LinvilleGorge

To be fair, it does on that particular branch of the family tree. He's a distant cousin.

While the conspiracy theories live rent free in your head.

Your tinfoil is wrapped entirely too tight. Most epidemiologists and virologists (you know, people who actually specialize in this exact thing) hypothesize that if anything the total deaths from COVID are likely under-calculated, but you know I'm sure Alex Jones is far better informed than those idiot PhDs who have devoted their lives to studying these types of situations.

It's not a political test. It's an IQ test. You're failing.

Reality no longer matters. Only emotions and political leanings. We're fuged.

I'm sad to report the Burke County Sherriff Department will not be enforcing the mask mandate. The Sherriff is my cousin, but he's a cop, a politician, and a pussy (though I'm not sure there's much difference between the three). He's also a Democrat.

My mom keeps trying to convince me that my hometown is a "young, thriving place". Based on the nearly devoid level of mask wearing I've observed over the last week, I had to agree that after this winter it might not be thriving but it'll probably be young.

It's not about fear, it's about simple, basic, minimally intrusive precautions. The thing about outbreaks is that you usually don't realize you're in one until it's too late to do much about it. It's about being proactive, not reactive. Reactive isn't very effective.

No one is suggesting another lockdown. Simply wearing face masks when in public and practicing basic social distancing among groups. Team sports likely aren't going to be able to happen. Someone will get it and it'll probably cause an outbreak. Testing everyone everyday may or may not prevent the outbreak, but what are you going to do when a team is missing 10+ players from COVID not to mention other football related injuries? It'll be impacting the integrity of the game at that point. I think the NFL will try to have a season but unfortunately for them, the NFL season coincides with peak cold/flu season. Their season will almost certainly get derailed by this. Most aspects of life can get back to relative normalcy with people wearing masks and socially distancing. Some things just won't be able to, team sports likely among them. Concerts, clubs, theaters, etc... well, it sucks but you're probably sidelined. I'm fine with creating economic lifelines for the impacted businesses as the list will be a LOT shorter than it was during the lockdowns.

I think that's the big issue. Everyone thought this was just a NY/NJ problem with no understanding that with America's relatively low population density outside of a few major cities, it was going to be relatively slow to spread through the country but ultimately part of the country would be spared.

That's what the people of Arizona, Texas, and Florida thought too.

It's impossible to explain the irrationality of logic being pushed aside for politics and/or emotions. It's why I just look at our society today and shake my head. So much of today's society is absolutely baffling to any rational human.

Here's some stats... Over the course of three months, 125k Americans have died from COVID. Over the course of a year, roughly 650k Americans die from heart disease and another 600k die from cancer. But rest assured, it's nothing. Meanwhile, 2996 Americans died during 9/11.

Well, you see, while this is a novel virus and we still have a lot to learn about it, doctors already have a pretty thorough understanding of how different types of damage to the body heal or don't heal and what the prognosis is for different types of damage to the body.

To those only looking at mortality rate to judge the seriousness of this pandemic, I think that's a significant error. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-effects/scientists-just-beginning-to-understand-the-many-health-problems-caused-by-covid-19-idUSKBN23X1BZ

I don't think many will wake up. There's too much peer pressure and political pressure for them to downplay it no matter what. Even if a million Americans die they'll still proclaim that there's 330 million Americans so that's still less than 1%. It's no big deal. Liberal hoax to destroy Trump's economy. Meanwhile, they'll still fail to explain why the rest of the world has taken far more aggressive measures.

O is the best blood type for this stuff. A is the worst. I haven't looked into exactly why.

Just got a text back last night from a former coworker of mine who I keep up with. I hadn't been able to get in touch with him for the past month or so and that's not like him. I knew something had to be up. Turns out he had been in the hospital for the past five weeks with the rona. Not sure of his exact age, but he's early to mid 60s.

I've switched to wearing an N95 in NC. In CO, I was just wearing a simple surgical mask but that's because virtually everyone was wearing masks. Here, virtually no one is wearing masks. Surgical masks basically just protect others from you, not you from others. All the N95s I own have a one way valve in them, so they don't do as good of a job protecting others from me, but fug 'em. They're not wearing anything anyway. I gotta protect me and mine from these damn idiots.

It blows my mind how virtually everyone seems utterly blind to what is coming in the real estate market.

Yeah. By wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

You asked what my deal was earlier... well, pretty much this. People being selfish fuging assholes because they feel like the odds are heavily in their favor if they contract this virus while showing a complete and utter disregard for all of the elderly, immunocompromised, etc. out there who run a much higher risk of developing severe illness from this virus. I didn't see much of this at all in CO. In the week I've spent in NC, it seems to be the prevalent attitude despite people by and large being a lot fatter and likely a far higher percentage of people with significant risk factors like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc.

It's interesting watching the cool and tough "I ain't wearin' no mask cuz mah freedoms" crowd switch up tactics on the fly and basically proclaiming themselves to be too physically and mentally weak to possibly endure the tortures wearing a simple face covering. It's not exactly water boarding, y'all.

If you're "young and athletic" you were just being dramatic. You're like that guy who was "struggling to breathe" while running suicides but magically recovered when it was time to run scrimmage.

Man, if you couldn't make it through a meeting of sitting on your ass while wearing a mask, you better hope you don't get this stuff.