COVID-19 Discussion

[Mark]

well I'm late to this party.

It just struck me this week that covid might be related to climate change. Just hold on while I ramble.

We've been told that the tipping point for co2 emissions is on us or perhaps we've even left the reservation. I've read and heard that as a species we're unwilling to voluntarily reduce our carbon footprint. Man has always partied till we drop. Let the good times roll.

If covid was engineered to address and try to reduce our co2 production then you must admit it has been effective in many respects. The miles driven metric must be way down. I know my petrol bill is 1/5th to 1/8th of pre covid days. This implies considerable other carbon reduction on my part. If I'm not driving then I'm not attending social/recreational/entertainment functions as I did before..

For example, I used to attend a giant movie megaplex 1-2 times a week. I'd have soda, popcorn, maybe a burger. All of those create co2 and the huge building itself is a co2 factory. Now multiply that by 10,000 people who went there each week. That's an enormous quantity of co2 that wasn't produced.

I no longer attend church. My POW is big, holds 4,000+ and has 3 services on Sunday. A couple thousand cars no longer make that Sunday trek and that trek for many families included side trips for breakfast or a Sunday drive, etc.

There's no longer traffic congestion on my highways. I left the downtown core of Toronto at 4:45pm and drove home to Niagara Falls, never slowing to under 60mph for the 80 mile whole trip. Normally it would be stop 'n go for half the distance till I cleared the city proper. Speaking of Niagara Falls it's been like a ghost town since March. I mean you can fire an automatic weapon on main street without much fear of killing anyone.

TLDR;
I think there might be a conspiracy and covid was introduced to see if the economy and world can still function if radical restrictions to reduce co2 were suddenly put into place.

Call me crazy but it's what I see.

Interesting theory!

I do think some things will remained changed once this passes. I had a cousin spend opening weekend of deer season with me this past weekend. He works for a large company in Milwaukee as some type of computer programmer. He's only been to his office once since March. He told me that he likes working at home now, but he is also single & doesn't have children at home. Rather than fly business executives all over the world, Zoom-like conference meetings will be used more often in the future.

On a personal level, I retired from teaching this past spring. My life was going to be different regardless of COVID. My last quarter of teaching was done virtually. For a dinosaur like me, doing virtual school was a lot of work. I worked really hard at setting up things for kids to succeed. It's not like teaching science in the classroom, however. I do get a little miffed at the public bashing teachers lately. Without parent support at home, it really hard to teach a student who isn't self motivated to begin with. Some students did extremely well with virtual lessons, & some struggled. As a teacher it's really hard to overcome what is going on at a student's home with your laptop computer.

Our district was in class to start, closed for bit, back to class, & now back to virtual again. It's really hard to hold students accountable when teaching virtual, and that would really frustrate me this year. I am so glad to be retired from education. I am still doing btw driving lessons, but that's different. The motivation to get your driving license is always there for most kids.

Overall, we are a very blessed country. Thanksgiving day is a good time to reflect on that. For decades, I would say we should send all our 5th or 6th graders to third world countries for a 6 months to year. Let them experience what life is like elsewhere. When they came back, they would be more likely to appreciate all that they have & take advantage of it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[Fummins]

I saw a major drop in traffic back in the spring when schools and tons of people were laid off. But that was very short lived! Traffic has been back to normal around here since the summer. We haven't had much for restrictions here, just the mask mandate in the 2 major cities and surrounding areas. Tuesday there was a big anticipated announcement that was supposed to help our highest active case count in the country drop. No real changes other than people can now be fined and grade 7 and up students are gonna start home schooling soon. And all students get an extra week off at Christmas time. And a few max capacity restrictions on churches and restaurants. Seems like a balancing act, have a ton of people loose their businesses or have covid numbers go up. I'd hate to be making that call. No matter what you do you can't please everyone. Regardless, it more elderly are dying here everyday. It's really sad they can't control the spread in old folks homes and hospitals. Those are the worst places to be right now.

My dad retired from being an aircraft mechanic last year(I believe). Now he's kinda kicking himself, he could be collecting free supplemental income from the government right now had he stayed another year! The company he worked for did a ton of fire fighting in the states in the summer but made the majority of their income in the winter at heli-skiing lodges in the winter with lots of out of country customers. This isn't gonna be good for that company or the employees who are used to making a pretty decent income.

