outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

temperature-taking is security theater

I saw the twitter posts from passengers on the plane and thought it had to be bullshit. wow. no words

Yea it's amazing by now that people think taking temps for a disease where half the ppl have no symptoms proves anything.

The White House security director was in the hospital for three months with COVID. Had to have his foot amputated.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-14/white-house-official-recovers-from-severe-covid-19-friend-says

Global South countries, led by South Africa and India, have requested a suspension of the WTO's patent rules to enable them to manufacture or import affordable generic versions of the COVID-19 vaccine. Shockingly, Britain and other rich countries have refused.

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) December 15, 2020

...which will come back and bite everyone on the arse/ass for years to come.

‘Shockingly’

I've been in a hospital for elective care recently (all good) and they're taking temps at every entrance, theater or no. That plus masks on everyone, but wearing them properly isn't enforced throughout the facility if ppl take them off or under their nose in a waiting room, for instance.

Otoh the medical staff are getting vaccinated already! And not only the most frontline ppl but everyone, it seems like? Hooray!

I mean, doesn't temperature taking at least eliminate the (yes, likely very tiny) percentage of people who are definitely sick but refuse to give a shit? No, it's not going to catch the asymptomatic cases, which is why the other social distancing and masking is still vital in those spaces.

yes, but I don't think the problem is so much taking the temperature, but what the temperature check is then being used to allow. Airlines are using this to justify returning to the practice of overbooking their flights and jamming everybody together, rather than continuing to limit flight capacity and eliminate middle seats/etc.

symptomatic people, some will stay home, and even those who are feverish can simply take a pain reliever to make the fever go away when they board the plane. so they're probably not rooting out *that* many people, but they're saying "we took the temperature, nobody had a fever, ergo let's all mash onto this airplane". true, airplane transmission is still poorly understood and they have HEPA filters, but thats why I view it as "theater" too.

like if you have a flight somewhere,and you are hellbent on not rescheduling, all you have to do is pop 2 ibuprofen and boom, you're on

my doctor friend from high school got her first jab today. so glad to see this finally happening.

it didn’t work that way in my experience. the fever came and went of its own accord. acetominophen worked as pain relief (to an extent) but the fever would disappear and come back multiple times a day. usually worst in the evenings actually (after having had a whole day of continuous pain relief)

other countries take it pretty seriously. if you want to fly into france, you need a negative test from the prior 48 hours - even if you’re a citizen. if you don’t have that, you don’t get on the plane. same in egypt. many places require this.

lede of the day, possibly the year https://t.co/U6GjPeLk1Z pic.twitter.com/ZGaNmGxB7B

— 💭 (@samthielman) December 16, 2020

https://i.imgur.com/KLnkfSD.png

probably wasn't a great idea to shoot an indoors unmasked wedding tbh

a report from south dakota: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/09/south-dakota-mitchell-covid-masks

would the stupidity be this bad minus trump? idk

Probably wasn't a good idea for a government to abandon its citizens who need to feed their families.

Like, sorry not sorry kevin k and others, but some of the victim-blaming I've been seeing recently is maddening.

The government has left its citizens to spread this disease and die, with no safety net in place.

If the government isn't the first place you place blame, then you're fucking wrong. Period.

I think there's plenty of blame to go around and that it's perfectly acceptable to shed some blame to people who still absolutely insist on going to indoor bars unmasked after we're done blaming the government.

Going to indoor bars is stupid, yes.

Blaming a wedding photographer for taking jobs when she has kids to feed? Cruel.

from that texas wedding story upthread, i weep for humanity

The photographer who got sick after shooting the COVID-positive groom said her experiences throughout the pandemic have left her a little depressed. She recalled one conversation from that wedding, before she left the reception. “I have children,” she told a bridesmaid, “What if my children die?” The bridesmaid responded, “I understand, but this is her wedding day.”

Maddening quotes from that Guardian article:

"We’re here sitting outside, if we have to go inside we’ll wear a mask, all the seats and tables are apart, and they check if you live or work together.”

"At the end of the day, with the amount of people having parties in their own house, I just think it’s really silly.”

“I’m paranoid about the virus, but it’s so safe outside. We need to rethink and reimagine the whole thing.”

i have a lot of photog friends; they, like us, are doing their best to get by and pay their rent.

I blame the straights for getting married tbh

harsh but fair

I mean, I'm not getting married, but I have a couple younger cousins that we're supposed get married this past summer and both have tentatively rescheduled their weddings for 2021. I just don't understand the insistence on going forward with a wedding anyway, surely it's better and more enjoyable for everyone to just wait. Of course it's not ideal, but... I don't know.

