Coronavirus

Jirin
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Jirin »

In America, 10% of people are responsible for 80% of infections.

The other 90% aren't any less individualist, they're less selfish and stupid.

An individualist who is evil will cause poverty and the spread of COVID.
A collectivist who is evil will establish concentration camps.

The problem isn't individualism, it's selfishness and stupidity.
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styrofoamboots
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by styrofoamboots »

You really don't think that there's a relationship between individualism and making choices in self-interest rather than the interest of the group? Isn't that literally the definition of individualism?
Cold Butterfly
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Cold Butterfly »

Capitalism and cronyism have been intertwined ever since the economic system's inception though. Also, a big reason for the U.S. Government not shutting down the country earlier than it should've been was to protect the economy. Under capitalism, you have a culture where those in positions of power are willing to risk lives (which has led to over 200,000 dying so far) to protect business interests. If the U.S. had been willing to put the safety of its citizens over economic interests at the beginning of its pandemic, then far fewer people would've died. In capitalism though, workers are viewed as tools in the means of production, meaning that they ultimately come second to the products and protecting those who are powerful. In an ideal society, workers would own the means of production and share all of the benefits those in power over them have had.

Individualism can be bad in many circumstances because it's in human nature to help each other out. But with capitalism, it's all about this belief that "you can make if you try" (to quote Sly Stone) when a lot of people don't have the resources to do that. That in turn leads to why people have been very inconsiderate about the mask situation. It's easy to say that these people have been brainwashed under Trump when in reality this all comes from a culture of dog eat dog that has been a part of America since it's inception. Combine that with the lack of seriousness the country historically has treated public health with, it leads to a lack of carelessness concerning this matter. Just look at a country like Cuba which provides health care for all its people and who has a government that takes public health seriously. Their economy isn't defined by individualism too and as a result, far fewer people have died per capita in that country due to COVID-19 compared to the United States. America's anti-science culture is also the result of a belief that capitalism must function as the crooked people high up want it to. Continuing on the topic of individualism and capitalism though, why do you think the majority of the anti-mask crowd is white? Because they're the people that benefit most under capitalism and because of that a lot of these people aren't able to see this from a viewpoint of an Indigenous, Black, or Hispanic person in America, who's communities have suffered the most under the pandemic and have suffered the most historically in America due to economic inequality.

There is a connection with that though. Capitalism began with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the forced genocide of Native Americans. And yet the systemic genocide of minorities in America continues to this day through things such as mass incarceration and police brutality. Racism still would exist even if capitalism never existed, but the rise of police and prisons in America (which didn't happen to protect communities but to stoke racial terror) is a product of capitalism. And look at what has happened. Statistically, police officers and prisons have shown to be useless when it comes to "protecting" society. A company like the CCA makes money off of Black and Hispanic people going to prison, but I don't think a lot of people are willing to bring that up as a product of the economic system. Or the fact that prisons in this country have been huge COVID-19 hotspots too, which ties into all of that.

But how does this all blend in? Because the majority of the anti-mask crowd are privileged, they think they're in some sort of solidarity with the economic system, since the economic system is designed to protect them only. And those are just a few examples out of many. 10% is always too much if we're talking about human lives. But government officials encouraging people not to wear a mask to deny the virus in turn so people can keep going out and giving money to businesses and institutions even though over 200,000 people that have died is a product of the desperate lengths those high up have gone in the "profit over people" ideology and practice. The parasites which are landlords are still going to keep evicting tenants who are just trying to make a living as they have through history and people are going to keep disregarding health issues nevertheless, as it was happening even before the pandemic. And why does all this happen? Because capitalism can't exist and/or thrive without exploitation.

Fixing specific laws can't help to "fix" an economic system that is inherently evil, designed from its inception to help the "big guys" and is just principally flawed in practice in general historically. Theorists like Rosa Luxemburg and Angela Davis have spoken about this incorrect belief that things from corporations to prisons can be "reformed" when in reality you can't fix something that is fundamentally tyrannical. "Reform" will only help to give further advantages to the "bourgeoisie" in the short and long run. Only direct action, which means the capitalist state will eventually have to be destroyed to alleviate some of these things will help.
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mileswide
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by mileswide »

Vietnam follows the mixed economy template of China and may even be more capitalist than its northern neighbour on account of its looser control of business activity. Singapore has long been a neo-liberal's wet dream and allows its cabinet ministers to be appointed as CEOs for its biggest companies yet its cronyism hasn't stopped it having the lowest Covid infection rate in the world as of September. Not to generalise but I suspect SE Asia's relative success springs from more interventionist states, a greater emphasis on communitarianism and the resulting increased trust in government. In their cities, they've of course been used to wearing face masks for years and it doesn't even occur to them to see it as an imposition on their freedom.

