TheRPGSite

I'm surprised no one's started a thread yet.

I live near Seattle, and all of the gaming events I usually attend have been postponed or cancelled. biweekly Starfinder Society is suspended. I had an X-Wing miniautures Store Championship to attend saturday but that's been rescheduled for April.
The gaming pub I usually go to has been open on reduced hours, and sanitizing all the tables between games. Attendance is down (due to cancelled events) but not completely gone.

Metro Seattle Gamers has cancelled all events and severely limited access to the club. All my games are now virtual. (2 different bi-weekly games that rotate in the same group).

Quote from: trechriron;1124162Metro Seattle Gamers has cancelled all events and severely limited access to the club. All my games are now virtual. (2 different bi-weekly games that rotate in the same group).

...Ummm. in case you haven't noticed yet. There is a national pandemic. This is not just Seattle, it is nationwide. CDC and the national health service totally fucked up on this one. It not been a help that every single president since George Bush Jr. has cut the budget for CDC and NHS, and now we have a virus outbreak that kills 2% of everyone over the fifty, 9% of everyone over the age of sixty, and 16% of everyone over the age of seventy. The last time we had a plague outbreak of this magnitude, it was 1918 and the flu killed 65 million people worldwide, and almost a million people in the United States. This coronavirus may kill even more people than that.

As of yesterday, I'm on a months paid leave. My only job right now is to not get infected. That is your job too. We need to slow down this virus so that it doesn't overwhelm our national health care system. There is a very small chance we may develop a vaccine for this, if we are very lucky, we'll see it in six months. If not, a year and a half. I have a three month supply of food, ummm.. a decent supply of Quantum Nuka-Cola, and will be running games online using Roll20 so my GaryCon peeps don't miss the old school goodness. I'll see you on the otherside (maybe)... as I'm in the high  mortality group now.

All major conventions in my State and any state around me have been cancelled for at least sixty days including Adepticon and GaryCon, as well as AtlantaCon (but not by the partipicipants, this is on order of the State Governors) ...after which, there will be a re-evaluation, to see if any public gatherings in excess of two-hundred and fifty people will be again again allowed. Pray for the best, plan for the worst, good luck! Let me know how your gaming goes. I'll be posting updates here and on my blog beginning tomorrow.

If any of my friends cancel any gaming because of this nonsense panic, I will shit upon them so hard their therapy bills will triple. That's a text I sent out to our crew last week. We're great about working around actual illnesses and work commitments, but useless fear isn't tolerated. Life's hard enough without having crybabies around.

Plus seeing each other in person when the world is acting stupid is always good for the soul.

But I assume every gaming convention / flgs event is going to crap out for the next month or two. Makes me wonder if the game cafes will stay open. I've got a heavy metal cover band festival coming up at the end of the month and I'm hoping (with little faith) they won't cancel. Hopefully the metal community still can find their nutsack, but that's a really big ask in Commiefornia.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1124173...Ummm. in case you haven't noticed yet. There is a national pandemic. This is not just Seattle, it is nationwide....

What in the sam-hell fuck-wits gave you the impression I was speaking as if Seattle were the only place impacted? I was speaking of my experience and what was happening for me. I was sharing. Also, I'm glad we shut everything down. I'm in a high risk group and don't want to die.

Perhaps you should crawl off your soapbox gramps and participate in the convo vs. lecturing me.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1124173...Ummm. in case you haven't noticed yet. There is a national pandemic. This is not just Seattle, it is nationwide. CDC and the national health service totally fucked up on this one. It not been a help that every single president since George Bush Jr. has cut the budget for CDC and NHS, and now we have a virus outbreak that kills 2% of everyone over the fifty, 9% of everyone over the age of sixty, and 16% of everyone over the age of seventy. The last time we had a plague outbreak of this magnitude, it was 1918 and the flu killed 65 million people worldwide, and almost a million people in the United States. This coronavirus may kill even more people than that.

As of yesterday, I'm on a months paid leave. My only job right now is to not get infected. That is your job too. We need to slow down this virus so that it doesn't overwhelm our national health care system. There is a very small chance we may develop a vaccine for this, if we are very lucky, we'll see it in six months. If not, a year and a half. I have a three month supply of food, ummm.. a decent supply of Quantum Nuka-Cola, and will be running games online using Roll20 so my GaryCon peeps don't miss the old school goodness. I'll see you on the otherside (maybe)... as I'm in the high  mortality group now.

All major conventions in my State and any state around me have been cancelled for at least sixty days including Adepticon and GaryCon, as well as AtlantaCon (but not by the partipicipants, this is on order of the State Governors) ...after which, there will be a re-evaluation, to see if any public gatherings in excess of two-hundred and fifty people will be again again allowed. Pray for the best, plan for the worst, good luck! Let me know how your gaming goes. I'll be posting updates here and on my blog beginning tomorrow.

The biggest threat of the Kung Flu is the panic surrounding it, which you are adding to.

I wonder if GenCon and Origins will cancel. Any official blathering?  

Quote from: jeff37923;1124191The biggest threat of the Kung Flu is the panic surrounding it, which you are adding to.

All hail Corona Chan baby! The Wuhan virus is the media event of our lifetime. Panic is our new national dance hit.

I go to bed with a leek like a stuffed doll to stay safe, just like the Pokemon Farfetch'd. :) With that and my living room fortress of solitude made of toilet paper & rice I will be safe. :cool: Take care everyone and don't finger other people's mucous membranes, even if they ask pretty please!

The problem with the COVID-19 is it does not only hospitalize and kill the stupid. Which is exacerbated by the perennial problem that many of the young are selfish and stupid. Therefore the little shits will be contagious. Now get the fuck off my lawn you contagious motherfuckers.

And in response to the OPs question. I'm pushing my in person group to switch to Roll-20 for the duration. It may help that our usual venue is closed for the next two weeks.

Hey guys I will open up my discord server if you need a place to game.  It is the least I can do.

Here is the discord server link and yes you should only see the entrance room.  You can only see it till you prove your living human being and not a bot. https://discord.gg/JEfP8AT

My local group is refusing to give in to the panic. There are only about 5 of us. All over 50. And we value the fun and good times of our group too much to give in to fear.

If the virus hits us, then it does. We will enjoy our gaming no matter what. Creating great memories that give us nothing but pleasure. Instead of quaking in fear alone at home.

Never give up! Never surrender!

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1124304Never give up! Never surrender!

HELL YEAH!!!

May Gravthar's Hammer protect and keep thy table safe!!!

So, what happens if *someone else* gets infected by you and dies?

Quote from: Luca;1124314So, what happens if *someone else* gets infected by you and dies?

Fearmongering doesn't work on me. I won't give up on life simply because of a remote chance of death.

We face death everyday because of other viruses. This is not new.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1124317Fearmongering doesn't work on me. I won't give up on life simply because of a remote chance of death.

We face death everyday because of other viruses. This is not new.

My father is 79 with a previous cancer and a heart condition. My mother is 71.
According to you, I'm "fearmongering".
According to me, you're insane.

Quote from: Luca;1124318My father is 79 with a previous cancer and a heart condition. My mother is 71.
According to you, I'm "fearmongering".
According to me, you're insane.

You give in to fear, then you might as well already be dead.

I take the proper precautions. According to the CDC.

And if you think wearing a mask can protect you from the virus, you are dreaming.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1124319You give in to fear, then you might as well already be dead.

I take the proper precautions. According to the CDC.

And if you think wearing a mask can protect you from the virus, you are dreaming.

Well actually I agree with you on the mask. That's the point. According to my country's health authorities, the only successful precaution is to not meet people.

OK Folks

The problem with this particular pandemic are

It deadlier than normal flu and colds. And it deadliness rise as the older you are up to 16% for people 70 or older. Overall it is averaging 2% to 4% along with 16% serious cases requiring emergency care. Well over the threshold to overwhelm medical service if there enough cases. The point of taking drastic measure now is keep the peak below this point. If the number of cases grows beyond this point only only do death from the virus spike upward but also from other causes as well as medical services become limited.

In the United States serious testing only has begun in the past week and still ramping up. So we don't know how far the virus has spread. Based on the experiences of Western Europe likely we are week behind them in particular Italy.

This is compounded by the relatively long latency of the disease showing visible symptoms yet the infected individual is capable of infecting others.

The media and official response are not overblown. It is crucial so that our medical system doesn't get overwhelmed and even more deaths occur.

As for the panic buying, it happens and this is the first serious pandemic in two generation. During and prior to the 1950s, people what to do with contagious diseases was a common experience. But since then one by one by the major infectious diseases were brought under control. There was a reason why the discoverers of the polio vaccine was thrown a ticker tape parade.

While panic doesn't help, adopting a "who cares" attitude or dismissing reports as overblown doesn't help either.

Keep up on what the CDC is saying and limit your contact with other people as reasonably as you can.

I could be wrong, but I get the impression more than a few of the 'it's just the flu you stupid libs' crowd are members of one or more of the vulnerable populations: over 60, obese, smokers.

Even if you don't give a shit about the hundreds of thousands likely to die from this thing if it isn't contained, maybe stop and consider that health care capacity is going to be beyond maxed for the next 12+ months. Better hope you or your loved ones don't suffer from a heart attack, gallstones, pneumonia, or appendicitis in the next year or so.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1124317Fearmongering doesn't work on me. I won't give up on life simply because of a remote chance of death.

We face death everyday because of other viruses. This is not new.

Of course you won't give up. And why should you have to give up anything at all or put up with even a minor inconvenience just because it might save someone else's life. Selfish and stupid.

According to a nurse who visited my mom today, there is going to be a three-week home quarantine enacted for the county I am in. No travel anywhere.

I still have to get up, shower, get dressed, and go to work. Pandemic or no, life does indeed go on.

Taking reasonable precautions to not spread the virus? Sure. Scaring the fuck out of the population because it is a lead news story? Nope. There is an excluded middle here that does not involve the panic we have been seeing.

I'd suggest more people be like R. Talsorian Games and make one of their more popular games a free download for the rest of this month. (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/25121/Teenagers-from-Outerspace?src=hottest_filtered) Teenagers From Outer Space is great fun and perfect for being trapped at home with the rugrats.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124324I could be wrong, but I get the impression more than a few of the 'it's just the flu you stupid libs' crowd are members of one or more of the vulnerable populations: over 60, obese, smokers.

Even if you don't give a shit about the hundreds of thousands likely to die from this thing if it isn't contained, maybe stop and consider that health care capacity is going to be beyond maxed for the next 12+ months. Better hope you or your loved ones don't suffer from a heart attack, gallstones, pneumonia, or appendicitis in the next year or so.

