BellGab.com Archive

Quote from: WOTR on April 12, 2020, 02:57:10 PM
I'm trying to decide who that is winning. In some ways, I understand. However, if they have the cash to sustain themselves (not get tax payer bail-outs), would it not be better to leave them in place? If you suddenly have an apartment complex half empty, the owner is going bankrupt. The grocery store around the corner is going to lay off more staff, the furniture store will have sales fall further in a depressed economy.

For those types of things, I'm torn... Yes, a larger labour force looking for work is not good- but I wonder which does more harm to a fragile economy...

It’s probably not good for the local economy but the tech companies need a kick in the balls and so do the politicians that keep upping the number of H-1b visas. 

It’s bad enough that they undercut US college grads, but many of them get here and have anchor babies.  With technology today, why can’t they do their jobs in India? 

Quote from: SredniVashtar on April 12, 2020, 01:20:59 PM
Let me just put a match to that straw man you're building so eagerly. I pointedly said that doctors are not perfect but they have a level of expertise that warrants respect. If you have a medical emergency you're going to need a doctor, not some idiot whose only purpose in life is to pretend that experts are useless. You seem to think doctors make the laws. If you want alcohol and tobacco banned that's a question for Trump, not the medical profession, who only provide advice.

Take what you like, I'm not your mother. Drink a gallon of badger piss and stand on your head for an hour if you think it will help.

Perhaps you haven't noticed but there are laws to stop you drinking and driving. Do you honestly think banning something automatically stops it?

Double fault. 40-love. Is my next serve game, set match?  I always lose count in these one sided matches. 

Quote from: SredniVashtar on April 12, 2020, 12:46:53 PM
OK, if you bust open a hernia go and look up a YouTube vid on how to fix it. You don't need them doctors. Let me know how you get on.

With alcohol or tobacco, generally speaking, as you are at risk you can make the determination. With a virus you're infecting others.

Frankly I'd like to see the US population down to about 50 million anyway, so I'd rather not discourage your free-thinking approach.

No clue as to what a hernia has to do with anything but you started out saying everyone should listen to the doctors but now you are saying not when it comes to alcohol and tobacco.  What about the doctors that say you need to let the virus run its normal course to establish herd immunity?

Let’s go with your “personal choice” discussion.  I choose to take HCQ as a prophylactic against the virus. Or Ivermectin. That would be my personal choice. 

How many drunk driving deaths occur on an annual basis?  Why does it seem the drunk always walks away with a few scrapes while the family in the other car is killed on the spot? You can’t honestly believe alcohol only has an effect on the drinkers. Domestic violence?  I don’t have a real position on the legalization of marijuana because of the loss of productivity (although as I lean libertarian I am beginning to believe it should be legalized), but you don’t have potheads being arrested for domestic violence.

What about the financial effects and the adverse effect on the mental health of the families of people that succumb to the deaths caused by tobacco and alcohol? 

30-Love.

Quote from: SredniVashtar on April 12, 2020, 12:10:53 PM
It's not true about alcohol having no medicinal value, doctors have often recommended a nip of brandy to people in need of a restorative. Wine in moderation is fine. Anyway, the reason people don't ban either alcohol or tobacco is because we have seen (Prohibition) that it is better to work from the bottom up rather than legislate top down. You'd just encourage more criminal activity.

The same doctors that practiced bloodletting?

But you just made the argument for ignoring the mandated shelter in place. Let people decide if they are at risk and should stay at home. 

What happened to following the science?

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 12, 2020, 11:19:28 AM
This doesn't sound too great thread.  I can hack distancibg w/o too much bother but I need bacon, dammit!

Smithfield shutting U.S. pork plant indefinitely, warns of meat shortages during pandemic

https://whbl.com/news/articles/2020/apr/12/smithfield-shutting-us-pork-plant-indefinitely-warns-of-meat-shortages-during-pandemic/1005820/

Time to invoke the DPA. 

Quote from: SredniVashtar on April 12, 2020, 11:03:42 AM
Aha! You bring out the Tu Quoque fallacy and I hadn't even taken my trousers off yet, debating-wise.

It's perfectly possible to enjoy alcohol without getting rat-arsed and destroying your liver, just as I am doing right now, enjoying a Gin and It while relaxing on the balcony watching my gardeners toiling away in the heat on my vast country estate.