Anti-mask rallies over in the UK at least do appear to be largely populated by white people (disclosure: I'm white) but not because of economic privilege, rather seemingly because the 'Covid-truther' movement taps into the same kind of unthinking refusal of the mainstream as the libertarian hard-Right. Some protesters who have been interviewed by the media aren't Corona deniers but people who have lost their jobs/businesses during lockdown. These jobless truther-converts are being irresponsible but they deserve some sympathy.

Generalising again, countries with low rates mainly appear to have benefited from sparse populations (such as the non-urban parts of Australia) and/or lower levels of globalisation (Belarus and much of Central Africa). Comparatively low death rates have occurred as a result of cultures that do more than pay lip service to individual accountability (much of Scandinavia, the Netherlands) and/or early, consistent intervention from government, with Germany often being held up as the model.

Germany's own recent spike shows that nowhere is fully immune but the number of avoidable cases is being exacerbated by the reckless post-truth posturing of some of our leaders (in America at federal and state level most blatantly but Brazil as well) and/or the blasé reluctance of a significant minority of us citizens to make sacrifices (depressingly so in the UK, especially here in Nottingham, which has the highest infection rate in the country).
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Live in Phoenix
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Live in Phoenix »

This is a bit on the nose as an illustration of this administration's response to the coronavirus, but I'm actually quarantined on Election Day. Someone at my office tested positive. Over the course of the year, one co-worker's husband has died from the coronavirus, and another co-worker's mother has died from it. Fortunately, I already voted a long time ago, and our office didn't buy into the extreme idiocy against masks, or into the notion of "it's been turning a corner since the summertime or something, nothing to see here" and so on, so I'm not especially worried about my health.
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Holden
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Holden »

Live in Phoenix wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:44 pm This is a bit on the nose as an illustration of this administration's response to the coronavirus, but I'm actually quarantined on Election Day. Someone at my office tested positive. Over the course of the year, one co-worker's husband has died from the coronavirus, and another co-worker's mother has died from it. Fortunately, I already voted a long time ago, and our office didn't buy into the extreme idiocy against masks, or into the notion of "it's been turning a corner since the summertime or something, nothing to see here" and so on, so I'm not especially worried about my health.
Make sure that you check up on your vote to see it’s status, it’s really easy (or at least really easy in my state of Wisconsin)
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Live in Phoenix
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Live in Phoenix »

Holden wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 5:30 pm
Live in Phoenix wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:44 pm This is a bit on the nose as an illustration of this administration's response to the coronavirus, but I'm actually quarantined on Election Day. Someone at my office tested positive. Over the course of the year, one co-worker's husband has died from the coronavirus, and another co-worker's mother has died from it. Fortunately, I already voted a long time ago, and our office didn't buy into the extreme idiocy against masks, or into the notion of "it's been turning a corner since the summertime or something, nothing to see here" and so on, so I'm not especially worried about my health.
Make sure that you check up on your vote to see it’s status, it’s really easy (or at least really easy in my state of Wisconsin)
Ballot was signature verified and counted on Oct. 14th 8-)
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Holden
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Holden »

Live in Phoenix wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 5:52 pm
Holden wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 5:30 pm
Live in Phoenix wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:44 pm This is a bit on the nose as an illustration of this administration's response to the coronavirus, but I'm actually quarantined on Election Day. Someone at my office tested positive. Over the course of the year, one co-worker's husband has died from the coronavirus, and another co-worker's mother has died from it. Fortunately, I already voted a long time ago, and our office didn't buy into the extreme idiocy against masks, or into the notion of "it's been turning a corner since the summertime or something, nothing to see here" and so on, so I'm not especially worried about my health.
Make sure that you check up on your vote to see it’s status, it’s really easy (or at least really easy in my state of Wisconsin)
Ballot was signature verified and counted on Oct. 14th 8-)
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Live in Phoenix
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Live in Phoenix »

