LinvilleGorge

I spent the last couple of days driving across the country from CO to NC. Mask wearing in CO ranges from near 100% in my town to above 50% most places. Mask wearing in Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and NC has been hovering very near zero.

The problem is that unless you're wearing a legit N95 respirator, your mask is only protecting others from you, not you from others. If you're out and about wearing your cloth mask or surgical mask while everyone else is wearing nothing, you're really not that much more protected than if you were also wearing nothing. It's why we need municipalities to pass legislation forcing mask wearing for awhile with steep fines for not doing so. People are just too damn dumb to listen to recommendations to wear them and way too many are in the elite dumbass category where they view not wearing a mask as some sort of political statement.

It's admittedly a controversial opinion, but I don't think LEOs should be able to unionize. Unlike many who are anti-cop, I think one of the biggest issues is the shitty pay. Starting cop pay sucks. When pay sucks, your talent pool is also likely going to suck. Sure, there are plenty who go into the profession for the right reasons, but there are way too many meatheads, power trippers, and sociopaths seeking a badge for all of the wrong reasons and the shallow talent pool allows many of them to slip through and get a badge and a gun. It's a problem. I'm not anti-cop as much as I am anti the current environment of policing. I very briefly sold equipment to police departments. VERY briefly. It basically confirmed all of my previous thoughts about police. American LEO departments need to be burned to the ground and completely rebuilt.

The behavior of asking the cop for my buddy to reach into the glove compartment to retrieve my insurance and registration, the cop saying yes, then his partner pulling a gun and screaming like a psycho? That behavior? Need them like the time a bear broke into my house and was between my wife and the exit, she called 911 in a panic and the news van beat the cops there (they took over an hour)? Or maybe that time tweakers broke into my truck while I was moving to Colorado and stole my wife's identify from the documents they stole. I gave the exact address. They did absolutely nothing. Months later they busted the theft ring due to an unrelated drug arrest. They blew out their shoulder patting their own backs. It was the exact address I'd given them months earlier. The tweakers were registering credit cards and shipping items straight to their rented residence. The cops thought there was some Oceans 11 stuff going on in Topeka. Anyway, I got a call out of the blue to let me know some of my belongings had been recovered with a description of said belongings and that they'd follow up to arrange shipping. A few days passed and I heard nothing so I called back. None of the items I described were in inventory and no record was ever taken of any such items. I'll say it again - fug the police. I have ZERO use for them. I'll be 38 years old this year and I've never once been in a situation where the presence of a police officer has improved the situation. Defund their asses. Maybe that's what we need to happen to break up the "brotherhood of the badge" that allows awful cops like the sociopath that killed the guy in Minneapolis to remain on the force because cops won't roll on other cops even when they know they work with sociopaths who abuse their power and will ultimately most likely end up seriously harming or outright murdering someone.

I've had guns pulled on me twice in my life. Both to by cops. fug 'em. I have zero use for them. Gathering I masses right now is still stupid and reckless.

Gathering in masses right now is stupid. Sorry that hurts you right in the feels, but a virus doesn't care about your feels nor your motivation to gather.

Are you watching Office Space right now? Because you definitely your Jump to Conclusions mat out. It might blow your mind, but you can actually support the cause of the protests while also realizing that gathering in masses right now is incredibly idiotic. Meanwhile, I sold a home. I'm not buying another one right now because the economic poo storm hasn't even happened yet.

I get that your entire purpose on this board is to be a snarky ass, but go back and read what I actually wrote and try to understand it.

My overall opinion of humanity was already pretty low but the past few months has just about convinced me we're completely beyond redemption. Morons on the right having pool parties and using not wearing masks and not social distancing as a political statement to "own the libs", whatever the fug that's supposed to mean. Morons on the left ccorrectly proclaiming the virus doesn't care about politics when criticizing aforementioned behavior but damned if that didn't fly straight out the window with all of these recent protests. TLDR version: People are really fuging stupid and politics dumps gas on the stupidity bonfire.

