Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

911realtime.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 523 posts

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#411

Post by burgerzzz »

kelnos wrote: post #398
burgerzzz wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were told the vaccine was the end all be all solution that stopped the virus. Many have opted to forego it and accept the risk. What’s so wrong with that? Now it turns out the vaccine isn’t as effective as originally thought, and the folks who decided to not get the jab are now somehow devoid of critical thinking skills? Explain what I’m missing. Or is it really not about death, but the bottom line?

Given that the vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated, yes, I would say that people who refuse the vaccine are devoid of critical thinking skills.

Given that they have chosen that destiny willingly for themselves, what's wrong with that? I personally feel it's a bit more nuanced of a decision then you're allowing. What do the vaccinated care? Why does this unvaxxed life matter to them all of a sudden when they've had plenty of opportunities to care about life before but haven't?

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#412

Post by dimitrios1 »

kelnos wrote: post #397
ls612 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine masks, distancing restrictions, etc becoming the knee jerk response every year there’s a bad flu scare or something like the Ebola cases in 2014 happens. This pandemic will be remembered not for the virus but for the massive and permanent social changes it brought to the west.

If people, post-pandemic, would (voluntarily) mask up and distance when they're not feeling well, I think it would reduce flu and common-cold transmission quite a lot throughout the year. This sort of thing is already common in some places and I'd be thrilled if it became a thing in the US. (But agree that knee-jerk mandatory restrictions would be a terrible outcome.)

But at what cost -- is the question I have, and too few are asking.

The young, healthy working aged adults are the "front line" against many dangerous viruses and bacteria. What happens when you remove the natural herd immunity? (Wasn't it something like 40-45% of the US was already naturally immune against COVID when the lockdowns first started happening?)

My guess is if we switch to pure defense, when the next big novel virus comes along, it will wipe out a whole lot more of us.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#413

Post by _drimzy »

tommymachine wrote: post #405
kelnos wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping yourself out of an ICU bed by avoiding a heart attack or getting cancer is likely a lot harder than getting a COVID vaccine. If we assume that the biggest cause of heart disease is obesity and poor general health-keeping, the solution there is to completely change your lifestyle: new diet, new exercise regimen, etc. While I think people who are at risk should probably do that, that's a much heavier lift than…

It would be interesting to see the numbers on being overweight vs vaccinated, and seeing which is more correlated with covid severity.

So you are going on and on about a hypothesis without any backing numbers, while completely ignoring provided evidence on how the unvaccinated is more likely to end up in ICUs?

Get off your high horse and do your fucking part. People are dying of Covid19, and a lot of people who survive end up with permanent disabilites, while you engage in mental gymnastics with your hypotheticals!

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#414

Post by [deleted] »

photochemsyn wrote: post #62

When reviewing 9/11 attacks (likely the biggest and most disastrous intelligence failure in U.S. history, give or take Pearl Harbor), it's worth remembering that it could have been much worse. If the first plane had hit Indian Point nuclear reactor what, 30 miles from NYC and upwind? It's likely a Chernobyl/Fukushima disaster would have resulted with an exclusion zone well into NYC. That was reportedly part of the pl…

[deleted]

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#415

Post by generj »

rsync wrote: post #185

I hitchhiked and walked to New York 20 years ago today. I had my firefighter and medic credentials faxed to FEMA and then went into ground zero for ~24 hours to dig. I wrote about all of this, later, in what became cDc t-file #396.[1] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20041208005336/http://www.cultde...

A wonderful read. It was interesting to hear all the ways in which you were put to work. I hadn’t expected reaching NYC to be such an adventure, but have forgotten the zeitgeist of suspicion and uncertainty immediately after the attacks.

In regards to your closing lines, tragedies are uniquely able to harness people towards joint concentrated efforts. I have only ever volunteered for hurricane relief efforts, typically weeks after impact, but the power of a large group assembled to help is intense. If the need is acute enough, we rediscover how important community is and willingly sacrifice our individual selves to its survival.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#416

Post by burgerzzz »

burgerzzz wrote: post #411
kelnos wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the vast majority of COVID hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated, yes, I would say that people who refuse the vaccine are devoid of critical thinking skills.

Given that they have chosen that destiny willingly for themselves, what's wrong with that? I personally feel it's a bit more nuanced of a decision then you're allowing. What do the vaccinated care? Why does this unvaxxed life matter to them all of a sudden when they've had plenty of opportunities to care about life before but haven't?

