Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!
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@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So that is the reason they’re not mandatory? All I keep reading and hearing is that it’s “difficult” to enforce the wearing of them, without anybody explaining why that would be so.
Yup. The reason we don't have mandatory quarantines is similar - it is possible to require those, but it requires doing paperwork for every individual (Must be ordered by the major, if I recall correctly). It is not possible to say on a national level "under <x> condition there is a mandatory <y>-day quarantine".
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@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
such as it being a rule of 15 for weddings, which is 6 from each side plus 3 people in an official capacity
That makes good Scientific sense.
I saw someone putting it this way:
All those rules simply aim at reducing the number of social contacts. They could equally well be "people whose name starts with a 'b' must stay at home." Governments pick rules that are slightly less asinine so that people can remember them, and preferentially targeting bits that are (slightly) less harmful to the rest of our lives, but they don't target any specific activity for any specific reason, anything that reduces contacts is fair game.
I agree with that. I would, however, really appreciate if the officials actually put forward at least this kind of explanation instead of just throwing dung at the plebs and keeping it in the dark (a.k.a. mushroom management).
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Random thought of the day: Maybe I should stock up on toilet paper before mad cow disease hits the supermarkets again.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
mad cow disease
More like Karen disease this time?
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@Bulb said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@remi said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
such as it being a rule of 15 for weddings, which is 6 from each side plus 3 people in an official capacity
That makes good Scientific sense.
I saw someone putting it this way:
All those rules simply aim at reducing the number of social contacts. They could equally well be "people whose name starts with a 'b' must stay at home." Governments pick rules that are slightly less asinine so that people can remember them, and preferentially targeting bits that are (slightly) less harmful to the rest of our lives, but they don't target any specific activity for any specific reason, anything that reduces contacts is fair game.
I agree with that. I would, however, really appreciate if the officials actually put forward at least this kind of explanation instead of just throwing dung at the plebs and keeping it in the dark (a.k.a. mushroom management).
As would I, but if the government says "we're doing a bunch of stuff that's supposed to simply generally improve things", then more people will suddenly start ignoring a bunch of the mandates/requests, and the government suddenly needs to make stricter manquests to get the same level of reduced-contact. ("Surely, they didn't want to cancel baseball, right? That would be simply Un-Holland-ese. There's 9 people on a team, and that's more than 6, sure, but we're pretty spread out in the field, because I'm conveniently ignoring the bullpen. Baseball for everyone!")
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Random thought of the day: Maybe I should stock up on toilet paper before mad cow disease hits the supermarkets again.
I have somewhere north of 100 rolls in my house. And not those tiny Chinese / European rolls. Rolls big enough for an American.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I have somewhere north of 100 rolls in my house.
I just had to get my Costco resupply. That generally lasts a year.
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@loopback0 said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
I've still got like 24 rolls from the 48 pack I ordered from Amazon in March.
I've got somewhere over 50 in store. Plenty for now.
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The application form for Extreme Couponing is
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@boomzilla
Holy Shit!
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Random thought of the day: Maybe I should stock up on toilet paper before mad cow disease hits the supermarkets again.
I have somewhere north of 100 rolls in my house. And not those tiny Chinese / European rolls. Rolls big enough for an American.
And here I thought that having everything "the biggest" is a Russian thing...
Edit: there is a lot of competition about "we have the biggest shit" around Europe, but it's usually in metaphorical sense.
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
And here I thought that having everything "the biggest" is a Russian thing...
Not everything, just household pets
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@Kamil-Podlesak said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
And here I thought that having everything "the biggest" is a Russian thing...
See also Norway and Texas.
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So that is the reason they’re not mandatory? All I keep reading and hearing is that it’s “difficult” to enforce the wearing of them, without anybody explaining why that would be so.
Yup. The reason we don't have mandatory quarantines is similar - it is possible to require those, but it requires doing paperwork for every individual (Must be ordered by the major, if I recall correctly). It is not possible to say on a national level "under <x> condition there is a mandatory <y>-day quarantine".
If there was an actual pandemic of an actually deadly disease (i.e. kills every 3rd infected person indiscriminately, like the Spanish flu), I guarantee you that suddenly a lot more would become possible on the national level.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If there was an actual pandemic of an actually deadly disease (i.e. kills every 3rd infected person indiscriminately, like the Spanish flu), I guarantee you that suddenly a lot more would become possible on the national level.
