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Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?

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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by n7axw   » Sun Mar 29, 2020 9:03 pm

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Just to an addition to the comments on malpractice lawsuits up thread... I just looked and here are some figures. The cost annually is 55.6 billion per year with 45.6 billion of that spent on defensive medicine. That is 2.4% of the total healthcare tab.

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by Imaginos1892   » Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:58 pm

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Enough with the panic already!

This year, as in any other year, almost 1% of everybody in the United States is going to die of something. That is INESCAPABLE. That is NORMAL. That is, by the way, one of the LOWEST percentages in the world. Can you begin to understand the meaning of that fact? I know most ‘graduates’ of our leftist-controlled government schools can’t.

It means that almost 1% of the people who do NOT catch the ‘pandemic’ are going to die. It means that almost 1% of the people who DO catch it will die of something ELSE, something completely unrelated to one particular cold virus. It means that if 40 million people catch that virus, and 345,000 of them die, THAT IS JUST HOW MANY WOULD DIE ANYWAY!

This is not the Doomsday Plague. This is not ’The Last Centurion’ or ‘Contagion’ no matter how many idiots scream that it is. The facts are finally starting to come out, and they show that the panic is senseless.

gcomeau wrote:Yep. He did literally nothing to push increased production of medical equipment.

What should he have done? The government does not have mask and glove factories sitting empty, waiting for Trump to start them up. Most of the factories are in China, because of idiotic tax laws. How was Trump supposed to ‘push’ them? The government does not MAKE anything, it just meddles. The best thing Trump can do right now is STOP the government from meddling.

gcomeau wrote:A pandemic playbook that outlined steps for dealing with all of this specifically including instructions to prep stockpiles of PPE

There was a stockpile. 0bama used them up, and did nothing to replace them. Democrats in Congress have continued that policy, or lack of it, so they could spend the money on other things.

n7axw wrote:I don't begrudge pharma a decent profit. But when does it move from a decent profit to price gouging?

Developing one new drug can cost TEN BILLION dollars. European drug companies are not permitted to make the ‘windfall profits’ that are required to recoup those costs, so almost all new drugs are invented in the United States. Then the Europeans demand to be given them for next to nothing ‘to be fair’.

The E wrote:Please point out on the balance sheet where the economic downturn hurt you.

No matter how bad the panic gets, it won’t affect ME very much. I own my house, and I have investments which, while substantially depressed right now, will recover in the fullness of time. I routinely keep enough food on hand to last a month or so. I always keep my gas tanks over 1/2 full. I have a barbecue, charcoal, a fireplace and firewood. I capture rain water from the roof. I know that, in an emergency, I can get 40 gallons of perfectly good water from the water heater. I can defend what I have. The same can’t be said for a lot of people.

Panic KILLS you dipshit, as do the government’s floundering attempts to appease the media wankers stirring it up. This panic is going to kill a lot more people than some lame-ass cold virus. Any large city is perpetually three days from famine and a week from food riots. Cities are maintained in that precarious balance by an economy that is far too complex to be centrally ’managed’ by fiat. An economy contains millions of parts, and the parts are people. They can’t be reduced to one-dimensional variables. Strangle that economy by locking people up so they can’t do their jobs and it all falls apart.

The problem is made worse here because in its infinite idiocy, the U.S. government has imposed taxes on ‘business assets’. Businesses would be taxed if they kept money in reserve for emergencies, but debt is rewarded with tax deductions. That alone would be bad enough, but inventories are also considered ‘business assets’. Raw materials, finished goods, even packaging are all heavily taxed. Stores are taxed for keeping food on the shelves. Distributors are taxed for keeping food in their warehouses. Bakeries are taxed for keeping ingredients on hand. Hospitals and medical suppliers are taxed for stockpiling extra masks, gloves and isolation suits. Bookstores and publishers are taxed for keeping unsold books. Millions of brand-new books are dumped in the trash every year because the taxes cost more than selling them would bring in. Manufacturers are forced to scrap tons of spare parts for the same reason.

As a result, companies are compelled to operate on the hairy edge, ordering just what they need, when they need it, and shipping their products out with frantic haste, with no reserves and no backup. Any disruptions to that intricate interdependent web of supply and transportation brings it all grinding to a halt and what is the government doing? Tying half of the threads in knots without the first clue what they’re fucking up. They have no idea how many jobs are ESSENTIAL to keeping the economy functioning normally.

But still, the only answer you can imagine is “The government must make all the decisions and force everybody to obey or else!” — when those decisions are based on few facts, no understanding, and the self-serving greed of petty tyrants that see only an opportunity to grab unconstrained power. Don’t try to pretend otherwise; last week the Canadian Liberal Party nearly succeeded in ramming through an enabling act that would effectively suspend Parliament and grant them the power to enact laws by decree. Sound familiar? It should! IF you knew anything about history.

