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Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


InkaUtexas

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can't find the latest reports on percentage of deaths in nursing homes, but when we study why they were hit so hard they won't need to look hard.  Fuck.  Another state sending the virus with next day delivery.  At some point they need to be asked what information they used to make these decisions.  Someone do their job and ask the question.

https://www.abc27.com/news/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-health-secretary-offers-guidance-governor-insists-on-gradual-reopening/

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Nearly 70% of Pennsylvania’s Covid-19 deaths, 2611 of 3806, have occurred in nursing homes or long-term care facilities. State Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine announced new guidance for those facilities on Tuesday to include more resources, education, and mass testing.

“By testing every resident and every staff member in every nursing home, we will be able to pinpoint exactly who has Covid-19, who has been exposed but has no symptoms, and cohort positive cases to prevent further spread,” Levine said, adding that the state will also require nursing homes to report all cases and deaths which will be available publicly.

While Levine beefs up rules and oversight at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, ABC27 learned the health secretary’s mother recently vacated a personal care home in the Midstate.

“My mother requested, and my sister and I as her children complied to move her to another location during the Covid-19 outbreak,” Levine said. “My mother is 95 years old. She is very intelligent and more than competent to make her own decisions.”

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7 minutes ago, Scary Stranger said:

But, I was told that this was extremely racist and wrong.

If you go look, it's kind of amazing.  Just about every "decent" country has strict and often seemingly arbitrary immigration laws, equal to or worse than the US.  And they don't have millions of people banging down their figurative doors to get in.

Impoverished countries make it pretty easy (enforcement issues aside) to lawfully immigrate if you are financially solvent to well off.

 

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17 minutes ago, Casual Encounter said:

You forget how many on here hate our country.

You are confusing hating certain aspects of how things are with hating the entire country, which few, if any here, do.

Its like when aggy gets upset over a story from some media outlet critiquing some aspect of aggy culture, and they spin it into Ye Olde BOMC.

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4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Well, if we don’t figure it out, enjoy the shutdown in the fall when it hits again.   And don’t bitch when we lose more businesses and more jobs.

 I’m not going to repeat everything ChiTownDoc said on the matter, but he or somebody else linked to a few stories about, and it’s not as massive as you think.  South Korea and others have done it successfully, and been able to mostly get back to normal.

The data is not insurmountable - 15-20 years ago, I worked at a large tech company building large servers/databases/etc. for other large companies, such as point-of-sales stuff for large grocery chains, and the amount of data we were handling was much more comprehensive than a contact-tracing app.   Facebook, Google, etc. store an insane amount of data as well.

KISS theory (Keep It Simple Stupid):  You have an app on your phone. You are assigned an ID number.  You go to a restaurant that’s been assigned an ID number in a database, and the app registers that you were there at such-and-such time.  Somebody tests positive, it’s flagged in the app, and the database pulls the ID #’s of the stores or whatever from where they went over the past week or two, and the times they were at those locations.  It sends out a ping to all the ID #’s of those who were at those locations around those times.  You get an alert saying you may have been exposed, and to please quarantine yourself for two weeks.

It doesn’t have to have your name and contact info in a database if the app can send you a message on your phone.  Quite a bit of the info in the database can be handled anonymously.    Current cities are asking for names and contact info because they don’t have an app to do it automatically.

It will drive hypochondriacs crazy of course.

But the point is, we can try this in an effort to keep our economy going, or we can do another shutdown like we just experienced.

 

So quarantine by data, and associated errors instead of gov't mandate

I am not against trying, I'm all for it.  

It won't work.

It will be a clusterfuck of monumental proportions. 

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22 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Because Canada has pretty tight immigration controls?  That's usually the primary reason for not many people moving someplace relatively nice.  

And those controls are there primarily to keep the deadbeats out.   I have some Canadian in-laws, and they don’t want the world’s riffraff or whatever.  . It’s bad enough they had to spawn Justin Bieber.  Covid ain’t helping things at all.  They were probably sweating over Washington State and NY blowing up with covid cases.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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Just now, atomheartbevo said:

And those controls are there primarily to keep the deadbeats out.   I have some Canadian in-laws, and they don’t want the world’s riffraff or whatever.  . It’s bad enough they had to spawn Justin Bieber.

By the same token, they've taken in plenty of refugees and folks from poorer countries.  Montreal is a very immigrant-heavy town, for example.  

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3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

You are confusing hating certain aspects of how things are with hating the entire country, which few, if any here, do.

Its like when aggy gets upset over a story from some media outlet critiquing some aspect of aggy culture, and they spin it into Ye Olde BOMC.

