Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[LeeLau]

Quite the role you’ve been on as our resident ignorant KKKlansman. First you confidently proclaim that the death rate is 1/1000000 now you cheer the death of brown people.

And SkiCougar will be the Kamp Kommandant putting uppity Azns into gas ovens. Again, nothing personal

[Adolf Allerbush]

Just as a lot of Asian folks have to deal with racial slurs about being rat- or bat-eaters by the mouthbreathers.

It's well established that especially during pandemics people tend to become insular, xenophobic and clannish, which is why the WHO (love 'em or hate 'em) is trying to move away from "origin" based names for outbreaks.

I'm not in the least trying to excuse the behaviour of Xi Jinping or the CCP, or deny that the most likely origin of the virus was Wuhan. I'm just bagging on the stereotypes promulgated by terms like Chinese Rat Flu and exacerbated by Drumpf and the right-wing noise machine in order to point fingers and blame others when we really oughta be working more closely together.

Ok, you've convinced me. Thanks. I stand corrected.

[mcski]

calling it a mountain or resort is a bit of a stretch. Lift museum, yes. I skied it once in the 90s.

Baldy has an elevation of 8600 and if you want a little bit of adventure plenty of gnAr as well. Wish there were more places like it still around. I’d take it on a decent snow day before many other places.

[Ripzalot]

From Wikipedia re the Epoch Times:

"Though the newspaper is known for general interest topics with a focus on news about China and its human rights issues, it has become known for its support of U.S. President Donald Trump and favorable coverage of far-right politicians in Europe; a 2019 report showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign"

So, I'm not buying what they're selling man.

Your loss of good information im well aware of the source and questioned it to my friend in china. He says its legit. You wont get any good inside info from china unless you listen to dissenters.

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[Tri-Ungulate]

Ok, you've convinced me. Thanks. I stand corrected.

Thanks for being understanding, I'm not really trying to score points here. It's just that it sometimes hits kinda close to home for me.

I'll provide a personal anecdote - true story from earlier this month: I'm driving to the med center the other day, and some dude in a jacked pickup pulls up besides me and he starts yelling and gesticulating at me. I'm being clueless and wondering, huh, not like I cut him off on the highway or anything, but I roll down my window to try and figure out what the hell he's saying.

Apparently he's worked up about me, a fellow American citizen, born and raised in this country, bringing the Jinaman Rodent Disease blight upon his wonderful country and yammering at me to "go back to Jina". He said a lot more shit I don't wanna go into, but FFS

[BmillsSkier]

That's what I say to my relatives in the US. Remember if there's ever a shooting war with China there'll be yellow people swinging from lampposts. It's nothing personal.

Gweilo will be Gweilo

Had to look that one up,

“ Gweilo or gwailou (Chinese: 鬼佬; Cantonese Yale: gwáilóu, pronounced [kʷɐ̌i lǒu] (About this soundlisten)) is a common Cantonese slang term and ethnic slur for Westerners. In its unmodified form, it refers to people of European descent and has a history of racially deprecatory and pejorative use. Cantonese speakers frequently use gwailou to refer to Westerners in general use, in a non-derogatory context, although whether this type of usage is offensive is disputed by both Cantonese and Westerners alike.[1][2]”


So you support condemning racism by using a racist term? Weird play man.

[Ripzalot]

More early inside china news that you wont be getting from the west until late...

https://youtu.be/y2oML9BpQ5g

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[Tri-Ungulate]

So you support condemning racism by using a racist term? Weird play man.

Having met and skied with Lee a bit, I'm gonna give him a pass and guess he's making an irony play. But you never can tell with inscrutable AZNs, he might be referring to you and your ilk as the Jinaman equivalent of a honky muthafucka. Which would be doubly ironic, considering the circumstances.

[Rideski]

Glad you brought it up Tri, I was going to but was going to handle a couple other problems over here first. I’ve been open to changing the title the whole time. There was a little convo about it around page 100. And then again maybe around 400. I’ve always had Asian friends and hope I do in the future.
I’m conflicted about being altruistic vs accountability. There was talk as to blaming China not solving anything and accept that Trump screwed the pooch. Which Trump certainly did, the virus started in China. If it started in New Jersey I wouldn’t have any problem calling it the Jersey Flu. I called it rat because it’s the year of the rat in China.

So if two people are in a car accident, generally one gets assigned blame.

If you are sleeping and your neighbor has a bbq and burns your house down, they get blamed. It’s not your fault you weren’t on your roof with a garden hose quick enough to put it out. We don’t excuse it and say ok well never mind, it was an accident.

So, this started on China’s soil and debatably they could have done more to stop it. I’m kinda pissed, not clear if my family is going to make it through, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions dead, global depression, possible world war 3.

There’s been several jabs at Russia in this thread but that seems to get a pass even though there’s Russian people on this board.

If China drops bombs on us, we will be at war with China, not CCP, not Asia.

So, kind of conflicted about the whole thing. I’m talking to a few dozen people around the globe and there’s a lot of people pissed at China. But I don’t want to contribute to xenophobia against people that had no part in the situation.

CCP is smart enough to know they should have stopped the wildlife trade. They have enough money to feed the starving.

I would edit and organize these thoughts better but it’s late I’m tired and battery low.

Someone pitched Fear and Loathing and I like that. Covfefe is funny.

[rod9301]

Just as a lot of Asian folks have to deal with racial slurs about being rat- or bat-eaters by the mouthbreathers.

It's well established that especially during pandemics people tend to become insular, xenophobic and clannish, which is why the WHO (love 'em or hate 'em) is trying to move away from "origin" based names for outbreaks.