The stock market decline is not “Wall Street’s problem”; it is an indicator and a symptom of what is being done to the economy, the way a face turning purple is a symptom of being choked to death. Businesses, especially small businesses, are going bankrupt not because of coronavirus, but because of the panicking idiots. People are losing their jobs. Soon they will be unable to make their rent, house and car payments, because the government punishes savings and rewards debt.

When this is over, the shitheads that whipped up the panic should get fair trials, followed by speedy executions.
———————————
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by The E   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 4:12 am

The E
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Imaginos1892 wrote:Enough with the panic already!

This year, as in any other year, almost 1% of everybody in the United States is going to die of something. That is INESCAPABLE. That is NORMAL. That is, by the way, one of the LOWEST percentages in the world. Can you begin to understand the meaning of that fact? I know most ‘graduates’ of our leftist-controlled government schools can’t.

It means that almost 1% of the people who do NOT catch the ‘pandemic’ are going to die. It means that almost 1% of the people who DO catch it will die of something ELSE, something completely unrelated to one particular cold virus. It means that if 40 million people catch that virus, and 345,000 of them die, THAT IS JUST HOW MANY WOULD DIE ANYWAY!

This is not the Doomsday Plague. This is not ’The Last Centurion’ or ‘Contagion’ no matter how many idiots scream that it is. The facts are finally starting to come out, and they show that the panic is senseless.


You saying that while the US is on track to have the worst outcome of this outbreak is somewhat telling.

There was a stockpile. 0bama used them up, and did nothing to replace them. Democrats in Congress have continued that policy, or lack of it, so they could spend the money on other things.


And why did neither Trump nor the republican-dominated congress he had in the first few years of his presidency do something to fix this? Rebuilding these stockpiles seems like something that is eminently fixable.

You can try to blame Obama as much as you want, but it doesn't erase the fact that Trump and the GOP had plenty of opportunity to fix things and decided not to do so.

Developing one new drug can cost TEN BILLION dollars. European drug companies are not permitted to make the ‘windfall profits’ that are required to recoup those costs, so almost all new drugs are invented in the United States. Then the Europeans demand to be given them for next to nothing ‘to be fair’.


We don't "demand", you moron. We negotiate. US companies are free to not sell their products to us, as some have done.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by Joat42   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 6:09 am

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Imaginos1892 wrote:Enough with the panic already!

This year, as in any other year, almost 1% of everybody in the United States is going to die of something. That is INESCAPABLE. That is NORMAL. That is, by the way, one of the LOWEST percentages in the world. Can you begin to understand the meaning of that fact? I know most ‘graduates’ of our leftist-controlled government schools can’t.

The mortality-rate is ~4% on average for COVID-19, if every inhabitant in the US gets infected that's about 13 million deaths but lets be generous and take other limiting factors into account and drop it by half - that's still 6,5 million people which would triple the average mortality rate for the US.

Somehow I get the feeling you think it's totally okay for someone who have contracted the virus to work anyway and infect other people just to keep the economy going. Because that's what you are arguing should happen.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by The E   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 6:39 am

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Imaginos1892 wrote:Panic KILLS you dipshit, as do the government’s floundering attempts to appease the media wankers stirring it up. This panic is going to kill a lot more people than some lame-ass cold virus. Any large city is perpetually three days from famine and a week from food riots. Cities are maintained in that precarious balance by an economy that is far too complex to be centrally ’managed’ by fiat. An economy contains millions of parts, and the parts are people. They can’t be reduced to one-dimensional variables. Strangle that economy by locking people up so they can’t do their jobs and it all falls apart.


Germany is currently locked down. Businesses are required to be open to the least extent possible, people are working from home, taking vacations, are on Kurzarbeit or whatever other measures are available to reduce the amount of contact with others; Gatherings of more than 2 people are prohibited.....

And yet, there's no panic. Grocery stores are open and filled; now that the first wave of panic buys of non-perishables is over, it's easy to get everything a person needs again.

There's worry, yes, a lot of it. Noone knows how long this will continue to be necessary (definitely past the end of April though), and while the consequences of being out of a job are less severe for us than they would be for the average american, it's still going to be a problematic time for a lot of people.
Note, however, that it is explicitly just "problematic", not fatal.

And why is that? Mostly because, unlike US media, we never went through a downplaying or minimizing phase. Covid was always treated as a serious matter of some concern, and so none of the measures taken came as a big surprise; there were no big course corrections like there were in the UK, and having Italy right next door served as a prime example of why we need to do what we are doing right now.