Documentary evidence from how people actually behaved during the Spanish Flu epidemic suggests that no, more would not become possible, or at least not until a very large number of people were dead. There's a real tendency for a substantial fraction of the population to think that the disease is someone else's problem and to try to refuse to take measures to prevent its spread. When this fraction of people includes the political/civic leadership, things tend to go very badly indeed as the necessary actions are taken late and incompletely.
Covid is a pain of a disease because it is highly infectious and takes quite a long time to incubate (few people cope well with a long timelag between action and consequence). Fortunately it's not particularly lethal to most of the population, but that's countered by the fact that unchecked it will infect a very large fraction of everyone. There'll still be many deaths. A death rate of 2% would still mean over 6.5 million dead in the US. And death is not the only undesired outcome. Covid also causes long-term disablement in quite a few people (the syndrome is not fully understood yet, IIRC). I don't know what fraction of people get it, but if it is similar to the death rate then that's a large economic drag suddenly being imposed, and it seems to be less restricted by age than deaths so it is going to include a lot of people who were previously quite fit and economically active. Locking down is a way of stopping things getting out of hand (with severe economic consequences, but the deaths/disablements also have severe economic consequences) but wouldn't be needed if people masked up properly. But the asshats don't unless forced at gunpoint, and they're enough with a highly infectious disease to act as a reservoir to allow everything to come roaring back.
In short, some people are inconsiderate assholes and they're causing almost all the trouble for the rest of us.
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Locking down is a way of stopping things getting out of hand
I'll say the same thing I said in March - politicians need to grow some balls and do a proper lockdown of literally everything, or give up on lockdown at all. It doesn't matter for the virus if people have contact everywhere or just in supermarkets.
but wouldn't be needed if people masked up properly.
If masks were priced properly and available properly, I would use them properly. But it's not exactly affordable to go through an entire 20-pack everyday.
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@dkf Lockdowns don't stop any infections. They just delay them, as we're finding out. Basically nothing short of a vaccine (and one that got distributed really really fast) would actually reduce the total number of infections.
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@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So, yesterday here they announced an 'alcohol curfew'. It is not possible to sell or carry alcoholic products between 20:00 and 07:00. Now, yesterday, they announced this would also apply to weed.
How does this help prevent the spread of COVID19?
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@dkf said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Documentary evidence from how people actually behaved during the Spanish Flu epidemic suggests that no, more would not become possible, or at least not until a very large number of people were dead. There's a real tendency for a substantial fraction of the population to think that the disease is someone else's problem and to try to refuse to take measures to prevent its spread. When this fraction of people includes the political/civic leadership, things tend to go very badly indeed as the necessary actions are taken late and incompletely.
Well, what we're doing seems to be working for flu.
In short, some people are inconsiderate assholes and they're causing almost all the trouble for the rest of us.
But enough about politicians ordering lockdowns.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Lockdowns don't stop any infections. They just delay them, as we're finding out.
That was pretty much known from the beginning. In the "flatten the curve" diagram that was shown everywhere, both the flattened and non-flattened curves illustrated had roughly equal area.
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Yeah, but you can't expect people to compute integrals
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@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Benjamin-Hall said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Lockdowns don't stop any infections. They just delay them, as we're finding out.
That was pretty much known from the beginning. In the "flatten the curve" diagram that was shown everywhere, both the flattened and non-flattened curves illustrated had roughly equal area.
That diagram, by the way, was a total snow job. It wasn't based on anything but conjecture and art. Yet it drove the discussion and became a matter of faith for many people.
Lockdowns only work for very isolated, very contained situations and for diseases that have low latency or aren't communicable until you're obviously symptomatic. And even then they need to be targeted. This disease is already endemic, or so close as to be the same. At this point, anyone pushing lockdowns is doing so for political purposes, not as a matter of best-practice public health.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@dkf Lockdowns don't stop any infections. They just delay them, as we're finding out. Basically nothing short of a vaccine (and one that got distributed really really fast) would actually reduce the total number of infections.
And even then... we had a working polio vaccine for approximately a quarter-century before the disease was eradicated in America. By this point we need to just accept the truth -- COVID isn't going anywhere anytime soon -- and move on with our lives.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
but wouldn't be needed if people masked up properly.
If masks were priced properly and available properly, I would use them properly. But it's not exactly affordable to go through an entire 20-pack everyday.
Re-usable masks may not be 100% as effective as going full hazmat suit, but that doesn't mean they're not effective.
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@topspin properly means properly.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin properly means properly.
