misteraven

On the real, I sincerely hope everyone, especially the community here and the rest of the friends and family we all care about, that if nothing else, take this as a lesson as to your personal situation / stability. Some of you have lived through earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, massive fires, etc... Sometimes the crisis is localized to just you, like losing a job or waking up to find out you have cancer. Whether zombies somehow walk the earth or you figure out you have something as significant as cancer, its a massively life affecting event that to you, might feel something like an apocalypse. When the event affects more than just you, it compounds a lot of that mess, and when it literally affects the entire world, well fuck... I suppose we see what we're seeing. Best thing you can do, whether it comes to be or not, is solidify your position. What that means to you, is a personal choice. Not saying all of you should doomsday bunker yourself, but having a stash of cash, food and whatever you need to bail out in a hurry or enough resource to not have to leave your home for a couple weeks is just common freakin sense and a really good idea. You all remember how much it sucks to depend on your parents, but at least they're generally looking out for your best interest. Depending on strangers to do the same is plain fuckin stupid and as we've seen time and time again, a really bad plan. Most of you can't stand Trump, so why put yourself in a position of depending on his administration to do right by you? Even if you somehow love the fuckin guy, you're a straight dumbass if you forfeit your resiliency and independence thinking him and his band of ass clowns in Washington DC are there to take care of you. So whether hoarding toilet paper is your plan or building an offgrid mansion is your thing, just take all this as an opportunity to sort of wake up and assess how well you can manage when shit goes side ways on you. Do what you got to do, be honest with yourself, assess your situation and put effort at making your little corner of the earth as solid, safe and comfortable as it can be because sooner or later, some shit will pop up that really disrupts your life in a huge way. Don't make that situation harder than it needs to be. Not saying to live your life fearful, but hedge your fuckin bets. ***This has been a 12oz PSA***

This is government in general. Only thing they're good at is spending tax payer dollars. Personally, I don't disagree with him disbanding the segment of the National Security Council responsible for pandemics. Apparently that department was something like 200 people when you count their aides. Obviously, having the ability to address such a situation is important, but considering the budgets and charter for the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention coupled with USAMRIID (United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) and the size of the USA government in general (Approximately 2 million people according to one of the few sources I can even find that details it)... It's a fucking embarrassment that those ass clowns can't sort this out. In fact, it should be considered criminal and though it'll never happen, the American people should conduct a thorough review and clean the slate on both sides of the aisle. This isn't about Trump, this about Washington DC and their long and storied track record of being irresponsible with tax payer money through sheer inefficiency. That didn't start with Trump and my thought on the subject is a whole shitload of them, hundreds of thousands, if not a million+ should be fired. I get that we live in a huge (both socially and geographically) country... But you don't need to 2 million federal employees, plus legions of private contractors, plus an entire military to manage the affairs of a Nation. It's become cliche to say if the government had to play by the same rules as businesses, they'd be out of business over night. That said, I also hope people take this as a lesson in that you simply can't trust government to look out for you, whether 'your guy' occupies the oval office or lost the run to it. Considering half the country simply cannot stand Trump as a human being, why the hell would you be looking at him, let alone depending on him, for anything? Why is anyone surprised, knowing how well we care for our military veterans, that the government would be incompetent at managing the health services and care of the entire rest of the population that is exponentially larger? What can anyone even point to that government is awesome at? War maybe... Even that is being increasingly offloaded to private contractors and we all know that it only works cause they essentially have a limitless budget. That in itself is reason enough to get your shit together and think through the vulnerabilities that exist in your life. Sucks to say it but this is a gigantic case of 'you made your bed, not you have to sleep in it'. I really hope this thing blows over (unlikely) and that regardless of how it pans out, that people take a long hard look at themselves, their priorities and how they invest their time, energy and focus (even more unlikely) and start realizing that government is the problem and not the solution. *end of rant*

I was just wondering what the catch was.

I see @CLICKCLACKONERon IG, I'll reach out to him when I get on next time.

Seems like a really bad idea regardless. But good luck with it.

Sucks that it took to the apocalypse to *possibly* put this debate to rest.

I'm sure its cancelled, so call and verify. He was pretty clear... No travel to and from Europe (excluding the UK) for the next 30 days.

True but it does clearly identify itself as being editorial opinion and the subject itself is turning out to be pretty sensational. I'm the first to criticize the MSM, but this is turning out to be one of those moments where the hype is real.

I just recovered an account for @professor poopatronic Hopefully they'll be back on and posting.

And now Africa is on some Biblical shit... https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-51618188 Hundreds of billions of locusts are swarming through parts of East Africa and South Asia in the worst infestation for a quarter of a century

Meanwhile Corona is popping in the Dominican Republic...