The "you hate America" line when you criticize anything about our country is the most bizarre, tired shit. It's the same nationalist load of shit you'd expect in North Korea, not the US. I live here, if I bitch about something it's because I want it to be better, and the whole fucking reason for the first amendment is to specifically allow you to do that without fear of repercussion.

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2 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

So quarantine by data, and associated errors instead of gov't mandate

I am not against trying, I'm all for it.  

It won't work.

It will be a clusterfuck of monumental proportions. 

The alternative is mass shutdowns of entire areas/states, with things like what we just did here in Texas - things like stopping travelers at the border or at the airport and getting their info, and having DPS troopers checking up on them randomly.   Tracking contact information by hand.

Or worse, having the government pull our cell phone records (which the police frequently do these days) and trying to process that info, and doing it scattershot, since cell phone tower info is not as precise as what’s needed.

South Korea gave us some examples of how to do it, although businesses here would balk.  I saw one story mentioned how you would get an alert if you were going into a business that had recent multiple cases of covid, or was frequented by people who recently had covid.   I imagine that a highly-trafficked place like Walmart would shit their pants over the thought of such an app.

We don’t have to get everybody on board, just enough to make a dent in the numbers, and make people aware, that we don’t have to do a total shutdown.    The only problem.is schools.   Kids have the worst fucking hygienic habits.

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1 hour ago, aggie08 said:

Hyperbole much? Jesus.

No one anywhere has said that America isn't a great place to live and be born in.

Actually, you would be wrong:

8 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

When I was a boy, my teacher taught me I was lucky to have been born in the United States and even luckier to a Texan. I believed it back then. Not so sure now. 

 

 

Bolded to make it easier on your eyes. I wouldn't want you to strain them, I know you need them to stalk unsuspecting sheep in the dark. 

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4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

The alternative is mass shutdowns of entire areas/states, with things like what we just did here in Texas - things like stopping travelers at the border or at the airport and getting their info, and having DPS troopers checking up on them randomly.   Tracking contact information by hand.

Or worse, having the government pull our cell phone records (which the police frequently do these days) and trying to process that info, and doing it scattershot, since cell phone tower info is not as precise as what’s needed.

South Korea gave us some examples of how to do it, although businesses here would balk.  I saw one story mentioned how you would get an alert if you were going into a business that had recent multiple cases of covid, or was frequented by people who recently had covid.   I imagine that a highly-trafficked place like Walmart would shit their pants over the thought of such an app.

We don’t have to get everybody on board, just enough to make a dent in the numbers, and make people aware, that we don’t have to do a total shutdown.    The only problem.is schools.   Kids have the worst fucking hygienic habits.

Nah.  No system is perfect so we should just do nothing! 

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9 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

The "you hate America" line when you criticize anything about our country is the most bizarre, tired shit. It's the same nationalist load of shit you'd expect in North Korea, not the US. I live here, if I bitch about something it's because I want it to be better, and the whole fucking reason for the first amendment is to specifically allow you to do that without fear of repercussion.

It’s an aggy thing.  You can take a diehard aggy, make a joke about them performing poorly in a single game against an undefeated Alabama team that goes on to win everything, and in their mind you’ve criticized the entire history of their football program and university as a whole.    Doesn’t matter that you pointed out their failings in a single football game.  Hell, it could just be a joke about the defense screwing up a single play.  Nope, you’ve criticized everything  that is the sum of aggy.

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Sorry you interpreted it that way Sydney. America has so much potential to be exceptional. Somewhere we as a nation lost sight of the goal in the past 50 years. Perhaps we lost our purpose when we defeated the Soviet empire. 

And please drive friendly - the Texas way. Arguing like a got-damn new yorker was never the Texas way. No offense intended.

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1 hour ago, gmr548 said:


 

 

 

 

 


Yeah, I'm being obtuse.

I'm sorry to all for my hand in threadjacking. I'm done here.

 

 

 

 

That’s such a fucking troll bullshit double quote. It’s disingenuous as fuck. I said the you aren’t finding better and then clearly modified it with “unless you are of the fucking opinion that you’d rather be Swedish or some shit (which is pretty clearly stand in for Scandinavian socialist nanny staters some some so desperately pine for) but there’s precious few on our level, and then you quote it that way as some sort of gotcha which moves you from the level of being obtuse to being a disingenuous fucking lying hack. 

Also- you call me a blind believer in American exceptionalism and you respond with a survey that shows we are closer to Mexico in quality of life than Canada?  That is so absurdly laughable it doesn’t even pass the smell test. Take that and cram it up your bleeding gash of a vagina. 

