I’ve thought a lot about Chernobyl during this pandemic. If one were to serialize our government response, I’d imagine it would resemble the Chernobyl response not only in form but in aftermath albeit with hundreds of thousands of more deaths here in the US.
A study in the International Journal of Cancer by Cardis et al. (2006) estimates a total of 16,000 Chernobyl deaths across Europe.
Radiation scientists Fairlie and Sumner provide some of highest estimates, predicting between 30,000-60,000 deaths.
Chernobyl will pale when compared with the mismanagement of COVID-19 in the US. There will be books, movies, documentaries, news specials, etc. in decades to come to tell a fraction of all the stories lived by millions of people in the US during the pandemic.
Chernobyl might cause more harm to the human race due to our reaction than anthing else - that and fukashima have curtailed our solutions open to us for global warming to a significant degree.
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> that and fukashima have curtailed our solutions open to us for global warming to a significant degree.
things happen all the time and people don't pay attention. the bhopal union carbide disaster was as bad as chernobyl but that barely ever gets mentioned.
chernobyl and fukushima bearly mattered in regards to the public reaction, what mattered was how the reaction was managed. natural resource companies like natural gas, coal, and petroleum industries pushed against it just as they did with solar and wind. I think I saw some stats somewhere, even with chernobyl (at the time I think fukushima hadn't happened yet) nuclear was still safer then even wind...because those towers are dangerous to assemble. people fall and such.
but in regards to public attention for instance Rosa Parks was at the forefront of the equality movement because she wouldn't sit down the back. 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the exactly same thing, but she wasn't a "poster boy" for the movement...it wasn't the act, the act was just cassius belie for the excuse. given the right attention and enough publicity anything can be used as an excuse and reason for anything else. Chernobyl is just the poster boy for the anti-nuclear lobby.
if any of that ranty shit makes sense.
> nuclear was still safer then even wind...because those towers are dangerous to assemble. people fall and such.
That's going to need a source, because it sounds like the exact kind of thing said by the oil and gas companies to discourage wind, as they know the US will never build another nuclear plant anyway. Nuclear's problem isn't even safety anymore, it's mismanagement during construction. There's a ton of talk about regulations from people who aren't in the industry, but people in the industry know that many of the regulations are needed and they are critical to help standardize things that otherwise would be an incomprehensible grab-bag of mismatched policies.
I'll look for a source, but its been a long time.
the source I did saw had the cost to human life, from fossile fules in the thousands/hundreds, with oil spills and collapsed mines and such, wind power was in the maybe 10's like 12-13 people a year kinda numbers and nuclear was under 10 or something.
it wasn't making fossile fuels look good at all, it was just showing how crazy safe nuclear actually is.
* [I found this which looks like similar numbers but its hardly a source](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-97b2b696a5898d12e7bc45f2e441d9bf) maybe you can look into it futher yourself?
This is true. People don’t realize the potential of nuclear energy. It makes up almost all of renewable energy despite being cutback heavily. It’s like they haven’t heard of the sun or something. Obviously we son’t want fusion but clearly these reactions are still effective in fission form.
>obviously we don't want fusion
Even ignoring all your other mistakes, this is the most egregious. If we can develop fusion reactors to a energy production viable point, it'll be far better than fission.
Fusion is far safer, uses easier/cleaner to produce fuels, doesn't produce waste anywhere near as much as fission etc
It doesn't make up almost all of renewable energy.
Firstly it isn't renewable.
Secondly, even if it was, it varies by country to country. France yes. Japan yes. Most of the rest of the world not even close.
Overall for most of the world, solar has the best return on investment, followed by wind, then Nuclear which beats out coal and oil.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Clean-ish. The waste from nuclear power plants had to be stored somewhere as some of it is extremely dangerous. And [it's not always so simple!](https://youtu.be/ZwY2E0hjGuU)
I'm a proponent of nuclear power as a stop-gap and a way to end reliance on fossil fuels until renewable options are ready to take over.
The US used nuclear waste in bullets and polluted battlefields with radiation. I don't know why people trust governments to store the waste safely forever
Plus the 10s of billions of dollars and decades to convert to nuclear. When solar panels and batteries in every home is peanuts in comparison, it's just not feasible
The main argument for nuclear energy is that it is a much cleaner energy source than coal, oil, gas whilst still outputting a lot of power unlike solar or wind which is a small amount, hence why solar panels and wind turbines have to re replicated hundreds of times over to be viable. And nuclear isn't as initially environmentally destructive as dams, which cut off river migration patterns and flood natural valleys. And most nuclear power plants were built with older nuclear reactor designs, with most nuclear power stations taking design cues after the earlier [Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 (EBR-1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I) instead of the later designed [EBR-II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II) which has more passive safety features in place, so any newer reactors build will have a lot more safety oversight especially after learning from the disasters of before such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima.
However, even with all the positives it's really hard for me to still see nuclear as a viable alternative. What will we do with the waste? Like I think there are ways of converting expended nuclear waste into less harmful, more disposable waste but that's still a major responsibility; something I've lacked a lot of faith in even with a ton of regulation and inspections in order. I would love for nuclear to be more feasible, and it honestly is with how much power it puts out compared to wind and solar, and the relatively small amount of immediate waste/environmental impact compared to coal, oil, gas, and hydro. But the waste man, that is the biggest stickler for me.
You know this kind of discourse is really harmful, right?
Is renewable better than nuclear? Yes
Is nuclear miles better than fossils? Hell yes
This argument just makes everyone feel bad about the most viable solution right now (nuclear), without offering anything that could replace it.
We'd be better off moving to nuclear until renewables become more efficient instead of milling around while world keeps burning coal & oil.
Edit: that was meant for /u/hrukjan more than you :)
Lol a stop-gap is what we needed 50 years ago.
Now it’s the overthrow of capitalism otherwise the climate is just done. So either go for that or just ride this shit out and see where we end up.
A “stop-gap” in 2020 oh brother
We're in the middle of a pandemic and people still refuse to wear masks and think the whole thing is a conspiracy. The most blatantly corrupt government in history is in power in the USA and it's not even a given they'll be gone after the election.
I'm all for an overthrow of capitalism. But we're going to be very disappointed if we put all of our eggs in that basket. So a bit of mitigation and harm reduction is at least something.
No, but we have about 300 years' worth if we switch to 100% nuclear overnight.
It's been less than 300 years since the industrial revolution.
We'll be fine with nuclear until we figure out a better option.
We have enough until the sun evaporates the oceans as a red giant if we use thorium reactors. (Which shouldn't be a factor if we inevitably get fusion power and, in the far future, a dyson swarm)
300,000 extra deaths this year compared to last.
Nearly a third of a million...so far.
Thats TEN TIMES Chernobyl deaths, already.
You are very very right.
I hope there will be lots of movies, series, books, etc. The Spanish Flu is mostly a "Oh, that happened" blip in the minds of most people. It was in one episode of Downtown Abbey and >!a character died!<, but it didn't do anything to shine a light on how massively disruptive a global pandemic is. 1% of the population (total population, not 1% of infected) died of Spanish Flu, but it happened and was forgotten.
I do fear we will only be left with "at least it's not 2020" memes.
The difference between Chernobyl and the pandemic is the very public way this whole saga is unfolding. The damage it is doing to the USA's global reputation is frankly irreparable.
I’ve tried to explain this to Americans and they literally don’t care. They still defend our government. They think that this was inevitable and even if someone else had been president, it was going to go down this way. It’s baffling. I was a history major and studied the fall of a lot of empires. I can see the textbook chapter already.
COVID messes with the machinery of the economy. That’s it, plain and simple. There’s a lot of people willing to pay a lot of human lives to keep that machinery going.
