UKH

It had to happen:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/13/30-year-old-dies-covid-party-...

A lot of people don't have a fear of nature anymore. Everyone is so used to their safe surburban environments that are predator free, plague free, parasite free, survival of the fittest-free, natural disaster free, that they have lost their respect for the immense brutality of nature. Our first world human monocultures are so sterile that many don't understand our world is chock full of life that just wants to slowly consume your flesh, and sooner or later these people will get the cold hard slap of reality. 

In this case the person who died apparently thought COVID19 was a hoax, which is surprising and very worrying. If there is one person who does not believe COVID19 is real then there could easily be others.

However, you are correct quite a few seem to believe that nothing in the natural world can affect them. We see it every time there is a heavy snowfall with people setting off on journeys they should never have started.

Dave

I've had a few 'friends' on Facebook sharing some moronic science about 5G, viruses not transferring through the air, 'it's only the flu', 'stop being so afraid' etc. I think the actual percentage of science-illiterates is disturbingly high. 

The figure is 20% in England and probably a lot higher in Texas. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/coronavirus-co...

I had someone tell me this morning on our local FB 'have your say' group that the rampant growth in cases in the USA is all a plot to discredit Trump and stop him getting elected....

Our village idiot (I think there may be more than one of them) thought it important to spray paint 'Covid scam' on some of the roads around here.  Not quite sure how the scam works myself, but what do I know?  The other village idiots empty their fast food wrappers out of the car up at Box Hill and Epsom Downs, along with their countless nitrous oxide cylinders.

I had a bit of a wake up call on this last year when I managed to ride my bike into a canal.  Managed to cut my shin to ribbons on some of the edging stones on the way in.  It was basically a long, wide, deep graze all way from my knee down to my foot, with about an inch that was split and bleeding.  Cleaned it when I got home, bit of Savlon, and a big plaster.

Fast forward a week and the whole leg is scabbed, swollen, red, pumping out the heat when you touch it and throbbing.  Several months, three separate courses of antibiotics , a case of cellulitis and it finally cleared up.  Kept thinking all the way through it that if I'd been born a few generations ago I probably would have been looking at a very painful death. 

I've always been very respectful of the natural world and the fact the everything is pretty much out to kill you (and of medical science which tries its best to get us through it).  This was a reminder.

Quite a lot of my family in Birmingham think that the virus is a conspiracy. I shit you not.

My next-door neighbour decided to play with his angle-grinder while wearing some rubber crocks. Can you guess where this story is going?

Anyhow, I got a knock on the door from his wife asking if I could pop round. I found my neighbour at home with his foot submerged in a bowl of water. I think it was water because it was quite red. it was an impressive cut to say the least. My neighbour just wanted to put a dressing on the wound and leave it at that.

The wound got infected, he nearly died but he kept his foot. Happy ending all round. But if we lived in a world of no antibiotics then it would have been a different story.

The attitudes revealed in that report is why I decided a while ago to stop being 'gentle' with conspiracists. It's scary just how pervasive this anti-science bollocks has become.

Don't worry, I expect they will willingly subject themselves to modern medical treatment should they contract it. 

It's quite likely there are conspiracies though, the problem is they aren't related to the morbidity of the virus. Clearly there is some dodgy dealings in the contracts awarded and the choices of when and what to say in press conferences. The way the virus is being managed is politicised.

That convinced with a misunderstand of the statistics is enough to confuse most people.

Someone has sprayed "Earth is flat" over a road-sign on the A1(m) near Stevenage. What is their motive?

What I have discovered, through talking to people in pubs in the last few years, is that there is a group who are not just ignorant, but willfully ignorant. For example, in the case of Brexit, they "don't care a f--- about the details, [they] just want out!"

My neighbour is a fully paid up member of the conspiracy theory club, and believes that Covid is a hoax manufactured (!) in China, is transmitted by 5g and the vaccine is patented by Bill Gates, and is all part of his plan to microchip everybody.

This is proper Darwin Awards material but I find it a lot more sad than funny. I do not believe in a hell, but I wish I did because there is a whole bunch of people that deserve to burn in it for all eternity.

re the EU, unfortunately the conspiracists have won.  Time they got some back.

From the article

"A “Covid party” is a gathering held by somebody diagnosed with coronavirus to see if the virus is real and to see if anyone gets infected, she explained."

Well at least they are doing their own direct research, just little slow off the mark. 🙂

My favourite Darwin Award recipient goes to someone who worked at the same company as me about 15 years ago. Despite the fact he was fully trained in its use, and worked with it on a day to day basis, still tried to see if it would hurt if he directed his water jet stone cutter onto his foot. It operates at 3,600 bar (approx 50,000 lbs psi). He lost 3 toes and a sizeable part of his foot. NB Part of his ppe was very heavy, specially angled plate steel shoes.......

Well, technically speaking, unless the jet also hit their balls, they have not been awarded the Darwin Award, as they are still in the gene pool.

