I use http://phanary.com/ which has a ton of sounds and similar controls.
I Miss My Bar
221–230 of 470 posts
Re: I Miss My Bar
#222I think the psychological toll of the lockdowns in different countries is highly underestimated. I myself have no real economical shortcomings due to the lockdown, but even as a person who is normaly a total loner and who can spend weeks completely alone on a excessive hiking trip i am slowly going crazy... For my wife, who is a highly social character, its even worse. And i am not the only one in this mindset... wha…
Your region might be different, but I've heard others say the same thing about my area and, frankly, I see it as wishful thinking. People aren't happy in general, but they both have surrogate outlets for their frustration(Netflix, porn, junk food, weed) and have been conditioned to accept lower standards; being able to eat outdoors in someone's parking lot with plastic dividers is considered "exciting" now, depending on where you live. Even people who were against lockdowns behave like their masters are giving them an extra scoop of kibble every time that restrictions are loosened. As long as people tirelessly hang on to the hopium, I think there's no way we'll see "torches and pitchforks" manifest in any substantial way. To reiterate, I'm sure this is region-dependent, and I'm speaking primarily for America in general.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm pretty sure nothing's going to change in the next 5 years. Given the speed in which effective vaccines were developed I think this is a rather bleak outlook. Sure, a lot is still unknown with the new virus variants and as has been expected vaccination drives had their teething problems. But in a few month time (almost) everybody who wants their jabs can get it (in rich countries, that is). I for one, see myself…
It is worth reading what the epidemologists advising Western governments actually think. Many of them are arguing for social distancing and border closures to continue until the entire world is vaccinated, regardless of how many people are vaccinated within your own country. That is expected to take probably until 2026, so the OP's worries about five years are founded. Some outliers among those advisors are even argu…
Do you have a source for that?
Re: I Miss My Bar
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even the term: lockdown Free societies don’t have lockdowns. Prisons do. One would think that the government would come up with a better term, if only out of self interest. But then perhaps that’s the point.
“Safer at home” was commonly used in my state.
WI? Nearly everyone I know still refers to it as 'lockdown' even if that's not what it's officially called.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail] I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the…
I'm sorry if it comes off as callous, but we're comparing incidents of mass death here and disability-adjusted life years is how insurance companies and demographers do it. To be clear, I'm not saying it's a good thing that 500k people have died from COVID in the US, but simply that having same number of young, healthy people getting gunned down in the Battle of the Somme is almost any measure objectively worse.
Do you really not know any young people who have been permanently damaged by COVID? I know multiple people in their 20s and 30s that spent weeks in the ER and will never be the same. I'm always surprised to find people who think the lockdown is excessive. COVID is absolutely no joke even if you're young, it's not the flu. Not even close, you don't want it.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's terrible. Even those of us who are "coping" aren't coping terribly well. But ironically the disconnection has made the costs of the disease invisible as well. The zoom funerals. I personally know a couple of people who are now effectively long-term disabled with respiratory issues - well enough to leave hospital, but their previous lifestyle can't come back. The death toll dwarfs every single "disaster" in…
But those mostly killed people still the prime of their lives, while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different. Cynical thought: COVID lockdowns are extreme largely because unlike most public health problems it affects the rich t…
> COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway
What a disgusting attitude.
How is this different from "Why bother treating cancer patients? Most are going to die early anyway"? Do you think old and sick people simply provide no value to society?
I think you're trying to argue that it's worse if a young, otherwise healthy person dies, but it's really not necessary to rank lives against each other in this way.
