Thetexashammer

I was a eucharistic minister for many years. I'm under no illusion that my little "wipe the cloth across the edge of the chalice" was in any way effective at sterilization. No soap, no bleach, just a feel good little shaking and stirring the bugs around like a mixed drink in a cocktail shaker

Listen, I know there's a pandemic but that's no excuse for ending a sentence with a preposition.

I was here before the Lombardy lockdown, and was watching CNN when they declared the nationwide lockdown and my phone exploded. It's not different than you would expect. Italy is an economic and social disaster. All of the locals I've talked to hate the economy. There is no economic opportunity, so my area feels like a small Texas town where all the young people left. Rush hour is a little lighter than before, but I was at a grocery store yesterday and it was a pretty normal looking crowd. There is a piece of paper that you're supposed to have with you when you're out. You list your reason for being out, there are several like going to work or going home. But as best I can tell, checkpoints are only on the autostradas. They shut down the football games and other events natiowide last week I think. Rome is probably pretty empty, as is I expect Firenze, and the Milan Duomo shots that the BBC has been doing are pretty stark. Tourism is probably their biggest industry. Italy is dominated by small and family businesses. So the complete shutdown is going to kill these folks. I talked to the guy at my hotel and he said his wife just got 15 days off unpaid from work. She has some sort of sales job and there were no customers. I've never really wished I spoke italian, but I would kill for a translation of italian news right now. Gotta be amazing to watch. I guess what's really striking is the reactions of people I've talked to. Some of them are freaking out. They're very polite, but they don't realize how little impact the disease has on the young and healthy. I am at very, very little risk, for example. For anyone who still thinks that police or military will ride to the rescue, that is certainly not the case here. People are largely left to their own devices. I really haven't seen police at all out in public. I mean, I see them sitting in their cars doing nothing, as usual I suppose. Banks are open, restaurants are open, hotels are open, trains and airports are open. I googled, tourism is 10% of the Italian economy. The original idea of just ring fencing the virus was stupid. But the social distancing thing is likely to be fairly successful. So let's say it works and Italy calms down. How long can you last with the majority of your population sitting at home, probably out of work? If they really try and ban being in public, won't crime start to increase at some point? When do people run out of money and start to get hungry? Few people do like I did, and store up supplies. You'll eventually get to social mayhem, and the quarantine has to end. But there will still be a reservoir of virus (third world countries), so you're back to a panic again. The goal is herd immunity. You WANT the healthy people to get it, and become immune. You want the risky people to isolate. Alternatively, you can vaccinate the public, but that vaccine doesn't exist yet. After a month or two you may be able to ramp up purel and surgical mask production. If everyone wears a mask, that measure alone is effective at stopping the spread. Allegedly. So I think everything shuts down for a while, the kids get out of school in a couple months etc. Maybe we have some solutions by then. And I expect the worst health outcomes might be avoided. And that leaves the financial outcomes. America will bounce back, because we were already growing. Europe, Italy especially, is in long term decline. This will accelerate that economic decline, and the social and political changes that come along with it. It's another leg down economically, they're already down around 10% from 2008. Just turning up the temperature on the pressure cooker. And that's the good outcome. But really, who the fuck knows.

Youre referring to a reddit thread, right? This one? The one that got deleted? https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses

I am in Northern Italy.

I'm kind of in the hot zone.

No, it's possible to just have a runny nose.

I don't have access to testing. I don't have a fever.

He dun.

I've had the sniffles pretty consistently for about a week. I'm starting to think it's the C virus. I think early estimates of R0 were significantly lower than actual.

I was assuming that Italians would not comply with the closure of restaurants after 6pm. Most restaurants don't even open until after 6. And Italians are famously, how do I say this gently, laid back about rules and shit. Anyway I went into the pizza place, which had the lights on so I knew it was open. It doesn't normally open until 6:30 according to Google. They were takeaway only. No seating. Seems like a reasonable accomodation. Bad news is, lots of family owned businesses are gonna suffer pretty badly. 168 reported dead today here.

Agree completely.

I don't disagree, but the issue is that it was an overtly provocative statement. The idiot posted the tweet, which is fine. He then proceed to say "That's actively downplaying the pandemic and advocating literally doing nothing about it." Which is factually inaccurate and a product of the idiot's trump derangement syndrome. I support idiots revealing themselves, so it doesn't bother me. But not everyone has restraint, and this bullshit needs to be eliminated. The idiot needs to be banned for deliberately posting political bullshit. There's a thread for that, it's in the cloaca room.

I may go ahead and book an international trip in August. I doubt prices will get any better. Getting eurodelivery.

So? His tweet appears to be entirely accurate, yes?

No, they don't have the assets for that. Period. China has PLA soldiers running around spying on everyone. Italy has the carabinieri, and they aren't really enforcing anything anyway. I would go through the numbers for how many active duty there are, how many are deployable, where they're located, etc. I could point to the number of roads in and out of a place like Houston. I could discuss posse commitatus. But for a million reasons, you are simply wrong. It's certainly not anything to do with corporate america for the love of all that is holy you are insane.

Heavy metal takes me to my happy place.

It's almost like my permanently skeptical perspective of the media is even more useful during times like this. Seriously, it's like an in vino veritas thing. The stress placed upon our media is going to make their flaws even more obvious. Twittter will be even shittier. Even their most vigorous media defenders will have to notice how ridiculous they've become. Please note i didn't save "liberal media". They're all in the same Acela corridor, corporate bullshit, cultural bubble. Fox just has hotter women, excluding Katy Tur of course.

It's obvious propaganda. Potemkin bullshit.

It's worse than that. I can't look at the prices, but junk bonds were already in bubble territory. Corporates are likely just as inflated, including many that will simply not pay their principal back at all. When the recession finally hits, all hell is gonna break loose. I mean, at some point, the magic bubble blowing Fed machine just stops working, cash flows just dry up.

All of Italy on lockdown now. Basically the entire country is restricted to "mission essential" travel now. Apparently the trains and airports are still open, FWIW, even in places like Milan. Exactly like we thought it would end up. Everybody gets to stay home for a month or two. I've spent weeks stuffed into in a cramped fucking hotel room before and it's no fucking good at all. Internet or no, I can't stay like that for long.

If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead! Also, no offense bro, but I'm in northern Italy. They're literlly putting boxes in every other chair to keep people 1 meter apart. I think I win this one.

Yes. She's not allowed to leave my dungeon.

Literally, I would tell people "well there really isn't any of the apocalypse scenrios that could happen. I mean, except for that virus thing." It's like after 9/11 everybody said "who could possibly have seen this coming" and some guy who writes fiction pipes up and says "Yeah, well, I wrote this book over here about this exact scenario." It was totally predictable.

Team #twominuteshate has a real desire to watch people suffer and die.