No, properly in context (but we can ask @dkf what he meant by it) means people actually wear the masks instead of not wearing them or wearing them as chin-protectors. That would go a long way.
E: s/shin/chin/, not that it's an effective difference
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@topspin properly means properly. If @dkf meant some specific kind of improper use, he should say so. Calling improper ways "proper" is a huge part of why we're in this mess.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin properly means properly. If @dkf meant some specific kind of improper use, he should say so. Calling improper ways "proper" is a huge part of why we're in this mess.
Wearing a simple mask that's 90% effective is a good compromise on the scale of things how we can reasonably prevent infections without going full lockdown. That was kind of the point of masks, that there is a spectrum of reasonable actions between "do nothing" and "isolate everybody 100%, not contact with anyone allowed". The masks are a very simple measure that have far fewer downsides than more strict ones.
Sure, if you have an unlimited supply of N95 masks, wearing those would be better. But if that's not the case, everyone wearing a simpler mask is still better alternative than not doing so. Properly means "wear the fucking mask" instead of putting it below your nose.
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@topspin there is a lot I want to say right now but I don't feel comfortable sharing my opinion freely on this forum anymore. So I'll just say one thing.
If governments, experts, media figures and activists were honest about what's actually 100% safe and what's just a half-measure that still puts people at non-negligible risk, people wouldn't think they're dishonest, and would be more willing to listen to them. By mixing up "proper use" and "only a tiny bit better than chin-masking but still better than chin-masking", they destroyed their credibility, which directly caused some people to stop listening to them, which directly caused them to do even less to protect from the virus, which directly caused the number of infections to go up.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
By mixing up "proper use" and "only a tiny bit better than chin-masking but still better than chin-masking", they destroyed their credibility
I'll agree with you on politicians' credibility, but I'm pretty sure it's been shown that cloth masks are far more than "only a tiny bit better than chin-masking", so it's not a half-measure.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
But if that's not the case, everyone wearing a simpler mask is still better alternative than not doing so. Properly means "wear the fucking mask" instead of putting it below your nose.
No, properly means following the proper protocols when it comes to donning/doffing of a mask, not manipulating it while it is being worn, proper disposal of a used mask, knowing when it is time for a new mask.
Masks have been well studied by medical professionals for a long time. The specifics about COVID aside, the consequences of improper mask usage are well known.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
If there was an actual pandemic of an actually deadly disease (i.e. kills every 3rd infected person indiscriminately, like the Spanish flu), I guarantee you that suddenly a lot more would become possible on the national level.
I’ve said it before on this site, but I kind of doubt it would, given the way Dutch government works. It’s just not suited to taking quick decisions, even in emergencies. Politicians here don’t seem to have the ability to say, “Somebody needs to do something now, and because I’m in a position to do just that, I will. We’ll sort out the consequences later.”
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@Gurth there's always at least one office that can react quickly and decisively.
It's just that you really really really don't want them to.
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@error said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@PleegWat said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
So, yesterday here they announced an 'alcohol curfew'. It is not possible to sell or carry alcoholic products between 20:00 and 07:00. Now, yesterday, they announced this would also apply to weed.
How does this help prevent the spread of COVID19?
Bars, restaurants etc. have had early closing (doors to close at 21:00, all customers to leave by 22:00) forced on them some weeks ago, in order to prevent groups of people being together in confined spaces. The immediate result of that was that a lot of those being kicked out of bars went to buy alcoholic beverages at shops instead, and therefore gathering in and around those instead of in and around bars.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gurth there's always at least one office that can react quickly and decisively.
He’ll wait for the minister of defence to tell him to spring into action.
It's just that you really really really don't want them to.
True.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
By mixing up "proper use" and "only a tiny bit better than chin-masking but still better than chin-masking", they destroyed their credibility
I'll agree with you on politicians' credibility, but I'm pretty sure it's been shown that cloth masks are far more than "only a tiny bit better than chin-masking", so it's not a half-measure.
N95 masks work by combining mechanical filtering (small holes) with taking advantage of electromagnetic properties of very small particles by means of specially prepared layers of electrically charged material. From what I could find, these electrically charged layers make the N95 masks up to 10 times more effective than if they lacked them. Cloth masks don't have specially prepared electrically charged layers.
This, and many other reasons, make me believe that even if cloth masks are somewhat effective, they're still much closer to the half-measure side of things rather than proper safety measures.
Edit: and even if cloth masks were effective, you'd still have to change them every 15-20 minutes to count it as proper wearing. How many people do you know who change their cloth mask mid-shopping?
