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I Miss My Bar

imissmybar.com

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Re: I Miss My Bar

#371

Post by mixmastamyk »

yao420 wrote: post #216
74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My s/o is Estonian. The thing is - yes, rates are high - but ... that's about it. There is not much going on beyond incidence rates being high. Which makes me question the panic.

I feel the same in Texas, we don’t have strict lockdowns and I’ve been going to gym, restaurants, and bars since June. Sure our rates are ‘high’ but are on par with places like California and New York who have very strict lockdowns.

It has a lot to do with density, so both policies can make sense at the same time.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#372

Post by _uwiz »

CydeWeys wrote: post #215
_uwiz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different countries, and different situations. Living in a big old house in the country with your family? Your life is probably basically the same as it always was. Potentially better, depending on the work situation. Okay, sure, you're not going on as many holidays, and depending on how strict the rules are where you are, dinner parties are off the cards. Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city?…

> Living in a flat as a single person in the big exciting city? Literally everything you do has been illegal or restricted in some form for almost a year now. And unsafe , too. I'm not not going to restaurants because I'm not allowed to (they're actually opening back up a little bit here now), but because under the present circumstances it's not safe to do so.

Nah, me staying inside for years on end with no or very limited social contact is less safe for me.

It guarantees a horrible outcome (psychosis), versus a slight risk of a bad outcome.

I'm not going to put myself into a coma for multiple years on the off chance that someone else gets ill. Best of luck.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#373

Post by skynet-9000 »

baud147258 wrote: post #329
skynet-9000 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 6pm curfew? In heavily urban parts of the U.S. and perhaps other parts of the world, people don't even get home from work by then, and the virus doesn't pay too much attention to what time it is either.

here in France, a lot of people who went to work aren't back home at 6 pm, but I think they aren't really the people targeted by the measure, but rather those who go see friends to have a drink in the evening

That's tough. Seems like if they're going to a tiny and consistent group of friends' homes in the evening to have a drink, then they're effectively an extension of your family and any spread would be limited to that relatively small group (unlike in a bar).

And if they're actually going to a bar instead, then just close the bar at 6pm. A general curfew seems like a chainsaw approach, instead of a scalpel.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#374

Post by DoingIsLearning »

karlerss wrote: post #276
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think is under discussed is the fact that we allow for all of these social restrictions measurements but yet air travel across all the EU countries is still allowed.

Air travel worldwide is just fine. In airport transit zones all you need is a mask. We flew from Northern Europe to South Asia a week ago and the flights were filled 60-70%.

Absolutely false. I am not saying airports are a source of infection. What I am pointing out is that air travel is allowing for all these variants to propagate to new populations.

The pervasiveness of the UK variant in Europe would have been contained or at least decelerated with travel restrictions.

A living proof of this is both New Zealand and Australia. These countries still allowed for sea and air freight but banned travel. Both countries are roughly back to normal life, while we in Europe are still trying to blame pharmaceutical manufacturing vaccine output, as if that is the sole cause of our problems.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#375

Post by anyonecancode »

orangecat wrote: post #347
anyonecancode wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an odd framing to me. The psychological toll is from there being a deadly global pandemic. I guess we could have made the choice to trade the toll of social restrictions for the toll of even more people getting seriously ill and dying, but whatever choices we made and are making, the fact of the matter is that pandemics majorly suck. I think railing against lockdowns is a coping mechanism -- as policies we've…

The psychological toll is from there being a deadly global pandemic. I agree that there's going to be an ambient level of anxiety from knowing that there's a nasty disease out there, but are you really saying that not being able to see your friends and family, or losing your job, or having to scramble to work from home while managing your children's remote "learning" has no additional impact? there's not some magical…

> I agree that there's going to be an ambient level of anxiety from knowing that there's a nasty disease out there, but are you really saying that not being able to see your friends and family, or losing your job, or having to scramble to work from home while managing your children's remote "learning" has no additional impact?

Of course it has an impact. If we didn't have social restrictions and consequently had much higher rates of infection, death, and long term disability, that also would have an impact. There's no world where, given a global pandemic, there are no severe impacts. Most arguments against social restriction that I've seen don't acknowledge this though. I mean, the other reply to my comment said "why not put some of the blame on the millions of people who died from this thing, who probably could have lived through it had they lived healthier lives", to which I can only reply "what?" For at least the most vocal opponents of social restrictions, they seem to have a radically different understanding of how respiratory infections work than I do.