This attitude seems to be what's largely made this pandemic so bad: it was viewed as "just the flu" and "only affects people with pre-existing conditions" and so rather than fast, decisive action (reducing burden on healthcare system, preventing deaths, reducing the need for lockdowns and shortening the time they take), many countries instead delayed and did half-measures, causing an exponential increase in cases, which causes everything to be worse. The completely obvious outcome of willing to let old and sick people die to "save the economy" was an economy that's in turmoil as well as a massive death toll.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#227I think the psychological toll of the lockdowns in different countries is highly underestimated. I myself have no real economical shortcomings due to the lockdown, but even as a person who is normaly a total loner and who can spend weeks completely alone on a excessive hiking trip i am slowly going crazy... For my wife, who is a highly social character, its even worse. And i am not the only one in this mindset... wha…
Your region might be different, but I've heard others say the same thing about my area and, frankly, I see it as wishful thinking. People aren't happy in general, but they both have surrogate outlets for their frustration(Netflix, porn, junk food, weed) and have been conditioned to accept lower standards; being able to eat outdoors in someone's parking lot with plastic dividers is considered "exciting" now, depending…
Those "torches and pitchforks" would quickly be followed by ventilators and graves. I absolutely despise authority and loss of individual liberty, but this isn't a fabricated crisis. Once you see multiple people you know devastated by COVID, you quickly realize it's not a hoax. I'm talking about younger people too (20-40), permanently damaged respiratory systems and near death experiences.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worth reading what the epidemologists advising Western governments actually think. Many of them are arguing for social distancing and border closures to continue until the entire world is vaccinated, regardless of how many people are vaccinated within your own country. That is expected to take probably until 2026, so the OP's worries about five years are founded. Some outliers among those advisors are even argu…
Do you have a source for that?
Many of these advisors are speaking directly to media. Devi Sridhar, one of the advisors to the UK government, for example, has been doing interviews recently about maintaining long-term border closures and requiring expensive hotel quarantines.
Right after I posted my comment above, at 15:12 comments regarding Canadian forecasts appeared in The Guardian's COVID live blog, in which epidemologists say that restrictions must be preserved within the country because the vaccine rollout is a global problem, not a local one.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in between the two groups. I live with my partner in a mid-sized house in the centre of a small city. Financially I'm doing great, I've worked throughout and there's literally nothing to spend the money on. My mental health is starting to deteriorate though. I'm not sleeping well most nights, I've turned very much inwards, I feel angry and despairing a lot. Part of the current problem is that we don't have a time…
> Part of the current problem is that we don't have a timetable. I can understand why people want things to look forward to - and why businesses and people whose jobs will reopen would want dates in advance so they can plan. But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen. That's what they did with the second lockdown - announced upfront that it was from…
> But the dumbest thing the government could do is schedule reopenings before we know if it'll be safe to reopen.
Sure. But while there is no end in sight, despair will rule. Whether it's reasonable to want a fixed timetable or not.
This is also why I mentioned criteria - even if not a fixed timetable, we could at least know what sort of criteria would trigger a rule change. I.E. when we get down to X cases per day, X deaths etc etc, the schools will open. If it keeps falling then the rule of six reapplies in outdoor public spaces ...
At least something rather than just being locked down indefinitely.
I agree the lifting of Lockdown 2 was a really poor choice.
Re: I Miss My Bar
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
But those mostly killed people still the prime of their lives, while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. If we measured the toll in disability-adjusted life years instead, the comparison would be quite different. Cynical thought: COVID lockdowns are extreme largely because unlike most public health problems it affects the rich t…
> while COVID mostly (not entirely, but mostly) advances the Grim Reaper for the old and sick who likely only had a few years anyway. The average years lost is 10 years of life in the US and 16 world wide[1] - and I think you need to reconsider how callous your comment comes across (to me at least, and I would guess others too). [edited: added detail] I also feel your comment entirely disregards the point made by the…
That's not how anyone should assess risk. You can't take an average and assume that it applies to everyone. The elderly hare far more likely of losing 10 years off their lives than young people who are very unlikely to lose 40+ years off their lives. For instance, the chance that I will die from COVID at my age and health are, for all intents and purposes, 0%, according to the CDC. It would be ridiculous for me to take a statistic that is more apt for the sick and the elderly and use that to determine the course of my life.
By the way, the truth can be very callous. I don't think it's particularly useful for you to point out how callous someone sounds on the internet unless the other person has some demonstrable intent of cruelty. We all know that we have the potential to sound like bad people through text online.