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26 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

By the same token, they've taken in plenty of refugees and folks from poorer countries.  Montreal is a very immigrant-heavy town, for example.  

They do, but if you are from the US or Europe, and want to immigrate to Canada, you better be able to prove you have the financial means to support yourself.   Otherwise all of our slackers would migrate north.

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3 hours ago, Lobo said:

Uh, Tim Horton of Tim Horton's restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario.  Probably the best restaurant in North America.  

Anyway, back to 'Murica.  I am glad I live here, but I don't take any special pride in the fact that I was born here.  I had nothing to do with it, so it seems like a weird thing to lead with as a personality trait.  I'm also 6'1" and ambidextrous, two qualities I had nothing to do with (maybe a little bit, I quit smoking when I was 7 because I felt it was stunting my growth).  Now, I am very thankful that I was born in the United States in 1976, and not 150 years earlier.  I am very thankful I am tall and can use both hands equally to pleasure South Austin's mom, but again it's not pride.  There is a very stark difference to me between being thankful and being proud.  You can be thankful for things you had nothing to do with.  And you can be thankful for things you had everything to do with (like the will power to lose weight or learn a language).  You can be proud for things you had everything to do with (fitting into a smaller clothing size or showing off your new Italian conversation skills).  But being proud for things you had nothing to do with (the sunrise, the city of your birth, the DJIA closing figures, what language you heard at home as an infant, or the rainfall in Austin yesterday).....I understand why people do it but it has never made any sense to me. 

Pride is a sin, Thankfullness is a virtue.  This nation would do well to remember that.  

Fuck him, we got chef Boyardee

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5 minutes ago, Hpara759 said:

this right here......

No fucking shit, right?  

Political leadership is not America

America is both a great and a good place 

America isn’t perfect and has things we can, will and are working on to get better, because that’s the nature of our country 

You are lucky as fuck if you are born an American citizen and that clearly puts you better off, by any available metric, than 90% of the world. 

All these statements are true. Anyone who disagrees with any of them is basically a cunt. 

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2 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Sorry you interpreted it that way Sydney. America has so much potential to be exceptional. Somewhere we as a nation lost sight of the goal in the past 50 years. Perhaps we lost our purpose when we defeated the Soviet empire. 

And please drive friendly - the Texas way. Arguing like a got-damn new yorker was never the Texas way. No offense intended.

I didn't interpret anything. I responded to your DIRECT quote. As did others. I've got plenty of gripes with America, it's people, and it's trajectory as a nation. But you literally said that you now wonder if you were lucky to be born in America. Well, I responded to that already. When the continent of Africa, China, and Russia alone constitute about 35% of the global population and places you could have been born, and you don't think you're lucky to be born in America, as shitty and flawed as it is these days, you're being fucking absurd and stupid. Either you're a complete out of touch idiot, or you made a shitty flippant statement without thinking about it. Either way, you can get that shit the fuck out of here. 

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8 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Sorry you interpreted it that way Sydney. America has so much potential to be exceptional. Somewhere we as a nation lost sight of the goal in the past 50 years. Perhaps we lost our purpose when we defeated the Soviet empire. 

And please drive friendly - the Texas way. Arguing like a got-damn new yorker was never the Texas way. No offense intended.

OK, why 50?  nice round number or something else?

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3 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

some bannings are in order and this thread should probably be nuked.  

It should be destroyed. My initial post that brought me here today, even if I've waded into the sewer, remains as valid as it did a few hours ago. There's no covid conversation here at all. It's all fucking politics. 

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So something I don't understand - why is the confirmed case fatality rate so much lower here than the rest of Europe (outside of Germany)? Even our worst state - Michigan, with a CCFR over 9% - is better than the UK, France, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands. And even then, the majority of US states (even those with large case numbers like California and Illinois) have better CCFR numbers than even Germany. 

What's the reason? We just lucky? It's not the age of the population. It's not air pollution or air quality (even though I think Europe's reporting on air quality is dubious).

What gives?

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32 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Actually, you would be wrong:

Bolded to make it easier on your eyes. I wouldn't want you to strain them, I know you need them to stalk unsuspecting sheep in the dark. 

My bad.  Missed that one.  Admittedly, that's a pretty lame, generic "America ain't what is used to be" trope.  (Though, so is the "you could have been born in 3rd world Africa!" retort that you trotted out.)

Everyone else has discussed what we could and should be doing better because "We're America; we're the best" and resting on our laurels only gets us so far.  It's undeniable that there are some concerning trends happening in our country.  But most of us have the means to live elsewhere and still choose America every day of the week, so obviously we realize that it's still among the best places to live--if not the best--and that we're incredibly fortunate.

