2020-08-06 19:07:33 (edited by ignatriay 2020-08-06 19:11:01)

Damn. That's fucked up that disabled people aren't getting treatement in some hospitals. While I do get the point made about having two people and statisticly, patient 1, athlete, has a greater survival chance than patient 2, blind guy, in this example, It is still fucked up. I get that hospitals are full and whatnot; but just because patient a has more of a chance than patient b; that is in no way an excuse to say, oh, fuck patient b, he's chance of dying is greater, so just let it happen; without even trying to save said patient. It is really fucked up. I mean, even if patient b statistically had less of a chance, if I where a doctor, I would still try to save both of them. If one didn't make it, I did my best but it didn't work, but I wouldn't just throw in the tower if there was a chance both could be saved.

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2020-08-06 19:26:41

@1027
Again, in the particular instance of that article, I don't know for sure what happened.  But in general, congratulations for adding yourself to the long list of people who don't get this.

They can't try.  There aren't enough doctors to try.  There are no beds to put the patients in.  There are no ventilators to put the patients on.  We've been doing things like risky procedures that try to split a ventilator between two patients already.  Even if you assume infinite equipment there's not enough doctor to go around.  If each patient takes 30 minutes a day, and they take much more than that, that means one doctor can only treat 50 people a day.  Assuming they don't sleep or eat, which is of course impractical, so cut it to maybe 20.  That assumes the doctor doesn't get covid.

by the time you need specialized medical equipment right now you're screwed.  That applies to anything, not just covid.  Hope you don't have a stroke or something.  There just isn't enough.  There could have been; we could have slowed the virus, or Trump could have used the executive orders he loves to write to actually produce things like ventilators or etc etc etc.  But it was mismanaged.  In general, don't blame the doctors.  The doctors *are* trying.  But if there's no resources there's no resources.  You can't wish intensive care units into being, they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each and we don't have the manufacturing pipeline to produce them quickly.  It takes multiple years to train a doctor.  It's a lose-lose situation.  The only way to win was for people in government to take it seriously 4 months ago.

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2020-08-06 20:00:39

@1028, I was talking more in general terms, but of course given the corona virus and the government not taking it seriously as they should have from the start, of course shit hit the fan. But generally speaking, if it was not do to covid 19, the doctors would try. Now however given there aren't resources... of course so much can be done. I kinda wundering though, why didn't the government take covid 19 seriously from the start? Many including mine; did so.

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2020-08-06 21:02:01

@1029 Because, like Brazil, we have an Idiot in Chief. And, like Brazil, we have terrible case counts.

2020-08-06 21:32:38

To be clearer, Donald Trump and his government didn't take Covid-19 seriously. They ignored pandemic prevention strategies put in place by prior governments, ostensibly because he just didn't believe the threat was that great but probably because democrats made them. Basically, if there was a step he could bungle, he bungled it. Nearly everything was done wrong.
Taking Covid-19 seriously means spending money on a lot of supports. Historically, folks on the right don't like doing this unless they must. Covid-19 also meant changing the status quo. Same deal; folks on the right don't do this easily or willingly. So basically Trump pretended there was no problem until he couldn't pretend anymore, and largely, I suspect, because he had a vague idea of what would happen. Money would be spent, unemployment would rise, those numbers might make him look bad. So he spent more time inflating his ratings than taking health experts seriously, and now America is suffering badly for it.

Honest to god. If he somehow makes it for another term, I don't know what to say to that. In the interest of there being a Simpsons quote for every occasion, I'm put in mind of Ray Patterson, former sanitation commissioner in the episode called Trash of the Titans who, after Homer fucks up the entire system, makes a speech which basically boils down to, "You're wallowing in the mess you made. You're screwed. Thank you."

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2020-08-06 23:01:19

The issue is though, what would the doctor do, if he had a 20 year old athlete, and a 20 year old blind guy?  Or a 60 year old sighted guy with conditions, and a 20 year old blind guy with none? If he still goes ahead and treats the sighted people here, that is very real bias. The issue here, is that doctors deciding that my life is not worth living, and possibly withholding treatment. Also that article mentions that they not only removed this man from intensive care, but withheld neutrician from him as well, and starved him to death.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2020-08-06 23:38:45

Yeah. Clear triage, where a multitude of factors are involved, is one thing. Sixty-year-old paraplegic vs. twenty-year-old athlete is a clear-cut case. But people who are comparable save for one disability...well, let's just hope we never get to that desperate a position.

