Nobeernolife told some of the changes, but how about the train wreck that has happened in the Middle East? Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan do have some effect on what has happened here later. Not just that some of my reservist friends have seen war in Afghanistan, which was quite different from the usual Blue Beret missions. — ssu

These are all wars to maintain the status quo. They're meaningful to those receiving the bombs of course but for the West they mean very little. Life goes on. I mean structural changes to society.

The last meaningful change was the labour participation of women, which has caused significant changes to the social structure, changing gender roles and dynamics. The light bulb. Washing machine. Industrial revolution. Moving from feudalism to democracies.

So in that respect the fall of the Berlin Wall was a fundamental change for Eastern Germany but not West Germany. Does that make sense to you? So a change in the social or economic constitution of a country?

You're pretty new here so you don't know what gets my blood pressure up. I certainly don't swear with cutesy made up names for people when I'm angry. It's all in good fun. This particular example would just be the typical corruption endemic to US politics. Another body that's sick I suppose.

Trump on 17 March :

“I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

Trump on 18 March :

The coronavirus "snuck up on us,” adding that it is “a very unforeseen thing.”

Which one is it?

Oh wait, they're both bullshit.

Yeah, if it comes from OrangeOtan, I know. If it came from someone you like, you would gloat about it.
Anyway,,,,, — Nobeernolife

Glad Orange-oetan is sticking with you. Also, I'm a reflexive kind of guy and quite allergic to arrogance. I don't like arrogant people, so there's no world where I would think differently.

In any case, in light of the tons of lies Trump had already uttered, the idea his disinformation is "really just" optimism is rather disingenuous.

https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Remind me again. TDS stands for Trump Defense Syndrome endemic under Trumpanzees right?

I don't see why companies ought to be bailed out. If taxpayers save companies that would otherwise go bankrupt, they should own it. It's the typical corruption that allows the vested interests to have cake and eat it too.

No, I said that if you have a travel ban for foreign nationals is doesn't make sense to not check us nationals coming in. Something a lot of countries have done. Including "shit hole" countries.

Yeah, but no. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/newpage_00032.html

Whether I'm hypocrite or snowflake notwithstanding, the point is that there is a consistent disdain for Trump that goes beyond rationality, even to the point of hoping for his failure despite who may suffer in his path. The truth is that the US has controlled the virus as well as any other nation so far and hasn't shown any greater ineptitude than the others. There's also the lingering question about the malaria drug, which might show greater promise than expected and that would not have gotten as much traction as it did without Trump. — Hanover

Again, if you think I'm hoping for that, you haven't been reading my posts. I'm warning you and I have been warning you and Tiff since before Trump was elected, that the man is a danger. That it requires something like a pandemic to make people acutely aware of that fact is a tragedy. The malaria drug has had hastily (and therefore badly executed) phase 1 testing in other countries well before Trump picked up in it. I already posted about it on February 18th (the effect of chloroquine was already indicated in labs in 2004).

About 75% of drugs that pass phase 1 are ultimately not brought to market because they are not safe enough. So we can hope, but on the basis of what we know about drug development it would be pure luck if (hydro)chloroquine is indeed the solution.

hmmm... You're asking me this because you are at a loss of examples of countries who are managing the disease well? What did Japan do? Or South Korea? I have examples via LinkedIn from peers across the world that were traveling the past few months, where even relatively poor African countries had a health questionnaire and measured temperatures of everyone arriving and then returning to the US with no check whatsoever. So while instituting a travel ban on China (for foreign nationals), but combine that with not checking people coming in is simply incoherent. In the one hand you acknowledge a problem in China but on the other you don't check anyone (US nationals) coming in.

So, life as normal. These are changes in degree, not fundamental. The economic structure in society remains the same, the real politik approach remained the same and our solutions to the same problems remain the same (throw a bucket of cash at it).

How did terrorism change our lives? I haven't experienced any fundamental changes except air travel became more of a hassle.

If it's anybody you know, I'd advise them to fly via Schiphol. The Netherlands is still slightly more relaxed than surrounding countries.

What's retarded is not seeing Trump's culpability in the fiasco running its course in the US right now and instead you resort to calling me names twice. Nice. I get you had 12 hour shift just now and you're tired and I'm not bothered by the name calling. But I'm bothered with the fact too many Americans are still not prepared to call a spade a spade.

Right. So if I can divert a train from only hitting 50 people instead of 100, I'm not to blame if it hits all 100 of them? Sound ethics. Carry on. :up:

As to this thread. Nothing is going to change except some technocratic tweedling and fiddling to make sure the system continues to work with as little interruption as possible next time. So we'll have more extensive, international cooperation and procedures specifically with respect to the next pandemic.

Also, can I just express my incredulity for the ingenuity of how nature works at times? One person gets infected somewhere in China, probably in November, and within 5 months it cripples economies across the world, kills over 15,000+ people (and counting) and the little fucker is invisible to the eye. This is just as mind-boggling to me as having a hydrogen star implode into a denser star and continuing to implode until it's fusing iron atoms.

It's wrong. On the official Dutch website from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

https://www.nederlandwereldwijd.nl/landen/frankrijk/reizen/reisadvies#anker-verkeersveiligheid

The relevant translation:

Coronavirus
Follow the advice of the local government and keep a close eye on (local) news.

Traveling to and through France is only possible with a valid reason. There is limited public transport and air traffic. The external borders of the Schengen area are closed, except for Europeans with a permanent residence in the EU or returning nationals.