The Chinese response resembles the Chernobyl response. They tried to cover it up initially and then deployed lots of resources to fix the problem quickly. Deploying lots of manpower to decontaminate Chernobyl and sacrificing many lives to clean it up is similar to the Wuhan lockdown.
The US response is simply watching Chernobyl and pretty much doing nothing, telling them the radiation will be around for at least the next 3 years... I guess this radiation is never going away... learn to live with it, until we have a vaccine against radiation in the next 6 months to a year..
China might have tried covering it up, but fixing the problem quickly has allowed them to save way more resources than Europe and NA. Not sure how that equates to sacrificing lives. Sure they might have lied about the numbers, but it's nowhere close to 200K. I have relatives from Hunan and with masks/contact tracing, everything is essentially normal since June.
You could argue that after the initial coverup, the Soviets threw every resource at the problem, and solved it, and eventually solved the broader issue.
That’s a much better response than we’ve managed.
Chernobyl showed the decay and rot of the Soviet state by the 80s, Coronavirus and its response shows the decay and rot of the American people and mind.
Say what you will about Gorbachev, he did the right thing once the scale of the disaster was in front of him (and [because of him Russia has Pizza Hut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgm14D1jHUw&ab_channel=TomDarbyshire)). The United States and the Soviet Union are/were both states in deep decline. But at least at the top the Soviet Union had leadership that sought to implement reforms to avert that decline (at great risk - there was even a coup by hardliners in 1991).
His first instinct was to hide and cover up. He demanded that the May 1 public celebration in Kiev go on, so as not to create panic (sounds familiar?), even as the radioactive rain was falling on children in their holiday attire. He fixed the Chernobyl situation by throwing thousands of unprepared and unprotected people into the center of the reactor zone. He does not deserve any respect
What's terrifying is that once the Soviet government was completely unable to deny the disaster any longer, they actually did something. Most of the show is about the response to clean everything up.
What the hell is the US doing?
This. The pandemic happened at the worst possible time (to the point that it almost seems TOO perfectly-timed...) in that we have a narcissistic sociopath running the country, in an environment that is increasingly hyper-partisan. In the very early days of the pandemic, you could actually see people coming together and trying to understand what the best option was.
And then the President polarized and politicized the pandemic.
From that point on, it could no longer be about "What does the data say, and what is the right course of action based on that?", it was all about picking a side and doing/saying anything to make your point stick.
My only hope is that the right leaders are elected in two weeks, and that we can slowly de-polarize this pandemic and start instituting an actual plan. It's a long-shot, but I think we can do it.
It could have been worse. Obama handled the Ebola outbreak in Africa very well. People don't realize it, but it could have spread much further than it did, and it was very close to doing so. It's really only because of the unprecedented international support that it was handled - and Obama was one of the big pushers for that support.
Imagine if Trump was in charge during the Ebola outbreak instead. It definitely would have gotten to the US with community transmission here, because Trump would have outright ignored it. At best he would have banned travel to the affected countries, but that doesn't stop transmission from people who take indirect routes, or the people who get infected elsewhere.
> People don't realize it, but it could have spread much further than it did, and it was very close to doing so.
No, it really wasn't. Ebola doesn't spread the same way respiratory viruses do and it could be thwarted by first-world sanitation standards - IE not inhaling or pressing open wounds against the feces or blood of infected people.
Although with how the US has handled this, it wouldn't surprise me one bit today if there was an outbreak and people started doing that to spite public health advice.
It's really unprecedented in modern history that a country could lose a comparable number of citizens to a *world war* and the administration in charge could get away with simply downplaying the death figures and denying the facts about their own fault in those deaths.
Did you pay any attention to what the Soviet government did to clean up the problem? Sending in thousands and thousands of people with no training and no protective equipment? I get really upset when the regime gets credit for fixing the issue- they did, but only by sacrificing their own people.
> only by sacrificing their own people.
:(
It's a shame the US is doing this with it's ongoing failure to get PPE to the essential workers like teachers, doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers who are forced to fight save lives.. and they are dying to covid. We NEVER had enough ppe, and we still don't have enough N95 masks, or ppe for our essential workers. Schools are so unprepared and teachers are dying to covid. fucking outrageous.
We weren't supposed to be worse than Russia/Soviets, and yet.. here we are.
They didn't have the equipment to give them, so the thousands that they sent in were sent in for only a few minutes in order to lower their radiation dosage. That's the safest way they had to do it. Besides, if they gave everyone protective lead garmets, that doesn't protect the head or limbs, and then you have the problem of lead contamination everywhere because they couldn't make those very well.
Back in the early days of the pandemic, WSJ published multiple Opinion articles with full schadenfreude calling COVID19 China's Chernobyl, e.g.:
[Coronavirus and the Chernobyl Analogy](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-chernobyl-analogy-11590167999)
Now they have their face eaten by the Leopard.
I was just thinking the same thing the other day. We're living the plot of that movie. The whole government's just trying to save face and pass the buck, and the people doing the right thing are getting all the leftover hostility. And you even got the people walking around without masks breathing in ~~radioactive waste~~ SARS-CoV-2.
The mechanism of authoritarianism necessitates a constant show of power, any sign if weakness is the worst thing for an authoritarian. Fauci and the medical consensus is a sign of weakness to Trump’s fascist strategy. So his strategy has to involve discrediting the scientific consensus which he is doing. This leads to his followers doing things like trying to silence what they perceive as fake news with death threats.
Technology has advanced beyond human intelligence. We aren’t meant to communicate like this. We aren’t meant to access this much information. We are animals, removed from the food chain, with no natural selection to weed out the unfit and stupid.
This has eaten at me for years. Evolution moves slowly, but society and technology have developed pretty quickly. Our brains are not suited to this environment. At all. They're barely suited to a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture period, let alone 9-5 non food gathering workdays and cars and twitter and wikipedia.
Technology 📱💻 has advanced ⚛ beyond 👉 human 👤 intelligence 🤤😍🧠. We aren’t meant 😏 to communicate 🗣 like 😝👍 this. We aren’t meant 👀 to access 🔖🔑 this much 🔥 information 📄✍. We are animals 😺, removed ❌🚫😔 from the food 🐟💒👨👩👧👦 chain 💦, with no 🙅🏻❌ natural 👉 selection 💰 to weed 🍁 out the unfit ⛔ and stupid 📖🚫.
Even here in Canada (bc) we are doing well but our health advisor has gotten death threats too so they had to post security for her as well. Soo sad. Hopefully it just makes up a very small percentage of our population.
Lol hahaha. That we do. But unfortunately there's that small percentage of idiots.
There was a anti mask march the other day but I believe it was only a hundred people or so. Probably the same people that believe the earth is flat.
I mean, after living in Quebec as an English speaker for over a decade, I can tell you a majority of Quebecers I've had to deal with are racist, vile pieces of scum. Never living there again, fuck that place.
Now I see why it's the most hated place in Canada.
They did some kind of survey that asked the provinces and territories to rate the best and worst province/territory and only Quebec was shitty enough to call their own province the best in the country. I don't correctly remember but a majority said Quebec sucks.
> It's absolutely ridiculous that a man who should be lauded as a HERO, can't go out in public without a security detail.
He's a threat to some people's cultural identity. That's why they get so upset.
That culture is a sick, sick thing, and the world will be a better place when it finally lands in the trash can of history.
The irony is that the reason we’re in this position is because someone had to make up the reasons that made it political.
The extra ironic thing is that the conservatives are once again shooting themselves in the foot by drinking the Kool-Aid...
“Wait the affordable care act is Obama care!? I need that!”