Looking at what's happening in Italy, where they have now had to ration care (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-italy-hospitals-doctor-lockdown-quarantine-intensive-care-a9401186.html), you can only hope it doesn't happen in any other places. As much as the idiocy on display here amazes me, I'd hate to hear that a forum member won a Darwin Award.

Quote from: jeff37923;1124367Taking reasonable precautions to not spread the virus? Sure. Scaring the fuck out of the population because it is a lead news story? Nope. There is an excluded middle here that does not involve the panic we have been seeing.

This. Holy shit people. COVID-19 is not the end of the world. Not falling for the ad-click motivated hysteria is good. Not contributing to the social contagion of fear is useful. Refusing to take low-impact measures to reduce risk is just silly. If it were 1975 and your gaming choices were "meet in person" or "don't game", that'd be one thing. But it's 20 fucking 20, use the damn internet, ye pig-headed plague-bearing werevermin.

Our forefathers who lived through (for example) the 1918 flu would surely think we're idiots in refusing to leverage our fancy ass technology as much as we can.

XOXO,

Your internet friend,

-Insubordinate Polyhedral

Quote from: Bren;1124326Of course you won't give up. And why should you have to give up anything at all or put up with even a minor inconvenience just because it might save someone else's life. Selfish and stupid.

That a serious consideration with this virus, the long onset period means if you are infected you will be putting others at risk. And it unlikely would know about it until the symptoms manifest. For this we are not our own isolated islands.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1124371Our forefathers who lived through (for example) the 1918 flu would surely think we're idiots in refusing to leverage our fancy ass technology as much as we can.

Exactly, don't lose your head but if there another options for hanging out using the internet or devices, then use it for the next few weeks.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1124371Our forefathers who lived through (for example) the 1918 flu would surely think we're idiots in refusing to leverage our fancy ass technology as much as we can.

Gotta quote this. The reason coronavirus is less of a threat is because we've got the technology to eventually develop a vaccine, self-quarrantine with a minimum of disruption, and track and diagnose this even when people aren't showing symptoms.

In case anyone is living under a rock, the US is doing a voluntary self-quarantine of 15 days. Apparently, this is how long it will take to get the health care system ready to roll and handle the virus. Might be time for some Roll 20 gaming, gentlemen.

Quote from: jeff37923;1124367I still have to get up, shower, get dressed, and go to work. Pandemic or no, life does indeed go on.

Depending on where you live, you may not be going to work for much longer. You'll either be working remotely from home, or out of work.

Quote from: jeff37923;1124367Scaring the fuck out of the population because it is a lead news story? Nope. There is an excluded middle here that does not involve the panic we have been seeing.

Italians weren't taking the pandemic threat seriously two weeks ago. Now they're fucked.

Panic isn't good. But if people need to be scared to get them to change their daily habits enough to suppress the transmission of the virus, then so be it. Better than the acute care system collapsing.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124383Depending on where you live, you may not be going to work for much longer. You'll either be working remotely from home, or out of work.

Entertainment and dining establishments are closing down (some for good, they can't afford the loss), but the grocery stores here in WA are hiring literally on the spot.

I already run my two main campaigns via Fantasy Grounds, and now will be doing all my gaming that way for the next little while.

In person gaming may be about to be not an option. Most of the San Francisco Bay area is under shelter in place orders that would prohibit gaming groups meeting. Other areas are likely to issue similar orders in the next few days.

Fortunately for me all my gaming is play by post or Roll20. Thank god for things like Roll20 and technology in general, the lock down for this one will be much more bearable than those for the 1918 flu...

Quote from: Myrdin Potter;1124389I already run my two main campaigns via Fantasy Grounds, and now will be doing all my gaming that way for the next little while.

I just started to use Fantasy Grounds about a year ago.   I normally use it to display the combat on the big screen that I've mounted near our gaming table.   I was discussing with some in my group about setting up a camera and a mic so we could allow remote play when others don't have time to drive over...or just feeling lazy :p  with COVID 19 we might have go ahead and make it a reality.

BTW Can't wait for Fantasy Grounds Unity to get finished :)

Quote from: Brad;1124377In case anyone is living under a rock, the US is doing a voluntary self-quarantine of 15 days. Apparently, this is how long it will take to get the health care system ready to roll and handle the virus. Might be time for some Roll 20 gaming, gentlemen.

My discord server is still open and we got dice rollers.  Is it Roll20?  No, but nothing is preventing you from using both at the same time.

Quote from: estar;1124372That a serious consideration with this virus, the long onset period means if you are infected you will be putting others at risk. And it unlikely would know about it until the symptoms manifest. For this we are not our own isolated islands.

Yes. People will be contagious for days before they will have any symptoms and some folks will only ever have minimal to even no symptoms, but they will still be contagious. They are the COVID-19 version of Typhoid Mary. This thread is an example of why we need government imposed lockdowns. There are just way too many people that are ignorant, often willfully so, and who just don't appear to give a rat's ass for anyone but themselves and (maybe) their immediate family and friends.

South Korea has had a lot of success using frequent, widespread testing and self quarantines to keep their rate of infection (and percent infected) low and early and appropriate treatment to keep their mortality rate well below what we've seen in countries like China and Italy. Sadly, as a country we wasted more than a month listening to people ranting about how this was all some overblown, media inspired panic instead of listening to the experts, examining the available data, preparing, and testing. Things seem to have turned around quite a bit, but we will be very fortunate if we aren't in similar shape to Italy in another few weeks.

Personally I'm no more panicked about COVID-19 than I am about driving in traffic. When driving I wear a seatbelt, my car has airbags, I watch out for other drivers, and I never, ever drive faster than I can see. Taking precautions isn't panic, its just good sense and good citizenship.

Looks like Tuesday night D&D 5E group will be using Roll20 tomorrow night. I'm kind of excited to see what Roll20 can do.

Quote from: Luca;1124314So, what happens if *someone else* gets infected by you and dies?

Then they die.

In an average year, 36,000 Americans die from the flu (the 2017-2018 flu season was 61k dead).

Every year, most people who are contagious with the flu just go about their lives. Kids with sniffles go to school. Adults with coughs go to work. Do these people infect others? Of course!!! The CDC says the USA has 25+ million infected with flu each year.

Let's be honest here. Every year, most people spread the flu without a second thought and sometimes, that spread results in someone's DEATH. Unsurprisingly, most of the deaths are the Old and the Infirm...as it has been since time began.  

The world average life expectancy from 2017 was 72.2 (but it was 48 in 1950). Nobody wants Mom, Dad and Granny to die, but  anyone who is 73 or older has already beaten the odds and lived longer than the expected. My Dad made it to 85 when double septic pneumonia punched his clock. Mom still can't believe he died so young, but I gotta face that Dad got 13 years beyond the math when I have friends whose own beloved dads never saw 50.

Yes, the Wuhan China virus will KILL many thousands of old and sick people (though probably less than a bad flu year)...but nothing is gonna damn the USA's future like it's people collapsing before a media induced panic. Americans like to forget we have many enemies, but they are watching this laughable debacle with wide eyes and deep smiles.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124423Yes, the Wuhan China virus will KILL many thousands of old and sick people (though probably less than a bad flu year)...but nothing is gonna damn the USA's future like it's people collapsing before a media induced panic. Americans like to forget we have many enemies, but they are watching this laughable debacle with wide eyes and deep smiles.

Your biggest strategic enemy imposed military-enforced curfew on one of its regions containing tens of millions of people, and incurred major economic losses in order to stop the spread of this particular "flu".
Ever considered they might have a point?

Quote from: Luca;1124430Your biggest strategic enemy imposed military-enforced curfew on one of its regions containing tens of millions of people, and incurred major economic losses in order to stop the spread of this particular "flu".
Ever considered they might have a point?

It looks to me that Western countries are going to inflict much more widespread nation wide economic shutdowns and inflict far more damage than China did, and in the long term far more people are going to die from the consequences of the shutdown than from the virus.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124423Then they die.

In an average year, 36,000 Americans die from the flu (the 2017-2018 flu season was 61k dead).

• The flu season you cite saw for every individual infected 1.3 additional people infected. Of the people who got infected less than .1% died thus giving you the figure you cited 36,000 dead.
• The H1N1 virus circa 2009 was around 1.5 people infected for every person who came down with the virus. Fatality rate was three time higher at around .3%
• In contrast for Covid-19, for every person infected 2.2 (Jan 2020) to 2.7 (Feb 2020) additional people will get infected. Of those people who get the disease 3.5% will die.
• Different age bracket respond differently with those 70+ have been suffering a 16% fatality rate due to Covid-19
• Covid-19 numbers slightly more deadlier than to that of the 1919 Influenza virus which has an infection rate of 1.8 and a fatality rate of 2% to 3%

All this isn't speculation but based on hard data using standard epidemiology procedures in place for decades.

Furthermore these are fatalities, an order of magnitude (10x) more cases do not result in death but do require medical intervention and hospitalization.

In the case of the flu the annual flu shot means that actual number are far less than just multiplying the fatality rate by the population.

What this means for my small rural town which has a population of 30,000 (city and the two surrounding townships) are the following

• During a normal flu season (Nov to April) we can expect around 30 flu related death. This is less because of the flu shot. We can also expect 300 cases requiring hospitalization spread across those months. Also less because of the flu shot.
• With Covid-19 which has no vaccine at this point, my town can expect 900 deaths probably spread across three months or so. In addition it can expect 9,000 severe case requiring medical intervention like hospitalization.
• This compounded by that fact that in the case of the annual flu the onset of the disease is 1 to 4days. For covid-19 the onset period is 3 to 14 days. A person can pass on the infection during the onset period.
• Moreover the fact without measure with the medical system handling Covid-19 cases this means all the other things like those having complication from the annual flu, trauma, infections, cancer, etc will have problem getting proper treatment thus driving up their death rate.

My town can't handle that. Nobody can handle that which is why we saw in Wuhan emergency hospitals being erected overnight.

What we can do is slow down the spread so these 9,000 cases and 900 death are spread across a longer span of time. And just maybe a vaccine will be developed or enough of a quarantine is place that the case start declining.

So if you want to trot out the arguments about annual flu deaths and automobile fatalities go right ahead.

Weaponized virus gets out of lab in china.  People laud china for containment.  The real danger is going on now, bank runs.  If you do not own a firearm, get one.

Quote from: oggsmash;1124448Weaponized virus gets out of lab in china.  People laud china for containment.  The real danger is going on now, bank runs.  If you do not own a firearm, get one.

I'm glad you brought this back to RPGs. This sounds like the setup for a good dystopian, post holocaust setting.

You could also try, US President covertly releases weaponized virus in a rival country he dislikes to create a handy scapegoat while waiting until it spreads sufficiently in his own country so he can cancel upcoming elections, declare martial law, and remain in power. The game could play out like Red Dawn, but with lots more local quislings.

