproportionally reward those who helped/encouraged/paid for said manipulation and control.

And I find the argument that "it just costs too much, you can never save enough to get out" to be hollow.  There are always ways to pool expenses - live at home, get roommates.  These options are part of the "unfulfilling and tedious" I know.  You don't have to sacrifice that many meals to afford a $40 bus ticket after all.  I bet you can probably find a religious organization in any area that is willing to give you a bus ticket out of dodge.

Ultimately the only reason oppressive regimes remain is because people end up being more comfortable with the status quo and complaining about it than ultimately risking their own well being (yes, even up to the point of death) to change it.

If you are wanting a "leader" or "law enforcement" or someone else to change society without you participating at all - then you are asking those people to, in some way, risk their own well being to bring about the change.  This feels inconsistent to me.

Put another way: it's fine to risk your own well-being for some cause.  But any time you are asking (or even forcing) someone else to risk their well-being for your cause instead of you... that just doesn't sit well with me.

What if the only well-being I'm asking others to risk is the financial well-being of those who by definition are already well-off but continue insisting that they're being terribly hurt by everyone else trying not to die?

I don't seriously expect this to kill off the bullshit prosperity gospel infected version of capitalism we suffer under here in the US, but I'm damn sure not going to clutch my pearls when it gets kicked repeatedly in the balls because it fucking deserves it and we'll all be better off the weaker it gets.

[wierd]

I am experiencing black humor here...

My brain is producing parody lyrics for various 80's songs...
--------Corona virus themed parody lyrics.


Devo "Whip it" becomes---

  Sleezo, "Kick it!"

Got off'a that ship!
Give the feds the slip!
Not up to the task;
Didn't wear a mask!
When the virus comes along,
You must kick it--
Before we finish up this song,
You will kick it!
When the ER wait is long--
You will kick it!
Now kick it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It's not too late
To kick it
Kick it good!

When a "good time" goes around
You will kick it
After it spreads all over town
Unless you kick it
No one gets away
Until they kick it
I say kick it
kick it good
I say kick it
kick it good

Got off'a that ship!
Give the feds the slip!
Not up to the task;
Didn't wear a mask!
When the virus comes along,
You must kick it--
Before we finish up this song,
You will kick it!
When the ER wait is long--
You will kick it!
Now kick it
Into shape
Shape it up
Get straight
Go forward
Move ahead
Try to detect it
It's not too late
To kick it
Kick it good!

for instance.

Why brain, why must you do this?

[Max™]

That's pretty good, I do that shit a lot as well but really don't have it in me to share them right now, maybe ever, except to say that years ago there was this really cringe inducing song on vh1 that I swear was about a jar of farts.


What the fuck, check my email and see a message from my littlest sister talking about how she's going to visit her sister (the one that is not part of my family) and her route comes this way and wanted to stop by.

I'm like, ok, this may be harsh but she's a psychopath who doesn't care about you, or she would have said GO THE FUCK HOME, THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR CASUAL STATE TO STATE VISITS LIKE I AM!

[McTraveller]

I'm gonna be 40 this 9/11 you know...

I guess a few years, and perhaps geography, makes a difference; I'm only 28 months older than you.

I don't ascribe to prosperity gospel by the way: I ascribe to "work to better yourself and others, not complain about what others have."  I also grew up knowing that work doesn't always lead to prosperity - "we live in a fallen world" and "the rain (that brings crops and therefore wealth) falls on the righteous and wicked alike".

I'm not talking about bootstrapping, I'm talking about what is important is what do you do with what you have, not how you compare to others.

I'm talking about understanding all sides of the virus response - the importance of both social distancing and basic hygiene and consideration of others as well as the importance of keeping people working.  Not for the sake of corporate profits, but for sake of the individual workers.  I'm willing to accept "corporate profits" as a price for helping people stay sane by getting them back to work.  Would I prefer other measures, like an official mortgage/rent holiday? Yes. But we don't have that; we have what are largely an inconsistent, incoherent set of measures.

I'm also aware that culture has shifted from "death is a part of life, yes let's not throw lives away but let's not spaz out about it" to a culture of "we must save all lives, no matter the cost!"  The false dichotomy of "lives versus the economy" has got to stop - at some point the economy is lives, so (as others have said) this is "lives versus lives".