That said, there are millions of citizens of other countries with the means to move here that never would.  There are plenty of subjective and objective metrics that would lead others to choose somewhere else based on their own personal preferences and priorities.  But typing that out translates to me saying, "I hate America" to a decent chunk of the country.

Edited by aggie08
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48 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Did I say that I approved of that particular Canadian policy in its entirety?  And let's use actual numbers -- our net immigration rate in the US is 3.8 per 1000 population.  Canada is nearly twice that, at 6.4-6.5 during the same period.  So, "nobody is moving to Canada" is, like, not even true.

So, Canada has a more open immigration policy than we do.  Has a greater life expectancy.  Has a happier population.

I mean, I'll concede that their native grub isn't worldclass, so it's not a PARADISE, but I would be perfectly happy living out the rest of my days in Canada.

6 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I didn't interpret anything. I responded to your DIRECT quote. As did others. I've got plenty of gripes with America, it's people, and it's trajectory as a nation. But you literally said that you now wonder if you were lucky to be born in America. Well, I responded to that already. When the continent of Africa, China, and Russia alone constitute about 35% of the global population and places you could have been born, and you don't think you're lucky to be born in America, as shitty and flawed as it is these days, you're being fucking absurd and stupid. Either you're a complete out of touch idiot, or you made a shitty flippant statement without thinking about it. Either way, you can get that shit the fuck out of here. 

Ding ding ding. I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with Sydney politically. But shit, we don’t fucking have to. It’s not important!  What’s important is not to be a disingenuous cunt and rail about how awful this place is when it’s totally and completely objectively fucking true that being born an American (even a poor and/or minority American) is winning the genetic lotto compared to most other places in the world you could have been born. 

Africa and Asia have a combined over 5 billion people on this planet. If you would prefer to have been born in any of those places you are literally dumb as a fucking stump. 

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1 minute ago, aggie08 said:

My bad.  Missed that one.  Admittedly, that's a pretty lame, generic "America ain't what is used to be" trope.  (Though, so is the "you could have been born in 3rd world Africa!" retort that you trotted out.)

Everyone else has discussed what we could and should be doing better because "We're America; we're the best" and resting on our laurels only gets us so far.  It's undeniable that there are some concerning trends happening in our country.  But most of us have the means to live elsewhere and still choose America every day of the week, so obviously we realize that it's still among the best places to live--if not the best. 

That said, there are millions of citizens of other countries with the means to move here that never would.  There are plenty of subjective and objective metrics that would lead others to choose somewhere else based on their own personal preferences and priorities.  But typing that out translates to me saying, "I hate America" to a decent chunk of the country.

Yeah, I trotted out a bit more specific detail and first hand information in regards to other places for it to be as simple as a trope. 

That being said, you clearly missed the actual point of my post, outside of calling out how stupid the original statement was that prompted the missive you quoted. This is supposed to be a politics free Covid thread. The fact it's literally how "america has lost its way" means it's a pretty political thread. As I've said upstream, I have plenty of issues with America, it's trajectory, and the abundance of people in it these days that accurately resemble a Hunter S. Thompson paragraph describing Richard Nixon. But that doesn't make the notion someone is no longer to be lucky being born in America any less preposterous (which they haven't walked back, they just insisted I "interpreted" their statement wrong) and make this non political thread any less political that it is currently. 

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4 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

My bad.  Missed that one.  Admittedly, that's a pretty lame, generic "America ain't what is used to be" trope.  (Though, so is the "you could have been born in 3rd world Africa!" retort that you trotted out.)

Everyone else has discussed what we could and should be doing better because "We're America; we're the best" and resting on our laurels only gets us so far.  It's undeniable that there are some concerning trends happening in our country.  But most of us have the means to live elsewhere and still choose America every day of the week, so obviously we realize that it's still among the best places to live--if not the best. 

That said, there are millions of citizens of other countries with the means to move here that never would.  There are plenty of subjective and objective metrics that would lead others to choose somewhere else based on their own personal preferences and priorities.  But typing that out translates to me saying, "I hate America" to a decent chunk of the country.

No it fucking doesn’t. What you typed out is a perfectly reasonable take that I don’t think anyone here would even bother to take notice of. 

What I responded to was herp derp I’m not so sure I was lucky to be born in Texas even though my high school teacher told me I was. Which is objectively, quantifiably, absurdly, stupid. 