Had to cancel both my Meetup games today. :( It truly is the End Times!

Quote from: estar;1124439Of those people who get the disease 3.5% will die.

I'm pretty sure the death rate is still a known unknown and estimates are all over the place. The one I saw yesterday had me in a 0.4% death rate category and my GF at 0.2%, her daughter at 0.0% and my son at 0.2%.

My one remaining monthly tabletop game is suspended, as the gaming store we meet in has suspended in-store gaming for the next few weeks.

My other regular game has been online for years due to the difficulty in getting people together. With kids and family obligations, and geographical separation, we only manage about four face-to-face gatherings a year.

Stay safe, people!

My brother has a compromised immune system due to the medications he takes for his Chron's disease. He's the poster child for "complications".

I'm not going to just roll my brother over the side of the boat because "Some people are gonna die". We'll fight it to the end, instead of giving up like pussies.

On topic, my brother has restricted himself to only going out for work and groceries due to his aforementioned situation. I think they tried gaming over Roll20 but couldn't get it to work.

Quote from: Bren;1124449I'm glad you brought this back to RPGs. This sounds like the setup for a good dystopian, post holocaust setting.

You could also try, US President covertly releases weaponized virus in a rival country he dislikes to create a handy scapegoat while waiting until it spreads sufficiently in his own country so he can cancel upcoming elections, declare martial law, and remain in power. The game could play out like Red Dawn, but with lots more local quislings.

Sadly its more boring. Some homer simpson lab worker goofed bad, china didnt bother reporting till they had to, and now a very fragile economic system held together with baling wire and spit is about to come apart in a way that makes the 2008 crisis look like a joke.  I do not think there was any planning, but I do think there are alot of lies in all the CYA going on.   When schools put off closing for two weeks because of concern  due to how many parents rely on free school meals to feed their kids, that alone says how well society is going to hold up under an extreme stress test, our society at least.  Gun, better to have and never need, than to need once and not have.

Quote from: S'mon;1124451I'm pretty sure the death rate is still a known unknown and estimates are all over the place. The one I saw yesterday had me in a 0.4% death rate category and my GF at 0.2%, her daughter at 0.0% and my son at 0.2%.

Out of 190,664 case worldwide (3/17) there have been 7,519 deaths for a fatality rate of 3.9%
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.

While age brackets numbers are in flux there are certain groups like 70+ where it found to be more severe.

Also the easy to find numbers don't report the number of cases requiring hospitalization or medical intervention. My 10x figure is an estimate based on what I read about other flu-like disease. Even if it half that would 4,500 cases in a relatively short amount of time for my community. If it a quarter is still 2,250 cases requiring medical intervention.

The math is still just as grim if you reduce the overall infection rate as well as the percentage of severe cases. It is two order of magnitude worse than the seasonal flu. My area's hospital system officially has 220 beds, since our current system is a result of a merger of two separate hospital with the building still intact and in use. More beds could be made available. Let's be generous can call it 400 beds in an emergency. So that mean any number that result in deaths+severe cases exceed 400 in my town means packed hospitals and a medical system in crisis.

My point still stands, the overall effect degrades medical services for everybody unless measures are taken now.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1124454My brother has a compromised immune system due to the medications he takes for his Chron's disease. He's the poster child for "complications".

I'm not going to just roll my brother over the side of the boat because "Some people are gonna die". We'll fight it to the end, instead of giving up like pussies.

On topic, my brother has restricted himself to only going out for work and groceries due to his aforementioned situation. I think they tried gaming over Roll20 but couldn't get it to work.

In case it helps, here are a couple more options than Roll20 (and Fantasy Grounds, which I presume everyone knows about): MapTool ( https://github.com/RPTools/maptool/releases -- free) and TableTop Simulator ( https://www.tabletopsimulator.com/ -- $20).

Quote from: estar;1124463Out of 190,664 case worldwide (3/17) there have been 7,519 deaths for a fatality rate of 3.9%
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.

While age brackets numbers are in flux there are certain groups like 70+ where it found to be more severe.

Also the easy to find numbers don't report the number of cases requiring hospitalization or medical intervention. My 10x figure is an estimate based on what I read about other flu-like disease. Even if it half that would 4,500 cases in a relatively short amount of time for my community. If it a quarter is still 2,250 cases requiring medical intervention.

The math is still just as grim if you reduce the overall infection rate as well as the percentage of severe cases. It is two order of magnitude worse than the seasonal flu. My area's hospital system officially has 220 beds, since our current system is a result of a merger of two separate hospital with the building still intact and in use. More beds could be made available. Let's be generous can call it 400 beds in an emergency. So that mean any number that result in deaths+severe cases exceed 400 in my town means packed hospitals and a medical system in crisis.

My point still stands, the overall effect degrades medical services for everybody unless measures are taken now.

See this Imperial College report - https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf - they have fatality estimates on page 5.

Age-group
(years)
% symptomatic cases
requiring hospitalisation
% hospitalised cases
requiring critical care
Infection Fatality Ratio
0 to 9 0.1% 5.0% 0.002%
10 to 19 0.3% 5.0% 0.006%
20 to 29 1.2% 5.0% 0.03%
30 to 39 3.2% 5.0% 0.08%
40 to 49 4.9% 6.3% 0.15%
50 to 59 10.2% 12.2% 0.60%
60 to 69 16.6% 27.4% 2.2%
70 to 79 24.3% 43.2% 5.1%
80+ 27.3% 70.9% 9.3%

Puts me in the 0.15% fatality estimate, my gf at 0.08%, my son at 0.006% and her daughter at 0.002%. My father at 5.1% and if my mother hadn't just died she'd be at 9.3%.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1124475In case it helps, here are a couple more options than Roll20 (and Fantasy Grounds, which I presume everyone knows about): MapTool ( https://github.com/RPTools/maptool/releases -- free) and TableTop Simulator ( https://www.tabletopsimulator.com/ -- $20).

I'll let him know. Thanks.

Quote from: S'mon;1124476See this Imperial College report - https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf - they have fatality estimates on page 5.

Age-group
(years)
% symptomatic cases
requiring hospitalisation
% hospitalised cases
requiring critical care
Infection Fatality Ratio
0 to 9 0.1% 5.0% 0.002%
10 to 19 0.3% 5.0% 0.006%
20 to 29 1.2% 5.0% 0.03%
30 to 39 3.2% 5.0% 0.08%
40 to 49 4.9% 6.3% 0.15%
50 to 59 10.2% 12.2% 0.60%
60 to 69 16.6% 27.4% 2.2%
70 to 79 24.3% 43.2% 5.1%
80+ 27.3% 70.9% 9.3%

Puts me in the 0.15% fatality estimate, my gf at 0.08%, my son at 0.006% and her daughter at 0.002%. My father at 5.1% and if my mother hadn't just died she'd be at 9.3%.

Look at the first number the percentage requiring hospitalization and the multiply that result by the second number needing critical care and do the math.

Quote from: S'mon;1124476Puts me in the 0.15% fatality estimate, my gf at 0.08%, my son at 0.006% and her daughter at 0.002%. My father at 5.1% and if my mother hadn't just died she'd be at 9.3%.

How nice for you. From the links you provided, in the UK you will have 763,000 dead, nearly 5 million in hospital, and of those nearly 1.6 million will require critical care. Your National Health Service won't have a any problem handling that many patients along with their regular cases, right?

Quote from: Bren;1124490How nice for you. From the links you provided, in the UK you will have 763,000 dead, nearly 5 million in hospital, and of those nearly 1.6 million will require critical care. Your National Health Service won't have a any problem handling that many patients along with their regular cases, right?

And in the UK going out and buying that gun is a no go

Well I always been a Heineken kinda guy so no Corona for me. But for real now, if you don't have alpha genes stay indoors. Cv-19 is extremely contagious, be safe! Things should start getting back to normal in 3 months.

In the first hour of my shift Monday a Mall management staffer came by with a sheet of paper saying that The Mall had to close down immediately by orders of the Board of Health. I was supposed to work until mid-afternoon. Instead I only had two hours of work time.

At 2:30 pm the Hamilton County Board of Health changed their minds and the order was rescinded - too late for all of the stores that closed early.
Later Monday night my manager called me twice and an announcement was made on Facebook and the News that the mall would have shorter hours. So now the mall is 12 noon t 7 pm Monday through Saturday and 12 noon to 6 pm on Sundays.  The normal old hours had been 10 am to 9 pm Monday through Saturdays.

Also the local Pathfinder Society group has cancelled all of their game sessions til the ed of the month - but their main coordinator is encouraging their players to stop by our store as often as possible.

Lets just say the Mall and all of local retail is feeling a bit tense.

- Ed C.

Quote from: Bren;1124490How nice for you. From the links you provided, in the UK you will have 763,000 dead, nearly 5 million in hospital, and of those nearly 1.6 million will require critical care. Your National Health Service won't have a any problem handling that many patients along with their regular cases, right?

If they send them all into Hospital via the Rail Network then most of them will be recovered before they arrive.

Quote from: Bren;1124490How nice for you. From the links you provided, in the UK you will have 763,000 dead, nearly 5 million in hospital, and of those nearly 1.6 million will require critical care. Your National Health Service won't have a any problem handling that many patients along with their regular cases, right?

NHS is shit at the best of times. They're geared towards killing old people, not saving them.

Quote from: Luca;1124430Your biggest strategic enemy imposed military-enforced curfew on one of its regions containing tens of millions of people, and incurred major economic losses in order to stop the spread of this particular "flu".
Ever considered they might have a point?

I considered it, until I did my research and heard from Chinese family friends.

Wuhan was the site of major protests in summer 2019. The protests were over the severely bad air quality that has been causing illness and early death for the people of Wuhan. The ChiCom's response? Lots of beat downs of protestors.

Then the China Virus strikes...a respiratory illness infecting citizens whose lungs have been already compromised from living in a city with the worst air in the world. That's an equation for a high death rate.

But my family's friends from Hong Kong propose an additional "death rate." Last year, it was revealed the ChiComs had gone back to organ harvesting of prisoners, particularly dissidents. They highly suspect Wuhan "troublemakers" have been harvested under the guise of China virus deaths. And let's not forget the ChiComs celebrated their 70th Anniversary last year, a celebration based on the murder of 50 million of their fellow Chinese.

So the death toll in China is very questionable (even without the harvesting aspect), but its parroted constantly as the "math" behind the media induced panic.

And then we have Iran, where there has been significant and escalating civil unrest for two years. I've known Persian Jews who escaped Iran during the revolution and they all swear the Ayatollah's goons were involved in mass killings of dissidents and there are many modern paved streets covering up old mass graves. So who knows if Iran's death toll is real either. This isn't like getting numbers from Italy and South Korea.

