Posted on 05/12/2020 5:35:05 PM PDT by RaceBannon
new thread
Corona Virus Daily Thread #52 COVID-19 5/12/2020
*****
Breaking: Ohio moves officially from “ordered” to “advisory” guidelines status.
Ohio press Conference, Gov. Dewine.
Because the judges are starting to rule that the emergency powers can’t be extended beyond the state-constitution limits. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to follow the recommendations.
Boy, am I tired of fighting this battle alone on Facebook. The conservatives there almost all have their heads up their rear end, and the sarcasm that used to be amusing is now looking pretty ugly. There are just a scant few who have “Liked” my comments, but they are not brave enough to join the fight. And I don’t even have Trump on by side anymore. Thank goodness for you guys.
It is the worst disease ever in ways that you still don’t comprehend, even with all the knowledge that has been presented to you.
You’re still trying to compare imaginary faces of people with different diseases to prove the whole thing was a scam.
So sorry for you.
States have been caught readjusting their data to make the recommendations seem less important.
Also, death is not the right metric to be using here. It’s an epidemiological nightmare. In fact, low death rates might have even been purposely built into the virus to encourage scoffers like you.
Those aren’t “conservatives”. They are members of the cult of positive thinking.
1) Positive Thinking Is Delusional
All delusions are dangerous, says Ehrenreich. To think that our attitude alone can determine events objectively out of our control is madness. In fact, it denies the existence of any reality outside our own heads. Negative thinking, she adds, is equally delusional. Believing that everything will turn out bad also has no basis in fact.
You might ask “what’s so wrong with being positive, even if it’s a delusion?” After all, you’re not really hurting anyone by thinking positively. Perhaps maintaining positive delusions is good for us?
Problem is, very often it’s not.
2) Positive Thinking Can Be Harmful
Here Ehrenreich discusses the crash of ’07 and ’08. For years before the collapse, there were objective signs that the housing bubble would burst and along with it the global economy.
But anyone who dared raise such concerns within financial companies like Countrywide were silenced or fired.
And there’s a logic to this. The stock market is built on belief. If everyone believes prices will go up forever, prices will indeed rise without end. But at some point someone with enough clout stops believing. That’s when the whole house of cards falls down, which is exactly what happened in 2007.
Theres no need to elaborate on the destruction that resulted from this delusion. We all know that millions lost their jobs and their homes, and that the repercussions of the crash are still felt today.
3) Positive Thinking Is Disempowering
The cult of Positive Thinking insists that all problems are your problems, stemming from your lack of a properly positive frame-of-mind. It is a religion of magical thinking in which you and your thoughts alone are able to exert influence over the universe and in so doing, bring you wealth and happiness. Achieving anything less is an admission of misguided thinking.
That leaves each of us totally on our own. By refusing to recognize an external world outside of ourselves, by denying that there are economic trends, for example, completely out of our control, we are discouraged from any kind of collective action that may relieve our burden. Depressed because you’re over 50 and can’t find a job? Or anxious every day for fear of losing the one you have? Well, there’s no point in protesting or forming a union or writing your congressperson. Just think positive thoughts and all will be well. And if that doesn’t work, you’re just doing it wrong.
4) Above All, Positive Thinking Is Cruel
Despite its sunny assertion that “nothing is impossible,” Positive Thinking is an ideology that silences dissent and blames the victim.
When people are at their lowest and most vulnerable, having lost a job, e.g., or battling breast cancer (as Barbara Ehrenreich did), the cult of Positive Thinking insists upon a mandatory cheerfulness, which in many cases only exacerbates the misery. Highly skilled but still unemployed? It’s your own damn fault for sending out the wrong vibes. The cancer has spread to your liver? You’re to blame for inadequately marshaling the positive energy of the cosmos.
This is cruel.
And it’s one of the prevailing ideologies of our time.
There Is An Alternative—Thinking Realistically
Ehrenreich rightly notes that the alternative to Positive Thinking is not gloom and doom. Rather it’s making a realistic assessment of the world before you. She brings up the example of our aboriginal forbears. If an early human living in the savannah heard a rustle in the tall grass, he or she would be alert to the possibility of danger. That sound, after all, could indicate a leopard or a lion ready to pounce. Wishing otherwise would lead to death.
All of us are here, right now, because we’re the progeny of creatures with enough of an accurate understanding of the world to survive and reproduce within it. The Positive Thinkers and their wide-eyed delusions were wiped out a long time ago.
