Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus

dann said:
I'm disappointed! I thought that I was on the actual ignore list!
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LOL. Nah. A body of work has to be extremely toxic and/or repetitive. Yours is nowhere near that point yet.

I was just wondering how many of the thousands dead in China were capitalists or its beneficiaries, but then I realized this wasn't the thread for that.

Thermal said:
Don't see how this is a capitalist or business issue. Its a people who like to indulge themselves issue.
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Body of work. Capitalism is the issue. The demographics of C19 transmission are the stalking horse.
 
dann said:
So gay men who had no idea what was happening somehow resemble business men and local authorities who have actually been told what is going on but who don't take the proper precautions, on the contrary, because in Tyrol, like in Florida at Spring Break, but not quite the same kind, "ski tourism [unlike beach, beer and booze tourism] is one of the biggest economic drivers."
Yes, that's a pretty clear resemblance. Only minor details differ, right?!
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Right. The part you're not getting (and that I admittedly didn't explain very clearly) is that it's not about attitudes toward the specific individuals who actually did spread the disease. Few of the radio jocks who spread anti-gay blame for "gays causing the AIDS pandemic" were specifically directing that blame toward the individual gay (and straight) people who had gotten ill due to knowingly or unknowingly engaging in risky behaviors. They were blaming gay people in general. That distinction is where the borderline lies between dispassionate assessment of cause and effect, and blaming an entire group based on a characteristic they share.

So, the thread title: "Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus." I see nothing there, or in the subsequent discussion, distinguishing between the rich capitalism beneficiaries (which describes nearly all Americans, by world standards) who actually spread the disease, those who risked doing so but got lucky and didn't, and the many who did nothing of the sort. You're clearly attempting to blame the entire group. There are other names for that pursuit.
 
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Thermal said:
Without shutting down borders and all air travel immediately upon it's discovery, do you think there was any practical way of stopping a highly contagious virus for which there was no ready test and many of the infected persons were asymptomatic?
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Yes, obviously! 1) Make sure that people don't enter or leave Wuhan. 2) Make sure that people don't enter or leave China. 3) .... Iran ... Italy ... 4) Don't let people go to the Alps when Northern Italy appears to be infected.
But you miss the point of the article! People got infected in Tyrol for more than a week even after it had become apparent that the infection was spreading. And people were sent back to their respective countries when it was obvious to the Austrian authorities that a lot of them were probably already infected. An awful lot of things could have been done to stop the virus or at least slow it down, yet you argue that it would have been impossible.

If not, then the specific way it travelled through a specific subculture of wealthy skiers is immaterial. Certainly, capitalism was not the culprit. Hubris and resort managers not getting how serious of a problem this was surely contributed. But an actual Capitalist Virus? No.
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It wouldn't have been immaterial if some people weren't intent on denying what was happening because of the tourism trade. The irony is that the trade (and a lot of trade in other fields) has been harmed immensely because of the very shortsighted interest in letting the tourism trade in Tyrol continue. And it was not about people "not getting" it. It was about people getting but denying it, lying about it, because they didn't want to harm their shortsighted business interests.

Again, if you want to blame how it was spread, talk to the Chinese. By the time it was in ski lodges in Italy, twas too late. Its just an academic exercise to talk about the specifics of transmission by then. It is not Capitalism's fault by any means.
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Why are you so preoccupied with blame?! This is about how the the coronavirus was spread from Southern Europe to the rest of the continent. And the way it was spread appears to have things in common with how it was spread elsewhere. The Chinese authorities probably have a lot to do with the way that it got out of country, but they don't seem to have had much to do with the way that it got from Northern Italy to Scandinavia and Germany.

And in this context, it's also important to stress that the CIA and other U.S. spy organizations appear to have known about the virus running wild in China, which means that China's attempts to conceal what was happening weren't the reason why the USA wasn't prepared. The reason was that Trump either didn't believe the reports about this or didn't care. China can't be blamed for that.
 
Myriad said:
Right. The part you're not getting (and that I admittedly didn't explain very clearly) is that it's not about attitudes toward the specific individuals who actually did spread the disease. Few of the radio jocks who spread anti-gay blame for "gays causing the AIDS pandemic" were specifically directing that blame toward the individual gay (and straight) people who had gotten ill due to knowingly or unknowingly engaging in risky behaviors. They were blaming gay people in general. That distinction is where the borderline lies between dispassionate assessment of cause and effect, and blaming an entire group based on a characteristic they share.
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They also blamed "gay people in general", but it isn't true that "few of the radio jocks ... were specifically directing that blame toward the individual gay ..." I think you can learn something from this story: Gaëtan Dugas (Wikipedia). Feel free to imagine that I blame "an entire group." What I actually do is to show how capitalism and its beneficiaries spread the coronavirus.

So, the thread title: "Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus." I see nothing there, or in the subsequent discussion, distinguishing between the rich capitalism beneficiaries (which describes nearly all Americans, by world standards) who actually spread the disease, those who risked doing so but got lucky and didn't, and the many who did nothing of the sort. You're clearly attempting to blame the entire group. There are other names for that pursuit.
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No, it doesn't describe "nearly all Americans." Capitalism doesn't benefit the vast majority of Americans. On the contrary. You are obsessed with the blame game instead of trying to find out how the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did. And it is fairly obvious that the vector wasn't poor people in Wyoming or West Virginia. It also wasn't poor people in Ishøj, Samsø or Ærø.
You interpret the title of my OP as if it were: Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Each and Every Single One of Them without Exception, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus.
Feel free to do so if you think that it will help you deny what I actually write.
 