Holden wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 6:23 pm
Live in Phoenix wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 5:52 pm
Holden wrote: Tue Nov 03, 2020 5:30 pm

Make sure that you check up on your vote to see it’s status, it’s really easy (or at least really easy in my state of Wisconsin)
Ballot was signature verified and counted on Oct. 14th 8-)
Rad!
Well, I noticed 2 states in particular this morning that either flipped or is leaning toward it...
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BleuPanda
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by BleuPanda »

Signed up for my first vaccine dose, scheduled for Thursday afternoon. I've rarely felt so much relief.
Jacc
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Jacc »

It hasn't impacted me too badly, thankfully. I work in a library and my job is secure. Nobody I know has COVID either.
Jirin
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Jirin »

Does anyone else have trouble keeping any respect for artists who became Antivax activists?

First Van Morrison, now Eric Clapton. If I ever listen to them again it will be in a medium they will not receive residuals for.

Having skepticism because you’re bombarded with scary misinformation is forgivable. Actually pushing that misinformation, you have permanently lost my respect as a human being.
jamieW
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by jamieW »

Jirin wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:31 am Does anyone else have trouble keeping any respect for artists who became Antivax activists?

First Van Morrison, now Eric Clapton. If I ever listen to them again it will be in a medium they will not receive residuals for.

Having skepticism because you’re bombarded with scary misinformation is forgivable. Actually pushing that misinformation, you have permanently lost my respect as a human being.
Yes and agree completely. I, too, can forgive someone who is scared because they listen to the wrong people and have genuine concerns from a vaccine safety standpoint. It's much more difficult to forgive those who fall into the categories of: a) should know better, b) are refusing to be vaccinated for purely political reasons, or c) think they're going to be tracked by Bill Gates / will stick to refrigerators when they walk past. Clapton's said some pretty offensive things in his past, so I wasn't too surprised to find him on the wrong side of history. Van Morrison's comments came out of left field; but I never really knew much about his politics, so maybe they shouldn't have. Oh well, my entire family's vaccinated, even if we live in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country...
Jirin
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Jirin »

I’m lucky enough to be in the state with the second highest vax rate.

What makes it even worse for Van is the way he glorified himself as the “Last Rebel”.

Yeah, the people out there changing their gender and loving the people they love at risk of personal and professional blowback and being targeted by violence, and the ones risking their safety to protest police violence aren’t rebels cause they aren’t on your side. Only the people ignoring all scientific evidence to baselessly call public health measures acts of fascism are real rebels. Sure Van, makes sense to me.

Just because you’re a rebel doesn’t mean you have an ethical or even a defensible cause.
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mileswide
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by mileswide »

Jirin wrote: Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:31 am Does anyone else have trouble keeping any respect for artists who became Antivax activists?

First Van Morrison, now Eric Clapton. If I ever listen to them again it will be in a medium they will not receive residuals for.

Having skepticism because you’re bombarded with scary misinformation is forgivable. Actually pushing that misinformation, you have permanently lost my respect as a human being.
I habitually push stuff like that to the background (because of moral cowardice? selective amnesia? not wanting to lose my grasp of my favourite songs? Hopefully the last of those but I can't tell), unless it poisons the music.

Morrison's declared himself apolitical through his career and that appears to be the case from his lyrics in his heyday, which were usually either abstract or about love/everyday minutiae. No More Lockdown autoplayed on my Spotify, however, and it is devoid of anything likable if you don't agree with the (extremely prosaically worded) message. And as I'm not that much of an idiot, I can't stand anything about NML.

Clapton's long-unapologetic stance on race does make it even more difficult to stomach his more plodding retreads of the blues originally by people he doesn't think should be allowed in 'his' country but I can't bring myself to give up his best tracks with Cream and the song Layla (I'm only human!) That said, it'd naturally be a lot more indefensible if his lyrics in the above songs reflected his opinions.

I can see where anyone who can no longer face listening to musicians with abhorrent views are coming from, though.
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Jirin
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Re: Coronavirus

Post by Jirin »

I can listen to them, I just can't stomach the idea of them profiting from me listening to them, even the fractions of a penny they'd get on Spotify.

So physical CD only from now on for those particular artists.
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