Coronavirus **personal experiences** thread

I don’t see a point of this thread if only certain viewpoints are permitted to be discussed. I feel bad for SB, not an easy situation to deal with. I appreciate that there’s at least one place on this global forum to talk about a thing that’s disrupting everyone’s lives, but if only certain people get to share their grievances, experiences, concerns, fears, or even opinions, I begin to have issues with it. I feel like there is justification for banning the topic entirely under the premise of it being BudgetLightForum, and the long standing rules prohibiting controversial topics. If milk toast and regurgitation of mainstream news stories is all that’s allowed, I feel like we don’t need it here.

I know I should just continue to keep my mouth shut and not share my 2 cents. I’ve ignored this thread about 85% of the time, and when I’ve indulged, it never seems to be a beneficial exercise.

I share this with respect for everyone and their individual experience and perspective. I wish this wasn’t so difficult.

:+1:
Yeah…… Sb is definitely underpaid…. tough job……
:beer:

I believe the idea behind the rule, if I’m not mistaken, is to prohibit certain topics, not to prohibit any viewpoints about each topic that is permitted.

Thankless job it is too. Sb’s done a great job IMO keeping the peace and still allowing us to mostly express our opinions. When he asked some time ago if we should eliminate this thread, I had mixed thoughts. Now I’m glad we didn’t. I like this thread as a place to blow off a little steam about what can be a volatile subject. Better here than buttin heads with somebody out in the street, don’t you think? JMO

Wellp, problem is that there are a lot of people (and make no mistake, on both sides), who simply Must Be Right, and will dog you ’til you drop. And aha!, you made a spelling error, so obviously your whole point of view is thus wrong and can be dismissed in its entirety, etc.

And like a dog with a chew-rag, they Just Won’t Let Go. If they “correct” the slightest detail to try to poke holes in your arguments, that can descend into calling The Other Side things like idiots, evildoers, conspiracy theorists, Nazis, whatever.

And that’s just toilet-paper over vs under, crumple vs fold, “Laurel” vs “Yanni”, you name it. Doesn’t need to be politix or religion or anything.

And this is why we can’t have Nice Things.

Not likely we’ll ever get over that hump. you think?

+1, just gotta luv Bender bringin the Light.

Believe it or not, some people die every year from complications of the common cold.

I mock fear itself.

Isn’t that special.

I honestly haven't had to intervene as much as expected here. But just to reiterate:

So it's not that I allow certain viewpoints and not others. I'm not trying to promote my personal feelings on the above issues, and as a matter of fact I haven't even mentioned my viewpoint. I'm simply pragmatically broad-brush prohibiting anything that leads to controversy, whether it's purportedly based on science, conspiracy, opinion, ineptitude, or otherwise.

WOW! SB you nailed it once again. I have enormous respect for how well you have handled this forum!

Looking at your reasoned list of rules breaks my heart as I realize the reality of their inherent truth. Every point is a significant issue in our shared experience of a truly exceptional and profound event. Our society is currently in a state where such things simply can not be discussed without the discussion becoming corrosive rather than constructive.

Thanks for the all the effort you put in here SB. I appreciate and recognize how hard you try and I think you’re doing as well as anyone can a ask of one human being. I really don’t mean to insult your efforts with my comments. It’s my personal frustration with the concept of a growing list of things you shouldn’t talk about. It happens naturally, and predictably over time. It’s a futile fight against entropy IMO. I know it’s not your intent, but if one strips all the red lettered subpoints of the pandemic from the discussion, there’s not much meat left to work with (again, YMMV). That’s really my contention I suppose. And any bias present in this thread is not due to your interventions IMO, but rather the common viewpoints of a handful of participants that regularly feed it.

I hope my point is coming across clearly. It’s not really a call to any action, but more of a statement of how I view the current situation.

@JaredM: I understand, no offense taken. Maybe we should tweak the title of this thread then. Something like “Coronavirus news and experiences thread”. Any thread on BLF should serve the overarching goal of contributing somehow to this forum, and I still believe that there are enough commonalities in this worldwide issue to allow us to simply post our personal experiences and bring us together as a community. But there’s a fine line between “telling” a personal experience and pontificating in favor of or against governmental measures that are anything but “personal”.

I feel like many people I meet are living in great fear of catching this thing, because they keep hearing how deadly it is supposed to be, and it seems like we are bombarded with a ton of fear-promoting news coverage every day. People shouldn’t have to live in fear all the time.

The odds of an individual dying of heart disease greatly exceeds the odds of dying from Covid-19, but we don’t live every day dreading it. Same with cancer, accidents, and a host of other more-likely-than-Covid causes of death. We put those things to the back of our minds; we might take normal precautions (eat right, look both ways at the intersection, etc.) but we don’t dwell on them daily. Yet we are virtually forced to dwell on Covid fear daily because the new number of cases and the latest death stats are always included in the daily MSM news. I think it’s a harmful overreaction, and it strikes me as fear mongering on the media’s part. That’s why it is important to put the risk of Covid death in better perspective, so we can live our lives joyfully and to the full.

When I talk to people and they find out I had Covid over Christmas, their reaction is something like, “OMG, that’s horrible? Are you okay???” I’m happy to tell them that it was no big deal, it felt like having flu and I recovered in short time, I was never afraid; I didn’t die from it, and even if you catch it, chances are that you won’t die, either. Life is too short to be fearful day after day of “maybe” and “what if.”

With regard to the risk of dying from Covid-19 compared to other causes [EDIT: I just realized that this is arguably on the list of prohibited topics, so rather than respond on the topic introduced by another member, I will delete the rest of my post to comply with forum rules].

I suggest you also use the Report button

I suggest you also use the Report button.

let the Report algorythm do its job

i agree with this and feel like it’s an almost digital manifestation—all or nothing, 1 or 0, folks are either scared shift-less, or running wide open with abandon.

Most of the time i try to look at the positions and usually tend toward the middle with regards to risk, except in the case of motorcycle riding which involves a great deal of risk management. Unfortunately cage drivers distracted by cell phones has changed the risk equation there.

i’m hoping that a big old dose of vaccinations will create the herd mentality needed to get out of the constant fear and loathing stage of the news media. Once the fear subsides then kids will go back to school, folks get back to work and get the booming economy running again.

Nobody should be making personal digs or troll-calling here, it’s not useful to open discussions.

Well said kb. A voice with a different viewpoint isn’t a troll. Exchange of ideas and supporting information isn’t arguing. And on this topic, not being fearful is not a lesser moral position.

Risk and deadliness are difficult concepts for people to grasp. For me personally I think the most risky thing I do is ride motorcycle. Early in the Pandemic I realized that the pandemic was significantly more dangerous than riding motorcycle. Fairly sure that the comments being derided as minimizing the situation are reasonably accurate. Absolutely certain that portable morgues and mass graves are a reality of COVID.

Beyond personal risk the other thing that makes my try to do my best to stop the spread (mask, social distance, no large groups, etc) is simply the desire to keep our health care system from collapsing. We simply do not have the capacity to handle the added load.

In the state of my birth there are about 5.8 million people. Approximately a year into this about 5900 people have died from COVID. That same state has about 283000 registered motorcycles. Approximately 80 people die during the course of a year from motorcycle accidents.

Quite a few people think it is unreasonable for me to ride motorcycle. They see it as a very dangerous activity. Some may see the pandemic as a rather low risk thing because the case fatality rate is so low and not recognize that it is nearly 40X higher than the case fatality rate for riding motorcycle.