Cities are three days away from a riot, yes..... if the supplies run out. There is no crisis in production or delivery at present. Shelves are filled. Stock is available.

So, what does your perception that your country is close to rioting tell you about your handling of this pretty serious pandemic?

The problem is made worse here because in its infinite idiocy, the U.S. government has imposed taxes on ‘business assets’. Businesses would be taxed if they kept money in reserve for emergencies, but debt is rewarded with tax deductions. That alone would be bad enough, but inventories are also considered ‘business assets’. Raw materials, finished goods, even packaging are all heavily taxed. Stores are taxed for keeping food on the shelves. Distributors are taxed for keeping food in their warehouses. Bakeries are taxed for keeping ingredients on hand. Hospitals and medical suppliers are taxed for stockpiling extra masks, gloves and isolation suits. Bookstores and publishers are taxed for keeping unsold books. Millions of brand-new books are dumped in the trash every year because the taxes cost more than selling them would bring in. Manufacturers are forced to scrap tons of spare parts for the same reason.


You pivoting this into a rant on taxation is prime comedy material. It's not a lack of disaster preparedness, not a lack of any real form of security net that's the issue, it's the taxes!

How many levels of libertarian brainwashing do you have to be on to actually believe that....

But still, the only answer you can imagine is “The government must make all the decisions and force everybody to obey or else!” — when those decisions are based on few facts, no understanding, and the self-serving greed of petty tyrants that see only an opportunity to grab unconstrained power. Don’t try to pretend otherwise; last week the Canadian Liberal Party nearly succeeded in ramming through an enabling act that would effectively suspend Parliament and grant them the power to enact laws by decree. Sound familiar? It should! IF you knew anything about history.


All I can say is: We started testing for Corona early and hard. As a result, we're currently on track to have one of the lowest numbers of deaths due to corona per capita on the planet. We couldn't have done that, and we wouldn't be able to weather this thing as well as we're doing so far, if we didn't have a comprehensive system of social security and a government that is slightly more capable than yours.

The stock market decline is not “Wall Street’s problem”; it is an indicator and a symptom of what is being done to the economy, the way a face turning purple is a symptom of being choked to death. Businesses, especially small businesses, are going bankrupt not because of coronavirus, but because of the panicking idiots. People are losing their jobs. Soon they will be unable to make their rent, house and car payments, because the government punishes savings and rewards debt.


And? We already know your system sucks hard if you suddenly lose your job, that's nothing new.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 7:29 am

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China officially declared that the epidemic (in the country) is over. They, of course, stay alert for possible future outbreaks, and so there are many restrictions still in place for quite some time, but they started to return to normal level of economical activity.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by Joat42   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 8:06 am

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Arol wrote:
n7axw wrote:
...drugs, that may well not be true. I could well be over a barrel. The same system used for the manufacture, the sales and distribution of cars doesn't work nearly so well when my life is on the line.
Don-

It will be interesting to read a continuation of this discussion in; I fervently hope the near future when a vaccine for the current virus is developed, tested and put on the market.
Whoever, or whatever pharmaceutical lab that does come up with it, will not only have you; but yours truly at age 74, but literally the whole world over a barrel.
With a potential market of 5-6 billion, the profits on a patent would be almost incalculable.
Salk’s polio vaccine, and later Sabin’s further refinement, would be nothing in comparison.

Salk didn't patent the polio-vaccine, so there where no-one who could really profiteer from it and even better, polio was eradicated.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by Atlantean   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:49 am

Atlantean
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Posts: 5
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The E wrote:
Imaginos1892 wrote:Panic KILLS you dipshit, as do the government’s floundering attempts to appease the media wankers stirring it up. This panic is going to kill a lot more people than some lame-ass cold virus. Any large city is perpetually three days from famine and a week from food riots. Cities are maintained in that precarious balance by an economy that is far too complex to be centrally ’managed’ by fiat. An economy contains millions of parts, and the parts are people. They can’t be reduced to one-dimensional variables. Strangle that economy by locking people up so they can’t do their jobs and it all falls apart.


Germany is currently locked down. Businesses are required to be open to the least extent possible, people are working from home, taking vacations, are on Kurzarbeit or whatever other measures are available to reduce the amount of contact with others; Gatherings of more than 2 people are prohibited.....

And yet, there's no panic. Grocery stores are open and filled; now that the first wave of panic buys of non-perishables is over, it's easy to get everything a person needs again.

There's worry, yes, a lot of it. Noone knows how long this will continue to be necessary (definitely past the end of April though), and while the consequences of being out of a job are less severe for us than they would be for the average american, it's still going to be a problematic time for a lot of people.
Note, however, that it is explicitly just "problematic", not fatal.