As the death math doesn't add up, I don't believe the USA's medical infrastructure will be compromised or overwhelmed. Will it be pushed, stretched and tested? Perhaps. We will all see soon enough.

What I do know is our media will endeavor to flood every hospital, scaring anyone who tests positive (or just has the sniffles) to rush emergency rooms and do whatever they can to maximize panic.

You left out Italy. Maybe the ghost of Mussolini has been leaving a lot of Italians medically vulnerable, so let's cast a shadow of doubt over the fatalities and news coming out of there too.

I am in a high risk group, as is my wife, so we will be taking what precautions we can (we both have lung issues, and I have serious immune issues). Unfortunately she works at a restaurant (bad both in terms of potential exposure and in terms of the likelihood that she won't have a job in a week). My gaming has all been online anyways, so this won't really change anything for me in that respect (probably will have an easier time getting players). Where I live most people are taking the social distancing thing pretty seriously. People who can, are working from home. Though people still have to go to the store (lots of people are hoarding, which is creating a problem).

Quote from: Shasarak;1124504If they send them all into Hospital via the Rail Network then most of them will be recovered before they arrive.

That gave me a chuckle. Though to be fair, the max delay I ever had was maybe 45 minutes one morning on the way into London while our train was stopped so the authorities could deal with a dead body on the tracks.

Quote from: S'mon;1124506NHS is shit at the best of times. They're geared towards killing old people, not saving them.

Presumably you have BUPO to deal with your routine appointments and minor injury or illness. Though that's unlikely to be very useful during the pandemic.

Why do RPG forums have so many nutjobs on them? If it's not the far-left progressive loons on RPGnet, it's the far-right nativist nuts here. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don't encounter either in my regular life. Is it something about this hobby, or just the hobby forums?

Quote from: Haffrung;1124542Why do RPG forums have so many nutjobs on them? If it's not the far-left progressive loons on RPGnet, it's the far-right nativist nuts here. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don't encounter either in my regular life. Is it something about this hobby, or just the hobby forums?

Yeah we are all far right here.  I mean on the surface it is all propaganda like free speech, working hard, taking responsibility for yourself, having fun with your gaming but it does not take much to read between the lines and figure out what we are really like.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124542Why do RPG forums have so many nutjobs on them? If it's not the far-left progressive loons on RPGnet, it's the far-right nativist nuts here. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don't encounter either in my regular life. Is it something about this hobby, or just the hobby forums?

It's the geek social fallacies. You can explain the vast majority of weirdo geek shit with it.

http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

Quote from: Bren;1124530Presumably you have BUPO to deal with your routine appointments and minor injury or illness. Though that's unlikely to be very useful during the pandemic.

Ha. No, I pay my osteopath on the spot each month, and minor injuries & illness have to look after themselves. I buy my Viagra retail price at the chemist - although now I can't since the chemists are only letting in one person at a time and there are huge queues. My gf seems freaked out by the virus anyway so no nooky. :(

Here in Queensland, Australia I'm working from home.
As I'm a computer programmer, working from home doesn't really impact my job and what I can do, as I've been set up for remote access for a while now.

Local gaming clubs have cancelled physical gaming days, but some have moved online for gaming days using Discord and Roll 20.

Overall, apart from some people panic buying in shops, things are relatively calm, although Cafes, restaurants have been hit really hard.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124542Why do RPG forums have so many nutjobs on them? If it's not the far-left progressive loons on RPGnet, it's the far-right nativist nuts here. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don't encounter either in my regular life. Is it something about this hobby, or just the hobby forums?

Owning a firearm qualifies as far right for lots of people.  Or wanting a border (nativist).  I suspect the people discuss that online because the political climate being as it is you can labeled pretty fast in a workplace and out of a job or lose friends in some cases.

I would add, given there were 3 million background checks last month, and the rate is faster now, especially in new york and california...seems that right wing craziness is catching.

I will also add, I have met actual far right wing nuts in real life, and i know a few actual social justice warriors in real life.  The most far right person more in passing training on the same mat, the lefties training with them and friends for years.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124542Why do RPG forums have so many nutjobs on them? If it's not the far-left progressive loons on RPGnet, it's the far-right nativist nuts here. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don't encounter either in my regular life. Is it something about this hobby, or just the hobby forums?

Social media seems to amplify extremes. Hobby forums being just one example of the effect.

Quote from: Shasarak;1124543Yeah we are all far right here.

He didn't say all. He said, "so many."

<-- Not Right Wing. Not ultra conservative. Not Left Wing. Not ultra liberal.

TOTALLY NUTS.

All the time.

Cruising LA's open highways has been great fun this week, and today the grand Governor of California announced we're gonna have 25.5 million Flu Manchu cases by May. By this weekend, the news will promise us an Extinction Level Event!

BTW, check out the photos of Spring Break 2020 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/19/coronavirus-spring-break-party/). GenZ isn't quaking in fear as ordered, so after all the beaches and bars are closed, the party will continue underground.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1124521You left out Italy. Maybe the ghost of Mussolini has been leaving a lot of Italians medically vulnerable, so let's cast a shadow of doubt over the fatalities and news coming out of there too.

If I didn't love "Toxic SocioCat" so much, I'd totally change my tag to "Shadow of Doubt"!!

Italy is a VERY interesting case.

Italy has the 2nd oldest population, right behind Japan, and a large number of Italy's elderly live with their families - aka, exposure via children and grandchildren in their home. What's going to be interesting in a couple years when the death data is broken down and we see how many of the dead elderly had Alzheimers. Alzheimers has a bizarrely bad relationship (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6417730/) with pneumonia. According to ALZ.org, Italy has 1M with Alzheimers.

Quote from: estar;1124439

• With Covid-19 which has no vaccine at this point, my town can expect 900 deaths probably spread across three months or so. In addition it can expect 9,000 severe case requiring medical intervention like hospitalization.

Estar, you are a good guy working with bad math, and that's not your fault. Everyone's working with bad math.

John P.A. Ioannidis is a professor of medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford's Meta-Research Innovation Center.  

Check out his thoughts on the Kung Flu.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

From
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm#F1_down
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4216[/ATTACH]

Did you miss watching Fox News lately. You are quoting the now disavowed party line on the Trumpandemic.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124617https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

Statistician complains about making decisions without better data. He then goes on to speculate wildly without any data. Yeah, we should definitely pay attention to that guy. :rolleyes:

It's not a news flash that we lack essential data. That's a direct result of the extremely low levels of testing here in the US. Which is a result of two things. First, the administration's failure to use the time in January, February, and early March to provide the means to do testing in the US. We could have been testing in January, but the administration decided to wait to develop a different test here. And second, the feverish conspiracy theories and lies of right wing nutjobs and propagandists abetted by the decline in rationality, data-driven decision making, and in expert opinion that has people listening to someone like Tucker Carlson instead of Anthony Faucci.

But back to the actual topic of the thread. The D&D group tried running things online last Tuesday, but trying to get everyone connected at the same time was an hours-long comedy of errors switching back and forth between Roll20, Discord, and Google Hangouts that stressed the DM to the point that once we finally all got connected in Google Hangouts, he was too exhausted to run. But we seem to have things sorted for next Tuesday. As they say, "cross the fingers."

On the plus side, it did force me to start learning how to use Roll20 which I might be able to add in to the group I run over Skype on Saturday.

Uhh after a really long russia investigation and imaginary impeachment charges i dont know what conspiracy theory or lie means anymore.   The real problem is the USA has a very bipartisan worship of GDP, rather than a true interest in the well being of its citizens.  Maybe a good hard shake up changes that and we can all schedule our games normally after the amicable split.

If you think about it, all of these feverish conspiracy theories work really well for ideas for playing modern RPGs, Cthulhu/Delta Green or Walking Dead games.

I would put internet money on the Zombie Fever coming out of a tent city in California.

Quote from: estar;1124623From
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm#F1_down
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4216[/ATTACH]

Those will be % of reported corona cases that are hospitalised. Not a randomised sample of the general population. You need to start with a sample population where everyone is tested, then go from there. Otherwise you have a bias towards people obviously sick enough to test - which is a standard that is varying a lot by time and place.

Quote from: Shasarak;1124651If you think about it, all of these feverish conspiracy theories work really well for ideas for playing modern RPGs, Cthulhu/Delta Green or Walking Dead games.

I would put internet money on the Zombie Fever coming out of a tent city in California.

You're close but here whats really happening. The Chinese were right.....

It all started when Donald Trump became worried about his reelection chances against Joe Biden. So went to his good friend Alexander Putin for a solution. Putin gave him the covid-19 virus as a solution to generate a world wide calamity in which Trump could find a solution to, and thereby become the Hero of America (TM) and be appointed 'President in Perpetuity'. In order to avoid suspicion he released the virus in China using a secret service agent pangolin (posthumously awarded the medal of honor, the only pangolin ever to receive such an award). So the Chinese were wrong on this point.

Unfortunately what Putin had provided was Russia's failed super-soldier serum, that just seemed to kill everyone, and that Russia didn't have a solution to. All it did was close its borders to avoid infection. Little to we know that on Victory Day (May 9th) all of the apparently 'recovered' infectees will become the walking dead and the zombie apocalypse will begin.....

It has nothing to do with 'politics'!
My response was how it actually is impacting a game store and the regulars that go there.

All the conspiracy theories are bullshit.
A Virus does not have a mind of its own - it doesn't care if you are left wing or right wing, it just kills.

- Ed c.

Quote from: R. Talsorian GamesStarting tomorrow, all our digital content is 50% off for the next month.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/13/R-Talsorian-Games-Inc (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/13/R-Talsorian-Games-Inc)

Stay safe, choombas.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4217[/ATTACH]

Now THIS is what we need to see more of.

Quote from: Koltar;1124668It has nothing to do with 'politics'!
My response was how it actually is impacting a game store and the regulars that go there.

All the conspiracy theories are bullshit.
A Virus does not have a mind of its own - it doesn't care if you are left wing or right wing, it just kills.

- Ed c.

Your game store is bullshit.

This is how a local game store with a spine operates.

Quote from: The Dented MugTHE SHORT VERSION: We're officially open tomorrow, social gathering hubs were ordered to shut their doors, we will provide walkup service between 12pm and 8pm until the order is lifted! Read on for the full details...

THE LONG VERSION:
We are officially ready to roll! Starting tomorrow, you'll be able to come in and make purchases!

That said... Mayor Kincannon did announce an Executive Order today ordering all bars, restaurants, and social gathering hubs to shut down for 2 weeks. Pickup service is available, however, and that's what we intend to do!