And no, I'm not talking about abortion, but everything else on Earth that is considered a preventable death; like car accidents (Ban cars!) and wars that we conveniently forget when about the pendulum swings to our favored political party so we can safely and costlessly say that we've learned and grown and now we're better despite the hundreds of thousands of lives we've cost over the years because we just trusted the "thinking heads" and academics and the corporate elite and government officials in bed with them.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#417

Post by noduerme »

irrational wrote: post #191
leesalminen wrote: post #29

9/11 was my birthday, and I was just outside of NYC in school that day. I was in math class. The phone in the classroom rang and my teacher turned on the radio (1010 WINS) immediately. After hearing what had happened she broke down in tears because her husband worked in WTC. My parents worked in NYC (as did most of my classmates' parents) and was very concerned. The school district evacuated the elementary schools to…

Thanks for writing this. It is good to hear the experience of someone that was close by. I live clear on the other side of the country (and did on 9/11 too). I didn’t know anyone that died that day, and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never met anyone who lost someone that day either. So it is good for those of you who did experience it to write about it since it is so easy for people like me to be no more affected…

It's weird. I lived in LA at the time and I was in my early 20s. I remember my gf waking me up at 6:30am to go look at the TV. It doesn't feel like an historical or far-away event to me. It seems like the most pivotal moment of my life, when this country changed and everything changed. We were worried about LA being attacked, worried about bio/chem attacks. Suddenly there were no-fly lists, and things called TSA and Homeland Security. Domestic mass surveillance really started then ... it's when all the methods from the drug wars were brought onto American soil. Suddenly there were truther conspiracy theories on a fairly new site called YouTube. Suddenly psychopaths on local Texas radio made their way into the national conversation. And a year or so later I found myself kettled by cops at a protest against our invasion of Iraq. I posted a novel on my website that got a lot of hits from military IP addresses in Virginia and Iraq. A neighbor told me the police were going through my trash while I was at work. My apartment got broken into and only a laptop and my papers stolen. I left the US and lived abroad for 10 years.

When I think of Americans who were alive then and younger, or who weren't born, looking at it as a historical event, it boggles my mind. Everything about this country has been deformed and twisted, every aspect of the society you live in from security theater at the airport to the militarization of local police, all that hardware, to the way the giant internet sites function now (or don't), to all the conspiracy-fueled madness that led to 1/6/21, which is the only other day that began to feel like 9/11. All of it started that day, it's the moment when we entered the wrong alternate universe.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#418

Post by bsdnoob »

badsoftware wrote: post #342
ISL wrote: post #44

If watching this footage makes you want to stand up and do something, remember that Covid-19 is killing as many people in the US every two days as died in these attacks. Take small steps to make the world a better place, helping your neighbors, and you can take a stand against entropy.

Comparing an intentional attack on our nation to a global pandemic is insulting.

Do you really think it is insulting considering the pandemic response has been really bad. The extent to which the whole event is politicized which directly caused deaths of thousands of people every day is just mind baffling. The misinformation spread deliberately by the top leaders and their follower just to strengthen their power can hardly be called as "unintentional".

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#419

Post by generj »

listenallyall wrote: post #280
SilasX wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the pandemic has far more historical significance but nothing for me will feel more visceral than 9/11 It’s an interesting comparison, and one I make a lot. 9/11 was in your face, and a bunch of pre planned events were canceled. But that lasted about a week or a month (depending on the kind of event), and people could still gather in public and support each other. The pandemic was a much slower burn, but al…

The pandemic hasn't denied "us" anything... governments have mandated it, in many cases without scientific evidence, or in many others, in direct contradiction to it. Things cancelled in the wake of 9/11 were done organically, by the organizers, mostly out of respect, not because the government twisted their arm.

A great deal of events have also been canceled voluntarily by organizers in this pandemic. Plenty of event organizers believe they have a responsibility to their attendees and the surrounding community and have not planned events even when local governments would have allowed them. Others knew they wouldn’t sell enough tickets without large changes to the events and canceled them due to their understanding of their customers.

I also imagine that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 large events would have had a hard time getting necessary approvals if they had decided to go forward.

The commercial reality was that people didn’t have a desire to attend large celebratory events immediately after 9/11. Disrespectful organizers did not have much of a choice if they lacked respect for the loss of life - their customers had already decided.

Re: September 11, 2001 media synced in real-time

#420

Post by [deleted] »

_drimzy wrote: post #413
tommymachine wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see the numbers on being overweight vs vaccinated, and seeing which is more correlated with covid severity.

So you are going on and on about a hypothesis without any backing numbers, while completely ignoring provided evidence on how the unvaccinated is more likely to end up in ICUs? Get off your high horse and do your fucking part. People are dying of Covid19, and a lot of people who survive end up with permanent disabilites, while you engage in mental gymnastics with your hypotheticals!

[deleted]
Post reply on HN