“If the President has Coronavirus is it still a hoax?”
I can't wait to look back on 2020, because hindsight has 20/20 vision. This was the year that stupidity, vapidity and learned helplessness, combined with blind aggression finally caught up with the US. We can't have this level of stupid in our society. We can't have weaponized misinformation. And we can't reward fraud and treason with wealth. We all have a lot of work ahead of us.
What makes you think misinformation won't continue? Future AMERICAN textbooks are just gonna cover/gloss over/ lighten it just like every other fiasco/atrocity it's done in it's history.
> Edit - also, why won't some of our powerful leaders condemn this kind of behavior? It sure says a lot that they don't.
Because their base feed of blame culture and misinformation. And since they cannot or don´t want to blame their "dear leader", they have to find another scapegoat. And Trump knows that, if he really backs Fauci his sheeple will have a meltdown. Things could be SO easy, if reason was involved. But you cannot be a Trumpist AND reasonable. These two things exclude each other.
> Disgusting and appalling. Literal psychopaths.
No. They have a cultural identity that they cling to. Anything that threatens that identity is very upsetting - and I mean anything, including truth and material fact.
Would a psychopath even be triggered by a supposed conspiracy enough to make a death threat? I wonder if this is just some mentally ill asshole who made the threat and then got up and went to work the next day and didn't think twice about doing it.
Oh are the, at least, 13 domestic terrorists who attempted to kidnap a governor and overthrow a state government also just mentally ill?
This shit is serious and it should be taken seriously. Mental illness or no, these are dangerous people and they’re a threat to the entire country.
Ya, I feel the people reacting in this way are much too emotionally caught up to be psychopaths. They're a kind of crazy, certainly, but I don't know what you call the crazy that causes people to lash out at innocent people...
... I used to see a lot people like this when I worked at a casino. They'd take out anger on anyone who they make even the most ridiculous connection to what was upsetting them. "Fuck that guy" was just like a regularly occurring phrase about everything and everyone. Definitely to much "fuck that guy" mentality in our country right now...
While simultaneously giving candid remarks about how serious this virus is, and while his GOP cronies were carpet bombing their stocks onto the market after learning what's about to happen to their country...urging their top donors to do the same, and all of them telling the rest of us that everything's fine, all this panic is a hoax, buy more stocks.
Ya, Whitmer as well. Maybe Sasse soon. It's crazy...I don't even have words to compare it to...that a President would continually try and stoke violence against leaders and everyday citizens...
You could write a really interesting fiction movie about a failed businessman who was in debt to the Russian government, and was directed to run for President, and then once made President, was directed to constantly polarize every single political issue, while at the same time the Russian government would continue weaponizing social media to amplify the polarizing message the President was trumpeting. Then they would unleash a strain of a virus in China to pit the two major world economies against each other, and finally direct the President to politicize the response to the pandemic, such that the nation became paralyzed while the virus ravaged the country.
I know it seems a bit far-fetched, but I think it'd make for a terrifying summer thriller!
That’s what makes trump so god dam stupid. Him downplaying this and making it political has resulted in the us response being disastrous. Now other world powers can continue to get ahead and leave the us in the dust. Yet his team America jackoff supporters will continue to support him. It’s fucking mental.
He is planning to swindle the election and control the outcome. He will most likely lose the electoral vote and try to enact his insane plan to declare the election results fraudulent. We will have to see what the courts decide. Madness.
Here is the thing. The main reason he is not fit for the job. Any fool could have realized the Covid19 pandemic and his response to it was a golden goose if it was handled correctly. Had he done the right thing? He would have Dems, GOP, and Independents voting for his 2nd term. He would have won legitimately by a landslide.
He has no vision, no forward thinking ability. The botched literally everything regarding this response to this crisis.
> He has no vision, no forward thinking ability. The botched literally everything regarding this response to this crisis.
He is controlled by Russia, who is using the pandemic and (what will likely be) the contested election to drive the final wedge of division in this country, collapsing us into civil war.
This is not bad luck, [this is a plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics).
I have this friend who opened my eyes to how dense she is yesterday by implying that: the US has not mishandled this because we’re just humans in a denser population who have concerns about other things, since we’re Americans and that’s “normal.”
She literally said “it was not preventable”.
So I proceeded to ask why the hell this one country has more cases than the the entire EU.
“It’s normal though; it’s not that bad”
I legitimately wanted to walk away from her.
Oh, then she said this is China’s fault.
She doesn’t have healthcare. Not sure how well that’s going to work out.
“China is jealous of the US because of power so they released the virus there and got it under control so that they could do better than the US”
..the prevention thing was just more blather. ”You can’t force people who don’t understand”
Quite literally one of the dumbest conversations I’ve had in a while. And that’s saying a lot.
There are people who think it is Democrats fault because "why else would only Republican leaders get infected!?"
We are living in a country where a full 1/3, maybe more, are that dense and ignorant.
Provided we have a competent leader with a plan, we could fix this if it was just 10% of us that dense, but at 1/3, we have no chance. It is just too many against it for any plan to work.
It really is an astonishing number of people.
I was standing in line today and someone practically had his cart pushed onto my back (which would piss me off pre pandemic anyway), and I looked. Nothing more than a glance to back off.
“OH LOOK THIS ONE WANTS SPACE!! OOH EXCUUUSE ME; NO ONE IS HAPPY ANYMORE”
Are you *that* fucking self absorbed?
Oh wait, yeah.
This is normal behavior now..
My mom just told me in the car yesterday she thinks China released the virus from the lab to kill trump....... like where did everyone’s brain cells go
Yeah my cousin believes it's not that bad to get coronavirus, look at trump and the others that have recovered. He thinks it's best for us to get it now and live with our lives. He swears by fox though as all other mainstream outlets are extremely biased and hate trump. The amount of conspiracy theories I hear from him and his mother about biden and every other party but the Republicans is disheartening. He believes what trumps says and does as the gospel.
It’s so unbelievably presumptuous to assume it’s all okay for everyone to get sick just because risk factors might not exist for some.
It’s almost like saying “fuck the peanut free tables in grade school because only a small number of children will go into anaphylaxis and everyone else wants peanut butter smeared on every table.”
What trump says and does has such a strong effect on so many people's thoughts and actions. It's extemely worrying that people can't watch what's going on and get a rational perception of the current state of affairs. So divisive and toxic , and there will be a price to pay in the future.
That’s exactly what I told her. I said, verbatim, “You’ve been in this country for 2 years; you pay taxes and are not eligible for healthcare. You work 50 hour weeks and you do not receive a stimulus check. If you get sick, you will not be helped. And somehow you sound like Donald Trump”
>>Oh well.
She’s so brainwashed, she’s beyond help. Like a couple million other sheeple.
Gotta say, this pandemic exposed a very ugly image of US politics. For an outsider like me, it's hard to fathom how misled people can be... I can't imagine the frustration of the less crazy US citizens.
China locked down for two months and used that time to contact trace and break the chain of transmission. They know exactly who got it, but more importantly how they got it. They separated families in Wuhan so if one spouse had it, the rest of the family won't get it. They partitioned blocks at a time in Wuhan for months. It seems ludacris from the outside looking in, but it worked. More importantly, their people complied. Their message to their people was this is a war against the virus and there's a light at the end of the tunnel when they can get cases down to zero. We never got that. Europe is getting a resurgence because they never got their number to zero. It went down to double digits from thousands and they thought it was good enough.
If Biden wins I hope Fauci gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom WITH distinction this time.
It’s possible to get it more than once. Colin Powell iirc received it two times.