Doctors aren't perfect but they're more likely to be right about medical matters than non-doctors. The reason we don't ban booze should be fairly obvious anyway, given recent history over there.

Because it can be repurposed as hand sanitizer in time of need?

There are two substances that could be eliminated which would eliminate two of the top three types of preventable deaths in the US. Tobacco and alcohol.  It alcohol were invented today it would be a Schedule I drug right next to heroin on the banned list. It has no medicinal value, severe risk of addiction, and a major contributing factor to death.

That’s over 200,000 deaths. Per year. Preventable deaths.  Wouldn’t take the total economy down.  Just a few slices of it. 

But noone would get rich from developing, testing and distributing a tobacco or alcohol vaccine. 

Quote from: SredniVashtar on April 12, 2020, 10:18:25 AM
As nothing like this has ever been tried before I think it's only too likely that the models are going to be out until they get actual data to work from. It's literally unprecedented to shut down countries like this so it's hardly surprising that people are blundering about in the dark.

Contingency planning is always going to involve worst-case scenarios, I don't see that as something sinister. It's better to get it wrong on the high-side than the other way round. I know you're being indoctrinated over there to distrust the word of anyone with expertise but most doctors are just interested in saving lives, that's their job. Trump sees his role as prancing around on T.V. and taking credit for everything, I know who I'd rather trust.

So you trust the doctors that say that alcohol is a poison that kills an estimated 88,000 deaths per year in the US?

Why isn’t every distillery shut down permanently?

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/alcohol-facts-and-statistics

Quote from: Kidnostad3 on April 12, 2020, 08:47:55 AM

Trump could use Senate shutdown to make recess appointments of judges and other federal officials that the Dems would be likely to oppose.  Might be seen as cynical advantage-taking but so is everything else Trump doesâ€"fuck em.

That would be counterproductive in the case of judges.  They can already get any judge appointed just using their majority. There may be cabinet positions and lower level appointments like the contested Inspector General appointments made but McConnell has been holding sessions as needed.  The house has been on recess until 4/20 but supposedly Pelosi said she is not coming back then.

Quote from: K_Dubb on April 12, 2020, 08:21:02 AM
Which is more or less admitted in the UW numbers I saw yesterday, which is why I posted it:  “Those types of models do serve purposes, such as moving policymakers into action,” said Tung.

I read yesterday that Pelosi is refusing to call the house back into session until Mid May at the earliest. I wonder if the state of emergency allows Trump to dispatch US Marshalls to round up all these slackers to continue to pass emergency legislation.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 12, 2020, 07:07:56 AM
This would wipe out whole apartment complexes/neighborhoods here if it actually happened.

Indian H1B Visa Holders Fear Deportation as Unemployed Workers Must Leave US within 60 Days

https://www.dqindia.com/indian-h1b-visa-holders-fear-deportation-unemployed-workers-must-leave-us-within-60-days/

#winning

Quote from: SredniVashtar on April 12, 2020, 05:30:45 AM
Science is about using the best available data to make predictions about the future. If the data changes then so does the model. It's about probability rather than certainty. If social-distancing is the best way to reduce the rate of infections then revising the numbers down illustrates its effectiveness not the weakness of the modelling. People are terrible at understanding probability.

Yeah. Except they can still be terrible models. They claim the IHME models were set to account for total lockdown of all states through May 30th and the range of deaths were a range based on the amount of compliance.  They were still high even though not all states were in a lockdown. 

I totally understand models and I totally understand probability. And I totally understand manipulation. 

The models were used to show the need for “flattening the curve” and I believe skewed to instill fear, if not panic.  Also skewed to manipulate or force the executive branch into a box. One only has to look at the disparity in the predictions of deaths (which even though high, were only high by a factor of 2-4) versus the the predicted number of hospital beds (which were high by an order of magnitude). Then you have the assumption of being in a lockdown state through the end of May.  Why didn’t they show the model with an end date of the lockdown as April 30th, which is the current quideline?   The worst internals of the model result in the predictions that each and every state drop down to zero deaths somewhere between the end of May and mid-June.  This puts the administration in a box as far as lifting the guidelines for the “quarantine”. If they stick with the guidelines for the end of April, every death which exceeds the predictions that have been lowered with the real data will be blamed on Trump for not going with the recommendation for a May 31 lockdown.  Yet if they go with the recommendation for the end of May, every death after that will just be written off as yet another error in the models.

