this topic is to focus on status updates & advice (no opinion or politics please).. status.
latest status is that it's serious, probably isn't going to be contained and most large companies are making contingency plans, cancelling large events etc... which i don't think would happen if it was just people being alarmist.
the incubation period means it may have already spread further and infected many more people than are currently known, so expect jumps in the numbers over the coming days and weeks.. tracking.
Which means really the US/EU total should be turning it around, NY made up 50% of the US tallies and Italy 25% of the EU so a change there will reflect in the overall US/EU statistics even though they didn't start implementing social distancing until ~2 weeks ago.
NY was expected to peak next week, not bending down already.
Good for Italy too, I'm presuming we'll hear lots of heartbreaking stories in the upcoming year as Italy cut off care for all elderly people (65-80 depending on the region).
consider these excerpts from the bible and the publications:.
“no one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends” (joh 15:13).
“for hardly would anyone die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone may dare to die.
@AlainAlam: There are no answers really. The questions are purely constructs of religion, if religion tells a story that doesn't conform to reality, there will always be questions about it, a good answer would uncover more than it hides.
For me the answer is this: they're dead, done, their bodies get consumed and grow into plants and "all memory of them is forgotten".
The more scientific way of putting it: your entropy increases (at least it makes more sense to me in the mathematical/cosmological sense) and you are just a small part of information through space and time. Dying is just the maximal entropy your biology will allow.
The problem is that our brains are not naturally wired to understand cosmological time, we want everything to be consequential and entropy to be maintained, so it makes sense that people would come up with ideas that explain an order to things even after you die.
This philosophy of mine does have consequences of its own: theoretically you could rebuild the information again and structure it so that someone can be 'resurrected' in some form. In that way, the religious would be right, something about us does live on for eternity but not in the structure we are told.
now that the medical advice seem to be coming round to actually giving honest advice, it's good to have a mask.
weeks wasted and god knows how many infected that didn't need to be, but now there's no excuse for not wearing one ... other than you may not have any.. you can make them of course, if you have a sewing machine.
but even if you don't, you can make one using the blue shop-towel, a couple of elastic bands and a stapler.
That looks like one of those Star Wars characters.
i was watching the local news in the background and i heard a guy talking about 3m and how florida was getting screwed.
i didn't hear the whole report.. later, i was switching through the channels and i saw the same guy talking to tucker carlson (fox news).
come to find out he is the federal cdc equivalent at the state level.
@Simon and @newsheep: that's the problem with government though. There is no such thing as a smart government action, it's too big and slow to do anything effective so it sucks at everything.
There's also a bunch of finger pointing, hospitals are rationing use of PPE because they fear they don't have enough in case of major swell in cases, they blame the government for not giving them free ones, the government blames the hospitals for not being ready or able to give the population free care. Nurses are pointing at their leadership for not giving them enough masks, leadership is pointing at onerous OSHA legislation that made it so they got used to using dozens of masks per day, even if medically unnecessary, the unions are saying not-for-profit hospitals are money-grubbing oligarchs that don't care about their staff.
The hospital ship in NYC is pretty much empty (yesterday it had 8 patients, it can take thousands) so they blame NY for not sending people there, DeBlasio and Cuomo blame the military for being too strict about testing patients.
And when it comes to supply, if the Federal government giveth, then the states will never lift a finger. JFK created a ton of federal mental health institutions because states were complaining about shortages. As a result, state-ran institutions closed because it was now the federal government's problem. A few decades later this snowballs into basically those systems that JFK had funded being the only remaining mental health facilities in the US. And this story plays out again and again.
Big government is never the solution. People want to use this situation to expand government and give more free stuff. People are now talking about making the $2T stimulus package a permanent monthly expense for the Feds (Universal Basic Income), right after a crisis that was partially exacerbated by a government too big to respond coherently - in every interview in January across both aisles, interviews with FDA officials, CDC officials, even Fauci himself, more time was spent on impeachment instead of how people were dying in China. The CDC and FDA that couldn't legally do anything for a full month because it hadn't put the right forms through the system, and every meeting that they had in the first month was torpedoed by officials arguing about how doing anything (closing borders, warning hospitals) was a power grab by the president. You want this government to grow and provide everyone with income?
now that the medical advice seem to be coming round to actually giving honest advice, it's good to have a mask.
weeks wasted and god knows how many infected that didn't need to be, but now there's no excuse for not wearing one ... other than you may not have any.. you can make them of course, if you have a sewing machine.
but even if you don't, you can make one using the blue shop-towel, a couple of elastic bands and a stapler.
I saw someone walking in the store with a hairnet as a mask. I'm like buddy, that's not going to help you.
Either way, rural area stores and mom-and-pop hardware stores still have stuff around here. Even grocery stores, I drive 30m in the other direction and most stores are still semi-stocked with toilet paper although they all have limits on the quantities.
now that the medical advice seem to be coming round to actually giving honest advice, it's good to have a mask.
weeks wasted and god knows how many infected that didn't need to be, but now there's no excuse for not wearing one ... other than you may not have any.. you can make them of course, if you have a sewing machine.
but even if you don't, you can make one using the blue shop-towel, a couple of elastic bands and a stapler.