It's easy to think this when you don't understand what you're talking about so you just look at the numbers, see them going up, and ignorantly conclude that definitively means there's no season element involved. Numerous studies have pinpointed the mid-40s as the optimal temperature for the spread of COVID. That doesn't mean it goes away in the summer, it just spreads much less readily. With a novel that the population has no natural resistance to, that can still be pretty readily, but relatively speaking it's transmission abilities are greatly reduced. There's a reason why there have been lots of outbreaks associated with meat packing facilities. A place where people are working shoulder to shoulder in a refrigerated indoor environment is pretty much perfect for the spread of this virus.

Yeah, I would've bet good money I had it. I developed a helluva chest cold shortly after a trip to Seattle in January. I had a dry cough that lingered about two months. Never had a cough like that for nearly that long. Whatever it was it wasn't COVID. The initial antibody test came back inconclusive. The second follow up test came back conclusively negative.

It's why I sold my house. poo is gonna crash HARD. I put a BIG ASS check in the bank yesterday and now I wait. I'm gonna buy someone's house next year at a steep discount and I'm not even gonna feel bad about it because I've told everyone who will listen exactly what I plan to do.

Unfortunately, it is. That's why we're gonna get smacked HARD in the fall.

Some of you clearly have no idea what a post major asteroid strike Earth would look like.

An asteroid that kills billions in one shot is the extinction of humanity. The remaining survivors would die off in the next couple of years during thw impact winter. In an event like that, you'd probably be best off to get hit the damn head by the thing. Better to get the lights shutoff and never even realize it rather than starve to death in a post-apocalytic hellscape.

Positive tests generally lag 1-2 weeks behind actual infection and hospitalization often lags an additional 1-2 weeks after positive tests. You don't know you're actually in a spike until the SHTF.

Which couldn't possibly be more irrelevant at a local, state, and even regional level.

What makes your gym special and unique? If it's indoors and people are huffing and puffing, it's the perfect coronavirus vector. It's pretty much the perfect situation for maximum respiratory exchange.

I would guess it's 30% of the maximum capacity as dictated by the fire marshall. You can't keep gyms shutdown forever, but I personally wouldn't be working out in a public gym right now. I can't imagine a better venue for the transmission of a respiratory disease than an indoor place where everyone is working out and huffing and puffing.

Very different situations. Sure, we did a terrible job, but we have WAY more international travel in and out and through than New Zealand. Look at the number of airports and ports of call in NZ vs. the USA. The state of Florida alone probably has 2-3x as many of each. NYC became our hub in large part due to the massive international travel through there. With that said, NY did a masterfully horrific job of handling their outbreak. Southern California probably has nearly as much international traffic as NYC and they didn't experience near the outbreak. Meanwhile, many have tried to make Cuomo some time of national hero for this. He should probably be a national villain. Having a brother who is one of the most prominent news anchors in the country likely really helps shape that narrative.

I hope I'm wrong, but I honestly expect a poo ton of virtue signaling and posts by individuals and organizations alike in search of likes and reshares (and brand awareness marketing) but very little meaningful action taken.

Weird to complain about politics in this thread now. The last week or so has probably been the best relatively non-political discussion in the history of this thread.

NC. I'll be back in NC by next weekend. Sell of the house officially closes next week. We'll likely boomerang back out west around this time next year. I just want to cash in our chips now and sit on cash.

Holding steady at 8-9% for the past 2-3 weeks. Hospitalizations have been slowly trending upward since May 10th. 442 on the 10th, 717 currently. Hospitals beds are 80% occupied, ICU beds at 84%. There isn't hospital capacity to account for these spikes we're seeing and the spikes ahead.

They're terrified of being called racist. I support their cause, but gathering in the thousands right now is a really, REALLY bad idea. It's not racist to remind people that a virus doesn't give a damn about your race, religion, socio-economic status, or political views. As long as people are gathering together in crowds, it'll spread like wildfire. Period.