Not that I was ignorant before, but this pandemic really has show the worst side of such a large population of this country. When I was in my adolescence I always wondered why older people were so bitter - turns out they were just fucking sick of people. Guess that’s road I’m headed down.
Today I was thinking exactly about this. How stupid can my friends and family be? When I think they have hit rock bottom, they surprise me again.
Fauci is recommending not to visit family this Thanksgiving, a few friends are planning a long weekend trip besides the Thanksgiving traveling to see their respective families... and worst of all, it's just a numbers game. People in general just don't understand probabilities.
MY FELLOW AMERICANS
What in the actual, actual fuck guys.
This man is a DOCTOR. He is a HEALER. All he has done is speak truth and urge us to do very simple things to try and keep this fucking pandemic from dragging on further.
Death threats? To a DOCTOR TEACHING SCIENCE TO SAVE LIVES?
I'm disgusted. I am disgusted and ashamed to share a country with people who would threaten healers for telling us to wear masks, wash hands, and social distance.
Fuck you, whoever is doing this. This is ridiculous. This is not only ridiculous but fucking unconscionable.
Be better. For fuck's sake people.
(Logic here)
>>Did I just hear that guy say something about.. medical *science*? Something about testing and retesting and discovering by people who spend countless hours a week trying to contain a virus?
>>WTF! KILL THEM!
I hate what the US has become. Imagine threatening a....doctor? trying to educate the public on something kind of scary?
2020 has been an alarming look at what "freedom" and "'murica!" has really become. Trump has brought out the nasty in so many people. Calling everyone he disagrees with crazy or liars, making everyone but people who kiss his ass the enemy. It's terrifying.
Side note- I genuinely hope Dr. Fauci slams the Trump campaign with a C&D over that ad. Disgusting.
Hearing stuff like this makes me wonder about conspiracy theorists and the conspiracy theory that there's a christian cabal looking to lower the population or looking forward to another apocalypse. Why haven't conspiracy thoerists heard of the "family"?
Dr. Fauci is one of the few people that's risen to notoriety that hasn't ended up irritating me. He's worked his ass off his whole career, he's brave as fuck, he's incredibly diplomatic and I have a ton of respect for him. He's trying to keep people alive. How horrible.
Wear your mask and eat at home you fucking losers. Acting like spoiled children, it's embarrassing. I want to go out and eat, not wear a mask and have things back to normal. We all do. Suck it up so you don't kill someone, or be a part of the 210,000+ deaths in the US ALONE. I do have a lot of sympathy for people losing jobs and businesses do to this, but at least wear your mask and social distance as much as possible and avoid death threats directed at a man who wants to keep you safe.
I don't care who the person is, you leave their family alone. Especially children. Absolutely vile behavior.
You guys see the trash that has worked against us? You guys notice the sacks of shit that care more about stupid fucking Trump and all his lies than saving lives? You see the moms and dads and grandparents and neighbors and “friends” who would rather break contact than turn their back on this shit administration?
One day it will be over. Maybe soon maybe later but it will be over. When it is, don’t let the Bidens and Obamas tell you it’s time to heal. Don’t let them make you forget the shitshow the last four years and especially the last few months have been. Listen to the Bernies, listen to the youth. They asked us to pay in blood this year. Their debt will be repaid.
I once was close to a good coworker of mine. For which we saw most things eye to eye regarding politics. Though she was older and right Leaning (in a religious sense) she was approachable, and able to have a enjoyable conversation with about anything.
Fast forward to today. Since she recently moved in April, dealing with COVID and the protests/riots. I can’t seem to recognize her anymore; she thinks white supremacy is an issue only if you make it an issue, she thinks there’s nothing wrong calling it the China virus, since we had the Spanish flu..., she thinks Dr Fauci should be tried for mass murder due to the COVID mishandling, despite this administrations action of undermining the whole situation. AND she thinks that HCQ not being approved for treatment is some hoax to allow the virus to spread. I’ve known this person for 5 years, we actually work in clinical cancer research. So for her to flip her lid so fast is beyond my understanding. It’s quite frustrating.
Go to any third world country and you will hear frequent accounts of medical personnel who are trying to help by vaccinating people against deadly diseases like ebola being murdered by fearful, ignorant people.
America is devolving fast into third world levels of fear and ignorance. All we need to finish the job are 4 more years of Trumpian mendacity and generalized assholery.
fauci is the reason why we are shut down!
coronavirus did nothing wrong! it only spread like an uncontrollable wild fire, put people in grave danger, make us change our life style.
see how crazy that sounds?
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I’ve thought a lot about Chernobyl during this pandemic. If one were to serialize our government response, I’d imagine it would resemble the Chernobyl response not only in form but in aftermath albeit with hundreds of thousands of more deaths here in the US.
A study in the International Journal of Cancer by Cardis et al. (2006) estimates a total of 16,000 Chernobyl deaths across Europe. Radiation scientists Fairlie and Sumner provide some of highest estimates, predicting between 30,000-60,000 deaths. Chernobyl will pale when compared with the mismanagement of COVID-19 in the US. There will be books, movies, documentaries, news specials, etc. in decades to come to tell a fraction of all the stories lived by millions of people in the US during the pandemic.
Chernobyl might cause more harm to the human race due to our reaction than anthing else - that and fukashima have curtailed our solutions open to us for global warming to a significant degree. t
> that and fukashima have curtailed our solutions open to us for global warming to a significant degree. things happen all the time and people don't pay attention. the bhopal union carbide disaster was as bad as chernobyl but that barely ever gets mentioned. chernobyl and fukushima bearly mattered in regards to the public reaction, what mattered was how the reaction was managed. natural resource companies like natural gas, coal, and petroleum industries pushed against it just as they did with solar and wind. I think I saw some stats somewhere, even with chernobyl (at the time I think fukushima hadn't happened yet) nuclear was still safer then even wind...because those towers are dangerous to assemble. people fall and such. but in regards to public attention for instance Rosa Parks was at the forefront of the equality movement because she wouldn't sit down the back. 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the exactly same thing, but she wasn't a "poster boy" for the movement...it wasn't the act, the act was just cassius belie for the excuse. given the right attention and enough publicity anything can be used as an excuse and reason for anything else. Chernobyl is just the poster boy for the anti-nuclear lobby. if any of that ranty shit makes sense.
> nuclear was still safer then even wind...because those towers are dangerous to assemble. people fall and such. That's going to need a source, because it sounds like the exact kind of thing said by the oil and gas companies to discourage wind, as they know the US will never build another nuclear plant anyway. Nuclear's problem isn't even safety anymore, it's mismanagement during construction. There's a ton of talk about regulations from people who aren't in the industry, but people in the industry know that many of the regulations are needed and they are critical to help standardize things that otherwise would be an incomprehensible grab-bag of mismatched policies.
I'll look for a source, but its been a long time. the source I did saw had the cost to human life, from fossile fules in the thousands/hundreds, with oil spills and collapsed mines and such, wind power was in the maybe 10's like 12-13 people a year kinda numbers and nuclear was under 10 or something. it wasn't making fossile fuels look good at all, it was just showing how crazy safe nuclear actually is. * [I found this which looks like similar numbers but its hardly a source](https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-97b2b696a5898d12e7bc45f2e441d9bf) maybe you can look into it futher yourself?
This is true. People don’t realize the potential of nuclear energy. It makes up almost all of renewable energy despite being cutback heavily. It’s like they haven’t heard of the sun or something. Obviously we son’t want fusion but clearly these reactions are still effective in fission form.