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2020-08-07 01:01:37

Just came across a video, and while it didn't tell me anything new, the stark horror of it blew my fucking mind.

Seriously, get a load of this. Watch it all the way through. If you can support Donald Trump, and anything he has to say about the coronavirus, after this, there's nothing I can do for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywa1fqPVp9o


Oh also? In other media clips, he's still calling it the "china virus". We rejected that nomenclature as racist five months ago, Donald.

For all the people who talk about Joe Biden losing trains of thought and maybe not knowing what's going on, this...well, watch for yourself. Please, just do it.

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2020-08-07 01:10:09

Jayde, I haven't been actively reading the forum for a few days, but I'll respond to your post about voting now, though the discussion has wandered pretty far from that. Partially, I want to explain my thoughts, and partially, I want to do anything to steer the conversation away from disabled people being considered lesser and not deserving of treatment for covid simply because they're disabled, because that legitimately upset and triggered me. And that's not something I say lightly; I think trigger warnings have become kind of a dirty term, because this is the internet and people abuse everything they can, but I digress. Also, the irony is not lost on me that I'm bringing up being triggered in the wake of a discussion on gun control, heh.

Have you, general you on this thread, ever seen the South Park episode which parodied the presidential election of 2004, where your choices were either a giant douche or a turd sandwich? Well, in this particular election, I'm less motivated to vote than ever, considering that referring to either of the current running candidates as either of those two things seems far too kind. Sure, you can vote for a party that doesn't hold any clout, but what, honestly is the point of that, other than to say you don't walk the line?

Let me be clear here. Donating to a cause, a legitimate cause, even something as simple as helping an up and coming independent artist by throwing a couple bucks their way on Bandcamp? That's all good, you can be reasonably assured that the money is going to a good place, and someone, somewhere is going to appreciate that. But voting by its very nature is a private affair. We're taught, here in the US at least, that the two things that destroy happy relationships are politics and religion, to say nothing of the fact that the act of filling out a ballot is supposed to be hush-hush, you're not supposed to directly reveal who you voted for to anyone. So...where's the reward in that, exactly? I mean, obviously, you wouldn't go screaming from the rooftops at a polling place who you voted for, but there's almost a veil of shame over the whole process, at least that's how I've always viewed it. And, guess what, we as a country have a lot to be ashamed of, as individuals and as a collective. But voting itself is not going to fix that. If I'm going to try to make a difference, then I want to focus my energy where it could matter, not on a hopeless wild goose chase where the goose has already been roasted and is currently being eaten by some fat executives who wouldn't know what it is to be hungry.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2020-08-07 01:21:46

@1032
I know I'm not supposed to say obviously screw the blind guy.  And as a blind guy I don't want that to be the case.  But the truth of the matter is that for a large number of people with disabilities, quality of life actually isn't that great.  And that does include blind people.  So, if someone has to make a subjective judgement call in the heat of the moment and the blind guy in your examples gets shafted, I understand.  Disability isn't like skin color.  If you have to ask yourself about the quality of life of two complete strangers, then "is disabled" is a good prior that it's less.  Triage isn't horrible only because someone's in the position of making this decision; it's also horrible because even the people doing it know that they're going to make wrong ones because they didn't have time to find anything out.  The name of the game here is haste, wait 5 minutes and they both die in some cases.

Sometimes the world is just sad.  I don't think people are equipped to deal with that anymore.  The world hasn't been sad in a long time.  And so it manifests as things like "disabled people have a right to care, how dare you triage against them", because nowadays we can only deal with a sad world by finding someone to blame. Triage decisions aren't about the value of people, and doctors hate making them, too.

