Covid-19 (Coronavirus) - Please stay safe, y'all


Status
Not open for further replies.
sorry i'm a bit late here - at what point is your distrust of others really just a reflection of who you are inside?
When they're not based on evidence. I used to be very trusting towards governments but lost my trust when I saw evidence that it was misplaced. Hence my distrust of governments is not a reflection of who I am inside. Also worth noting here is that I believe that most people are good. I am trusting towards people in general, it's just the proverbial 1% that has lost my trust. But even in their case I know that some of them are good people. But "some" is not enough to make me want to put my DNA in their hands.

you like to tell others how to live and eat, and consider yourself trustworthy but not others?
That's not true. I actually got most of my information from others. Back when I was sick I knew that I did not know enough about health (as was evidenced by my own sickness) and that I needed help from someone more knowledgeable than I was. After I finally found people who were able to help me with their advice I got my health back. Suffering through sickness has given me empathy for other people who are sick like I was and because of that I tend to be eager to pass on the advice that saved me from my misery.

As for "telling other how to live and eat", that's nothing more than well-meant honest advice. I've mostly stopped giving it here though, because people here are generally not interested in it and I respect that.

not everyone who tells other people how to live is evil...
I agree. As I said earlier, I believe that most people mean well. I have also made horrible mistakes in my ignorance while meaning well. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

genuinely concerned, not trying to throw daggers.)
Thanks. But there's no need to worry because your interpretations of me were incorrect and unfounded. Maybe you should ask yourself your first question instead of me.
 
That, plus masks were at first in limited supply, and essential workers needed them most.
It's simpler than that. At the beginning of the outbreak there just weren't enough mask for everybody. They knew full well masks were needed but if they'd said so, there wouldn've been any masks for doctors and nurses, people would have get them all for themselves like crazy.
So they lied to the public and said masks were useless. Sad, but effective. Hospitals got masks (and yet not enough of them) and the rest got to stay home and wash hands.
Now that mask production is up they can tell ordinary people to wear them. That helps a little to pretend further than the economy still works a little.
The proper protective masks were in short supply (still are somewhat I believe) but there was no argument that those help to protect you. From the start the instructions were not to buy those because healthcare workers needed them.

The home-made fabric face coverings most people are wearing now don't offer much protection to the person wearing one, but reduce the overall spread of the virus if everyone is wearing one. At the start, we were told those were useless and possibly worse than useless. The supply problem story wouldn't make sense here, because the sooner these face coverings are recommended, the sooner people start making them.

Surgical masks are a grey area here.
 
Wow. I agree to the expression of free-speech, but bloody hell, @Robert Taylor don't half talk some shite.

Hats off to you sir! If you were to be cut in half (by a medical professional, of course), I'm sure we could see the stars and stripes run all the way through. Thanks for subsidising our cradle-to-grave EU healthcare at the expense of your country men, women and children. I appreciate their sacrifice! :confused:
 

Thanks for the post. That will take a bit to get through. Post more, I would like to hear your thinking on this subject.
Post automatically merged:

Wow. I agree to the expression of free-speech, but bloody hell, @Robert Taylor don't half talk some shite.

Hats off to you sir! If you were to be cut in half (by a medical professional, of course), I'm sure we could see the stars and stripes run all the way through. Thanks for subsidising our cradle-to-grave EU healthcare at the expense of your country men, women and children. I appreciate their sacrifice! :confused:

I accept the rebuke. Note: I am Canadian, Americans are subsidising both of our lifestyles.
 
@Robert Taylor in which case, your opinions on the US of A seem even more strange, but I would defend your right to express them.

However, it sounds like you have a case of something that compares to Stockholm syndrome? Being that the continent you share keeps you in such close proximity?
 
Absolutely fair critique.

How do you think the whole puzzle fits together? What did I get wrong? ElPoco finally posted something that I can dig into, which is nice. I don't mind more about where I am wrong.

EDIT: Sorry, just to spell out one point, I am not trying to win any arguments or convince anyone. This is a conversation between friends as far as I am concerned, so feel free to lay it on. No biggie.
 
I am Canadian, Americans are subsidising both of our lifestyles.
I really don't get it. You are American, as are Mexicans, Brazilians, Argentinians, Chileans, Bolivians ...
So of course, Americans are subsidising your lifestyle.
 
This is something i dotnt understand at Donalds Slogan: "Make America Great Again", America is a lot more than just the USA, so why should they make a Border Wall between Parts of America ??

Would "Make USA Great Again" much more sense ?? (MUGA)..
 
This is something i dotnt understand at Donalds Slogan: "Make America Great Again", America is a lot more than just the USA, so why should they make a Border Wall between Parts of America ??