There are conspiracy theories about all sorts of weird stuff, such as men did not land on the moon or that the world is flat. However I don't understand what you mean about the problem that the corona virus conspiracies are not related to the morbidity of the virus bit.

The way that the virus has become politicised because it is being controlled my politicians. How more politicised can you get?

As for the government controlling and managing the nationwide control and eradication of the virus, then that is a matter for those in power to get their fingers out of the trough and for the electorate to accept responsibility who voted for a one-policy government who had only one focus and goal to achieve. The government treated the last election campaign as a referendum and the public had only one thought on their minds. Nobody was concerned if the political leaders had the  depth of skill to multi task for challenges that were not Brexit related.

Misunderstanding or blatant obfuscation?

That really is quite special isn't it.  He may still be in the gene pool, but surely he must have another good idea soon to finish the job.

I used to work with things that have various names but are often called 'exploders' or 'firing devices'.  They generate electric charges/currents/whatevers that set ofs detonators at the end of a kilometer or so of cable and those make explosives go off.  Some of them (old fashioned but reliable) have a little handle that you wind until a light comes on. You press the button and bang. This is serious stuff - the handle unscrews - no handle, no bang.  They have a warning that the electric wotsits can be fatal.  So, our contender for an award decided that he wouldn't give it a full crank, just one turn and he'd see what happened.  He tasered himself.  How far off he was from doing the job properly I wouldn't care to say, but he showed a marked aversion to the things afterwards.

People seem to believe mutiple contradictory theories.

Simultaneously.

Hand held water jet? Mental!

Jk

I was told a couple of weeks ago that it's nothing to worry about anymore, it's still here the guy said but it's much weaker now so we don't need to worry.

I have lost track of the amount of people who have told me they are convinced it was released by China to cripple the world economy and that Wuhan wasn't effected in the slightest, the lockdown there was just a cover story. 

The best one I have heard though from a mate of mine who is usually quite intelligent, it spread round the world because it's in the air. It's traveling from East to west and that's why we were 2 weeks behind Italy, it passed over them first and took 2 more weeks for the wind to blow it to us. 

It's a real shame, I hope his death prevents others from dying in the same kind of way. Imagine his sense of regret while talking to the nurse.

Not far from us someone painted, "Stop 5G" on a wall, to be followed a few days later by the word, "paranoia".

A few years ago the 3M corporation did a online survey about the state of science.

In one of the questions 36% of those surveyed, either somewhat agreed or totally agreed with the statement, "If science did not exist my everyday life would not be that different." Apart from anything else, I wonder how they thought they had completed an online survey.

Dave

We had a newly graduated Geology student working with us on a rope access trackside vegetation removal job a few years ago. In the space of two weeks he managed to cut both his ropes with a Hilti Hedge Trimmer and rolled 30ft down the slope and got caught kicking a stump stuck in the wood chipper a 30cm from the rollers… I'm not sure if he's still alive ?

Not sure of the motivation, but I heard that social distancing is pushing their members over the edge. 

This must be the same guys who went on flat earthers' convention cruise and kept pestering the crew for longitude/latitude and GPS coordinates to put on the photos they mailed home.

CB

The only flaw in that argument is that a few generations ago you probably wouldn’t have been riding a bike along a canal bank and therefore wouldn’t have crashed in the first place.

But I get the point you’re making.

Last year the cruise ship I was on displayed the Lat/Long, distance to destination, speed and estimated time to port in reception. I asked the woman on duty if people ever bothered looking at it and she said that most don't but if they get one he is usually obsessive and it stops them asking for the data on an hourly basis. I never thought that it could be flat-earthers gathering "evidence".

I was thinking more about the fact that any insignificant scratch or cut could have turned into something nasty and untreatable

Those times are probably returning though with the increase in antibiotic resistance. Unless there is a big change in antibiotic creation or maybe they figure out how to use phages on a larger scale.

I know, I was just having a little bit of fun. But you’re right we live in blessed times. Even the fact that we know what C-19 is and how to manage transmission is a shed load better than we’d have experienced a century ago.

I was more wondering about flat earthers talking about position using a coordinate system describing the surface of a sphere rather than some disc, and relying on technology involving several smallish bits circling the big sphere in 3D.

CB

I went for a walk last week in a pair of new trainers that left me with a blister the size of a fried egg.  That also went a bit manky for a bit despite keeping it clean and for a while I thought it was infected too (lots of redness around it and started to feel warm to the touch).  On the mend now, but little things like that (and the canal injury) make me so thankful for antibiotics, anaesthetics, modern medicine, and the fact I'm not chomping down on a bit of leather while someone is sawing my lower leg off.

it wasn't completely hand held, but part of a kind of rig - definitely hand controlled though. The water pressure overall wasn't that great, as the jet was of miniscule (about 0.6mm dia, from memory) dimensions, but the pumps used to achieve that kind of nozzle velocity were impressive pieces of kit, in a geeky engineery kind of way.......