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dann said:
You are obsessed with the blame game instead of trying to find out how the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did.
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You started a thread essentially saying, let's play the blame game (and here's who to blame).

Now you're accusing people who respond of being obsessed with the blame game. That's... what it is, I suppose.

A thread for discussing trying to find out how the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did would have been better named something like, "How did the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did?"
 
rockysmith76 said:
I never said centrist, I said both side suck, which they do. That partisan blinder thing is the thing in your way.
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This is your claim. You fail to follow through. Your bias, and your obvious partisan blinders have you attacking 'lefties'/'leftists' non stop.

Yet you claim I have partisan blinders? You're a hard right winger, you just seem to lack the racism of your fellow righties displayed in this forum.
 
dann said:
You mean, like, distribution of free condoms and safe-sex lectures???
I don't see how that would protect anybody from this virus or how it would have prevented it from spreading in the first place. And unlike HIV/AIDS, we have had a very good and early understanding of what we are dealing with in the case of Covid-19. In the case of AIDS, it took years before anybody knew what was going on - at one point it was described as gay cancer and one idea was that the environment of saunas, somehow, was a vector! (It would have been an extinction event for the Finns if that had been the case) - so, no, I see no resemblance at all.
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That doesn't come close to answering the question. You're quick to blame the covid-19 outbreak on "rich people" but refuse to hold "gay people" to the same standards for the HIV pandemic. It's not because of some magnificent logic pretzel you've figured out, it's because you're afraid of upsetting GloboHomo.
 
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rockysmith76 said:
I never said centrist, I said both side suck, which they do. That partisan blinder thing is the thing in your way.
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These people can only view the world of a white person's take of the 'left/right' paradigm. They do it with religious fervor and it's bizarrely fascinating but also incredibly frustrating.
 
Myriad said:
You started a thread essentially saying, let's play the blame game (and here's who to blame).
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No. Instead of playing games, I started a thread saying, Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus.

Now you're accusing people who respond of being obsessed with the blame game. That's... what it is, I suppose.

A thread for discussing trying to find out how the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did would have been better named something like, "How did the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did?"
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Then maybe you should start another thread with that question. I started a thread with an OP stating that capitalism and its beneficiaries, rich people, are the spreaders of coronavirus, and telling you how it took place in my corner of the world and with a reference to articles about two other places where it appeared to have happened in a similar manner.
 
Baylor said:
That doesn't come close to answering the question. You're quick to blame the covid-19 outbreak on "rich people" but refuse to hold "gay people" to the same standards for the HIV pandemic. It's not because of some magnificent logic pretzel you've figured out, it's because you're afraid of upsetting GloboHomo.
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Yes, I lie trembling in fear that the Lavender Mafia will send a hitman and infect me with gay. Go back to your white supremacist fantasies, Baylor.
 
dann said:
No. Instead of playing games, I started a thread saying, Capitalism and Its Beneficiaries, Rich People, Are the Spreaders of Coronavirus.

Then maybe you should start another thread with that question. I started a thread with an OP stating that capitalism and its beneficiaries, rich people, are the spreaders of coronavirus, and telling you how it took place in my corner of the world and with a reference to articles about two other places where it appeared to have happened in a similar manner.
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Yes, you started out the thread by assigning blame. Then you accused those disputing that of "playing the blame game" instead of "trying to find out how the virus spread to all corners of the world as fast as it did." And then you suggest that I should start another thread with that question.

But you're not playing games. :rolleyes:

If you didn't actually want to discuss the topic you started, why did you start it? Is it because you just expected everyone to agree with you? Scapegoating entire groups of people for epidemics has a long and ugly history. It's not going to go unchallenged here. Sorry.
 
Oh yes, the poor, underprivileged, scapegoated rich people! Who will speak out for them?! :rolleyes:
I'll leave you to it.
In the meantime, I would rather take a look at the reality of this situation:

Rich Europeans Flee Virus for 2nd Homes, Spreading Fear and Fury (NYT, March 29, 2020)
COVID-19's Global Spread Among The Relatively Rich Has Been Remarkable (NPR, March 14, 2020)
It Pays to Be Rich during a Pandemic - How the wealthy, powerful, and connected are exploiting the loopholes in our health-care system (The Atlantic, March 15, 2020)
Super-rich jet off to disaster bunkers amid coronavirus outbreak - ‘Self isolate’ for some of world’s richest means Covid-19 tests abroad, personal medics and subterranean hideouts (The Guardian, March 11, 2020)
Coronavirus lifestyles of the rich and famous: how the 1% are coping - While the rest of us face the pandemic, the wealthy are donning face masks, boarding private jets and heading for the hills (The Guardian, March 13, 2020)

So does anybody still believe in the idea that the boomers are one, united group, who should sacrifice their lives for the common good of capitalism, when the actual beneficiaries of the economic system are either hiding out in their (no doubt luxurious) disaster bunkers waiting for a vaccine or busy spreading the virus to regions that would otherwise have been unaffected? (In Denmark, the often elderly inhabitants of a couple of so-far-unaffected islands are asking city dwellers with second homes on the islands to stay the **** away!)
 
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Small rural towns are begging rich folk not to come out to their 2nd homes fleeing the disease. It's happening here in the Berkshires, wealthy folks from Boston are fleeing the city to their vacation homes, spreading the disease to rural communities ill equipped to deal with a health disaster.

https://theberkshireedge.com/great-barrington-implores-second-home-owners-tourists-to-stay-away-during-covid-19-contagion/

Likewise in Blaine county Idaho, where wealthy resort towns have high infection rates.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/27/822122059/sun-valley-idaho-no-one-should-come-here
 
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