Would "Make USA Great Again" much more sense ?? (MUGA)..

Don't argue about this... Donald surely knows this argument better than anyone else !! :cool:
 
I really don't get it. You are American, as are Mexicans, Brazilians, Argentinians, Chileans, Bolivians ...
So of course, Americans are subsidising your lifestyle.

I am not sure what any of this means. What does conflating the semantics of coloquial use of America in our culture vs the rest of the world have to do with economics?

Here are a few more things you might not understand about our culture:

Did you know we don't consider Mexico as part of North America? They might be geographically North American but we don't view them as North American at all. Did you know that, not only do we think of Mexico as the beginning of South America, we view Mexico as the beginning of the third world? As well, America == USA. No one says US or United States of America, it's just America. In addition, colloquially, we think of South America as "South America" and not America, which includes Mexico and is populated by third world people. "South America" is just a label we see every once in a while and it is always followed by a story about how many Mexicans were beheaded on a particular day:


On that point, we NEVER see any positive news about "South America" except pictures of Machu Pichu and occasionally a picture of a beach at a resort, all of which are owned by the cartels:


I personally know one friend who got kidnapped in Mexico and escaped, and I know one other lady whos son went to Mexico for vacation and dissapeared. Her son's last phone call was to her on his last day in his hotel calling her to tell her that he loves her, that someone is following him and that he is making his way to the airport to escape and come back home. He never made it back, she does not know what happened to him, no body was found.

Actually, funny you bring up Bolivia. I saw our first MS13 gang member walking around today in our area. They were not known to be in Canada, they are now. He was tattoed, part of his face had MS13 on it. I now give it 2 years before we start hearing about MS13 style behaviour we see in the states. If anyone here knows about the different cultures between different cities in Canada and America, you will know that people in big cities and rural towns walk differently. This dude had a TOTALLY different walking gate and speed from either big city or little town folk too. It's going to get fun with these people around now.
 
Last edited:
This is something i dotnt understand at Donalds Slogan: "Make America Great Again", America is a lot more than just the USA, so why should they make a Border Wall between Parts of America ??

Would "Make USA Great Again" much more sense ?? (MUGA)..

That's because you are German.

:)

By the way, is this true or is someone pulling my leg:
Surely German isn't that ridiculous.
 
That's because you are German.

:)

By the way, is this true or is someone pulling my leg:
Surely German isn't that ridiculous.
Thanks, that's hilarious. Mucho respecto for the narrator to pull that off - I couldn't. And yes, German can do that - tremble before its might, muahaha!
 
Post more, I would like to hear your thinking on this subject.
There are definitely groups out there that fight to impose their views. Some are formal groups with a leadership and an agenda, other are more ad-hoc. They do it for different reasons (some will do it for personal gains, other will do it because they're convinced it's better), and even inside these groups you can find different motivations.

This is to be expected, despite everything we're still living in societies where you can't get anything done if your population doesn't consent at least a bit, and where you can't get any drastic change without at least some popular support. Note that when I write "drastic change", I mean deviation from the status-quo. So obviously, groups that benefit from the status quo not only benefit from spreading their ideology, but they also benefit from just disrupting other discourses.

Some of the views that all these groups are trying to impose can be "scientifically" argued. This doesn't mean that the answer is clear-cut: even in natural science, most of the things are true until they're proven to be false. So even in good faith, you could expect a lot of dissensions on these questions. And since there's potentially a lot to gain, most won't stick to good faith. This makes it hard to get the "truth", but I don't think it means that you can't believe anything. Just like in any science field, there are some solid references that you can assume to be correct until something better is found.

Some of the views are less grounded in facts but are more a matter of ideology, or personal preferences. Most of the human rights don't have any scientific proofs behind them. They're just things that we decide to agree on because we think it's better this way. This is why it's sometimes difficult to debate them, and also why we feel strongly about them (the less facts you have to back up a concept, the more belief in it you need to keep it).

So back to the topic, the people cited as linked to the Manhattan Institute have a discourse that:
- Will generally go against the flow of scientific consensus (climate change denial, denial of studies proving systemic racism, etc.)
- Spread mistrust, masquerading it as "reasonable doubt", leaving you with absolutely nothing to rely on (except their words)
- Reject any voice that challenge the status-quo.

So you might feel like you're anti-authoritarian when you follow these people who reject the "mainstream opinion" but when that mainstream opinion goes against the status-quo (like it does with climate change or Marxism, since even if they're being talked about a lot no major government is actively doing anything on these topics), you might actually do what the authorities want you to do.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top