>Lockdowns aren't binary. We're allowed to consider the costs and benefits of individual measures

Absolutely. It's not the people who are able to do nuance I'm taking issue with here.

> it is not at all clear that stronger measures lead to better Covid outcomes.

Well, I think the evidence is pretty clear that taking either none or very few measures has led to worse outcomes. Among places that have taken measures, I agree it gets hazier as you then have to go from the general "lockdown or freedom" argument into "which specific measures work best." The latter discussion is where we should be; the former one is, to my mind, based on an unrealistic set of assumptions.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#376

Post by bingohbangoh »

OminousWeapons wrote: post #317
mStreamTeam wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "two weeks to flatten the curve" feels like gaslghting in retrospect.

The problem is people saw China bring the situation under control in under six weeks and thought that containment rather than management was also an achievable goal here. They therefore interpreted the term "flatten the curve" in that context and assumed it would lead to containment. What they didn't see (and what was never really talked about) is just how extreme China's eventual response to COVID was relative to th…

That's if you buy the numbers from China at all.

For all we know, China just stopped counting and is accepting whatever new cases or deaths come up.

We know they fake other numbers. There's not reason not to think they aren't faking them here.

If the news wasn't telling me about the Virus all the time, I would not know there was a "raging" epidemic. I only know one person who contracted the virus among my entire family and friends group.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#377

Post by marcosdumay »

e67f70028a46fba wrote: post #144
RalfWausE wrote: post #31

I 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…

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.

The term is perfect, because it means the government stepping over your liberty during an emergency, so that there isn't a fundamental society crisis.

It should require a huge amount of justification, and people should have little patience with it. The euphemisms some places use are Orwellian.

Re: I Miss My Bar

#378

Post by Notorious_BLT »

leesalminen wrote: post #218
standardUser wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank god the epidemiologists are not the ones making policy. Most state and local governments in the US have not shown a willingness to follow such a hardline approach, and we're already seeing reopenings as numbers drop, long before the vaccine has even had a major impact.

Pretty sure one of Biden’s main talking points of his election campaign was that America would start listening to the scientists more closely.

So far no meaningful action has been taken that indicates he's particularly concerned. He's focused on trying to reopen schools, last I heard.

Some people have argued that the vaccinations are evidence of his success regarding Covid-19 but I don't see any part of that that wouldn't have been proceeding with or without him. As far as I can tell, the only difference between Trump and Biden's handling of covid has been "Biden knows to keep his mouth shut about specifics and predictions, because he might be wrong" which is exactly the kind of playing-both-sides I've seen from many state and city governments for the last year (talking a lot about how we need to follow the science and keep locking down to keep the spread low, but also taking no steps to enforce the rules or financially support people/businesses.)

Re: I Miss My Bar

#379

Post by [deleted] »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #362
schwartzworld wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird comment. You think people with families don't miss their social lives? You think it has been easy? People aren't meant to spend so much time together. Not to mention work and full-time child care don't really go together. I'd say if anything, I considered maintaining a social life to be a form of self-care, one I was already struggling to get enough of. > A month or two more and I'm going to be in the 'p…

The parent comment was wrong to assume that people with families aren't also struggling due to dampened social lives - we're all struggling. The people who are isolated by themselves are struggling much more. In prison, the worst punishment you can receive is to be taken away from the all rapists and murderers, and put in solitary confinement. Being stuck in a prison cell with a partner and family probably sounds lik…

[deleted]

Re: I Miss My Bar

#380

Post by steve_adams_86 »

speeder wrote: post #334
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the error here is perceiving errors from medical authorities as having emotional or manipulative motivations. First masks were unnecessary and hand washing was crucial. Now it’s essentially the reverse. It helps to wash hands of course but we realize it’s less of a vector. Then various governments said it’ll be over by summer. Then various governments said it’ll be a year. No one was attempting to gaslight; t…

Problem is assuming it was "errors" What I saw: 1. Lots of outright lies, for example Chinese people saying the truth getting arrested, WHO toeing the CCP line (for example claiming there was no human-human transmission) when it was obviously a lie already, etc... 2. Lots of governments around the world using the lies for their own gains at expense of population, for example in Brazil the media was quick to paint the…

I suppose an important thing I meant to express here, and which is useful to consider in response to you, is that we shouldn't generalize.

Were some authorities gas lighting? Maybe. Were all? Certainly not. We should focus on and isolate the bad actors who are doing this, not generalize.

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