Common Sense 319 – A Recipe for Caesar

[Montegriffo]

Predicting the future is hard, who knew?
People have an unrealistic expectations that it's even possible for a model to perfectly accurately predict something that is extremely complicated, with a lot of unknown variables, deep in the fog of war, far into the future

If anyone ever came up with such a model, and acted on it's predictions, they'd probably be the one of richest and most powerful people in the world, if not the most

Not when you have had several previous epidemic scares in the last couple of decades.

None of them compare to this one, fighting the last war is why many nations weren't prepared in the first place, while most of the nations that were hit hardest by ones that didn't compare where the most well prepared, this is not a coincidence

Are you saying that no one could have predicted a worldwide pandemic capable of killing millions?
Hollywood for one disagrees. The WHO would also contend that view.
This is SARS 2 after all.

[Speaker to Animals]

It wasn't hard to predict what would happen, especially after the first week of Feb when the data came out of Wuhan. I mean.. get fucking real. People who pranced around accusing people advising preparedness of being chicken littles just didn't want to look at the data (or lacked the basic mathematical skills to understand the data in the first place). Maybe to them it really does seem like this is some kind of black swan. It's really not. It's a fat tail risk and we fucking damned well knew it was coming sooner or later. We damned well knew this was the one by the first week of Feb too. It didn't surprise me or really anybody else who took college algebra and actually bothered to look at the data.

I still see it even now. There are conservatives in my Facebook feed that keep mentioning Sweden as an example of how abandoning isolation works because their numbers were low. Their numbers were low because their epidemic just started. But if you looked at the epidemic curves, it was definitely exponential growth. I mean.. it wasn't even debatable. Now Sweden is starting to pop.

This is what happens when people making decisions about mathematical problems don't understand math.

[heydaralon]

It wasn't hard to predict what would happen, especially after the first week of Feb when the data came out of Wuhan. I mean.. get fucking real. People who pranced around accusing people advising preparedness of being chicken littles just didn't want to look at the data (or lacked the basic mathematical skills to understand the data in the first place). Maybe to them it really does seem like this is some kind of black swan. It's really not. It's a fat tail risk and we fucking damned well knew it was coming sooner or later. We damned well knew this was the one by the first week of Feb too. It didn't surprise me or really anybody else who took college algebra and actually bothered to look at the data.

I still see it even now. There are conservatives in my Facebook feed that keep mentioning Sweden as an example of how abandoning isolation works because their numbers were low. Their numbers were low because their epidemic just started. But if you looked at the epidemic curves, it was definitely exponential growth. I mean.. it wasn't even debatable. Now Sweden is starting to pop.

This is what happens when people making decisions about mathematical problems don't understand math.

People are stressing, but the world has not ended. Supply chains are still running strong. To me, it is amazing how in spite of the panic buying, how orderly most of our society is outside of NYC (which has always been a haven for faggot morons anyway(. If this manages to kill 200K Americans like the CDC claims, that is about 3 to 4 times what the flu does every year in this country. I am midly stressed being in a job where I can be infected, but in the bigger picture I am counting my blessings.

America will live on.

I am going to start buying stocks in oil companies and stuff. That is what I am using my next dividend check to do. You should count yourself lucky that you know how to code and could probably get some kind of work from home gig right now. Use that money to buy stocks, and put it towards your goal of homesteading/being self sufficient. This could work out really well for both of us if we play our cards right.

Neither of us can change what has happened, but again there is potential future upside. You of all people could probably thrive in this environment.

[Martin Hash]

It’s a False Dichotomy to argue “doing nothing” and “lockdown.” I know a lot of people are anti-liberty & pro-authoritarian, so that seems like a valid argument. I’m a “give me liberty or give me death guy,” so I see a lot of in-between. Lock up the fucking Boomers until there’s a vaccine, and let healthy people live their lives. And if Boomers want to risk it, their choice.

I know this is an unpopular position among the Sanctimonious crowd.

[Smitty-48]

America will live on.

Space Program

From Appomattox Court House to the Sea of Tranquility and beyond

[StCapps]

Not when you have had several previous epidemic scares in the last couple of decades.

None of them compare to this one, fighting the last war is why many nations weren't prepared in the first place, while most of the nations that were hit hardest by ones that didn't compare where the most well prepared, this is not a coincidence

Are you saying that no one could have predicted a worldwide pandemic capable of killing millions?

[Speaker to Animals]

It’s a False Dichotomy to argue “doing nothing” and “lockdown.” I know a lot of people are anti-liberty & pro-authoritarian, so that seems like a valid argument. I’m a “give me liberty or give me death guy,” so I see a lot of in-between. Lock up the fucking Boomers until there’s a vaccine, and let healthy people live their lives. And if Boomers want to risk it, their choice.

I know this is an unpopular position among the Sanctimonious crowd.

Fact is, at EVERY point in the lead up to this, every single time somebody mentioned doing anything meaningful to prepare for this thing, or even to try to limit the damage, they were met with this asinine "we must not panic" bullshit. I swear to fuck this panic thing is going to be a meme for over a century. Nobody panicked. The word was dishonestly used to characterized anybody who actually took the disease seriously and tried to do anything about it.

> Maybe we should shut down most international air travel.
>> Let's not panic, bro!
Now everything is shut down anyway.

> Maybe we should prepare for lockdown and any supply disruptions that could occur.
>> Let's not panic, bro!
Now we are on lockdowns and people the panic bros are rationing their tip, and still probably blaming "hoarders" for their lack of supply because they don't understand how the supply chain works.

I could go on with this.

[Martin Hash]

It was weaponized against Trump. TDS caused this outbreak, not China.

[Speaker to Animals]

It was weaponized against Trump. TDS caused this outbreak, not China.

TDS is what saved my city from the worst of it. When that dumbass was on television comparing this to the flu, and opining about an April miracle where it magically goes away, the TDS-afflicted Ashevillians freaked the fuck out. Now our epidemic is stalled and we hopefully contained it.

Thank fuck for TDS.

[Martin Hash]

Fuck that narrative. You’ve got TDS