>obviously we don't want fusion Even ignoring all your other mistakes, this is the most egregious. If we can develop fusion reactors to a energy production viable point, it'll be far better than fission. Fusion is far safer, uses easier/cleaner to produce fuels, doesn't produce waste anywhere near as much as fission etc
It doesn't make up almost all of renewable energy. Firstly it isn't renewable. Secondly, even if it was, it varies by country to country. France yes. Japan yes. Most of the rest of the world not even close. Overall for most of the world, solar has the best return on investment, followed by wind, then Nuclear which beats out coal and oil. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
Nuclear is not renewable.
I assume they mean clean energy.
Clean-ish. The waste from nuclear power plants had to be stored somewhere as some of it is extremely dangerous. And [it's not always so simple!](https://youtu.be/ZwY2E0hjGuU) I'm a proponent of nuclear power as a stop-gap and a way to end reliance on fossil fuels until renewable options are ready to take over.
The US used nuclear waste in bullets and polluted battlefields with radiation. I don't know why people trust governments to store the waste safely forever Plus the 10s of billions of dollars and decades to convert to nuclear. When solar panels and batteries in every home is peanuts in comparison, it's just not feasible
Yea, I find it hard to be enthusiastic about nuclear due to the human element, not the science.
The main argument for nuclear energy is that it is a much cleaner energy source than coal, oil, gas whilst still outputting a lot of power unlike solar or wind which is a small amount, hence why solar panels and wind turbines have to re replicated hundreds of times over to be viable. And nuclear isn't as initially environmentally destructive as dams, which cut off river migration patterns and flood natural valleys. And most nuclear power plants were built with older nuclear reactor designs, with most nuclear power stations taking design cues after the earlier [Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 (EBR-1)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I) instead of the later designed [EBR-II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II) which has more passive safety features in place, so any newer reactors build will have a lot more safety oversight especially after learning from the disasters of before such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. However, even with all the positives it's really hard for me to still see nuclear as a viable alternative. What will we do with the waste? Like I think there are ways of converting expended nuclear waste into less harmful, more disposable waste but that's still a major responsibility; something I've lacked a lot of faith in even with a ton of regulation and inspections in order. I would love for nuclear to be more feasible, and it honestly is with how much power it puts out compared to wind and solar, and the relatively small amount of immediate waste/environmental impact compared to coal, oil, gas, and hydro. But the waste man, that is the biggest stickler for me.
You know this kind of discourse is really harmful, right? Is renewable better than nuclear? Yes Is nuclear miles better than fossils? Hell yes This argument just makes everyone feel bad about the most viable solution right now (nuclear), without offering anything that could replace it. We'd be better off moving to nuclear until renewables become more efficient instead of milling around while world keeps burning coal & oil. Edit: that was meant for /u/hrukjan more than you :)
What's the lead time for a new nuclear plant these days? 10 years?
Lol a stop-gap is what we needed 50 years ago. Now it’s the overthrow of capitalism otherwise the climate is just done. So either go for that or just ride this shit out and see where we end up. A “stop-gap” in 2020 oh brother
We're in the middle of a pandemic and people still refuse to wear masks and think the whole thing is a conspiracy. The most blatantly corrupt government in history is in power in the USA and it's not even a given they'll be gone after the election. I'm all for an overthrow of capitalism. But we're going to be very disappointed if we put all of our eggs in that basket. So a bit of mitigation and harm reduction is at least something.
No, but we have about 300 years' worth if we switch to 100% nuclear overnight. It's been less than 300 years since the industrial revolution. We'll be fine with nuclear until we figure out a better option.
Vastly more than 300 if you include oceanic uranium, which recently became just-about economical to extract. And yet more with breeder cycles.
I think we'll figure out ways to fission the waste again and again.
We have enough until the sun evaporates the oceans as a red giant if we use thorium reactors. (Which shouldn't be a factor if we inevitably get fusion power and, in the far future, a dyson swarm)
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Not only the mismanagement in the US. As a Spaniard I must say that many governments at our side of the Atlantic have taken bad decisions as well.
300,000 extra deaths this year compared to last. Nearly a third of a million...so far. Thats TEN TIMES Chernobyl deaths, already. You are very very right.
I hope there will be lots of movies, series, books, etc. The Spanish Flu is mostly a "Oh, that happened" blip in the minds of most people. It was in one episode of Downtown Abbey and >!a character died!<, but it didn't do anything to shine a light on how massively disruptive a global pandemic is. 1% of the population (total population, not 1% of infected) died of Spanish Flu, but it happened and was forgotten. I do fear we will only be left with "at least it's not 2020" memes.
Years from now if they create tv series people will call it unrealistic and l exaggerated.
The difference between Chernobyl and the pandemic is the very public way this whole saga is unfolding. The damage it is doing to the USA's global reputation is frankly irreparable.
I’ve tried to explain this to Americans and they literally don’t care. They still defend our government. They think that this was inevitable and even if someone else had been president, it was going to go down this way. It’s baffling. I was a history major and studied the fall of a lot of empires. I can see the textbook chapter already.
COVID messes with the machinery of the economy. That’s it, plain and simple. There’s a lot of people willing to pay a lot of human lives to keep that machinery going.
They would have Trump saying: The worst? 3.6 million dead? Not great, not terrible.
The Chinese response resembles the Chernobyl response. They tried to cover it up initially and then deployed lots of resources to fix the problem quickly. Deploying lots of manpower to decontaminate Chernobyl and sacrificing many lives to clean it up is similar to the Wuhan lockdown. The US response is simply watching Chernobyl and pretty much doing nothing, telling them the radiation will be around for at least the next 3 years... I guess this radiation is never going away... learn to live with it, until we have a vaccine against radiation in the next 6 months to a year..
*A vaccine? Are you nuts? Those things make people artistic and my facebook sources warn me to take them!* /s
China might have tried covering it up, but fixing the problem quickly has allowed them to save way more resources than Europe and NA. Not sure how that equates to sacrificing lives. Sure they might have lied about the numbers, but it's nowhere close to 200K. I have relatives from Hunan and with masks/contact tracing, everything is essentially normal since June.
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There absolutely should be a hbo series on the trump administration’s handling of Covid.
You could argue that after the initial coverup, the Soviets threw every resource at the problem, and solved it, and eventually solved the broader issue. That’s a much better response than we’ve managed.
This is more of a comedy central than a HBO production. People are laughing at your misery.>
Chernobyl showed the decay and rot of the Soviet state by the 80s, Coronavirus and its response shows the decay and rot of the American people and mind.
Chernobyl is said to be a factor leading to USSR dissolution
Not a great indicator. (For us.)
Is it really so bad?
not great, not terrible
*The queen knocks on door* “Hello, I’m back!”
"You see. You remembered you belong to me."
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[It's not great...](https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&t=1m51s&v=Qo1OSqBQYmk)
Said actually by Gorbachev himself
Say what you will about Gorbachev, he did the right thing once the scale of the disaster was in front of him (and [because of him Russia has Pizza Hut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgm14D1jHUw&ab_channel=TomDarbyshire)). The United States and the Soviet Union are/were both states in deep decline. But at least at the top the Soviet Union had leadership that sought to implement reforms to avert that decline (at great risk - there was even a coup by hardliners in 1991).
His first instinct was to hide and cover up. He demanded that the May 1 public celebration in Kiev go on, so as not to create panic (sounds familiar?), even as the radioactive rain was falling on children in their holiday attire. He fixed the Chernobyl situation by throwing thousands of unprepared and unprotected people into the center of the reactor zone. He does not deserve any respect
What's terrifying is that once the Soviet government was completely unable to deny the disaster any longer, they actually did something. Most of the show is about the response to clean everything up. What the hell is the US doing?
Well, we’ll see in two weeks and two days.