I wonder what is going to happen when ventilators start showing up from the 10 or so companies that have been mobilized to produce new ones because it doesn’t look like we are going to have full utilization of the ones we have already had in hospitals or distributed from the stockpile.

As has been stated, these guidelines and total shutdown of the economy were sold based on the need to flatten the curve and keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed in the near term. Around the time the IHME models were adopted as gospel, the narrative switched to reaching an unrealistic goal of zero deaths by mid June.  How could they be relatively close on the predictions for morbidity and so off scale on all the other factors such as number of beds, number of ICU beds and number of ventilators? 

There was definitely an agenda into the design of the models.

Quote from: WOTR on April 12, 2020, 12:58:05 AM
***What the fuck? furloughing staff? The Alberta health authority is asking their employees who do the hiring to work Sunday at triple pay to fast track new hires. (I know somebody who is doing it- I doubt you will find it in the news)... I guess that is the difference between for profit and public health? You can hire as many staff as you can get away with and have them twiddle their thumbs if you don't have to show a profit...

I suspect that there are a lot of "scientific models" that have been using that protocol lately.

I’ve seen reports of layoffs in hospitals all across the country. And even more layoffs in clinics that are strictly outpatient in nature. Most states have stopped all “elective” surgeries. Primarily to not use up more PPE.

I read an article about a chain of day surgery clinics in NYC. They weren’t allowed to be open but had 600 rooms with over 200 doctors and all of the PPE. They tried to make these available on a volunteer basis to NYC or the state and could not get anyone to return their phone calls. Supposedly the drawback was their license did not allow them to keep patients over night.

In Texas we are in pretty good shape. Some hospitals are closing down whole departments but I haven’t heard of layoffs at hospitals yet.  Rural hospitals are going to be the hardest hit. They don’t have many Covid cases but can’t schedule normal surgeries like knees and hips.

Here are today’s resource numbers for our hospitals. We have just over 20,000 detected cases.

Quote from: K_Dubb on April 11, 2020, 10:05:49 PM
Someone needs to point out that hospital capacity was the original purpose of social distancing.  It was, specifically, "flattening the curve", not reducing overall fatalities, i. e. the area under the curve remains the same, just stretched out.

Meanwhile one of our biggest hospitals (Virginia Mason) is furloughing staff.  Hospital business has gone down dramatically as people, fearing infection, stay away.

That is definitely going to be the problem in getting the people out of their homes. People started concentrating on the number of deaths instead of the number of open beds left to deal with the pandemic.

And the ridiculous models that show zero deaths in any state after mid June. 

Quote from: BellHop on April 11, 2020, 10:47:17 PM
Can I get that fleshed out a bit? I know Art died and Heather left and did her own show, yadda yadda yadda... was she supposed to return to MITD or something? Why is Keith no longer involved?

Keith sold the show and the network. Heather somehow ended up thinking she had regained her role as the host of MITD. She did one show and then things went to shit.  I guess she didn’t understand the terms of the deal and either backed out or was fired.  For the last few nights she has been doing a show on her own website/stream. Last word from MITD was the show will resume on 4/13 with a flat earther named Tim O that actually tried to do one show the first night after they bought the stuff from Keith. As far as I know most people cancelled their subscription. I hope Keith cashed the check.

Quote from: BellHop on April 11, 2020, 08:53:25 PM
I’m confused - what happened with Heather and MITD?

Art Died
Heather Cried
Vara Tried
Heather Cried
Tim O Applied
Heather Pried
Radini Lied
Heather Cried

Any questions?

Quote from: albrecht on April 11, 2020, 12:21:40 PM
Some of these eggheads with their models seem to be approaching RCH level of "modelling." First ignoring the disease and not modelling at all, changing the data all the time, updating it, changing advice to lessen spread, and now making it some kind of global model for global, wholesale changes to society, government, and religions.

Then why isn’t it called Covid 19.5?

Quote from: timebandit on April 10, 2020, 07:03:00 PM
     Heather.. The Chosen One.

#Legacy

#stamina

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 10, 2020, 10:02:18 AM
Dude - we've got armies of "essential" landscapers here blowing grass clippings, dust, pollen and virus particles everywhere.  Screw those big Flu Trucks man!

Wait until they find out how essential oils are made.