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2020-08-07 01:48:02 (edited by Ethin 2020-08-07 01:55:49)

Wow... the shear idiocy that Trump displays, even in the first few minutes -- discussing voting by mail and how "absentee voting" is supposedly different from voting by mail (which it isn't, as Jonathon says, its synonymous with voting by mail) -- is just... horrifying. And very aptly displays why he's not qualified to run a country, let alone a business. (Side note: he did have six bankruptcies. Pretty telling.) Why he won the election in 2016, even with the help of the electoral college, is beyond me. I am curious though: since its 2020 and we have tech and all,why, oh why, haven't we switched to internet voting? Like I know that we have E-voting machines, but from what I know those aren't connected to the internet for "security purposes." Which I get, I really do. What I don't get is this: why can't we set up an internet sight where everyone can submit their votes, then transfer all of those votes (which could be stored in a database) onto a USB drive or other storage medium, then let the voting machine tabulate the votes? I might be overlooking security flaws with this idea, but if it were to be done, with the flaws taken care of (as best we can) I can see it cutting down on a lot of costs for E-voting machines. So I'm curious why that hasn't been done yet. What's the barrier to making that a reality? A computer could sort and analyze through 324-330 million votes in a few minutes to an hour, tops, and it wouldn't even require much memory or any fancy algorithms.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2020-08-07 01:49:38

Turtlepower, good on you for trying to make a difference where you think it will matter.
I'm not convinced Joe Biden is a great candidate, but I -am convinced that Trump is by far the greater of two evils. If I were American, I would vote purely to add my single voice to the other millions who will doubtlessly try to get him out of office. It's not so much that I support Biden; it's that I want to do everything I can to wreck Trump, short of actually doing him physical harm.
That's me, though. I don't expect everyone has the same MO.

Also, this whole thing about being hush-hush around the ballot box? I confess that this is something I have never understood. I don't think anyone has a right to know how you voted if you don't -want them to know, but I don't think it should be taboo to discuss your choice, either at the polling station or from the nearest available rooftop. Hell, I say share away. I know I do. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I vote with a relatively clear conscience, even if it's only to shut out someone else. I'm more than willing to own my complicitude in the process, and see no reason that I should be quiet about it. I mean no, obviously I don't want to ram my opinion down everybody's throat, particularly if they aren't open to it in the first place. That's just loud and brash and completely unnecessary. But I see no reason why two intelligent and rational human beings can't discuss either politics or religion. The reason they've been mystified into these relationship-wrecking, life-altering, family-destroying entities is not because they're dangerous in and of themselves; it's because people simply wield them this way, and are groomed to do so.

Also, I can't help but think of the similar taboo, where you're told to generally not talk about your salary with your colleagues in a company. As far as I've ever seen or heard of, when a company does this, it's because they want info about wages to be as nontransparent as possible, and that's usually to their benefit. Under capitalism, when employees find out how much one another are making, it tends to expose favouritism and inequity all over the place. Now obviously, I'd not walk into a brand-new job and say "I make thirty-seven grand a year, Bill. How about you?". But I also don't think the subject should be completely off limits either.

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2020-08-07 03:18:09

Well, it is true that disabilities, especially severe ones like blindness,  do degrade someone's quality of life, but I don't think it is right to  condemn someone to death eeven when there isn't space in the intensive care ward, by withholding neutrician. Also, we can't just blindly assume that 20 year old guy's life is very good quality iether, maybe he is a drug addict, homeless out on the street without an education etc. Not to mention the fact that withholding treatment could increase someone's disabilities by allowing virus complications to damage more organs.
As  for trump versus biden, trump is pure evil basicly, the cause of the problems with the pandemic, but biden isn't great iether, I really seriously doubt biden has the mental lucidity and understanding to run a country. I mean think about it, a guy who forgets what office he's running for has no business becoming president iether. I really think that presidental candidates should go through cognitive tests, as well as intelligence tests, and have to score a certain point range to be even a possibility of running for president after biden.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2020-08-07 03:54:03

Well, the thing to remember is this. If Biden flakes out, his VP will step in and run the country instead. That's why the VP is there. I hope no Americans use that as a reason to vote for Trump; the video I linked to raises some pretty stiff questions about Trump's own lucidity, come it to that.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
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2020-08-07 03:56:56

@1033 As someone having a girlfriend with a disability, more specifically using a wheelchair, I'm going to call you on the "clear-cut case" bit. We need to be *very* careful about those sorts of judgment calls. If I misunderstood your intent with that line, then OK. But she and I were just talking about that kind of thinking the other day, and she was panicking about it. FWIW, this is someone who at one point in her past volunteered to translate documents for immigration lawyers, which included some pretty horrific autopsy reports of documentation submitted by asylum seekers trying to prove probable threat in their countries of origin. So I'm not sure the 35-year-old, or even the 60-year-old, is as clear-cut as we might like. She is one of the sweetest, most dedicated folks I know, and our relationship not withstanding, I'd be very careful sacrificing her in favor of 1 or 2 or half a dozen 20-year-olds any day. Maybe I misread what you intended to say, in which case my bad.