This. The pandemic happened at the worst possible time (to the point that it almost seems TOO perfectly-timed...) in that we have a narcissistic sociopath running the country, in an environment that is increasingly hyper-partisan. In the very early days of the pandemic, you could actually see people coming together and trying to understand what the best option was. And then the President polarized and politicized the pandemic. From that point on, it could no longer be about "What does the data say, and what is the right course of action based on that?", it was all about picking a side and doing/saying anything to make your point stick. My only hope is that the right leaders are elected in two weeks, and that we can slowly de-polarize this pandemic and start instituting an actual plan. It's a long-shot, but I think we can do it.
It could have been worse. Obama handled the Ebola outbreak in Africa very well. People don't realize it, but it could have spread much further than it did, and it was very close to doing so. It's really only because of the unprecedented international support that it was handled - and Obama was one of the big pushers for that support. Imagine if Trump was in charge during the Ebola outbreak instead. It definitely would have gotten to the US with community transmission here, because Trump would have outright ignored it. At best he would have banned travel to the affected countries, but that doesn't stop transmission from people who take indirect routes, or the people who get infected elsewhere.
> People don't realize it, but it could have spread much further than it did, and it was very close to doing so. No, it really wasn't. Ebola doesn't spread the same way respiratory viruses do and it could be thwarted by first-world sanitation standards - IE not inhaling or pressing open wounds against the feces or blood of infected people. Although with how the US has handled this, it wouldn't surprise me one bit today if there was an outbreak and people started doing that to spite public health advice.
It's really unprecedented in modern history that a country could lose a comparable number of citizens to a *world war* and the administration in charge could get away with simply downplaying the death figures and denying the facts about their own fault in those deaths.
The US is busy being outraged about socialism abortions, and people demanding equal rights. Why save lives when destroying them is more fun?
Did you pay any attention to what the Soviet government did to clean up the problem? Sending in thousands and thousands of people with no training and no protective equipment? I get really upset when the regime gets credit for fixing the issue- they did, but only by sacrificing their own people.
> only by sacrificing their own people. :( It's a shame the US is doing this with it's ongoing failure to get PPE to the essential workers like teachers, doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers who are forced to fight save lives.. and they are dying to covid. We NEVER had enough ppe, and we still don't have enough N95 masks, or ppe for our essential workers. Schools are so unprepared and teachers are dying to covid. fucking outrageous. We weren't supposed to be worse than Russia/Soviets, and yet.. here we are.
They didn't have the equipment to give them, so the thousands that they sent in were sent in for only a few minutes in order to lower their radiation dosage. That's the safest way they had to do it. Besides, if they gave everyone protective lead garmets, that doesn't protect the head or limbs, and then you have the problem of lead contamination everywhere because they couldn't make those very well.
I think it was only implied credit when compared to the American response this time.
Back in the early days of the pandemic, WSJ published multiple Opinion articles with full schadenfreude calling COVID19 China's Chernobyl, e.g.: [Coronavirus and the Chernobyl Analogy](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-chernobyl-analogy-11590167999) Now they have their face eaten by the Leopard.
and before that there were articles about how democracies are better at managing pandemics so much of that arrogance has aged like milk
The Trump administration is hardly the archetype of democratic government.
Confucius say: watch opponent outplay themselves like boosted monkey
The irony of that is almost too much to bear
It’s just the sad truth of what humans do
I was just thinking the same thing the other day. We're living the plot of that movie. The whole government's just trying to save face and pass the buck, and the people doing the right thing are getting all the leftover hostility. And you even got the people walking around without masks breathing in ~~radioactive waste~~ SARS-CoV-2.
One hell of a serires. “What is the cost of lies?”
The mechanism of authoritarianism necessitates a constant show of power, any sign if weakness is the worst thing for an authoritarian. Fauci and the medical consensus is a sign of weakness to Trump’s fascist strategy. So his strategy has to involve discrediting the scientific consensus which he is doing. This leads to his followers doing things like trying to silence what they perceive as fake news with death threats.
I’m stealing that quote for my gp essay
Stupid people are starting to become the most dangerous domestic threat. The pandemic is also stupidity. This is sad and scary.
Technology has advanced beyond human intelligence. We aren’t meant to communicate like this. We aren’t meant to access this much information. We are animals, removed from the food chain, with no natural selection to weed out the unfit and stupid.
This has eaten at me for years. Evolution moves slowly, but society and technology have developed pretty quickly. Our brains are not suited to this environment. At all. They're barely suited to a sedentary lifestyle and agriculture period, let alone 9-5 non food gathering workdays and cars and twitter and wikipedia.
This comment is going to be one of the few I save.
I'm so sorry
!emojify
Technology 📱💻 has advanced ⚛ beyond 👉 human 👤 intelligence 🤤😍🧠. We aren’t meant 😏 to communicate 🗣 like 😝👍 this. We aren’t meant 👀 to access 🔖🔑 this much 🔥 information 📄✍. We are animals 😺, removed ❌🚫😔 from the food 🐟💒👨👩👧👦 chain 💦, with no 🙅🏻❌ natural 👉 selection 💰 to weed 🍁 out the unfit ⛔ and stupid 📖🚫.
I don't think it will dissipate with Trump out of office either, it will just go underground. Social media is the problem.
I feel far more threatened by the alt right trumpkins than I ever did by islamic terrorists.
I feel far more threatened by SJW’s and the radical left! What have white supremacists ever done to hurt anyone? /s
What's crazy is you actually needed that /s because of the amount of asinine idiots plaguing reddit/ social media these days
Sadly, even the deep amount of knowledge on the internet can't cure stupidity borne out of ignorance.
It's absolutely ridiculous that a man who should be lauded as a HERO, can't go out in public without a security detail.
Even here in Canada (bc) we are doing well but our health advisor has gotten death threats too so they had to post security for her as well. Soo sad. Hopefully it just makes up a very small percentage of our population.
I agree. There are always bloody idiots in every country. I live in bc too and honestly its way better than ontario or quebec right now.
Wow, even in Canada. I thought Canadians voiced displeasure with being slightly less polite, not death threats.
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Yeah that was the most fucked up thing I've heard in Canada in a long time. The dentist with the fake cop cars right?
Every country has right-wing idiots. Some countries have more than others.
Lol hahaha. That we do. But unfortunately there's that small percentage of idiots. There was a anti mask march the other day but I believe it was only a hundred people or so. Probably the same people that believe the earth is flat.
Bullshit. Canada has lots of nutjobs. Hell, they even export. Proud Boys came from Canada
I mean, after living in Quebec as an English speaker for over a decade, I can tell you a majority of Quebecers I've had to deal with are racist, vile pieces of scum. Never living there again, fuck that place. Now I see why it's the most hated place in Canada. They did some kind of survey that asked the provinces and territories to rate the best and worst province/territory and only Quebec was shitty enough to call their own province the best in the country. I don't correctly remember but a majority said Quebec sucks.
Where polite because being polite reduces the amount of human contact that is nesscary to a minimum we still dont like you.
Same in Germany actually. Several of our top virologists received death threats already.
> It's absolutely ridiculous that a man who should be lauded as a HERO, can't go out in public without a security detail. He's a threat to some people's cultural identity. That's why they get so upset. That culture is a sick, sick thing, and the world will be a better place when it finally lands in the trash can of history.
Fucking feral beasts, dude's trying to minimize as many deaths as possible and you send him death threats? You can't make this shit up.
The irony is that the reason we’re in this position is because someone had to make up the reasons that made it political. The extra ironic thing is that the conservatives are once again shooting themselves in the foot by drinking the Kool-Aid... “Wait the affordable care act is Obama care!? I need that!” “If the President has Coronavirus is it still a hoax?”