During the duration of the Executive Order, we will be open and prepared to supply you with all your hobby needs during the self-quarantine. Need a new board game for your family? Paints for miniatures in your backlog? Some miniatures to add to your backlog? Come see me and we'll send you back to isolation busy and smiling. :)

Because of the nature of this shutdown, all events will be suspended temporarily and we won't be allowing play within the storefront. We will also be operating on a temporary alternate schedule until the Order is lifted. For the next 2 weeks (starting tomorrow!) you'll be able to come say hi and pick up your goods between the hours of 12pm - 8pm.

If for whatever reason that doesn't jive with your schedule and you'd like to come grab something later than 8pm, send me a message on the Facebook page and I will meet you to get you what you need any time during our normal operating hours!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4218[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Bren;1124632Statistician complains about making decisions without better data. He then goes on to speculate wildly without any data. Yeah, we should definitely pay attention to that guy. :rolleyes:

Dr. Ioannidis is not just a statistician. He pioneered the field of meta-research, proving that most published research is actually false (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/). As Stanford's biodata professors have access to the most cutting edge machine learning tools on Earth, I'm definitely paying attention to THAT guy.

Quote from: Koltar;1124668A Virus does not have a mind of its own - it doesn't care if you are left wing or right wing, it just kills.

Koltar, it's not ebola. It doesn't "just kill". It mostly just gives you the sniffles and you recover.

Unless you are in the high risk population (elderly, immuno compromised, suffering underlying health issues), the Chinese virus rarely kills you. That's why the worldwide death toll is so low. Americans should be FAR more concerned about heart disease.

BTW, I was thinking about your situation and I wondered if the store should host online gaming. If your player base is much larger than your GM base, I wonder if players would pay for YOU to GM events online. Or the store pays you to GM, and in exchange the players have to buy X dollars of merchandise. Or maybe just as a goodwill gesture to the store's most loyal customers.

Regardless, your store does need to shift dynamically to remain viable during Corona Chan.

Quote from: jeff37923;1124672This is how a local game store with a spine operates.

If their governor announces a shutdown of non-essential businesses, that "take out for games" won't work.

But perhaps a delivery model would work, and the staff could be the delivery drivers.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124684If their governor announces a shutdown of non-essential businesses, that "take out for games" won't work.

But perhaps a delivery model would work, and the staff could be the delivery drivers.

The Dented Mug is a gaming space that serves alcohol and food, so gaming take out comes along with that as a nice loophole.

So, they shut the swimming pools yesterday, dooming me to pain and misery (bastards!) but I am undaunted and am looking to restart some or all of my online games - 2 OSR play by posts (White Star & 1e/OSRIC Faerun Adventures) plus a text chat 5e D&D game (Runelords).

Quote from: Bren;1124632It's not a news flash that we lack essential data. That's a direct result of the extremely low levels of testing here in the US. Which is a result of two things. First, the administration's failure to use the time in January, February, and early March to provide the means to do testing in the US. We could have been testing in January, but the administration decided to wait to develop a different test here.

The administration didn't decide to develop  a new test the CDC, you know the supposed experts, did.

QuoteIn the case of SARS-CoV-2, as the virus causing COVID-19 is officially known, CDC’s sluggishness was apparent 1 month ago. On 26 January, the agency held an unusual Sunday teleconference for the media to provide an update about the rapidly growing outbreak. There were then five cases in the United States, but the CDC lab in Atlanta was still the only one in the country able to test for the virus, and it repeatedly had backlogs. Asked why more labs weren’t able to do the tests, Nancy Messonnier, who then was leading CDC’s response, said it was a quality issue. “We hold ourselves to an incredibly high standard of precision in terms of laboratory testing,” Messonnier said. “We wouldn’t want to inadvertently make a mistake in patient care.”

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve)

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124684Dr. Ioannidis is not just a statistician. He pioneered the field of meta-research, proving that most published research is actually false (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/). As Stanford's biodata professors have access to the most cutting edge machine learning tools on Earth, I'm definitely paying attention to THAT guy.

Not when he's talking out of his ass. His point was that people are drawing conclusions based on poor data. Which they are. Then he drew conclusions with no data. Which is worse. The tone and tenor of his piece makes me suspicious that he has some axe to grind.

Quote from: Gagarth;1124702The administration didn't decide to develop  a new test the CDC, you know the supposed experts, did.

Experts are sometimes wrong. I don't know what caused the CDC's sluggish response or their conservative 'not-invented-here' approach to assays.*  But as Harry Truman once said, "The buck stops here." The President said this was a hoax, not a threat, and that he believed his friend the Premier that China had the situation well in hand. That attitude isn't going to convey much urgency to the CDC, the FDA, NIH, private industry, or the American people. Fortunately Trump seems to be taking COVID-19 more seriously now.


* Once we get through this pandemic, I there will be a thorough and unbiased failure modes analysis of the US (lack of) response that finds and fixes the root causes.

If you think anything gets fixed from this, you dont pay atrention to american history.  Same people who have not got it done for 30 plus years will still be in charge.  The only thing that fixes the mess at this point is a big ol fire in DC.

Funny things is, you're both right. It looks like IF you shut down real quick and have a good health strategy that tests everyone who might be infected, you seem to get a much lower proportion of deaths per infected person (Germany and S. Korea seem to be in this category), whereas if you didn't shut down and your health service is (locally) overwhelmed you seem to have many more deaths (Italy, France, looks like UK too). But there could be a large number of undiagnosed cases - because testing is so lax.
So it's right that we are basing our projections on bad data, but there are a lot of people dying, and hospitals are getting overwhelmed - with health worker falling sick. And young people aren't immune - of the "confirmed" cases in those below 40, about a fifth need hospital treatment. Note that is "confirmed" cases, not all cases. So if you are young and get sick, it can be really nasty.
I don't think we're overdoing the precautions, I think we need to do more - more testing, more respirators, more research on a vaccine, but if this virus can shut the world down as it has, just imagine one that was truly lethal (50%+ infected cases dying) could do to the world.

However, on a lighter note, I'm using discord & roll20 to game while I'm stuck at home. There's food and beer, and dragons to slay!

Back to topic, anyone use/like fantasy grounds?  They support savage worlds which i like alot.  As to the testing vs deaths, i think it is likely a bit less deadly than some numbers say, BUT it also seems that the cases that go upside down, and some are in young healthy people are horror shows.  Not worth the risk to me.

now more than ever it is vital to have and use your own dice, and only your own dice...you hear me kenny?!? buy dice you cheap bastard before you give us all corona lung-aids!!

Well this sure has exposed the idiots among us. I wonder what ThePundit's opinion is on this matter.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124175If any of my friends cancel any gaming because of this nonsense panic, I will shit upon them so hard their therapy bills will triple.

#OKBoomer

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124175We're great about working around actual illnesses and work commitments, but useless fear isn't tolerated. Life's hard enough without having crybabies around.

Might take you more seriously if you weren't acting like a crybaby yourself.

Quote from: jeff37923;1124191The biggest threat of the Kung Flu is the panic surrounding it, which you are adding to.

I'm pretty sure it's the people actually dying, the coming economic collapse, and threat of war on the horizon, but you do you.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124194I wonder if GenCon and Origins will cancel. Any official blathering?

They will either cancel or wait until the hotel or convention center default so they won't have to pay a cancellation fee. Convention season is effectively over.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1124317Fearmongering doesn't work on me.

Neither does rational argument apparently.

Quote from: estar;1124323The problem with this particular pandemic are

Yep, but nobody's going to listen until the bodies start hitting the floor.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124324I could be wrong, but I get the impression more than a few of the 'it's just the flu you stupid libs' crowd are members of one or more of the vulnerable populations: over 60, obese, smokers.

Isn't it ironic, don't ya think?

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1124371This. Holy shit people. COVID-19 is not the end of the world. Not falling for the ad-click motivated hysteria is good. Not contributing to the social contagion of fear is useful. Refusing to take low-impact measures to reduce risk is just silly. If it were 1975 and your gaming choices were "meet in person" or "don't game", that'd be one thing. But it's 20 fucking 20, use the damn internet, ye pig-headed plague-bearing werevermin.

Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1124376The reason coronavirus is less of a threat is because we've got the technology to eventually develop a vaccine,

Hopefully, but there's a reason we don't have one for the 'common cold'.

Quote from: Brad;1124377In case anyone is living under a rock, the US is doing a voluntary self-quarantine of 15 days. Apparently, this is how long it will take to get the health care system ready to roll and handle the virus.

No, it's going to require 18 months based on current models, which is untenable. We'll be lucky if people isolate for one, and the best we can hope for is hospitals become less overloaded.

Quote from: Bren;1124419This thread is an example of why we need government imposed lockdowns. There are just way too many people that are ignorant, often willfully so, and who just don't appear to give a rat's ass for anyone but themselves and (maybe) their immediate family and friends.

Sadly I agree, but fear that solution would be just as bad. I don't want to live among either the dangerously stupid nor aggressively authoritarian.

Quote from: Bren;1124419Taking precautions isn't panic, its just good sense and good citizenship.

Still Chinatown.

Quote from: Luca;1124430Your biggest strategic enemy imposed military-enforced curfew on one of its regions containing tens of millions of people, and incurred major economic losses in order to stop the spread of this particular "flu".
Ever considered they might have a point?

The 'enemy' being right is not something many people can process, and I use it as an indicator of who can can be counted on to avoid unnecessary bias in a crisis.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1124454I'm not going to just roll my brother over the side of the boat because "Some people are gonna die". We'll fight it to the end, instead of giving up like pussies.

You might not have noticed, but there's a difference between willful murder and telling people to take precautions, and by not doing the latter you might inadvertently cast vulnerable people like your brother overboard.

Quote from: FelixGamingX1;1124493Things should start getting back to normal in 3 months.

Again, more like 18 months. The only reason mainland China 'recovered' so quickly is because they're a totalitarian government which forcefully isolated everyone. On the other hand the democratic nation of #Taiwan never got that bad to begin with because the entire society took rational precautions to prevent the spread.

Quote from: Haffrung;1124542Why do RPG forums have so many nutjobs on them? If it's not the far-left progressive loons on RPGnet, it's the far-right nativist nuts here. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but I don't encounter either in my regular life. Is it something about this hobby, or just the hobby forums?

It's the internet itself. It gives people the ability to self-select to such a degree that all you get are ideological echo chambers.

Quote from: Bren;1124709The President said this was a hoax, not a threat, and that he believed his friend the Premier that China had the situation well in hand. That attitude isn't going to convey much urgency to the CDC, the FDA, NIH, private industry, or the American people.