I'm not in the least trying to excuse the behaviour of Xi Jinping or the CCP, or deny that the most likely origin of the virus was Wuhan. I'm just bagging on the stereotypes promulgated by terms like Chinese Rat Flu and exacerbated by Drumpf and the right-wing noise machine in order to point fingers and blame others when we really oughta be working more closely together.

Why's the Chinese flu a stereotype?

It did originate in China, right?

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[Bobby Stainless]

Im pretty sure its called The Rona.

[LongShortLong]

So sad. How can there not be demand for potatoes? Basic food staple. The government can’t figure out how to pick them up and take them to shelters? Spend billions on bombs but not a few grand on feeding starving people. Humans are doomed.

How about a mag project?

Somebody with a pickup truck could easily get a ton of potatoes. Hauling shit is why you buy them oversize road hogs, right?

Picabo, ID is about 700 miles from SF or Denver. Other cities in this range, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas.

At 17 mpg going empty, and 13 mpg returning loaded, that's ~100 gallons. A peek at gasbuddy suggests 100 gallons might cost $250 coming from the expensive west coast cities. Throw in $70 for food and a motel, makes $320. Guessing a large potatoe at 10oz, you could easily be hauling 3200 potatoes, at 10 cents each to supplement 3200 meals at a local food bank.

I'm in for $37

[Mustonen]

Well you can't figure that out until you know the real death rate and we don't yet. It seems sure to be well under 1% but nobody can say yet. But if it was 1% that would be a shitload, 80 million or so assuming everybody gets it eventually. But it doesn't look like 1%, so who knows.

https://youtu.be/wVs5AyjzwRM

[simple]

There are those stupid "rules" again...

[Benny Profane]

Time to pick up a carton of Marlboros.

https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574

[huckbucket]

Okay, I actually sat through most of the talk, skipping through some of the explicatory Bio 101 sections, but getting most of the gist as well as the substance of it.

My personal critique as a posturing bitch who really oughta stay in my dentist lane:

Yes, in the reductionist terms Farzan puts it, SARS COV2 is a "dumb" virus with "simple" solutions. But the problem is the reductionism. He makes a lot of blanket statements about SARS COV2 that are currently felt to be likely true by the scientific community, but not necessarily fully established. Yes, I understand he has to do so in order to present a simplified streamlined presentation in an hour that is easily accessible, but glossing over subtleties with happy face spin can lead to undue optimism on how well we actually understand the virus and its interactions.

Also, he simplifies the physiology and feedback loops between virus and host, that are far more complicated than he lets on. To be sure, he makes a statement that as a bench scientist, he defers to his clinical colleagues on certain points, but again this is a gross oversimplification of processes we're still figuring out as a scientific/clinical community.

Finally, as OG mentions:


Sure, Farzan acknowledges that scaling up bench findings to actual solutions that are safe and effective for a tremendously large worldwide population is difficult. But again, the scope of this endeavour is not really appreciated by his talk - it brings to mind the Underpants Gnomes business plan.

Sorry to throw cold water on what is overall an encouraging discussion by Farzan.

Page 600 beyotches.

Oh. You were looking for "BL205: SARS COV2, A deeper look" That class meets on MWF at 8AM in room 425.

[Benny Profane]

Why we wear masks.

https://twitter.com/NEJM/status/1253364259112865792

[BlatantAlias]

I'm torn on whether calling it the "Jihna" Flu is racist or not as on the surface it doesn't seem any more racist than any other flu name. It is where it originated, right? An interesting comparison would be with the Spanish flu, which didn't even start in Spain, but has an interesting story of how it got that name. Regardless, the Spanish flu isn't considered racist because they're Caucasian?

The name itself isn't racist - The racist MF's making it racist are. And that's why we can't have nice things.

[Benny Profane]

Today's, like totally, what the fuck.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/airlin...wearing-masks/

[skifishbum]

Thanks for being understanding, I'm not really trying to score points here. It's just that it sometimes hits kinda close to home for me.

I'll provide a personal anecdote - true story from earlier this month: I'm driving to the med center the other day, and some dude in a jacked pickup pulls up besides me and he starts yelling and gesticulating at me. I'm being clueless and wondering, huh, not like I cut him off on the highway or anything, but I roll down my window to try and figure out what the hell he's saying.

Apparently he's worked up about me, a fellow American citizen, born and raised in this country, bringing the Jinaman Rodent Disease blight upon his wonderful country and yammering at me to "go back to Jina". He said a lot more shit I don't wanna go into, but FFS

I cant do much about redkneck utards being redkneck tards
but the next phantom pairs on my gwelio honkey mutherfucker wageslave shop rat ski bum ass

im bummed those didn't get to gnaricorn the yurps
but glad youse all made it back safe

[schuss]

The problem with Wuhan virus etc is that it's just a racist dogwhistle that incites against asian-americans. A close friend (US citizen, grew up in a major metro Chinatown) has been bombarded with friends and family being assaulted (verbally or physically) just for being Asian.
This is not to say China is innocent, it's to say hold those in power accountable and don't punch down. It's a virus that got out of control and we are now in the midst of a pandemic. Pointing fingers doesn't fix it and doesn't help when people are spending their time and energy on racist threats instead of useful things.

[Benny Profane]

First injections.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52394485

[Benny Profane]

Check the shit.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020...warning-system

[wkd-rdr]

Model suggests the virus spread widely in the US before detection. I've been banging this drum for a little while, it seemed to me like it had to be true. Part of this goes back to initial introduction/creation/birth if this virus, which I still believe was substantially earlier than we're hearing (even though they keep moving it back): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/u...gtype=Homepage

I work in the hospital in Eagle County, and we had a very busy coupke weeks in early to mid January. The ER was overrun with people that had flu-like symptoms (many tested negative for Flu). A few physicians believe that this was, in fact, the Coronas.

[wkd-rdr]

if true, I am liking Sweden more and more !

Socialized health care goes a long way.