You could also go to Home Depot and get a drywall sanding mask. It's an N95 mask. I got a 10-pack from 3M for I think $15. They're not "medical grade" but realistically the same thing.
i was watching a video saying with tongue in cheek saying that trump was the antichrist listing all the scriptures and prophecies... was kind of funny but it made me wonder what the heck do jw's believe?
was it that it's other religions or some such garbage?
i don't seem to recall it being a specific person but honestly i don't recall at all.
I think it's apostates. Edit: Remembering this: apostates that go out of their way to work against the faithful and discreet slave
Those that "know" it's the truth but choose to deny it.
At least that was the answer last time we studied the Apocalypse book in the book study (I think I did that like 5 times throughout my life and at least 2-3 times the "Greatest Man" book before the Knowledge book)
consider these excerpts from the bible and the publications:.
“no one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends” (joh 15:13).
“for hardly would anyone die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone may dare to die.
What I've always struggled with is this: If death is only temporary, as Jesus demonstrated and we'll all be resurrected anyway (or you go to heaven after death), why are we emotionally wrecked if a loved one dies?
Sure the temporary loss of anyone can be painful, but our natural reactions (the animal brain) seems to indicate we are wired to understand that death is permanent even if we tell ourselves (through religion or other ways) that the change is temporary.
Simple test: if you have a small child, someone they love leaves them after a few hours of play, they can be sad or even devastated. If you explain they'll be back, the child often becomes happy again awaiting when they come back. When someone dies, you can tell them about heaven or paradise, the child has the same reaction. When you go to an open casket funeral or bring children to the burial however, those same children (I've seen it in JW-land, I've seen it with Presbyterians and Catholics), the child intuitively seems to know that they won't be back, they can repeat to you the 'fact' they're in heaven alive or that they'll come back in paradise, but at no point do those children believe it. Children that don't see the burial or open casket, will often continue being happy until a few weeks later they realize it's all been a lie and then fall deeper into a depressed state.
I've gone through the same emotional roller coaster as a child, we had a lot of death during my formative years, we had an elderly person in the Kingdom Hall that gave all the kids candy every meeting, we were told about paradise, we treated the funeral as a regular meeting but then later it dawned on us, a few meetings later, that person wasn't going to come back and that paradise is not 'the current life' and ever since I've struggled with "why". If paradise isn't going to be any time soon, sure Jehovah has some other way of resurrecting or communicating with that person.
Funny anecdote: my wife's grandmother recently died, we went to the service with open casket. A 7 year old nephew in front of us: Dad, I thought you said grandma was in heaven. Whisper: Yes, she is. Nephew: She's right there!
i was watching the local news in the background and i heard a guy talking about 3m and how florida was getting screwed.
i didn't hear the whole report.. later, i was switching through the channels and i saw the same guy talking to tucker carlson (fox news).
come to find out he is the federal cdc equivalent at the state level.
At this point this whole circus is political. The US is nowhere near having a shortage of masks. With proper rationing of masks and given the current rate of growth is slowing, it's unlikely we'll need ALL of them.
The Feds have purchased as much as they can, but because the federal government has promised to pay for them, individual states like NY and CA are refusing to bid (why pay if you can get someone else to pay) even though Trump has standing orders to cancel any orders if states want to bid on them, the Feds haven't yet had to cancel any orders and FEMA has told us in briefings that they now have a stockpile of at least 500k masks.
The hospital I work at is still talking about having a stockpile which will last for several more weeks without replenishment 'at current rates of usage, which can be curtailed'. And we're in NY, the worst state.
The worst thing about this whole politicization process is that now the unions are knocking at our doors for 'hazard pay' asking for sometimes double the rates for janitorial, nurses and facility personnel. We're a not-for-profit looking at posting losses of $100M/month for the next few months, our leadership promised to pay for all the co-pays if we need testing or care and even setup a whole suite of medical and mental health care for employees dealing with work-related injury, stress and burnout, we're working on testing all personnel, students and faculty and the unions are threatening to use the media to score raises.
this topic is to focus on status updates & advice (no opinion or politics please).. status.
latest status is that it's serious, probably isn't going to be contained and most large companies are making contingency plans, cancelling large events etc... which i don't think would happen if it was just people being alarmist.
the incubation period means it may have already spread further and infected many more people than are currently known, so expect jumps in the numbers over the coming days and weeks.. tracking.
And now this: https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/04/03/cuomo-plans-to-use-national-guard-to-seize-ventilators-from-upstate-facilities-1271376
Cuomo only cares about his voting base in NYC, people in Upstate are really upset that they're seizing very expensive property from private (public hospital) facilities because DeBlasio in NYC doesn't have its act together even though he had the opportunity to buy ventilators, they invested in 'solar panels' (which are useless in NYS)
https://www.heraldcourier.com/opinion/your-view-in-cuomo-invested-in-solar-factory-instead-of/article_61b338a6-2bc0-5f33-8801-f8558d5b14b9.html
and tuition grants for illegal immigrants
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-dream-act-peralta-immigrants-tuition-20190123-story.html
And the Democrats claim "this one doesn't count" even though the state health authorities warned and recommended to purchase more, the report "wasn't binding". Well no shit Sherlock, when you advise the government, they can choose to ignore you.