@1035 I'm right there with you. I actually didn't vote for Hillary in 2016, because she sucks in her own way (and I certainly didn't vote for Lord Cheto.) Biden and the Democrats get my vote in 2020, but it's a pure pity vote. My Facebook feed has been inundated with Democrats for the last 8 years basically saying "If you have any reservations about voting for our candidate, do so or else suffer the consequences!" That's straight-up abusive relationship language as far as I'm concerned. "Do what *I* want you to, or else." I think we got into this situation by perpetually supporting a lesser evil for years. Ah well, Democrats get my vote, and I view it as me manning the pole to keep us from running aground on the rocks. If they can't muster a candidate in 2024 who actually deserves my vote, then they don't deserve to survive, and we need a third party that actually represents my views.

2020-08-07 04:27:33

Nolan, I couldn't agree with you more on the latter point you raised, especially. I am not American, so I can't vote in an American election, but I hope that a bunch of people feel the same way you do. Give the democrats, who have the only chance at destroying what Trump has done, a chance to right the ship, and while you're doing that, eye serious reform. I was really hopeful when Sanders was involved, and sad to see him drop out. I'm also a big fan of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for a whole host of reasons, so maybe she'll run for president in 2024 and America will actually start getting good shit done again. You've done it before. You can come back from this. It's just going to take a crapton of work.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
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2020-08-07 06:08:15

@1039
And as I said, I'm addressing the general point.  Because this whole right to care in a triage situation is really irritating.  It's a triage situation.  By definition, someone's losing the right to treatment.

In so much as I have a problem with the article, it's this: it reads very much like it's by someone with an agenda, it's from a news source I've never heard of, it's in a state that I know is already having these sorts of issues, and if I wanted to make political points or something then this is exactly the story I'd write.  It may very well be true to the letter and if it is then it's bad and people deserve to get in a lot of trouble for it, but it's also hitting every single prior for exaggerated and/or fake news, and I don't have the time to do the legwork to find that out because that's effectively becoming a part-time reporter for something this small scale.

But I wouldn't have commented at all except that it's trying to play the triage against the disabled is discrimination and there is no gray area point, and I'm just sick of that so much.

@1041
I think that 1033 was unfortunately blunt phrasing of difficult truths.  I'm in a similar position, though not geographically: a doctor given my entire medical history would probably triage against me.  I hate that, and if I weren't in Seattle I'd be very worried to say the least, but I also can't say that they were wrong to do it, because the things that would make them wrong to do it require me to be conscious and for them to be aware of a lot more than my medical history, and I'm not nor would there be the time.  Mind you, my issues sadly go beyond just blindness.

But to be honest I'm not sure what it says about me, that I just got bored one afternoon, reasoned through "if I were a doctor triaging me, what would I do and is that ethically wrong", arrived at something that is roughly this stance and the conclusion that I'm screwed, and then went on about my day.  The actual stance, for those wondering, is that I consider trying to culturally shift the weights placed on the bayesian priors available to doctors in an emergency triage situation to be a net harm at the current time, which isn't what I said first because that sentence unpacks into an entire essay if you try to explain it to anyone to whom it doesn't already make sense and is thus mostly useless in discussions.

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2020-08-07 06:13:12

@1043 Fair points. I'm having a pretty raw week, and I wasn't really upset, it just hit a bit close to home since we were literally just talking about her fear of having her plug pulled if she got hospitalized because of this. Broke my heart to hear, even though I'm not surprised by it.

2020-08-07 10:36:00

Hi Camlorn,
Though I didn't post all  now, this article is on multiple news outlets, which makes it more likely it was true.  Well, this just motivates me to look after myself more, in case a doctor decides my life isn't worth saving wwithout knowing me, and I die or become more disabled.
As for biden, I feel I wouldn't vote for trump definately, but I feel voting for biden would just reward democrats and tell them they can nominate whoever they want as their candidate and they are garanteed support. I really don't think they should be getting this message iether. I never said trump was mentaly fit to run a country, he definately isn't.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."