And why is that? Mostly because, unlike US media, we never went through a downplaying or minimizing phase. Covid was always treated as a serious matter of some concern, and so none of the measures taken came as a big surprise; there were no big course corrections like there were in the UK, and having Italy right next door served as a prime example of why we need to do what we are doing right now.

Cities are three days away from a riot, yes..... if the supplies run out. There is no crisis in production or delivery at present. Shelves are filled. Stock is available.

So, what does your perception that your country is close to rioting tell you about your handling of this pretty serious pandemic?

The problem is made worse here because in its infinite idiocy, the U.S. government has imposed taxes on ‘business assets’. Businesses would be taxed if they kept money in reserve for emergencies, but debt is rewarded with tax deductions. That alone would be bad enough, but inventories are also considered ‘business assets’. Raw materials, finished goods, even packaging are all heavily taxed. Stores are taxed for keeping food on the shelves. Distributors are taxed for keeping food in their warehouses. Bakeries are taxed for keeping ingredients on hand. Hospitals and medical suppliers are taxed for stockpiling extra masks, gloves and isolation suits. Bookstores and publishers are taxed for keeping unsold books. Millions of brand-new books are dumped in the trash every year because the taxes cost more than selling them would bring in. Manufacturers are forced to scrap tons of spare parts for the same reason.


You pivoting this into a rant on taxation is prime comedy material. It's not a lack of disaster preparedness, not a lack of any real form of security net that's the issue, it's the taxes!

How many levels of libertarian brainwashing do you have to be on to actually believe that....

But still, the only answer you can imagine is “The government must make all the decisions and force everybody to obey or else!” — when those decisions are based on few facts, no understanding, and the self-serving greed of petty tyrants that see only an opportunity to grab unconstrained power. Don’t try to pretend otherwise; last week the Canadian Liberal Party nearly succeeded in ramming through an enabling act that would effectively suspend Parliament and grant them the power to enact laws by decree. Sound familiar? It should! IF you knew anything about history.


All I can say is: We started testing for Corona early and hard. As a result, we're currently on track to have one of the lowest numbers of deaths due to corona per capita on the planet. We couldn't have done that, and we wouldn't be able to weather this thing as well as we're doing so far, if we didn't have a comprehensive system of social security and a government that is slightly more capable than yours.

The stock market decline is not “Wall Street’s problem”; it is an indicator and a symptom of what is being done to the economy, the way a face turning purple is a symptom of being choked to death. Businesses, especially small businesses, are going bankrupt not because of coronavirus, but because of the panicking idiots. People are losing their jobs. Soon they will be unable to make their rent, house and car payments, because the government punishes savings and rewards debt.


And? We already know your system sucks hard if you suddenly lose your job, that's nothing new.


E, I love your country. I do. It is really beautiful. I was madly in love once with a beautiful German woman from a city close to Stuutgart. I find it interesting that your companies condone drinking in the middle of the day on the job. Cool. Which is why I wonder if you were inebriated during many of your posts.

Surely you don't think the LOGISTICS of dealing with this thing is anywhere comparable between our countries. Germany has about a quarter of our population. With a land mass smaller than one of our states. You can stand in the middle of Germany and THROW food to everyone.

The 320M population in the US does not count the actual number of people who are IN the US at any given time.

Locking Germany down can be achieved with ONE squad car.

The infrastructure of our countries differ by night and day.
.
The artist formerly known as... cthia.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by The E   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 10:24 am

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Atlantean wrote:Surely you don't think the LOGISTICS of dealing with this thing is anywhere comparable between our countries. Germany has about a quarter of our population. With a land mass smaller than one of our states. You can stand in the middle of Germany and THROW food to everyone.


Many of the other factors Imaginos mentions are the same (or, in his mind, worse) than they are for you though. We do have a more authoritarian government. We do have higher taxes. We do have a massive social security network. We are treating this disease as if it is actually dangerous for a large portion of the population. Our businesses have adapted to just-in-time delivery and production methods just as much as US businesses have, and yet? There is no fear of rioting, of the country breaking down irrecoverably.
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Re: Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?
Post by Arol   » Mon Mar 30, 2020 11:14 am

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n7axw wrote:...Realisticly in about 18 months for the vaccine. I don't know, but I suspect that the pressure to make it widely available with public funding will be enormous. I don't think that they will be able to keep it to themselves.-

By the time a vaccine does become available, the number of deaths attributed to Covid 19 will have reached such numbers, that it would be political suicide for any politician not to make it readily available to their electorate.
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