Coronavirus - COVID-19

#962

Yea I agree here people that say its “just a flu” need to wake up and see that its not!

What grinds me every day is people just thinking this thing is a joke. I go to the store some person is right on my ass I move forward to keep my distance they move again. I more once more they do the same I take them on and I am seen as rude ! WTF. (This happened to me a few days ago.)

People not understanding how to use a mask properly. When you tell them “Hi sorry your nose of not covered " I got asked " Are you a Doctor ?”

Idk sometimes I dont understand humans

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#965

I am sorry for your loss :cry:.

While I share your frustration, it is important that we attack one another’s ideas and not person.

For clarity: I use the word “attack” in the academic/debate sense. Nothing wrong with attacking argument with argument in a respectful way with the goal of increasing mutual knowledge/understanding.

I also appreciate that most people don’t like any kind of fighting, online or off, so I’m in two minds about whether to continue to stoke debate. I don’t want people to feel chased off because I happen to like a good debate :confused:.

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#973

OT: This has to be the most popular topic I ever created… :grin:

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#975

laughs in threadkiller

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#983

Hey y’all

I’ve been messaged privately by folks who didn’t like the personal attacks that came out of this most recent debate, and so I believe this is something that needs to be addressed from a moderation standpoint.

One of the many things I love about MEW is that we’re an incredibly diverse group people brought together by our shared love of gaming.

It is wonderful to be able to discuss gaming and non-gaming related stuff among a group of friends where you know you can assume good faith.

I’m really hoping that when we disagree and debate charged issues that we can extend that same good faith to one another.

Having a place on the Internet to have such discussions is basically unheard of nowadays. Everyone keeps to their own echo chamber, and so we all grow divided. Focusing on the small things where we differ, instead of the big things that unite us.

However, I also recognise that there are some topics that have become so charged that a constructive discussion just becomes impossible. People quickly divide themselves into two camps and all good faith goes out the window.

I don’t care if we disagree about religion, politics, climate change, vaccines, the shape of the earth, COVID-19, or whether Bobby Kotick is overpaid… so long as we do so civilly.

That said, the MEW community is more important to me than any one topic.

If you’ll indulge a brief anecdote: I’ve actually had a throw-down fight with a very good friend of mine not because of the COVID-related point he was arguing, but because of the way he was arguing the point. That kind of debate is not a debate, but a fight, and is completely pointless because you’re not actually dealing with the meat of the issue. Fortunately, we are very good IRL friends and managed to get to the other side of the fight without hating each other. Had it been anyone but a close friend, though, such a fight would probably have been a very destructive.

One inflammatory issue must not be allowed to wreck the relationships on this forum.

So I’m asking that from now on we all consider very carefully how we engage with this topic. Be careful about making off-hand jokes in the heat of a debate. Always, always stick to the point being discussed and don’t conflate two points of view, or a point of view with an identity.

Part of the problem with discourse since the 2010s is for some reason holding one opinion gets you lumped in with a “camp”.

What I’m trying to say is that we—MEW—contain multitudes. And that is a wonderful thing that I will fight very hard to protect.

There are many discussions in this topic that I think have been extremely valuable, like the questions about the privacy/security of the COVID Alert SA app and the GAEN API, and I don’t want to shut that down.

Hence this appeal. Please, please keep it civil in this topic. If I’ve overstepped the bounds, let me know so that I don’t do it again either.

If needs be, we’ll close this topic, but ideally I wouldn’t want to.

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#987

Wow I miss a lot on days when I go visit clients.

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#989

That was quite a post @SIGSTART

MEW is a great community and when debates happen on the forum regardless of what it is it should still be seen as a debate and never an attack.

I don’t feel that closing this tread will change anything as COVID-19 is here and that’s not going to change. This forum to me is a home yes not everyone will agree with everything but that’s what makes MEW an amazing community to be apart.

COVID-19 as a topic has affected each person in many different ways that is what makes this such a hectic and heavy topic on the forum but I feel being mindful that debates are debates and never attacks on people.

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#990
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#991

Ai… China never ceases to amaze.

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#992

'Rona, she ain’t done just yet.

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#993
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#994

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump test positive for Covid-19

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#995

You beat me to it!

(Also I hope you know where that gif is from if not we need to talk)

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#996

Is it bad I burst out laughing?

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#997

I suspect a lot of people did

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#998

Q: What do get when you pee on a pebble?
A: Yellow stone
:grinning:

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#999

I can’t help it, Yellowstone is currently my top TV show and next season is FAAAR off and the cliffhanger this one has me in a panic!

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#1000

I was hoping the headline would be that he has succumbed to Covid.

Yes i want him to eXpire.

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#1001

It’s perhaps a small consolation that we down here in little old South Africa are not the only ones to have complaints regarding the apparent lack of logic in our government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To be clear: I’m not referring to the initial 21-day lockdown, the closing of our borders, the requirement to wear masks in public, or the need for businesses to maintain heightened levels of hygiene and provide staff with suitable protective gear.

I am referring to our lengthy bans on alcohol and cigarettes rather than an increase on taxation on the two vices, the curfews, and the previous bans on visiting friends and family even when you were allowed to go to church, hotels, and restaurants.

But I digress.

Apparently the situation in the U.S. is an even bigger mess. The response has been so haphazard that the U.S. has had over 210,000 recorded deaths due to COVID-19 and doctors are complaining that the lockdown measures are causing more harm than good.

The reason I’m posting this is because the doctors who spearheaded this thing (The Great Barrington Declaration, the have humbly called it), seem to be legit.

Martin Kulldorff, PhD

Google says he has an h-index of 75! That’s beyond impressive.

https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/martin-kulldorff-phd/

For pharmacovigilance, I have developed tree-based scan statistic data mining methods to detect and evaluate drug and vaccine adverse events with minimal prior specificantions.

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD

Google says he has an h-index of 50. Also amazing.

https://healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu/people/jay_bhattacharya

Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. Dr. Bhattacharya’s recent research focuses on the epidemiology of COVID-19 as well as an evaluation of policy responses to the epidemic. His broader research interests encompass the implications of population aging for future population health and medical spending in developed countries, the measurement of physician performance tied to physician payment by insurers, and the role played by biomedical innovation on health. He has published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals in medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health among other fields. He holds an MD and PhD in economics, both earned at Stanford University.

Sunetra Gupta

https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta

My main area of interest is the evolution of diversity in pathogens, with particular reference to the infectious disease agents that are responsible for malaria, influenza and bacterial meningitis. I use simple mathematical models to generate new hypotheses regarding the processes that determine the population structure of these pathogens. I work closely with laboratory and field scientists both to develop these hypotheses and to test them.

When these folks say they have a strategy to allow the U.S. to end its lockdowns, I think the States need to listen.

(I’m watching this video now. Hopefully there is something in there that is useful to our situation here in South Africa as well.)

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#1002

That pineapple in the background bothered me.

So I want Googling and apparently it’s a thing in the Southern United States, and on the U.S. Eastern seaboard. This happened in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, so maybe the pineapple thing is a thing there?

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