Chick with dick?

The scar tissue thing has been stated many times in many places. I've also seen mention of brain damage due to lock of oxygen. Seems both are by products and not direct results of the virus.

NBA season just cancelled for the year. Air travel to and from Europe suspended for 30 days. Wife said Costco had an agency at the doors to spray and wipe the hands of people coming in as well as wiping the cart handles down. Also setup at the food court to wipe down the tables and seats between people eating. Was told by a friend that has some inside knowledge that nation wide curfews will be announced Friday.

For starters, got to cover the eyes as well. If the filters are beyond N95, it should work. If you want to get really real with it, you also need to wear gloves if not a full containment suit with taped seams.

No, but thats was the basis of the twisted logic to get infected now, before it all gets to that level.

One of the guys here working with me just said the same thing. There's a twisted logic to it... Get sick and get treated. At least there's beds and medical care available and they'll 100% treat you with utmost priority. As I understand the situation right now in Italy, they're literally in triage mode and making choices on who to bother putting in effort to try and save.

News is still all over the place. but I started trying to put numbers together based on numbers being thrown out by 'official' sources. Again, I'm super skeptical of MSM, especially editorialized crap they churn out, but do pay attention to what is said directly by people in clear authority. Not saying I take it as truth by default, but at least when the leader of a nation or large government is saying something specific, its worth paying attention to and trying to understand. With that said, someone sent me this: According to the Chancellor of Germany (Their version of the President), she's projecting a 60 - 75% infection rate. According to Google, Germany has a population of 82.79 million people. So easy math... 82.79 million people with an average of 65% (midway between Angela Merkal's 60 - 70%) gives us a total of 53.8 million people expected to be infected by this disease. News has largely put forth a death rate of approximately 2.5% on average (much lower in youth, much higher in older people). Many credible sources claim the death rate has not been confirmed, but are speculating as high as 5%+ according to certain heavily infected areas. Most also cite direct death rate from the Novel Corona and then likely consequences resulting in death due to an over burdened medical system. So as far as Germany, according to Angela Merkal's projection, they 're looking at 1.345 million deaths as a result of this, if we layer the current accepted death rate according to medical authorities. If we run Chancellor Merkal's projection against a 5% death rate, Germany is looking at approximately 2.69 million dead people. I'm obviously unsure as to the accuracy of her projection, but we can speculate that it's likely in the best interest of government to downplay numbers in a speculation like that. If even accurate, we can likely still see the higher number as possible as its not just about catching COVID-19 and maybe dying, but the cumulative effect of all those sick and dying people overwhelming the system so that other preventable death is not properly addressed or managed. If we apply this algorithm to the USA, which according to Google has 331 million people right now... 331 Million at a 65% infection rate gets us 215.15 million infected people in the USA. This means that based on a 2.5% death rate we see about 5,378,750 dead people in the USA. If we go with the larger 5% death rate number, then this bring the total up to about 10,757,500 dead people in the USA. Not saying this is what I believe, only doing a little math for you guys based on the projections coming from world leaders and the medical authority. Just for fun, I'll add a little more context to this... In 2018, there were 5.96 million homes sold in the USA. If we hit that 5% number in the USA, there’s about twice as many individual deaths in America as there were homes sold in all of 2018. You can imagine if these numbers pan out the affect on the economy this would have. Single digit numbers sound small until you start to apply them to real world numbers. Talking to @Kultsin his mind, he'd start getting concerned when the death count hit tens of thousands. I pointed out that the average influenza virus actually does this according to yearly averages. So we started talking hundreds of thousands as justification for panic. Pretty incredible when world leaders are throwing out numbers like 60 - 70% infection rates and the medical authorities are throwing out numbers like 2.5 - 5% death rates. Yeah, I know... Lot of you think this is basically just the flu. But go look at the incubation numbers and transmission rates of past influenza and compare that to Covid-19. If you actually analyze the spec on that thing, its stats come closer to the influenza that led to the Spanish Flu than it does to the average influenza. Spanish Flu killed off about 1/3 of the global population. It did have an opposite characteristic compared to Covid-19 as having greater impact on youth / young, but likewise, compare the human races capacity for frequent and far travel now as opposed to what we were doing in 1918. Again, these are speculations, but I tried to base it off credible data. I think either way we're looking at pretty significant numbers and suspect that they'll far exceed the hundreds of thousands that Kults thought was the barometer for panic. Feel free to scour the internet for sources and do your own math.

Yes, pretty scary shit. Condensed version for those that want to listen / watch:

LOL, too good to not actually be planned.