Probably wasn't a good idea for a government to abandon its citizens who need to feed their families.

― "Bi" Dong A Ban He Try (the table is the table), Wednesday, December 16, 2020 1:00 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no I get this, just saying that going to an unmasked indoor event is understanding you’re taking the risk that someone’s going to be positive. obviously the bride and groom are reprehensibly evil

I also agree that the entirety of the blame falls on the govt

The thing about a marriage is that you can just live together and postpone the ceremony indefinitely, or if the legal status is important right now you can have a judge officiate with a clerk to witness, send out announcements, and then schedule the big wedding celebration for later when it's safe.

Yeah. Sorry if I was a little testy, I'm just getting a bit miffed at how things are playing out in the court of public opinion.

Like, it isn't the fault of people taking risks to make ends meet when a government has so thoroughly abandoned its citizenry, but the news media and the government itself is really trying to make it out that this is entirely a personal responsibility issue. Fuck that noise.

The thing about a marriage is that you can just live together and postpone the ceremony indefinitely, or if the legal status is important right now you can have a judge officiate with a clerk to witness, send out announcements, and then schedule the big wedding celebration for later when it's safe.

Exactly. Which is why I judge pretty harshly those people who seem to be, "well it's MY special day and no one can tell me not to invite dozens of people to an unmasked ceremony and reception". I follow a former coworker on instagram and she posted photos from four different wedding receptions over the course of the summer, all of them unmasked, indoors and packed.

We were supposed to host a big party this past spring celebrating our marriage, but we cancelled it... indefinitely! Cuz we're not totally nuts!

As well as being horrible and stupid, aren’t the couple here also liable? Kinda hope they get sued

Politico scoop: ‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal https://t.co/HWZtvocgiR

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) December 16, 2020

The conservatives I come into contact with have bought that stupid Reagan line: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

I think that line is at the root of so much of the conservative project, and it's so damaging. People who buy into this are the ones arguing that the only way the government can help is to either:

1. Get out of the way and let all the businesses open up, virus be damned.
2. I heard one guy arguing that we should sue the govt under some kind of eminent domain reasoning, since businesses have lost money due to the COVID lockdowns.

Or, you know, maybe stop living in some kind of macho libertarian fantasy world and demand that our government support its citizenry with all of their tax dollars.

At this point, I actually believe that the government is in the business of trying to kill its citizenry.

I think you can say that our government is primarily to blame and also say that our government is generally a reflection of its citizens' infantile desires.

yes

the government's role is to let the big dogs eat. that's it

it didn’t work that way in my experience. the fever came and went of its own accord. acetominophen worked as pain relief (to an extent) but the fever would disappear and come back multiple times a day. usually worst in the evenings actually (after having had a whole day of continuous pain relief)

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, December 16, 2020 12:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

this was the exact same thing w/ my friend. shew as still getting elevated temps a month later, and then an hour later, normal again.

At this point, I actually believe that the government is in the business of trying to kill its citizenry.

Trump saw the pandemic as something he couldn't solve and that would reflect badly on him and that he couldn't profit from, so he was not interested in it and he tried to deflect from it and embraced any option that might have seemed to any idiot to have made it go away with the least effort on his part as possible. "Herd immunity sure will that that get rid of it then good." They're not out to kill the citizenry they just don't give a shit if they live or die, which is equally as bad.

demand that our government support its citizenry with all of their tax dollars.

stimulus printer go brrr

the economy is people

Stevie otm

Elections have consequences

Also, tho, pandemics have consequences. If he'd handled this with even the remotest semblance of competence he'd still be president I reckon. But it revealed his absolute lack of capability, empathy or concern over the citizens he was supposed to serve.

And yet, having revealed all these deficiencies, he still got more millions more votes in 2020 than in 2016. It is enough to make me think that a very large percentage of American citizens are equally incapable of empathy or concern for anyone not in their small circle of acquaintance.

^^ I think that's exactly it. Somehow roughly 40% of this country absolutely does not give a fuck about others and, rather than feeling even mild embarrassment for it, they loudly embrace it, shout it from the rooftops, and actively shame anyone who does express empathy for others as weak or pathetic. It's infuriating to see this reinforced on a near daily basis.

you don't have to be a conservative to believe in the myth of "personal responsibility", that our lot in life happens to us purely because of actions we took and nothing outside or nefarious. so their view is "what could Trump have done about COVID", which is nonsense, but so are they

the myth of "personal responsibility", or alternatively the story of the Three Little Pigs. Just build your house out of bricks** and you're proof against misfortune.

**please note: bricks can only be inherited