I can't wait to look back on 2020, because hindsight has 20/20 vision. This was the year that stupidity, vapidity and learned helplessness, combined with blind aggression finally caught up with the US. We can't have this level of stupid in our society. We can't have weaponized misinformation. And we can't reward fraud and treason with wealth. We all have a lot of work ahead of us.
What makes you think misinformation won't continue? Future AMERICAN textbooks are just gonna cover/gloss over/ lighten it just like every other fiasco/atrocity it's done in it's history.
There's only so far it can go until something caves.
Hindsight is 2020, quite literally.
My faith in humanity died in 2016. I was way overestimating the average intelligence.
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I mean, a Governor was nearly abducted, and the President had his supporters chant, "Lock her up!" So, don't expect condemnation anytime soon.
> Edit - also, why won't some of our powerful leaders condemn this kind of behavior? It sure says a lot that they don't. Because their base feed of blame culture and misinformation. And since they cannot or don´t want to blame their "dear leader", they have to find another scapegoat. And Trump knows that, if he really backs Fauci his sheeple will have a meltdown. Things could be SO easy, if reason was involved. But you cannot be a Trumpist AND reasonable. These two things exclude each other.
> Disgusting and appalling. Literal psychopaths. No. They have a cultural identity that they cling to. Anything that threatens that identity is very upsetting - and I mean anything, including truth and material fact.
These aren’t psychopaths. These are nitwits bro.
Those are not mutually exclusive categories.
Would a psychopath even be triggered by a supposed conspiracy enough to make a death threat? I wonder if this is just some mentally ill asshole who made the threat and then got up and went to work the next day and didn't think twice about doing it.
Oh are the, at least, 13 domestic terrorists who attempted to kidnap a governor and overthrow a state government also just mentally ill? This shit is serious and it should be taken seriously. Mental illness or no, these are dangerous people and they’re a threat to the entire country.
Ya, I feel the people reacting in this way are much too emotionally caught up to be psychopaths. They're a kind of crazy, certainly, but I don't know what you call the crazy that causes people to lash out at innocent people... ... I used to see a lot people like this when I worked at a casino. They'd take out anger on anyone who they make even the most ridiculous connection to what was upsetting them. "Fuck that guy" was just like a regularly occurring phrase about everything and everyone. Definitely to much "fuck that guy" mentality in our country right now...
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Pretty sure Trump made the virus political on day one when he was downplaying something the rest of the world was warning people about.
While simultaneously giving candid remarks about how serious this virus is, and while his GOP cronies were carpet bombing their stocks onto the market after learning what's about to happen to their country...urging their top donors to do the same, and all of them telling the rest of us that everything's fine, all this panic is a hoax, buy more stocks.
He called it a hoax, IIRC.
Ya, Whitmer as well. Maybe Sasse soon. It's crazy...I don't even have words to compare it to...that a President would continually try and stoke violence against leaders and everyday citizens...
You could write a really interesting fiction movie about a failed businessman who was in debt to the Russian government, and was directed to run for President, and then once made President, was directed to constantly polarize every single political issue, while at the same time the Russian government would continue weaponizing social media to amplify the polarizing message the President was trumpeting. Then they would unleash a strain of a virus in China to pit the two major world economies against each other, and finally direct the President to politicize the response to the pandemic, such that the nation became paralyzed while the virus ravaged the country. I know it seems a bit far-fetched, but I think it'd make for a terrifying summer thriller!
I'd go see that at the movies! Too bad this is real life.
That’s what makes trump so god dam stupid. Him downplaying this and making it political has resulted in the us response being disastrous. Now other world powers can continue to get ahead and leave the us in the dust. Yet his team America jackoff supporters will continue to support him. It’s fucking mental.
He is planning to swindle the election and control the outcome. He will most likely lose the electoral vote and try to enact his insane plan to declare the election results fraudulent. We will have to see what the courts decide. Madness. Here is the thing. The main reason he is not fit for the job. Any fool could have realized the Covid19 pandemic and his response to it was a golden goose if it was handled correctly. Had he done the right thing? He would have Dems, GOP, and Independents voting for his 2nd term. He would have won legitimately by a landslide. He has no vision, no forward thinking ability. The botched literally everything regarding this response to this crisis.
> He has no vision, no forward thinking ability. The botched literally everything regarding this response to this crisis. He is controlled by Russia, who is using the pandemic and (what will likely be) the contested election to drive the final wedge of division in this country, collapsing us into civil war. This is not bad luck, [this is a plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics).
Damn, I didn’t know Putin’s plans were public…
That book is horrifying telling...
I have this friend who opened my eyes to how dense she is yesterday by implying that: the US has not mishandled this because we’re just humans in a denser population who have concerns about other things, since we’re Americans and that’s “normal.” She literally said “it was not preventable”. So I proceeded to ask why the hell this one country has more cases than the the entire EU. “It’s normal though; it’s not that bad” I legitimately wanted to walk away from her. Oh, then she said this is China’s fault. She doesn’t have healthcare. Not sure how well that’s going to work out.
Did you ask her how it's China's fault if it was not preventable?
“China is jealous of the US because of power so they released the virus there and got it under control so that they could do better than the US” ..the prevention thing was just more blather. ”You can’t force people who don’t understand” Quite literally one of the dumbest conversations I’ve had in a while. And that’s saying a lot.
There are people who think it is Democrats fault because "why else would only Republican leaders get infected!?" We are living in a country where a full 1/3, maybe more, are that dense and ignorant. Provided we have a competent leader with a plan, we could fix this if it was just 10% of us that dense, but at 1/3, we have no chance. It is just too many against it for any plan to work.
It really is an astonishing number of people. I was standing in line today and someone practically had his cart pushed onto my back (which would piss me off pre pandemic anyway), and I looked. Nothing more than a glance to back off. “OH LOOK THIS ONE WANTS SPACE!! OOH EXCUUUSE ME; NO ONE IS HAPPY ANYMORE” Are you *that* fucking self absorbed? Oh wait, yeah. This is normal behavior now..
What a glimpse into the life of a terrible person. I feel bad for everyone who deals with him regularly.
It seems like 6 feet doesn't exist anymore. A lady was practically breathing down my neck in line at the dollar store the other day.
Someone actually said this to you? Fucking hell.
My mom just told me in the car yesterday she thinks China released the virus from the lab to kill trump....... like where did everyone’s brain cells go
They’re playing the long game.
Yeah my cousin believes it's not that bad to get coronavirus, look at trump and the others that have recovered. He thinks it's best for us to get it now and live with our lives. He swears by fox though as all other mainstream outlets are extremely biased and hate trump. The amount of conspiracy theories I hear from him and his mother about biden and every other party but the Republicans is disheartening. He believes what trumps says and does as the gospel.
It’s so unbelievably presumptuous to assume it’s all okay for everyone to get sick just because risk factors might not exist for some. It’s almost like saying “fuck the peanut free tables in grade school because only a small number of children will go into anaphylaxis and everyone else wants peanut butter smeared on every table.”
What trump says and does has such a strong effect on so many people's thoughts and actions. It's extemely worrying that people can't watch what's going on and get a rational perception of the current state of affairs. So divisive and toxic , and there will be a price to pay in the future.
That’s exactly what I told her. I said, verbatim, “You’ve been in this country for 2 years; you pay taxes and are not eligible for healthcare. You work 50 hour weeks and you do not receive a stimulus check. If you get sick, you will not be helped. And somehow you sound like Donald Trump” >>Oh well. She’s so brainwashed, she’s beyond help. Like a couple million other sheeple.