[dspace9]

We are all very tired of COVID, & how it has impacted our lives. I'm sure we can all agree on that!

Happy Thanksgiving to all tomorrow! Belated Happy Thanksgiving (October 11) to our Canadian friends to the north of us, too!

Yep for sure eh. Happy Thanksgiving!

[MetroMPG]

if they get covid and die, instead of saying they died of cancer it'll be counted as a covid death. Am I wrong or how would one get that info? Numbers can be posted about anything, if you don't know what they mean they're meaningless.

I have heard some people dismiss the seriousness of Covid based on the argument that it's just a shell game: messing around with accounting / categorizing on death certificates.

But one metric that can't be fudged is total deaths, and the stats show that a lot more people are dying than usual this year. So it's not just a case of taking deaths from "Column A" "B" or "C" and putting them in "Column Covid".

And saying that people with pre-existing conditions "were gonna die soon anyway" is just cold. (Not saying that you were saing that, fummins!) It'll be clear from the stats if there is a shell game going on, eg. a suspiciously low number of cancer deaths this year.

My folks are elderly and have multiple pre-existing conditions, but we'd like them to stick around as long as possible! So all us kids/nieces/nephews/grandkids have been pretty careful, following public health guidance/rules. And we're grateful the community in general is like-minded.

Unfortunately, that means seeing a lot less of each other this winter. More games via zoom, coming up...

[Wallythacker]

Regardless of any underlying agendas real or otherwise I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all the great people I've met here over the years.

Give your family members a big warm hug and let them know you care about them, especially the ones you nearly come to blows with over dinner.

[dspace9]

I don't mean to sound negative or anything, but..

I think people seem to forget that humans jumped out of trees for good only like 200,000 years ago, whereas the coronavirus, and raccoons, and bats, have existed much longer, maybe millions of years. So if you're encouraging hugging your relatives, the coronavirus doesn't care if you're the Queen or your pet hamster. Even household hugs has a "host" of problems.

All I want for christmas is the new vaccine.

[Eggman]

I don't mean to sound negative or anything, but..

I think people seem to forget that humans jumped out of trees for good only like 200,000 years ago, whereas the coronavirus, and raccoons, and bats, have existed much longer, maybe millions of years. So if you're encouraging hugging your relatives, the coronavirus doesn't care if you're the Queen or your pet hamster. Even household hugs has a "host" of problems.

All I want for christmas is the new vaccine.

I get what you are saying. Like many others in the animal kingdom, most humans (not all...) are social creatures that are drawn to the contact and interaction of others. It's understandable that people want to get together for holidays to celebrate their friends and families.

In these circumstances, it's also understandable to put that on a brief and temporary hold.


Which brings up an interesting dilemma - what about social pods? Meaning groups of individuals who live in the same household or otherwise share similar living conditions, don't mix with others, work from home, etcetera. I know of some pretty smart folks who disregarded the common advice and went traveling to visit anyway. I worry for them and hope things turn out ok but I'm not about to chastise and brow-beat them to see things any different.

[Fummins]

I don't mean to sound negative or anything, but..

All I want for christmas is the new vaccine.

Sound negative? No, never!

Be prepared to be very disappointed this Christmas lol

[Fummins]

I read the other day that canada doesn't have the ability to mass produce a covid vaccine so we're gonna be dependent on other countries to supply us. The soonest we'll be able to make our own would be at least a year or two from now.

This morning I heard on the radio that the U of A has a vaccine that's similar to the pfiser one but more stable. And they have the ability to produce 250,000 doses a day to start. And of course I can't find anything online about it...

[7milesout]

I personally don't believe we came from monkeys. Well, maybe some of us did! Ha! That's just a joke, pull your panties out of your Naired arse ladies. I also think that the fastest way to get over covid is to set up "Infection Stations." Just make everyone get it, and get over it. Then life can get back to normal. One day, I'm going to die. Until then, I want to L-I-V-E. And not live like I'm scared to touch anything or hug another person.

My wife has had covid twice. She works in the medical field. During those times she was sent home with covid, she would occasionally request organisms. My wife is still damn hot. I don't care how many covid germs she's carrying, when she calls me up to the plate, you can bet I'm bringing a bat and swinging for the fence. So ... that being said, I'm going to have to guess I've had covid. Getting infected was A-W-E-S-O-M-E.