Do we really have the hubris to say which lives are more worthy than others, or that dealing with an acute illness (even with long-lasting effects) is more important than the long lingering effects of a broken economic system in general?  I don't.  I may not agree with the lifestyles of the "rich" but they are still people, so I can't condone "kicking them in the balls."  I also can't support ostracizing people who want to live their lives, go outside and play, heaven forbid go visit friends or family.  Safety is not a single-axis quantity that consists of "no exposure to virus du jour".

Individually any of the sentiments or actions that are surfacing because of the pandemic are not that concerning, but taken as a whole, the culture of ideas out there is deeply troubling.  And yes it's not all because of the pandemic, much of it was there before - the stuff about government control and "community impact" versus individual agency.  Stuff about sidestepping freedom of speech protections by hiding behind "they are a private company so they can censor hate speech if they want."  Basically all the stuff about which interests have the greatest impact on various aspects of daily life.

[Frumple]

I may not agree with the lifestyles of the "rich" but they are still people, so I can't condone "kicking them in the balls."

Do note that 'kicking them in the balls' largely consists of, god fucking forbid, measures to make them maybe have a lifestyle only two or three times more wealthy or secure than the average person, rather than even more than that, to sometimes farcical degrees and the great detriment of many other people.

Personally, I can condone that real bloody hard, extra especially in the face of a goddamn plague. The sympathy I have towards the "plight" of the better off maybe ending up living like the friggin' rest of us or putting off their goddamn beach trips and fancy haircuts for a few months or a year or two or whatever isn't just infinitesimal, it's outright negative. Invocations to care about their fucking luxuries while the rest of us toil and die makes me want those luxuries pulled to the ground and burnt.

[McTraveller]

Because this is drifting off COVID discussion.... any further discussion should probably go to maybe the armchair economics thread?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The problem isn't in the concept of promoting (economic) equality.  The problem is in the proposed method (e.g., "burning it all down").  "Burning it all down" will not effectively* make the situation of "the 99%" better.  It will just make the situation of "the 1%" closer to that of the 99%.

*Yes, some situation of "the 99%" is bad due to the inequality itself, so that portion of "badness" may be removed.  I would hypothesize that is not a significant portion of the things that "the 99%" complain about on a daily basis though.

[scriver]

Everyone excuses revolutionary realisation when it comes to their own camp but gets hyper sensitive when it comes to violent words against their fellows.

Because the Other isn't people. And even if they were then they deserve to be burnt regardless.

[Starver]

"Burning it all down" gets us hardline Trump/Brexit/etc mentalities...

BTW. Current ambitions in the UK (England, mostly) is to rush school reopenings, barely in time for them to clise again for the Summer Holidays arrive just for the sake of it.

I wrote a long piece about this last night, but it fell into a bit-bucket. Basically, I think it's just a thibg to do to have been seen to have done something, with misplaced emphasis on the schooks taking on a social role that I don't think is their responsibility. But if we want to argue the point on that, it'll have to be in another later post.

Same for how I think Boris is being reckless in other aspects because of the next looming Brexit escarpment (if not actual cliff-edge).

[Il Palazzo]

I'm gonna be 40 this 9/11 you know

Listen sugar, it's literally been 30 years since I started studying and learning about relativity and black holes and spacetime and all sorts of other stuff

Been following the subject for literally 30 years now, I've paid attention and studied and watched an entire base climate period worth of the discussion and research and so forth

Lol.

[Iduno]

Back up to 5 days in a row with 1k+ deaths, it's probably safe now guys, let's go back to work!

To be fair, most of those deaths are poor people, who are disproportionately black or hispanic. Killing them off is already fairly obviously a goal of the federal government and most states.

I don't ascribe to prosperity gospel by the way: I ascribe to "work to better yourself and others, not complain about what others have."  I also grew up knowing that work doesn't always lead to prosperity - "we live in a fallen world" and "the rain (that brings crops and therefore wealth) falls on the righteous and wicked alike".

I'm hearing "shut up and do what's good for your betters" from those quotes.

[ChairmanPoo]

I find it pretty rich on a personal level to get boomers and gen Xers patronizing my work ethos by default, based on generation. Are you all  that certain you're financially and professionally more successful than I am, to pretend to dole out lessons?