You have a grim outlook on life, nature will always win so why be afraid of it?

A boy that my friend was in school with was into making home explosives (this predates 9/11 so wasn't taken particularly seriously). He was sat at his desk in his bedroom working on the intricate wirings of his latest device when it exploded blowing a hole through the desk and bedroom floor, rumor was that he was left eligible for a Darwin award!

A schoolmate was very lucky to live to an age that allowed him to eventually become professor of inorganic chemistry. Homemade pipe bombs and glass recycling bins are a baaad mix....

He also had the fire service come around to his parents place several times due to some exuberant experimentation with his Kosmos student's chemistry lab kit.

Yes we did that at home. As an explanation, my granddad was a miner eventually working his way up to running a large quarry. When we visited him at work he usually had his explosives engineer chuck us large sticks of ammonium nitrate explosive: Careful, better catch that!!!!

Of course, the ignitor wire is much more dangerous. Winding it a couple times around the trunk was their favourite way to clear trees...

More harmless was riding around the quarry in the scoop of their biggest excavator.

CB

A pretty cool and fun mix, too, from a school kid's perspective. I can see the attraction while thinking 'blimey'. 

Edit: What happened?

The bin burst, spreading shards of glass about 50m each direction. Luckily he ignited the whole thing from about 100m away. To anyone reading this, this was back in 1983 or 84.... Now, this would be a terrorism level event, and rightly so!

CB

I think it would fail to win an actual Darwin award on two counts, firstly not 'special' enough (if lots of people are doing it, it doesn't get the award) and also the person stepping out of the gene pool is disqualified if anyone else gets hurt in the process.

Coincidentally, the genuine 'latest Darwin Award' is on-topic for UKC - he was the Japanese Brave Dave.
https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2020-01.html

pretty horrifying - trouble is I think I'm seeing people like that on Helvellyn in winter, walking up only looking at smartphones in poor visibility and asking for help near the summit.  Seen several cases of people asking to join groups of strangers they meet to help them off when the phone screen proves insufficient.

Simple really. No axe, no brakes, no hope!

Similarly I recall a ski holiday at Kitzbuhl and a young lady halfway down the Hammenkahn took off her skis as she was so frightened by the steepness of it all. She promptly slipped and after falling some way crashed into a tree. Died from her head injuries. Again she had no brakes when the skis were removed.

I started up mt fuji in june one year,  met a german and italian also going up. I turned back before the top as i had an early morning flight home, but the German and italian continued up. The Italian was very generous to the German guy who was poorly prepared in shorts, trainers etc. He lent him spare clothes etc to keep him warm. They made it up in the end. On the way down the met some us army guys coming down ( We had also met them.on the way up) who reported a dead body on the slopes that day.

My profile pic is from lower slopes of mt fuji, I am with some Japanese guy who was coming down the mountain dressed like that!

What I said is not grim, it is simply reality. It doesn't matter if you find it grim, or if you're afraid or not, the truth does not care about your feelings on the matter. 

He doesn't look Japanese.

I "commandeered" two americans, a teacher and his late adolescent son who were planning to walk down in light hiking gear from the Schreckorn hut after a big temperature drop between the time they got up there and the day I stayed the night.  Sheet hard ice over sloping slabs and scrambly bits on some of the approach sections.   Though usually a mild person I told them that they would be going down with me (wearing crampons) on a rope until we were past the steepest and icy rocky parts.

Pretty stupid really as if anything had gone wrong I'd have no leg to stand on legally but they were heading for suicide if they'd gone down without aid in the prevailing conditions.

That reminds of falling off my bike, and them using something which at the time felt sponge like to clean the bits of grit out my leg while pouring sterile water the wound. I've since been told that tap water can be used for cleaning wounds with. 

I used a nail brush under the shower the last time I took a chunk out of my knee when the bike slipped under me on 1/2" of sharp gravel. On a national cycle trail...

I decided it would be prudent to go to A&E to get it checked after the adrenaline subsided, and pain kicked in... The houseman apologised when he used an alcohol wash on the gravel rash without thinking....

It was your implication that others should have a fear of the inevitable that I found rather grim.

Well the outcome for a person with an invincibility complex paired with a merciless natural world will be grim. If you believe your body is stronger than a moving train you will also be subjected to grim results. I don't see why pointing this out is grim though? It's just common sense. 

I don't feel that the result is grim, but that living in fear of that result would lead to a pretty miserable life.

I have a fear of being eaten alive by a crocodile. It doesn't ruin my life, or even affect it in any way, I just don't stand by the edge of creeks in crocodile populated areas. Why would having fear of a painful or premature death lead to a miserable life? It's a totally normal and ubiquitous emotion that evolved to ensure animals try to survive. If the fear is rational then it is totally justified. It doesn't mean you are afraid all the time.