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@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gurth there's always at least one office that can react quickly and decisively.
He’ll wait for the minister of defence to tell him to spring into action.
History tells that military generals can be very proactive in times of need.
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@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
The immediate result of that was that a lot of those being kicked out of bars went to buy alcoholic beverages at shops instead, and therefore gathering in and around those instead of in and around bars
I thought that was covered by the regular curfew.
Edit: I guess it's easier to make stores comply than individuals
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@Gurth said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Bars, restaurants etc. have had early closing (doors to close at 21:00, all customers to leave by 22:00) forced on them some weeks ago, in order to prevent groups of people being together in confined spaces. The immediate result of that was that a lot of those being kicked out of bars went to buy alcoholic beverages at shops instead, and therefore gathering in and around those instead of in and around bars.
This was the effect of the same rules being introduced here in England in a surprise to almost no-one outside of the Government.
In Wales the restrictions cover all alcohol sales which stops that particular problem.
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Wearing a simple mask that's 90% effective is a good compromise on the scale of things how we can reasonably prevent infections without going full lockdown.
No. We cannot reasonably prevent infections. Period. We can delay them with various measures, but all that does is drag the suffering out further.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Edit: and even if cloth masks were effective, you'd still have to change them every 15-20 minutes to count it as proper wearing. How many people do you know who change their cloth mask mid-shopping?
This. Even if masks work in theory, they don't work in practice. (As evidenced by the recent report showing that over 70% of COVID patients were scrupulous mask-wearers!)
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Wearing a simple mask that's 90% effective is a good compromise on the scale of things how we can reasonably prevent infections without going full lockdown.
No. We cannot reasonably prevent infections. Period. We can delay them with various measures, but all that does is drag the suffering out further.
There's always the North Korean solution.
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@Mason_Wheeler said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Edit: and even if cloth masks were effective, you'd still have to change them every 15-20 minutes to count it as proper wearing. How many people do you know who change their cloth mask mid-shopping?
This. Even if masks work in theory, they don't work in practice. (As evidenced by the recent report showing that over 70% of COVID patients were scrupulous mask-wearers!)
Who all got infected by those 30% not wearing a mask?
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@topspin said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Mason_Wheeler said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Edit: and even if cloth masks were effective, you'd still have to change them every 15-20 minutes to count it as proper wearing. How many people do you know who change their cloth mask mid-shopping?
This. Even if masks work in theory, they don't work in practice. (As evidenced by the recent report showing that over 70% of COVID patients were scrupulous mask-wearers!)
Who all got infected by those 30% not wearing a mask?
Even without masks, they say it requires something like 15 minutes in close contact. The masks people are wearing will knock down the liquid from a sneeze but air still jets out of them around the margins, even if the cloth does much for the aerosols blowing through them, so you're still ending up in a cloud of whatever. And again, people are touching them or they get moist from being worn for too long, if nothing else, which gives stuff another chance at getting aerosolized. Or the mask wearer re-inhaling it and potentially building up their viral load to the point where they get sick.
I think they're mostly good for health theater by getting people who can't think about graphs and numbers to calm down a little bit.
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@Gąska said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Edit: and even if cloth masks were effective, you'd still have to change them every 15-20 minutes to count it as proper wearing. How many people do you know who change their cloth mask mid-shopping?
The instructions on my box say 4 hours. I don't know where you're getting 15-20 minutes from. Also, boxes of 50 cost 15 bucks.
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
And again, people are touching them or they get moist from being worn for too long, if nothing else, which gives stuff another chance at getting aerosolized.
I wear a mask for eight hours a day and it doesn't get moist. I swear everyone complaining about masks is wearing different masks or something.
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
Or the mask wearer re-inhaling it and potentially building up their viral load to the point where they get sick.
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@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
There's always the North Korean solution.
Making your country such a hellhole that COVID-19 is the least of your worries? I guess it works, yeah, but...
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@Zerosquare said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
@boomzilla said in Tales from Coronavee-rooss Italy, mamma mia!:
There's always the North Korean solution.
Making your country such a hellhole that COVID-19 is the least of your worries? I guess it works, yeah, but...
You cough, you get shot. Easy.
Wait, what do you mean there’s no money for bullets?
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I wouldn't bet on that. There's always money for bullets, missiles, or nuclear weapons.
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I've been told that common calibers (5.56, 9mm) are currently as rare as honest politicians in the US. So no, maybe there's money, but maybe no bullets.