Quote from: albrecht on April 10, 2020, 09:54:14 AM
Interesting. Here everyone I see is working in their yard, cleaning out the garage, doing projects that have been delayed, working on trucks, etc. I'm going to do run to Goodwill to get rid of a bunch of stuff after cleaning out some closets.

How is working in the garden a "risk?" Assuming it isn't in the 90s and humid (as it was here) and you are reasonably able-bodied. If anything the exercise and sunshine would help you fight off the virus.....

They know the real threat is the asian hornets.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 10, 2020, 09:29:01 AM
Jimminy Crickets!

I swear we are in an alternate timeline and this is another Mandela effect. Around 1963 when I was about 7, I was fascinated by something that looked very similar to that in our front yard and for some reason tried to grab it. It stung me and the stinger remained in my hand leaving a quarter inch L shaped scar that I carried with me my entire life. The pain was indescribable. I just looked down at the palm of my hand and it was gone and for a few minutes I couldn’t even remember which hand.  I closed my eyes and tried to remember the incident in more detail. Now I look at my right hand and the scar is visible. Weird shit is happening.

You got to be shitting me

https://www.the-sun.com/news/661834/giant-asian-hornets-kill-single-sting-invade-virus-us/

I swear. If I make it through this shit, I promise I will eat my black eyed peas on New Years.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 10, 2020, 06:30:42 AM

Well since travel bans do not seem to work, perhaps you can take on the population of Brooklyn for awhile while we get it decontainminated.
They'll fix your pizza problem.

Is DeBlasio going to import a bunch of those Wuhan leaf blower disinfectant trucks?  I bet he only allows union drivers. 

Quote from: WOTR on April 10, 2020, 01:46:25 AM
I listened to the CBC state broadcaster on the way home from grabbing a few slices of pizza (yeah, I'm one of those bad people who still dared to go out and get fast food...) I don't think that I had listened to them since the start of this. In the space of 20 minutes, I learned that:

Orange man bad. He has been "scapegoating" the WHO for the last few days. They did everything correctly and acted with the best information available at the time.

Travel bans and boarder closures do not work. There is no point to them, and we should leave them open as it might actually increase the spread because countries feel secure when closing the boarder and don't test or prepare. Just leave them open, damnit!

Finally, countries with the best outcomes have citizens who trust their government. Countries with the worst do not. Look at Italy. It has the bad outcome because they have not had a stable government, the citizens don't trust science, and many of them do not get vaccinated.

Now, you may be wondering why a population that is anti-vaccination would factor into a virus with no vaccination. I think that I pieced it together. I think it is because if the are too stupid to be vaccinated, they don't trust their overlords and they are not very smart. Therefore, when their government told them to stay away from eachother, they were not obedient... I think.

Overall, it makes me realize that I should probably do whatever the government requests. I should probably allow them to track me 24/7 and report my every movement and social interaction to the ministry of trooth...  And listen to the CBC for my daily dose or propaganda more often.  :

I remember when I viewed Canadians as a robust set of individualists that were self-sufficient almost to a fault.  Geez, I don’t listen to NPR but I bet they are spewing similar shit.

Italy got so bad so fast because Northern Italy has a large Chinese (not racist, that is what they are) population working in garment factories. The Chinese bought several brands, built factories and then staffed them with low paid Chinese laborers in order to be able to sell products to the EU that they could say was made in the EU. Italy did not enact a travel ban and travel continued between China, including Wuhan which created a perfect extension of what was happening in China. While people were speculating on why so many “Italians” were dying, no one mentioned the fact that there were Chinese dying in Italy.

Now I am not an eye witness to any of that, but I read it on the internet so it must be true.

I don’t know about Spain. I haven’t seen reports of Chinese-owned factories in Spain.

How was the pizza? 

Quote from: Dateline on April 10, 2020, 12:45:42 AM
I thought I would share this since this is an Art Bell forum.  I have had difficulty sleeping since  the Covid-19, some call scamdemic has began.  I stay up until the wee hours of the morning researching, tracking uncompleted unemployment claims, and seeing how much more martial law is instituted upon me.

