Howdy yanks, it's doomer time 😎

The linked editorials discuss how for every excess pandemic-related death, there is an average of 9 people who would be severely impacted by the death (and may even present PTSD symptoms). In short, the current mental health crisis is expected to get much worse.

Also there is a graph in the Ars article that can easily be misread. At first glance, it may seem to indicate a declining death rate per capita over time, but that's not what it's communicating. The deaths since May 10 include the deaths since June 7, and it's presented that way to show what countries managed to slow infections in that May-June period (when it became very clear that significant government response was mandatory to curtail spread) and what other countries just let it keep on going.

  • Zhoutaku [they/them]
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    4 years ago

    It really is amazing that the US was almost laboratory designed to fail a pandemic.

    Can't wait until the next one, with a high fatality rate, so people just start capping people for not wearing masks.

      • Zhoutaku [they/them]
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        4 years ago

        I have to wonder how effective that rhetoric is.

        Because 60% of the country lives paycheck to paycheck, many with 0 paid sick days, I have to wonder how much of that is cope. Like "I literally can't afford to stay home with Covid, so actually Covid isn't that big a deal and anyone I give it to will live through it" type shit.

      • Zhoutaku [they/them]
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        4 years ago

        Oh, for sure. It's fucking amazing how the US can just prop up the dumbest shit and make it controversial, while we just immediately normalize the truly horrible things.

        ONE MAN in this entire country tried to free an ICE facility.. That was the peak of the outrage. We literally spent more time squabbling about the definition of concentration camps than we did fighting them.

        • AbolishAmerikkka [he/him]
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          edit-2
          4 years ago

          RIP williem van spronsen. Rest in power hero. Never forget, never forgive. The pigs have blood on their hands.

    • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
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      4 years ago

      All they have to do is accidentally release the smallpox that the American military keeps locked down instead of destroying. New American Smallpox Plague.

        • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          No. Their genes are sequenced all the possible studying to be done is done. It would be best to simply destroy all samples and move on.

            • TemporalMembrane [she/her]
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              4 years ago

              Other than lab accidents, the last known smallpox case was in the 70s. You may have heard about some accidents where people were exposed to smallpox or some mishandling happened.

              You may have confused smallpox outbreaks with the black plague (Yersinia pestis) which does occasionally pop up periodically. Or perhaps the measles which was declared eradicated in the continental US in 2000 but has made a comeback in no small part due to anti-vax proliferation.

    • OhWell [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      This is what the ruling class wants. I don't think we deserve this as being citizens to this shit hole country, but we're the ones that will be suffering from it while they line their pockets with our suffering.

    • Churnthrow123 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      It's pure ideology where you can't even suggest any form of strong, decisive collective action. It turns out that a pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back, but a major famine or massive collapse of infrastructure could have lead to the same result.

      • AbolishAmerikkka [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Between Coronavirus, the opioid epidemic, Mass incarceration, ending immigration, and deaths of despair, it seems like the ruling class is literally trying to kill us all off.

        Their death cult is trying to get America to commit collective mass suicide.

        Survival is resistance.

      • snackage [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        *virus turning my lungs to sludge and destroying me heart valves and vains

          • snackage [he/him]
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            edit-2
            4 years ago

            Who has two thumbs and just got owned? This guy.

            * I point at myself with my two dumb thumbs.

              • snackage [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                In my defence I speak 3 languages natively but my orthography in all of them is horrible due to mild dyslexia.

                  • snackage [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    You can do it. I hear Spanish isn't super hard and would really be helpful in the US. Go for it. Take a class. I believe in you.

  • AbolishAmerikkka [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    The Republican death cult is trying to get America to commit collective mass suicide.

      • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Yeah, I laughed when this whole shit started at Gen Zers calling it the boomer remover, but I've seen too many BIPOC grieve at the deaths of their mom, dads, aunties and uncles, cause this shit only seems to kill them.

  • WhatsUpPup [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    The crazy thing about all of this is we are still yet to have the reckoning from the head on collision between an economy no longer able to forestall the terminal decline of the rate of profit, with a pandemic that is brutalizing the circulation of value in the economy.

    The economy will become the historical hinge point of this crisis. It’s going to be fucked up and painful.

  • GVAGUY3 [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    My Grandparents: The virus is fake and we tanked the economy for nothing. Also Chinese virus.

      • snackage [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Less so I think. If there's no healthy workforce there's no labour and when there's no labour we saw what happens a 3 months ago.

  • GVAGUY3 [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    On less doomy side, at least many people I know are willing to burn everything down. Gotta use that energy.

  • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]
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    4 years ago

    Under a communist revolution, there are so many pain points in this society that could be overhauled. First, there's the collapsing and expensively inefficient healthcare system. Environmental clean up that would increase public health; reforestation in California to prevent all the weeds from taking over after fires. Housing renovation and reconstruction, to clear out condemned housing (in which people still live, breathing in black mold). Public transport to improve air quality (and help people walk more). Improved network and computer infrastructure for kids to work from home or at school. Increased public school construction to reduce class sizes. A jobs program for the unemployed in beautifying cities. Arts program to commemorate the dead. A partnership with the clergy to hold public vigils and prayer services for the dead. And lastly, a work and re-education program to turn out millions of new therapists and grief counselors. Instead, we are just gonna whittle down all business to Amazon, Walmart, and the Uber of Xyz.