I've found the experts in those fields don't use politicians as their gauge. On the contrary they're usually the ones trying to convey how urgent a situation is.

Quote from: oggsmash;1124720If you think anything gets fixed from this, you dont pay atrention to american history.  Same people who have not got it done for 30 plus years will still be in charge.  The only thing that fixes the mess at this point is a big ol fire in DC.

And even that won't help.

As bad as this is, it's still a mild wakeup call compared to what could have happened, and I just hope to hell enough people are listening now. But Bill Gates put the majority of his wealth towards addressing this and was warning us for years, and instead of heeding him I'm seeing people blame him for the outbreak. Now sure how effective a nation which does that will be in confronting future pandemics.

This is why making everything political is so fucking dangerous.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1124726You might not have noticed, but there's a difference between willful murder and telling people to take precautions, and by not doing the latter you might inadvertently cast vulnerable people like your brother overboard.

That post was me saying I think we should take this pandemic seriously. I think you might be talking past some people.

Bill gates has been warning us for years.  Just as many others have warned us about the spinning plates of our economic system and debts.  I cant say how bad it could have been, because this is just a beginning, the very beginning.  Once a house rots out to a certain degree, better to just burn it down and build a new one, rather than keep slapping paint on it.  Otherwise it falls down on top of you.  If i had to guess how it turns out, it more paint or our heads will be sore.

Sometime when you have a lot of plates spinning the answer is not to stop, it is to spin those suckers faster, innovate as fast as you can so you can keep just in front of disaster.

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I mentioned that, slapping another coat of pain onto the rotting house.  It can work for a while, I think it is possible to come to a huge leap forward and then fix the mess behind, but history says the big bump will come.  Dunno if this is it.

Question:
Are you taking MORE precautions than the recommendations for your area?

If NO, please explain why you hate old and/or sick people.

If YES, please explain why it is ok for you to contribute to the mass hysteria?

Quote from: Bren;1124709Experts are sometimes wrong. I don't know what caused the CDC's sluggish response or their conservative 'not-invented-here' approach to assays.*  But as Harry Truman once said, "The buck stops here." The President said this was a hoax, not a threat, and that he believed his friend the Premier that China had the situation well in hand. That attitude isn't going to convey much urgency to the CDC, the FDA, NIH, private industry, or the American people. Fortunately Trump seems to be taking COVID-19 more seriously now.


* Once we get through this pandemic, I there will be a thorough and unbiased failure modes analysis of the US (lack of) response that finds and fixes the root causes.

What hasn't been covered much is the CDC wasn't just refusing to use tests not invented here, in America. They also insisted the test be made exclusively in house. That's a problem for some very obvious reasons, because we really want to have as many skilled hands as possible working on the project, and not just those from one agency. But it's worse than that, because this isn't really in the CDC wheelhouse. They don't regularly make tests or vaccines, that expertise is in the private labs across the nation. Which the government didn't just refuse to authorize, they explicitly told at least one lab to stop when they created a test.

But sclerotic agencies are never punished for their failures. What's going to happen is they'll point to the failure, and use that as an excuse to get more funding. Large, public failures may cost a few chief bureaucrats their positions (while leaving their nice retirement packages intact), but they benefit the organization as a whole. That's a perverse incentive.

Quote from: spon;1124722Funny things is, you're both right. It looks like IF you shut down real quick and have a good health strategy that tests everyone who might be infected, you seem to get a much lower proportion of deaths per infected person (Germany and S. Korea seem to be in this category), whereas if you didn't shut down and your health service is (locally) overwhelmed you seem to have many more deaths (Italy, France, looks like UK too). But there could be a large number of undiagnosed cases - because testing is so lax.
So it's right that we are basing our projections on bad data, but there are a lot of people dying, and hospitals are getting overwhelmed - with health worker falling sick. And young people aren't immune - of the "confirmed" cases in those below 40, about a fifth need hospital treatment. Note that is "confirmed" cases, not all cases. So if you are young and get sick, it can be really nasty.
I don't think we're overdoing the precautions, I think we need to do more - more testing, more respirators, more research on a vaccine, but if this virus can shut the world down as it has, just imagine one that was truly lethal (50%+ infected cases dying) could do to the world.

It's a bit more complicated than that. The trick is stopping the spread of the disease when it's in the very early stages, by shutting off travel, aggressively testing to ID every case, mandatory quarantine, and tracing every single one of an infected person's contacts. The latter is why this needs to happen very early -- the web of personal contacts grows exponentially as you have more cases, which means you need to catch it very, very quickly or you need to impose very draconian measures. And even that won't help once you start seeing widespread community transmission, as is the case in Europe and the US. Because cases popping up that can't be linked to previous contact networks means the number of people infected is many times the number identified, so there's an basically an invisible network out there spreading the disease.

At that point, you have to move to measures designed to slow the spread of the disease (i.e. the "flatten the curve" everyone's talking about), to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. But that doesn't stop the spread of the disease, or reduce the number of people ultimately affected. It just slows the process down, so fewer people are infected at one time. A necessary corollary is this lengthens the duration of the pandemic. We're looking at 18–24 months, easily. The only think that could stop that is putting every household into quarantine, and only letting them out if they test negative, which would require the capability to test more than 300 million people. Or a vaccine.

I am taking a lot of precautions to isolate and still provide for my aging parents. :) I may joke about my living room tp fort, but it is a serious matter every year for flu season and far more so this year. :p Also the tp fort gives me comfort and support (no we do not hoard anything here, besides National Geographics, just well supplied).

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1124726No, it's going to require 18 months based on current models, which is untenable. We'll be lucky if people isolate for one, and the best we can hope for is hospitals become less overloaded.

Fake fucking news...stop watching CNN. If we can hold out another week should be able to handle the demand. Seriously, this is nothing other than fear-mongering. If you mean 18 months until the virus isn't a threat, sure, but that has NOTHING to do with the capacity of the US healthcare system to handle the demand.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1124726I'm pretty sure it's the people actually dying, the coming economic collapse, and threat of war on the horizon, but you do you.

[video=youtube;MPGw5Ucmwk8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPGw5Ucmwk8&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3AlH2gDcU61m2GrFFaoE2VbEVtrzG-7g8S9fJ1NMT3y0vm42apPtTdSQQ[/youtube]

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1124731That post was me saying I think we should take this pandemic seriously. I think you might be talking past some people.

Apparently so. Apologies.

Quote from: Brad;1124776Fake fucking news...stop watching CNN. If we can hold out another week should be able to handle the demand. Seriously, this is nothing other than fear-mongering. If you mean 18 months until the virus isn't a threat, sure, but that has NOTHING to do with the capacity of the US healthcare system to handle the demand.

Wish I could say the same here.

Coronavirus Origin Theories
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Source: https://creazilla.com/nodes/19974-coronavirus-origin-theories-poster-vector

Quote from: tutu;1125246Coronavirus Origin Theories
*snip*

Hey, tutu. You signed up just to post in the coronavirus gaming thread?
What RPGs do you play? Have you been playing online? How has the coronavirus situation impacted your table top gaming?

I'm using the pandemic as inspiration. I've come up with a few potential pandemics to afflict my RPG worlds with, to oppress my players with. Below is the first I've finished: the Corvixix fungal parasite. Aside from turning its victims into walking fear-gas bombs, it turns them into crowbait. Nasty stuff, that.

Check it out!

https://www.godspargames.com/godspargames/corvixix

We've got our technical difficulties mostly taken care of. I need to figure out how to mute my brother since we're both in the same room, and hearing him talk and hearing him over the voice chat is very difficult.
So I'm getting some gaming online done this week, and looking into playing X-Wing miniatures using Table Top Simulator. Gotta tackle that next.

So, I now have three Roll 20 games going - two are text-chat only (5e Runelords at Epic-20, Mini Six Primeval Thule) while the 5e Princes of the Apocalypse game uses Microsoft IM video phone for audio. A kind PoTA player bought me a 3 months premium membership but I have no idea what to do with it, the fancy VTT stuff is not how I like to play online.

I also restarted my 1e AD&D Faerun 1359 DR game set in post-war Damara, which is a lot of fun.

Quote from: Brad;1124776Fake fucking news...stop watching CNN. If we can hold out another week should be able to handle the demand. Seriously, this is nothing other than fear-mongering. If you mean 18 months until the virus isn't a threat, sure, but that has NOTHING to do with the capacity of the US healthcare system to handle the demand.

Well, so far, the only place the U.S. Healthcare System has been tested has been New York. It is very likely become much, much, worse before it becomes better here in the United States. Korea is also seeing a second wave of reinfections occurring in people who have already had the cornoavirus. It continues to exhibit a 4-15% mortality rate (depending on the age of the infected.) The facts are this: Coronavirus is a deadly virus, highly infectious, and we have no known cure at the present time. You get it, you live or die based on the quality of your medical care, and your natural immune system. In yesterdays "Fake" news as you call it, I observed the first mass burial of victims in unmarked graves in New York.

Reinfected again! - Korea (If it is happening there, it is happening in China which just came out of lockdown, and everywhere else as well!)
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/25264/20200410/south-korea-recorded-another-40-coronavirus-reinfections-bringing-total-reactivations.htm

Mass anonymous grave burial of unclaimed coronavirus victims
https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus/2020/04/new-york-city-starts-burying-coronavirus-victims-in-mass-graves.html

I can tell you for a fact the U.S. Healthcare System is not prepared for this. The Hospitals here in Indiana have already run out of masks, and are turning away people with healthcare insurance, without testing them (becuase no more tests are available), who are exhibiting coronavirus symptoms and are ordering them into self-quarantine to live or die without medical care.

Pay attention to what is really going on, plan for the worst, and hope for the best. By the end of the day today America will have the most deaths from Coronavirus and will pass Italy in total number of fatalities. There is a half a million Americans infected meaning another 20,000 or so are going to die and that is without even one more person becoming infected.   The Federal Government already unleashed this pandemic upon us, what makes you think they are going to do any better at handling the pandemic when things really get bad?

Quote from: S'mon;1126476So, I now have three Roll 20 games going - two are text-chat only (5e Runelords at Epic-20, Mini Six Primeval Thule) while the 5e Princes of the Apocalypse game uses Microsoft IM video phone for audio. A kind PoTA player bought me a 3 months premium membership but I have no idea what to do with it, the fancy VTT stuff is not how I like to play online.

I also restarted my 1e AD&D Faerun 1359 DR game set in post-war Damara, which is a lot of fun.