Alright, seems this is starting to degrade. You guys are both mods so if you want to continue discussing between you two, split three comments off and move them to the mod area. Few things... 100% there’s going to eventually be a set of rules and protocols. I don’t care if parts of the internet are a free for all. I don’t care if there’s better places on the internet to do some of what we’re doing and trying to do. That doesn’t factor in my opinion. This is 12oz and we’re going to things our own way. You guys can think of it as yet another experiment in establishing a constitutional republic... There will be certain fundamental rules that stand above all else, and then we can add a layer of democracy below that. This being said, I suppose what I’m looking for more than actual rules, are a framework for intelligent debate. I realize this isn’t a college debate team competing for points in a moderated venue. But there is some basic structure we can establish to hopefully avoid the shot show we frequently see on here with discussions. I’m sure Reddit has some stuff worth looking at and perhaps we can actually look at some of how college and professional debate is structured and managed. Likely I won’t extend a rigid frame work to other sections and I’m betting even the structure in this section might have some hard edges softened but I will be implementing something. I’m asking for you guys to step up and assist in a constructive manner so you can be a part of the process and so I can consider alternate points of view. Hell, I’m sure you guys can touch on areas I haven’t even considered. But what I’m not interested in at all are very specific and opposing points that will be argued to death and never have the hope of consensus between you guys since shit is so fucked up that respectful conversation and agreement is very much the exception and very far from the norm. Likewise, we now have groups. I know most of you guys haven’t embraced them and many of you guys seem to not like them. I’m much more agnostic about what you guys do in groups, because that is much more along the lines of me sub letting a room in my building, than you guys showing up to the pool area to enjoy the party. So please... Throw your ideas out, pass along some links. Feel free to state why you think it’s a good idea or other context to back your position, but no more commenting and especially no more criticizing what other people suggest in this thread. We’re far from the point of chiming I’m on a body of ideas and clearly as a community, our track record for respectful cooperation amongst ourselves largely sucks.

So I've been talking to the mods as well as a handful of members I talk to in real life about the need and plan to draft rules for the community, as well as for specific sections. Likewise, we've also been discussing moderating protocols as a part of that. Anyhow, the community has seen steady growth, which is great. It ebbs and flows, but has been incrementally trending up since we relaunched it about two years ago or so. There's been a few spikes or exponential growth and there's a lot I'm trying to do outside the forum to build up budget to be able to take bigger steps with both the 12ozProphet brand and the forum. That being said, we're also living in a highly charged environment, that seems to only evolve to entirely new levels of volatility. Seems almost all aspects of daily life quickly degrade into a shit storm of discussion across the internet and we've obviously seen our fair share of contentious debate, trolling and disrespect (intended or not). I'd like to believe at the end of the day we're all fairly smart individuals that care about our fellow man. That we all seek pretty much the same ultimate goal - a quality life for ourselves and our own, but simply disagree on the path to get to it. In any case, as the world continues it's crazy spin and the forum continues to grow and evolve, I think we all could benefit from some basic ground rules to help keep topics clean, keep conversations respectful and keep the time spent on 12oz fun, if not an opportunity to learn, connect and grow. So to that end, I'd like to open the discussion up here in news section as this is probably the subsection that could benefit most from a sort of "12oz code of ethical discussion". I'd love to see references some of you might have to other areas online that have successfully addressed this issue, as well as hear suggestion and feedback so we can refine our own version. Hopefully the various points of view and the hand in helping me assemble this will smooth the process along since I've dragged ass on it for far too long.

Going to revise up my threat assessment based on what a shit show we're seeing. Guess I shouldn't be surprised based on past government response to national disasters, but Miami decided not to cancel Ultra Fest this year, a multi-day rave (slash hedonist party) that takes place on the beach featuring tens of thousands of people that fly in from everywhere. Also read, that a major city marathon (think it was LA), is going to proceed as usual. Meanwhile China is testing 10,000 people a day and the USA has so far tested 3600 total. Further to that, the CDC knew 7 months ago that out tests weren't trust worthy, but decided to sit on that fact until the first cases hit the USA. Somehow most people here seem to still trust the official reports coming out of China about how they have it all under control (Might be worth getting into bridge sales) and now we're seeing news in teh USA creep out (like the Tweet above) about how the shit show here is actually way worse than people thought. Anyhow, not suggesting this is the society reseting pandemic that I do believe is in store eventually, but am saying that if this thing turns out to be more virulent than the early projections (guesses), that the response to it will certainly allow it to escalate into something truly nasty. I know reality can be stranger than fiction, but some of my B grade, fan fiction, zombie novels on Kindle have a more believable lead up than what we're actually seeing here with this. Here's to hoping that the virus isnt that bad, because if it is, we're fucked by the way this thing is being handled. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1235659010227003392?s=21