Last night I slept good and dreamed.  I dreamed I was stuck in a skyscraper in a city I had never been to. I had went there to get away from my quarantine.  The skyscraper was glass.  I was there with some people in my past.  Somehow, I wanted to go home and that would require going through a small town, but centrally located on my way home.  There is an old grocery store that has closed, an IGA, is the name.  It was there that I interacted with Art Bell, he was alive and he owned that IGA.  He and his new Phillipino wife were going to open a Christmas store there.  He was stocking it and even held up a wreath that he was going to sell and showed me it.  He was healthy and happy.  The store was only going to be open half a day every day because he had other ongoing business ventures.  I talked and spoke to Art.  I am a fan, but I have never met Art.  Seriously, what does all of this mean?  Does anyone here do dream analysis?

Feel free to use this thread to include any dreams or nightmares you want to discuss, and offer any analysis or insight as felt.

Sweet dreams!

It means both Airyn and Heather are going to be jealous.

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 09, 2020, 10:00:40 PM
I guess this NYC.  It's like a Marx Brothers movie.

https://twitter.com/blue500000/status/1248450886612869122

The cop eventually caught him.  He should have wore Keds or PF Flyers.

Quote from: Taaroa on April 09, 2020, 09:50:39 PM
Cell phone service isn't particularly reflective of how good/developed a country is. You can't even get a decent signal in central London a large chunk of the time.

Yeah. That was kind of tongue in cheek.  I can’t say I’m a world traveler. Beside North and Central America and the Caribbean, the only countries I have been to are Switzerland, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Taiwan.  That’s probably way ahead of most Americans. I would say maybe 30 in all.  Having spent 8 years in the Air Force and 33 years in the space program, I am probably more familiar with the Russians and Chinese than most as well.

Not sure what defines a country as a superpower but I am pretty sure we are the only country that shows up in every corner of the world whenever there is a natural disaster that requires humanitarian assistance. People can say what they want about the US but we always seem to find the resources to help others in need.  The current state of affairs here has us preoccupied and lots of our human resources are engaged, but we would still find a way to help others if called upon.  I think that alone justifies us as a superpower. I hope we always keep that attitude.

Quote from: Taaroa on April 09, 2020, 09:31:32 PM
Maybe I'm just a dumb ol' foreigner, but I really doubt Americans are 'contemplating their superpower status'.

As American bodies fill mass graves, the US contemplates an end to its superpower status
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-10/coronavirus-triggers-struggle-between-donald-trump-and-china/12138772

I question our superpower status every time I go to my property in Central Texas. While it is nice to unplug for days and even weeks at a time, there is no cell phone service unless I walk about a half mile into my woods and sit up in a tree stand.

6 weeks in Thailand going everywhere from the mountains in the north to the islands in the south and I always had a cell signal. 

Quote from: Walks_At_Night on April 09, 2020, 09:01:53 PM
Thai food for meal after meal?  That would kill me.  I'm not built for that.

I decided to go all in for full cultural immersion for 42 days.  The only actual “American” food I ate during that six week period was a handful of Lays potato chips on two different occasions. My Thai friend that traveled with me actually got sick 3 times but I didn’t eat everything they did.  I refused to eat the water buffalo jerky and buffalo hide they bought in an open air market in Laos.  The food was absolutely covered with flies.  And they loved these little shellfish things they call hoi which to me tasted like mud. I only ate one of those. They ate dozens at a time.  Thailand has its share of wet markets. I ate in several of them, but it was always cooked to order, and I didn’t go for any of the exotic fare.

Quote from: K_Dubb on April 09, 2020, 08:46:54 PM
OK but were you eating rice and vegetables in appreciable quantity along with it?  Adds bulk/holds the fat longer.  I am talking just meat.  There is a name for the whoosh I will try to find it.

Lipase deficiency.  People who get it take supplemental lipase.

I ate everything in very appreciable quantities except for the bugs.  Closest I came to eating bugs was Koi Khat Moi  Dang (spicy ant egg salad). My traveling companions were Thai and they sure loved the bugs.

Quote from: K_Dubb on April 09, 2020, 08:20:08 PM
I think leaner = longer digestion time, since we're talking theory.  If you go too fatty there's actually a state where you can't absorb all the fat and whoosh.  Nothing but chicken breast and you shoot out a little hockey puck every 4-5 days with the assistance of some helpful little pills, clean as a whistle.

Whoosh?  I never have whoosh unless I go for my detox tea. 6 weeks in Thailand eating at any and every street market I never went whoosh. 

Now a spoon of peanut butter or extra cheese on the pizza makes me wish I could whoosh.  Hence the stockpile of detox tea. I always figured it was the high fat content that acted as the binding agent.