I assume by premium membership you mean PRO membership.  If you do a lot of theatre of mind type stuff it is not going to be much use to you. With PRO membership you get access to Dynamic Lighting  and Advance for of War .i.e. the player  sees what the character sees.  The other memberships have much more limited version .  You get more  storage space but I have been a PRO and  after 5+ years and I am nowhere near my storage limit. You have access to custom character sheets but if you have no html/javascript/css  you can forget about it.   You also have access to API scripts which are user created scripts which automate and extend a lot of the features of the VTT.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126486The Federal Government already unleashed this pandemic upon us, what makes you think they are going to do any better at handling the pandemic when things really get bad?

The Federal Government nor any other Western government for that matter unleashed this.  It was the Communist Chinese and their stooges in WHO. You fucking cunt.

I don't think any government unleashed it. They all reacted to it, with greater or lesser degrees of incompetence.

Quote from: Gagarth;1126576The Federal Government nor any other Western government for that matter unleashed this.  It was the Communist Chinese and their stooges in WHO. You fucking cunt.

You can't even lie convincingly. Facts contradict you.

Fact check: A list of 28 ways Trump and his team have been dishonest about the coronavirus
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/fact-check-trump-administration-coronavirus-28-dishonest/index.html

I won't go into the general incompetence of the entire Federal Government including both houses of Congress, and every single president going back at least to 2008 as that year and every single year since then, the budget has been cut for the CDC and the National Health Service (NHS) curtailing their ability to forecast and prevent the outbreak of pandemics. Right after he was elected in early 2017, Trump fired the entire White House Pandemic response team while he was busy trying to drain his swamp.

Yes, the Pandemic started in China, The American response has been 3rd world though, which is why we have the highest death rate in the world. It is still going to get much worse before it gets better because Pandoras box has been opened, and there is no closing it. Feel free to continue being ignorant though, it suits you well.

Quote from: S'mon;1126579I don't think any government unleashed it. They all reacted to it, with greater or lesser degrees of incompetence.

I would tend to agree with you. They didn't unleash this on purpose. Seems very likely it was developed in one or more labs though, and unexpectedly got out into the general population.

Both the Chinese and the Russians claim it was unleashed by the United States, and have provided an interesting link to a 2008 patent filing where the coronavirus has been genetically modified in a United States research laboratory, specifically The Pirbright Institute here:
https://patents.justia.com/patent/10130701

Patent # 7452542

of course the Pirbright Institute no longer works with Coronavirus, because President Obama issued a executive order prohibiting continued research into producing new variants of viruses back in 2015. I find it interesting, and amazingly coincidental that at ground zero in Wuhan, there are not one but two Chinese genetics research labs that are sponsored by the ComChinese government. Plenty of cities in China with wet markets, but no research labs, and this unique new strain of the virus, didn't break out in any of the  other Chinese cities first even though the other markets are much larger in scale, than Wuhams'. I'm receiving credible reports that the outbreak was already present in the Wuhan population before the wave of infections occurred at the market there, which lends creedence to the Chinese, that this virus didn't originate in China.

Save the page, as it will likely be removed from the US Patent database in the near future.

Here is another article from 2015 with scientists here in the U.S. debating whether they should continue modifying viruses
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502

..and yet another research article (cited in the article above) in NatureMedicine from 2015 is being actively blocked both in my regular browser and when I'm using a Tor browser to access the website index of articles there at the present time. ...And found the direct link... from 9 November 2015. This article cites 27 other similar reports and research papers.

A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985#change-history

Reported studies were initiated after the University of North Carolina Institutional Biosafety Committee approved the experimental protocol (Project Title: Generating infectious clones of bat SARS-like CoVs; Lab Safety Plan ID: 20145741; Schedule G ID: 12279). These studies were initiated before the US Government Deliberative Process Research Funding Pause on Selected Gain-of-Function Research Involving Influenza, MERS and SARS Viruses (http://www.phe.gov/s3/dualuse/Documents/gain-of-function.pdf). This paper has been reviewed by the funding agency, the NIH. Continuation of these studies was requested, and this has been approved by the NIH.

Some real science for you. Read the entire article and know the truth for yourselves. They added a disclaimer to this artlcle on the 30th of  March stating they believe the new variant originated in a wild animal, LoL! Really save these articles locally on your hard disk drive, as I believe they may become unexpectedly unavailable online for a variety of reasons not related to this outbreak of course, in the near future.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126616I'm receiving credible reports that

Hmm. From your highly located friends in the Illuminati?

QuoteSome real science for you. Read the entire article and know the truth for yourselves. They added a disclaimer to this artlcle on the 30th of  March stating they believe the new variant originated in a wild animal, LoL! Really save these articles locally on your hard disk drive, as I believe they may become unexpectedly unavailable online for a variety of reasons not related to this outbreak of course, in the near future.

Some real science that you obviously have mastered but neglected to mention. Coronavirus is a class of viruses. It's not that there is one THE coronovirus. Yes?

Addendum: Seeing how the facts are elided with fantasy is heplful for planning future conspiracy games - with only pretend lives at risk.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126614I won't go into the general incompetence of the entire Federal Government including both houses of Congress, and every single president going back at least to 2008 as that year and every single year since then, the budget has been cut for the CDC and the National Health Service (NHS) curtailing their ability to forecast and prevent the outbreak of pandemics. Right after he was elected in early 2017, Trump fired the entire White House Pandemic response team while he was busy trying to drain his swamp.

That's just not true.

Obama eliminated the White House Health & Security Office in 2009, and only replaced it with a Directorate for National Security and Health at the NSC in 2016, after the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

When Trump took office, he appointed Timothy Ziemer to lead it. But after Trump made Bolton his third National Security Advisor, Bolton reorganized his unit, which was widely considered a bureaucratic mess. Bolton eliminated a number of deputy NS advisor posts, consolidated groups, and reduced bloat. This included creating a new directorate focused on counterproliferation and biodefense, and folding the security and health directorate into it. In 2018, Ziemer left for a high level post in international development, something that had reportedly been planned for a while. His staff, which Ziemer called his "dream team", remained in place. And the head of the new combined directorate is actually a higher level position than Ziemer's post was.

There are a lot of similarities between biodefense and pandemics, and the reorganization meant the formerly separate staff were forced to interact and didn't have to pass through a security check to visit each other, so there were good reasons for the merger. On the other hand, there's also a good argument that pandemics are different from biodefense and thus the merger was ill-advised. But that's an administrative judgment call, not a deliberate attempt to eliminate the pandemic team, and happened below Trump's pay grade. It's also worth noting that insiders from the Obama administration talked about how difficult it was to figure out where the pandemic team belonged, so it was an open subject for debate. Of course, this also largely irrelevant, given Trump's managerial style. He typically points at someone and says you're in charge, as he did with Azar then Pence, instead of using existing structures.

There are a lot of articles that narrowly look at whether Trump was wrong, whether Biden's tweet was wrong, dissect Fauci's statements, or the like; but they all lack context. The Washington Post article below is one of the few that covers the history, institutional environment, what happened when, and uses sources from both the Obama and Trump administrations:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/20/was-white-house-office-global-pandemics-eliminated/

Also, the CDC budgets have increased, not decreased. Trump wanted to cut them, but Congress added money, and Trump signed those bills.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126614Y
Yes, the Pandemic started in China, The American response has been 3rd world though, which is why we have the highest death rate in the world. It is still going to get much worse before it gets better because Pandoras box has been opened, and there is no closing it. Feel free to continue being ignorant though, it suits you well.

That's not what your post said you lying cunt.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126616Pile of turds snipped

Next you will be  claiming Jews flew the planes into the towers.

Quote from: Pat;1126633That's just not true.

Obama eliminated the White House Health & Security Office in 2009, and only replaced it with a Directorate for National Security and Health at the NSC in 2016, after the Ebola outbreak of 2014.

When Trump took office, he appointed Timothy Ziemer to lead it. But after Trump made Bolton his third National Security Advisor, Bolton reorganized his unit, which was widely considered a bureaucratic mess. Bolton eliminated a number of deputy NS advisor posts, consolidated groups, and reduced bloat. This included creating a new directorate focused on counterproliferation and biodefense, and folding the security and health directorate into it. In 2018, Ziemer left for a high level post in international development, something that had reportedly been planned for a while. His staff, which Ziemer called his "dream team", remained in place. And the head of the new combined directorate is actually a higher level position than Ziemer's post was.

There are a lot of similarities between biodefense and pandemics, and the reorganization meant the formerly separate staff were forced to interact and didn't have to pass through a security check to visit each other, so there were good reasons for the merger. On the other hand, there's also a good argument that pandemics are different from biodefense and thus the merger was ill-advised. But that's an administrative judgment call, not a deliberate attempt to eliminate the pandemic team, and happened below Trump's pay grade. It's also worth noting that insiders from the Obama administration talked about how difficult it was to figure out where the pandemic team belonged, so it was an open subject for debate. Of course, this also largely irrelevant, given Trump's managerial style. He typically points at someone and says you're in charge, as he did with Azar then Pence, instead of using existing structures.

There are a lot of articles that narrowly look at whether Trump was wrong, whether Biden's tweet was wrong, dissect Fauci's statements, or the like; but they all lack context. The Washington Post article below is one of the few that covers the history, institutional environment, what happened when, and uses sources from both the Obama and Trump administrations:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/20/was-white-house-office-global-pandemics-eliminated/

Also, the CDC budgets have increased, not decreased. Trump wanted to cut them, but Congress added money, and Trump signed those bills.

No... they didn't. Stop yer lying! Used to be there were plenty of gamers on the rpgsite with good reading comprehension and a brain that worked.  Seeing alot of refugees from TBP and similar boards without these two essential cognitive skills. You'all are making me tired.

Charles Koch Network Pushed $1 Billion Cut to CDC, Now Attacks Shelter-in-Place Policies for Harming Business
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/26/americans-for-prosperity-cdc-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR0Xcw6B82XZhX4bvSu6jZJ1oJTumnyiL0LKwHZIiREdsWHJJuANIhmLjxE

Quote from: Gagarth;1126682That's not what your post said you lying cunt.

The pandemic did start in China, it just wasn't their creation. The virus was likely engineered elsewhere, until of course, it became illegal for Americans to engineer viruses, which was back in 2015. Of course, the Americans shared their newfound love for virus engineering with their "respected peers" in a fucking communist Chinese country. And they are still so scientifically incompetent there, that they unleashed the beast.

You should really go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under, and just quit lying, it doesn't suit you well here. Even better you should learn how politics really works in the U.S. today and what is broken in our system:

https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/congress?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=congress&sc=MK1018SO57&fbclid=IwAR0limNXrqL_uydYD2Fe4aB8dFN2mkF5N_9Le0rvbNm_L0ALv1tv06Zhg4Q

Quote from: Anselyn;1126622Hmm. From your highly located friends in the Illuminati?