Which means when we’re vigilant about seeing clearly the reality in front of us, when we question and doubt, only then are we at our best selves. A healthy dose of Negative Thinking is what’s enabled our species to get this far and it’s the key to any chance we might have of surviving into the future.
https://www.smarterstorytelling.com/blog/positive-thinking-cynical-cruelty/
Could be that GOP elected officials are panicking over the apparent loss of their base to the sunshine patriots. Possibly they are doing private polling, or an avalanche of email has come in from worshipers of Limbaugh and other wingnuts.
Doesn’t look like any flu patient I’ve ever met.
Looks more like before/after HIV.
That’s easily 40lbs weight loss. Mostly muscle looks like.
Wonder how his kidneys are doing.
Our thin, healthy 30 something friend who had this the end of February is in phase 2 kidney failure due to it.
The weight loss aspect is similar though. She looks like an emaciated skeleton still. Still hasn’t gotten her sense of taste or smell back.
Yup
“GOP elected officials are panicking over the apparent loss of their base to the sunshine patriots”
You have sum it up. The virus did not spread enough so people think it is fake/hoax design to control people.
Wow. That is brilliant. I agree completely!
I recently had a disagreement with someone who said that when you talk about bad things that might come in the future you help to make those things happen. Magical thinking, in other words. The inverse of positive-thinking “philosophy” and just as crazy.
She even had a verse from Proverbs to “prove” her point—a verse that was actually about the tongue being a terrible weapon in slander, gossip, bearing false witness, and jealous vindictiveness. The whole book of Proverbs is rife with this idea, and a famous rabbi once said that gossip was worse than murder and worshiping false gods combined!
The power of positive thinking has nothing to do with that either. It refers to positive thinking about your own courage and will to do good, not about the inanimate universe. Norman Vincent Peale probably does handstands in his grave when people misinterpret that book title.
I find it interesting that China, who has the longest base of information on this virus, has locked down 100M+ people again.
You’d think by now that those ‘stupid chinese’ would be taking the herd immunity approach like Sweden.
If it were ‘just the flu’.
But oddly enough, they’re not.
It’s ALMOST as though China knows something about the virus that isn’t the death rate...like what the virus’s REAL purpose for creation was...like sterilizing males...
If a person tested positive for a month straight, is the virus doing damage inside. He is not showing any outward synonyms, the doctors are not sure what to do.
Right.
I wonder about that myself.
There’s a difference in ‘stirring up discontent’ by slandering other humans, and evaluating risk/reward from the world around us.
To conflate the two IS magical thinking.
Stirring up discontent is generally NEVER rewarded. If you don’t have something nice to say...
Wearing a seatbelt is the result of evaluating risk/reward.
I’ve said for 3 months now, the issue with this virus is NOT the mortality rate. It’s the morbidity rate.
I find it disturbing that all the ‘open it up’ people discuss is that it kills old people.
If all it did was kill old people China would be spreading it inside china as fast as they could manage it.
Nobody ever talks about the chronic ailments those of us in middle age will, as a group, acquire from this virus that WILL shorten our lives.
If you’re 32, like our friend, how much sooner have your kidneys reached phase 2 failure than they would on average? Her grandmother is still alive and kicking in her mid 80’s. Will this chick’s kidneys hold out that long now?
I suspect this virus was NOT developed to ‘kill the enemy like ebola’. I suspect it was engineered to sterilize the enemy and lower the T of its males. Perfect if you want to ‘leibensraum’ your neighbors if you have a vaccine or treatment available for it.
The west thinks in terms of quarterly earnings reports on wall street. China thinks in terms of hundreds of years...
Sounds just like HIV.
Looks like HIV.
Only thing I can think of is...GP120
“Sounds just like HIV.
Looks like HIV.”
I think that is the main reason people who have tested positive for the virus are not allow to enter the Military. The Military is treating it just like they treat HIV.
All this talk of caronavirus killing off the elderly or sterilizing males reminds me of Frank Herbert’s ‘The White Plague’..a story that tells of a revenge-driven biologist who designs a plague that only kills women and is carried by men. An excellent read.
Maybe sterilizing males is easier than sterilizing females, bioweaponly speaking, but since one male can fertilize many females contemporaneously, it would have been more effective to sterilize women if reducing the population was the goal.
The Chinese people are not evil. They are a wise and compassionate people. They would not be one of the oldest cultures in the world if they had not been compassionate toward one another. The leaders were stuck with out-of-control population growth and a dying country because of it, prey to all sorts of invaders at one time. The leaders have made some wrong choices but the people have goodness along with their celebrated smartness.
All to say that I doubt very much that they would be locking down their own people in those numbers if it were not necessary.
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