2020-08-07 14:37:02

@1045 I get you. The way I see it is, I'm giving them one chance to field someone better in 2024. If in 2024 the oceans are flooding over the land, dogs and cats are rising up to overthrow humanity, and the world is falling apart, they'd better have a candidate worth my vote or they won't get it. After all, at that point the line that voting makes a difference is going to fall flat with me. I see this as an absolute last-ditch effort and a last chance for the Democraps. If they can't pull off a major party coup, let them lose, and let the chips fall where they may.

2020-08-07 16:21:04

Dammit now I want to read a story where cats and dogs are overthrowing humanity successfully.

I totally blame you for this, Nolan.

(Also thank you, who knows? maybe I could develop a good plot out of this.)

2020-08-07 16:24:21

Thing about Biden is that Biden makes a good deal of sense if your goal is to get rid of Trump.  Sanders is a scary candidate that would probably have alienated the suburban white voter as well as many independents.  You have to play that card only when the world is ready for change, but right now the world is ready for normality.

I'm not super fond of the democrats right now either, but as I put it to my dad at one point (because he's 50 and just didn't get it) one side of this would rather me just go away as a person, and that arguably means my death.  I'm gay and disabled, so they've got me no matter what I do.  Republicans are in the process of trying to repeal healthcare without a plan and would love to roll back gay rights, and for anyone who doesn't know, gay sex was illegal in the U.S. as recently as 2003.  Disability rights were also on the chopping block, though having to protest against that was a long time ago given the current huge list of controversies, something like 2017, so I think many have forgotten.  But for all of us here, healthcare is a big deal because those pre-existing condition protections are a huge deal for us.

So, my point being, there kind of isn't a choice.  If you let the chips fall where they may, we can end up in much worse places than ineffective democratic presidents that don't get anything done.  Right now the status quo is someone such as myself can't retire because even though the ACA exists, healthcare isn't actually affordable to anyone with truly complicated stuff.  But the status quo could very easily be no gay rights, no healthcare, no disability rights, no discrimination protections for any minorities, and being extra tough on protesting.  I try very hard to believe Republicans don't stand for these things.  But they've tried to do most of these things over and over for the last 4 years, so...well, actions speak much louder than words and I've mostly given up on "both sides have good points".  And if I find out I have friends voting for Trump this year, they probably won't stay my friends because it's really hard to stay friends with someone who votes against your direct interests and even in some sense your right to personhood.

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2020-08-07 16:40:33

@1048 Good points. I just worry that we got to Trump by sort of wobbling toward the precipice. Our choice has always been between some sort of conservative, and some other sort of moderate liberal. That window has shifted further and further right over the years. And for my girlfriend, even the moderate liberal choice doesn't serve her interests in a "I can't get out of bed because it's getting harder and harder to hire people" way. And arguably the conservative choice is worse in that regard, but I really do think we're setting ourselves up for a worse situation in the long-term if we're perpetually forced to pole ourselves off the rocks or smash up against them. I don't much like that alternative either, but I can't in good conscience vote for another Obama who campaigns on change while killing people with drones and compromising on other liberties.

2020-08-07 17:00:02

@1049
I dunno.  I'd say we've actually shifted left.  It looks bleak right now but universal healthcare and even UBI are now in the overton window.  Obama shouldn't have just let torture keep happening, but it wasn't that long ago that we set that up, and not at all long before that was the cold war, tons more problems with racism, tons more problems with women's rights, tons more problems with healthcare, the list goes on.

it's easy to look at now and say actually we've been shifting right for a while, but really what we have is a political system that's broken in a couple ways that lets really vocal minorities block everything, and a backlash to moving left.  Someone like sanders wouldn't have had a chance in hell 10 years ago, and the right has lost the majority vote twice in the last 20 or so and only made it because of the electoral college.

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2020-08-09 00:50:33 (edited by Ghost 2020-08-09 00:51:56)

Ok, so trump just signed executive orders lowering the unemployment to 400 dollars, based on the bullshit republican  myth of people sitting at home to get unemployment instead of going to work. Also, there is a payroll tax cut. I really wonder if this will lower peoples' retirement and social security benefits should they become disabled in the future, and if so, if it can be opted out of.
Additionally, for unemployment, stats are expected to pay 25% of that 400 dollars, how they will with all funds dried up is beyond me as well.

A learning experience is one of those things that say, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."