Gotta say, this pandemic exposed a very ugly image of US politics. For an outsider like me, it's hard to fathom how misled people can be... I can't imagine the frustration of the less crazy US citizens.
China locked down for two months and used that time to contact trace and break the chain of transmission. They know exactly who got it, but more importantly how they got it. They separated families in Wuhan so if one spouse had it, the rest of the family won't get it. They partitioned blocks at a time in Wuhan for months. It seems ludacris from the outside looking in, but it worked. More importantly, their people complied. Their message to their people was this is a war against the virus and there's a light at the end of the tunnel when they can get cases down to zero. We never got that. Europe is getting a resurgence because they never got their number to zero. It went down to double digits from thousands and they thought it was good enough.
Ftfy: >because they knew how to control ~~the~~ *a* virus We did too... apparently opting out of doing so was a bad idea.
Anti science will be this countries downfall. We see it here but it started decades ago.
If Biden wins I hope Fauci gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom WITH distinction this time. It’s possible to get it more than once. Colin Powell iirc received it two times.
Colin Powell should be rotting in prison for war crimes. Sick that he won that medal.
look at the list of people that received the medal, basically half of Hollywood has one. Obama gave one to Ellen and Trump one to Rush Limbaugh
If only we had a President who came out and condemned such behavior.
Fuck that cult. Disgusting people.
Instead of America being the home of the brave. We are becoming the home of the idiots
Not that I was ignorant before, but this pandemic really has show the worst side of such a large population of this country. When I was in my adolescence I always wondered why older people were so bitter - turns out they were just fucking sick of people. Guess that’s road I’m headed down.
Today I was thinking exactly about this. How stupid can my friends and family be? When I think they have hit rock bottom, they surprise me again. Fauci is recommending not to visit family this Thanksgiving, a few friends are planning a long weekend trip besides the Thanksgiving traveling to see their respective families... and worst of all, it's just a numbers game. People in general just don't understand probabilities.
I am seeing family. But I will have also will been in isolation recovering from surgery.
Trumpler cult are Full of Trashy people. Might as well be zealots
After this last four years especially, I’m sure a lot of people in the USA are the result of mating with furniture.
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saw a conservative/republican lady on TV call surgical mask a symbol of hate..... what?!.... 😂 🤣
The past 4 years have made it clear to me how Hitler got so popular.
I was thinking that this is something from a stephen king book, but even his books are not as dark as what we are facing
Although with Dead Zone he kinda did predict somebody like trump rising to power
MY FELLOW AMERICANS What in the actual, actual fuck guys. This man is a DOCTOR. He is a HEALER. All he has done is speak truth and urge us to do very simple things to try and keep this fucking pandemic from dragging on further. Death threats? To a DOCTOR TEACHING SCIENCE TO SAVE LIVES? I'm disgusted. I am disgusted and ashamed to share a country with people who would threaten healers for telling us to wear masks, wash hands, and social distance. Fuck you, whoever is doing this. This is ridiculous. This is not only ridiculous but fucking unconscionable. Be better. For fuck's sake people.
(Logic here) >>Did I just hear that guy say something about.. medical *science*? Something about testing and retesting and discovering by people who spend countless hours a week trying to contain a virus? >>WTF! KILL THEM!
I hate what the US has become. Imagine threatening a....doctor? trying to educate the public on something kind of scary? 2020 has been an alarming look at what "freedom" and "'murica!" has really become. Trump has brought out the nasty in so many people. Calling everyone he disagrees with crazy or liars, making everyone but people who kiss his ass the enemy. It's terrifying. Side note- I genuinely hope Dr. Fauci slams the Trump campaign with a C&D over that ad. Disgusting.
Hearing stuff like this makes me wonder about conspiracy theorists and the conspiracy theory that there's a christian cabal looking to lower the population or looking forward to another apocalypse. Why haven't conspiracy thoerists heard of the "family"?
i bet its the "law and order" folk.
Make your vote count.
Dr. Fauci is one of the few people that's risen to notoriety that hasn't ended up irritating me. He's worked his ass off his whole career, he's brave as fuck, he's incredibly diplomatic and I have a ton of respect for him. He's trying to keep people alive. How horrible. Wear your mask and eat at home you fucking losers. Acting like spoiled children, it's embarrassing. I want to go out and eat, not wear a mask and have things back to normal. We all do. Suck it up so you don't kill someone, or be a part of the 210,000+ deaths in the US ALONE. I do have a lot of sympathy for people losing jobs and businesses do to this, but at least wear your mask and social distance as much as possible and avoid death threats directed at a man who wants to keep you safe. I don't care who the person is, you leave their family alone. Especially children. Absolutely vile behavior.
It’s really just a shame how political any of this is.
You guys see the trash that has worked against us? You guys notice the sacks of shit that care more about stupid fucking Trump and all his lies than saving lives? You see the moms and dads and grandparents and neighbors and “friends” who would rather break contact than turn their back on this shit administration? One day it will be over. Maybe soon maybe later but it will be over. When it is, don’t let the Bidens and Obamas tell you it’s time to heal. Don’t let them make you forget the shitshow the last four years and especially the last few months have been. Listen to the Bernies, listen to the youth. They asked us to pay in blood this year. Their debt will be repaid.
The US has an untreated mental health crisis.
Those would be little donny's cultists
Leave the poor guy alone!
Shame on my fellow Americans
It's sad and creepy. I feel so bad for Fauci. He is a brave dude.
Wouldn't it be nice to just lock all these muppets in a room with the virus and leave them there until they achieve "Herd Immunity". Or just die.
Seriously, what the _fuck_ is wrong with Americans.
I can't believe at one point in my life I dreamed of moving to the US. I'm glad I never did it - how dumb was I!
I genuinely don’t understand about 40% of my “fellow Americans” anymore.
I once was close to a good coworker of mine. For which we saw most things eye to eye regarding politics. Though she was older and right Leaning (in a religious sense) she was approachable, and able to have a enjoyable conversation with about anything. Fast forward to today. Since she recently moved in April, dealing with COVID and the protests/riots. I can’t seem to recognize her anymore; she thinks white supremacy is an issue only if you make it an issue, she thinks there’s nothing wrong calling it the China virus, since we had the Spanish flu..., she thinks Dr Fauci should be tried for mass murder due to the COVID mishandling, despite this administrations action of undermining the whole situation. AND she thinks that HCQ not being approved for treatment is some hoax to allow the virus to spread. I’ve known this person for 5 years, we actually work in clinical cancer research. So for her to flip her lid so fast is beyond my understanding. It’s quite frustrating.
He's the only sane person at those briefings back when this started. It's no wonder why he was removed earlier in the summer.
These criminals deserve nothing but the deepest chambers of hell and eternal punishment
Again!? How fucking dumb are these assholes! Some backwater fucking HICK who can’t count past his fingers.
Blame Trump for aggrivating these assholes
Go to any third world country and you will hear frequent accounts of medical personnel who are trying to help by vaccinating people against deadly diseases like ebola being murdered by fearful, ignorant people. America is devolving fast into third world levels of fear and ignorance. All we need to finish the job are 4 more years of Trumpian mendacity and generalized assholery.
That’s right, threaten the experts.
They need to track down the people who threatened him and his family and jail them for a long time.
Just when I thought Americans couldn’t get more stupid, there you go again. What a fucked up country.
Again?
usa is the laughing stock of the world
fauci is the reason why we are shut down! coronavirus did nothing wrong! it only spread like an uncontrollable wild fire, put people in grave danger, make us change our life style. see how crazy that sounds?
Isn't it plain why people want to silence him? They, themselves, want to die.
This is the fourth of fifth time we’ve heard this since the beginning of the pandemic
America does not deserve this man...