Travelers traveling to or through France must fill in (or transfer) the attestation de déplacement dérogatoire (statement of reason for relocation) and state the reason for the trip (tick the 4th box - déplacements pour motif familial impérieux - and add it manually: retour aux Pays-Bas).

Whether you meet the "valid reason" criterium is another matter.

There are no closed borders as far as I'm aware. I can jump in my car and drive to France right now. Gas stations are still open as well. It's not smart and air travel is a bitch right now but if you must... possible.

One event that struck me was how fast the Schengen agreement was effectively abandoned in Europe. Suddenly all the countries remembered that they have borders. Merkel's liberal Germany closed down its borders You think people will forget once the virus passes? On the contrary. Everyone will understand that the moment there's a crisis, it's nations and borders that matter and not lip-service to free movement. That lesson will not be forgotten. — fishfry

What gives you that idea? I can still travel from the Netherlands to other EU countries without problems provided that I meet the requirements of a lock down in any receiving State.

OK snowflake. Or instead you can take that comment in the context that it was made, with fellow Trumpanzees defending the orange-oetan's ineptitude with "typical optimism" and accusing others of "politising" and creating "hoaxes". Where's your outrage at those games, huh?

You can eradicate false positives by retesting. In the Netherlands each sample is tested twice by separate laboraties to lower the likelihood of false positives. In case of contrary outcomes, you test again.

If you think I think it's a game, you haven't read my posts.

Thanks to Trump, the USA seems to be winning the corona Olympics. Now in third place.

No harm no foul. He was just being optimistic. :shade:

people will abuse the loophole it creates as the Italians did and why they're in a stricter lock down.

Shit. Here's hoping it doesn't become bad. :pray:

Case numbers for the Netherlands are meaningless. They only test hospital employees and hospital patients.

The Dutch are not sufficiently sticking to the social distancing rules so I expect a lock down soon enough. A shame people don't take it seriously enough.

Speaking confidently about ones actions and decisions is optimism by definition. — NOS4A2

No, that's just arrogance.

Btw, I have no clue how we're avoiding lock down in the Netherlands.

I don't think this is quite fair. If they could have just given the airlines billions to solve the problem; some expensive device that instantly diagnoses flyers and so you can contain perfectly, then they would have spent that money gladly. — boethius

I sincerely doubt it but we'll never know. It's just interesting to me that approaches are discussed in terms of economics and its long term effects. Where was that discussion going into Iraq, Afghanistan, war on drugs etc. Etc.?

Yes, I'm sure his work is bad but I guess my point was that even if he was right it still didn't matter. So the whole discussion becomes a distraction from the fact that the Trump administration dropped the ball.

The fatality rate is actually not even that important at the moment. It's the fact nobody has immunity and enough are sick enough that they require hospital care that will demand all the healthcare capacity a country has. The knock-on deaths because of that will mean deaths that can be attributed to corona will greatly increase.

But anyhoo, good to see spending a few billions to save lives is more an issue than spending trillions on wars.

Disinformation isn't optimism. Optimism sounds like this: Things look bad, but I'm convinced we'll get together as a country and take care of each other to beat this virus.

LOL.

Outdated model. They've been pumping money into the economy for years. It doesn't necessarily mean inflation as people actually started to save more. We've seen deflation and growing GDP in several countries in the last recovery (Switzerland, Spain for instance).

This is explained by the fact that a lot of people have saving goals. With interests too low, they will set aside more money to still reach those goals.

(A) the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), or ~[x = ~x] — 180 Proof

If you mention this one, why not also include the law of identity and the law of the excluded middle? If not, why not?

except the lancet article clearly states this was already done on January 2. I'll trust the peer reviewed journal specialised in medicine thank you.

Edit: to clarify, the Chinese issued internal warnings on 2 January. They shared the sequence on 12 January.

First, that's article was written by someone from the Brookings Institute which is just establishment shit as usual.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext

You don't seem to understand how Chinese internal politics works. It sat on information while it was still an internal issue that wasn't necessarily going to become an international issue. That's from beginning until end of December. At which time there were 40 confirmed infected (41 as of January 2). They shared the genetic code then, which is early (go ask a virologist whether it's normal to do after only 40 confirmed cases).

So no, they did not troll the rest of the world. It's just kindergarten politics to blame the Chinese as a distraction of how shittily the US administration.

It's also funny to see that when it wasn't an issue in the US, right wingers were taking issue with the Chinese lock down and now they didn't do enough. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. And not a week ago the problem was Europe!

Meanwhile, I think people here have close to zero understanding of virology, epidemiology or the skills and knowledge necessary to begin to manage health issues at these scales so let's all point fingers to the Chinese, because really that's all you can do. Which is probably why Trump does it too.The Chinese are currently helping more to minimise the effects than any other country because the rest that have any money to spare are almost all in lock down.

If that's his excuse then the Chinese claiming it was the US was entirely fine in reaction to Tom Cotton's bullshit from January 30.

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm informing you they tried it the last time a virus jumped from animals to humans in China. It didn't work. So next time you come up with a brilliant solution maybe try to read up on the shit that's been tried before, ok?

Yeah, funny how all the right wing newspapers in the US wrote these stories yet not a single European newspaper of note wrote anything about it. As usual it is more complicated but people want simple answers. It is a country where propaganda and censorship is important. Nevertheless, they have been open about this instance of the virus as opposed to last time.