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Remember that choir that got nailed?   
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/us/coronavirus-washington-choir-outbreak-trnd/index.html

Quote

Public health officials studying the Covid-19 outbreak among members of a Washington choir found numerous ways the virus could have spread, according to a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Authorities interviewed all 122 members of the Skagit Valley Chorale, which met every Tuesday for 2.5 hours before the outbreak. They focused on two rehearsals held March 3 and March 10 in Mount Vernon, Washington.

The report said 53 people were sickened and two died -- and all but one attended both rehearsals. The report said Thirty-three cases were confirmed, the report said, and 20 people had probable infections.

Quote

There were 61 people at the March 10 rehearsal, including one member who reported having had cold-like symptoms. That person tested positive for Covid-19 and was the first case identified by health authorities, according to the report.

There are graphs and a lot more info trying to explain how it spread, for those who like the technicalities.  

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17 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

The 5G shit. I've spent the last 5 or 6 yesterday working on 5G/mmWave applications. Unless you're talking about the fake shit AT&T et al are calling 5G, in which case carry on.

As I said, 5G mmWave has its uses, but isn't fundamentally changing regular cellphone data connections (at least, not yet). There are too many technical problems (e.g., signal blocked by paper, hands, not to mention walls). It is great for niche scenarios where you need very high bandwidth, low latency, and have an unobstructed (and nearby) tower. Maybe we work out those issues in a few years, but right now, today, it isn't a game changing mass market product. And, the original claim was that somehow 5G was helping other countries better respond to the pandemic. I'm not seeing what 5G (in any form) brings to the table in that regard that isn't pretty well covered by existing products. It may provide some indirect benefit in the form of additional bandwidth, but nothing that should critically improve pandemic monitoring.  

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Just now, SydneyCarton said:

I'm pretty sure most of the people on this thread would be pretty surprised at my political affiliation. Just because I don't want to talk about it here, however, makes me basically Roger Stone apparently. 

I’ve seen a little bit of your stuff on CR and I bet we disagree with more than we agree with on policy. But, like, I don’t give a shit about any of that. It has never bothered me if people agree with me or disagree with me on policy. 

I literally only get irritated about two things:

1) people being disingenuous in an argument and/or putting words in my mouth; and 

2) people being abjectly fucking stupid. 

The quote I responded to at first violated #2

The other back and forth I got into violated #1. I literally don’t think I’ve ever seen you violate either of my red button issues. 

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Let's make sure this is perfectly COVID related, and also reflects how we've absolutely lost our way.

People are demanding that we open things back up.

And the response is generally not "no."  It's mostly "you know, we can probably open up a good bit.  Maybe even more than we thought we could a month ago, so long as people wear masks, mostly to protect those around them."

And is the response "that's great!  Let's get America back to work, and of course I'm happy to experience a mild inconvenience to help keep my neighbor safe?"  Nope.  It's...

"FUCK YOU!  NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT TO DO!  FASCIST AUTHORITARIANS!  FREEDOM LIBERTY PATRIOT!"  I mean....why?  Seriously, why?  Why is that how we respond?  That's beyond fucked up.  That's a broken fucking country, people.  We need you to do one really easy thing to get the best of all worlds -- a lot of stuff opened back up, and our neighbors protected from high transmission risk, and we are ready to go to war NOT to do that.  

It's as if we asked "hey, as you're driving down a Texas road during the summer, please don't flick a lit cigarette out the window, as it could start a fire that destroys thousands of acres and hundreds of homes," and the answer is "YOU DON'T KNOW THAT!  IT WILL PROBABLY GO OUT ON ITS OWN.  NOBODY TELLS ME WHAT TO DO!  LIBERTY FREEDOM!"  What the fuck is wrong with us?

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4 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Yeah, I trotted out a bit more specific detail and first hand information in regards to other places for it to be as simple as a trope. 

That being said, you clearly missed the actual point of my post, outside of calling out how stupid the original statement was that prompted the missive you quoted. This is supposed to be a politics free Covid thread. The fact it's literally how "america has lost its way" means it's a pretty political thread. As I've said upstream, I have plenty of issues with America, it's trajectory, and the abundance of people in it these days that accurately resemble a Hunter S. Thompson paragraph describing Richard Nixon. But that doesn't make the notion someone is no longer to be lucky being born in America any less preposterous (which they haven't walked back, they just insisted I "interpreted" their statement wrong) and make this non political thread any less political that it is currently. 

Fair enough. I'd only counter with the invariable fact that every thread over 100 pages devolves into a shit show, so you kind of know what you're getting. Shit, that's half the appeal for a lot of us bored in quarantine.

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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Formerly DT: COVID-19 - Featuring Lots of Politics, now CR because political talk not going away


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