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Quote from: Anselyn;1126622Some real science that you obviously have mastered but neglected to mention. Coronavirus is a class of viruses. It's not that there is one THE coronovirus. Yes?

Addendum: Seeing how the facts are elided with fantasy is heplful for planning future conspiracy games - with only pretend lives at risk.

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Quote from: GameDaddy;1126689No... they didn't. Stop yer lying! Used to be there were plenty of gamers on the rpgsite with good reading comprehension and a brain that worked.  Seeing alot of refugees from TBP and similar boards without these two essential cognitive skills. You'all are making me tired.

Charles Koch Network Pushed $1 Billion Cut to CDC, Now Attacks Shelter-in-Place Policies for Harming Business
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/26/americans-for-prosperity-cdc-coronavirus/?fbclid=IwAR0Xcw6B82XZhX4bvSu6jZJ1oJTumnyiL0LKwHZIiREdsWHJJuANIhmLjxE

Everything I said is easily verifiable, and your link in no way contradicts it. Your source is talking about a third-party organization's proposal to cut the CDC's funding. The proposal hasn't turned into policy.

As I mentioned, the actual funding for the CDC has increased every year, for Trump's entire presidency (2017 to 2020). And as I also mentioned, Trump did initially propose cuts each year, but each time Congress passed a bill increasing their funding, and Trump signed it.

This was widely reported, so you can verify it nearly anywhere, but here's one with some graphs:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/28/michael-bloomberg/did-donald-trump-fire-pandemic-officials-defund-cd/

Incidentally, we should defund the CDC. They failed, badly. As a matter of general principle, we should stop rewarding ineffective agencies and administrators with additional funding and status when that happens, because it creates a perverse incentive. And more specifically, having a central source that monopolizes the official response to a pandemic is clearly a bad idea. We need more agencies and labs working on things like tests, instead of a single-agency serving as a bottleneck. We should look into a more dispersed response, perhaps state-based.

Oh come on, this virus wasn't engineered.  China's not hiding some bioweapon program, they're hiding improper containment procedures.

Coronaviruses are in many different species, from bats to beluga whales to humans (some strains are part of what we call the "common cold").
Unfortunately, bats are hosts to many different strains of Coronaviruses, and being an RNA virus instead of a DNA virus, Coronaviruses mutate very rapidly, which allows them to jump species.
SARS-CoV was Bat->Civet->Human
MERS-CoV was Bat->Dromedary->Human

Sars-CoV2 is looking to be possibly Bat->Snake->Human based on studies of the genes of the virus and comparison to other Coronaviruses.

The Wuhan wet market did not sell bats.  It also is an indoor market in the middle of a city, so bat droppings are an unlikely cause.
There are, however, two different Viral Labs studying Bat Coronaviruses in the city of Wuhan, one of which is 300 yards from the market.

We'll never get the full story from China, but improper containment leading to Bat Coronavirus transmitted from a Viral Lab scientist to the Wuhan wet market, possibly to the snakes there, from which it jumped to humans.  There's reports that some of the earliest Wuhan victims had nothing to do with the wet market.

In this country, the CDC would trace the connections between every person working in those two labs and cross with their usage of the wet market for them or family members.  They'd also take samples from the market, and both labs and compare to the current Coronavirus.  China may have done that, we'll never know.

In any case, it seems now that we have flattened the curve.  The city hit the hardest, New York, has mostly empty beds in the health system now, BUT...everything is locked down.  In other states like Michigan, it seems to be still ramping up.  Shelter-in-place orders will definitely continue through the first of June in most places I would think.

Saying "Everything is back to normal, GO!" is probably not the best way to go about it, it could spike the number of cases.  A more measured lessening of restrictions, perhaps with other restrictions in place (masks, etc) to see if that spikes the spread is hopefully what will happen.

I moved my 82 year old mother in with me due to increasing vascular dementia, but luckily she's never had any heart/lung/diabetes problems, but I'm still being very cautious and I'm the only one who leaves the house.

Rolling out the National Guard and Army/Marines to the streets of every city and enforcing mandatory 3 week quarantine, with delivery of emergency rations/etc to people would probably eliminate the virus entirely, but we're obviously not going to do that with this virus.  It's dangerous, but hardly a doomsday scenario.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1126728Oh come on, this virus wasn't engineered.

Except it was.

I would not have thought that GameDaddy would fall for the CNN Fake News.

Quote from: Brad;1126746Except it was.

Based on what, that it came from a lab?  Virology labs are full of non-engineered viruses as well as the host organisms.

The patent Gamedaddy's talking about is for chicken coronaviruses.  SARS-CoV2 bears genetic resemblance to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV bat coronaviruses with possible relation to snake coronaviruses.

Quote from: Pat;1126722Everything I said is easily verifiable, and your link in no way contradicts it. Your source is talking about a third-party organization's proposal to cut the CDC's funding. The proposal hasn't turned into policy.

As I mentioned, the actual funding for the CDC has increased every year, for Trump's entire presidency (2017 to 2020). And as I also mentioned, Trump did initially propose cuts each year, but each time Congress passed a bill increasing their funding, and Trump signed it.

This was widely reported, so you can verify it nearly anywhere, but here's one with some graphs:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/28/michael-bloomberg/did-donald-trump-fire-pandemic-officials-defund-cd/

Incidentally, we should defund the CDC. They failed, badly. As a matter of general principle, we should stop rewarding ineffective agencies and administrators with additional funding and status when that happens, because it creates a perverse incentive. And more specifically, having a central source that monopolizes the official response to a pandemic is clearly a bad idea. We need more agencies and labs working on things like tests, instead of a single-agency serving as a bottleneck. We should look into a more dispersed response, perhaps state-based.

They failed badly because their budget was cut, for the last twelve years consecutively. Sadly we still seem to be funding CDC initiatives overseas with foreign countries in ridiculous amounts, however protecting Americans is not their top priority based on how they are actually spending their money... For our dear readers here, the actual operating budget for the last three years, 2018, 2019, and 2020 directly from the CDC.

Here is the 2020 Budget, notice how there is $43,119,000 less than there was last year for Immunizations and Respiratory Health. DO YOU SEE IT IN RED? CAN YOU SEE? HOW ABOUT THE CDC PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE HAS BEEN CUT BY $5,000,000 DO YOUR EYES WORK???? NO!!! BECAUSE YOUR MOUTH IS TOO BUSY RUNNING!!!
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Here is last years Budget. 2019. They cut immunizations by 43 Million dollars, and added just six million dollars for respiratory diseases. This was offset by a decrease of $704 Million Dollars for buildings and facilities, In fact, what was actually spent by the CDC was $914,550,000 less than what was actually approved in the budget at the beginning of the 2019 fiscal year. So a net cut of almost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!! YOU ARE SO FULL OF BULLSHIT EVERYONE CAN SMELL IT EVEN OVER THE INTERNET!!!
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So you can verify this for yourselves, the actual link to the CDC 2019 Operating Budget
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2019/fy-2019-cdc-operating-plan.pdf

Alright, let's have a look at 2018... the actual budget for Immunization and Respiratory Health was up $5,131,000 over 2017. The 2017 spending was $3,811,000 Less than 2016, and 2016 Spending was $115,000,000 less than 2015, so from 2016-2018, the overall budget for Immunization and Respiratory Health been cut by $112,000,000 Over what the budget was in 2014! QED!!!
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The last six years of the CDC's Operational Budget. And we haven't even started looking at the National Health Service yet!
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/fy2015/operating-plans.html

First, the news media is full of BS. They are only interested in ratings not truth. Congress and the government have been playing a shell game for years, just one step ahead of a major disaster, and they have collectively defunded the CDC and the National Health Service, and many other branches of public service as well. The money which should have went to the CDC and NHS has been going to pay down the national debt, to keep that from rising out of control and derailing our economy. It is a serious problem, and only one solution has historically worked to correct that, and we are not exercising that solution right at the moment.

I just want it to be over - so that stores can re-open. Really, really miss the regulars at the store...

- Ed C.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126776They failed badly because their budget was cut, for the last twelve years consecutively. Sadly we still seem to be funding CDC initiatives overseas with foreign countries in ridiculous amounts, however protecting Americans is not their top priority based on how they are actually spending their money... For our dear readers here, the actual operating budget for the last three years, 2018, 2019, and 2020 directly from the CDC.

Here is the 2020 Budget, notice how there is $43,119,000 less than there was last year for Immunizations and Respiratory Health. DO YOU SEE IT IN RED? CAN YOU SEE? HOW ABOUT THE CDC PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE HAS BEEN CUT BY $5,000,000 DO YOUR EYES WORK???? NO!!! BECAUSE YOUR MOUTH IS TOO BUSY RUNNING!!!
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4264[/ATTACH]

Have you completely lost it?

In any case, you've clearly never read a budget before. There was not an overall decrease in spending on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases between FY19 and FY20. That $43 million was subtracted from one of the line items (BA), while almost $50 million was added to the other line item (PPHF). I&RD saw an overall increase, of $6.6 million.

But we weren't talking about the allocation of funding within the CDC. We were talking about the overall funding levels for the organization as a whole, from year to year. And the FY20 operating plan shows an increase over FY19 of either $370 or $645 million, depending on whether things like some prevention and nonrecurring expenses are included.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126776Here is last years Budget. 2019. They cut immunizations by 43 Million dollars, and added just six million dollars for respiratory diseases. This was offset by a decrease of $704 Million Dollars for buildings and facilities, In fact, what was actually spent by the CDC was $914,550,000 less than what was actually approved in the budget at the beginning of the 2019 fiscal year. So a net cut of almost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!! YOU ARE SO FULL OF BULLSHIT EVERYONE CAN SMELL IT EVEN OVER THE INTERNET!!!

First of all, you mean billion, not trillion. The entire federal budget is roughly $4 trillion. The CDC's budget doesn't fluctuate by a quarter of that, from year to year.

And you're also mixing up years. It was the FY20 operating plan that reduced one of the Immunization and Respiratory Diseases line items by $43 million (while increasing the other line item by a greater amount, for a net gain). The FY19 operating plan shows a decrease in one of the line items by $3.8 million, and an increase in the other by $5.4 million, for an overall increase of $1.6 million. There's also no $6 million line in the FY19 operating plan, so I have no idea where you got that number from.

You're also reading the buildings section incorrectly. Between FY18 and 19, the operating plan for buildings and facilities was reduced by $480 million. The $704 million decrease is for the CDC, overall. So the FY19 operating plan does show a decrease from FY18, of either $704 or $940 million (again, depending on whether some prevention and non-recurring expenses are included).

But if we look at the operating plan more closely, nearly every section and line item is in the black. In other words, the spending on nearly everything increased between FY18 and 19. The reason the overall budget decreased was because of two unique expenses in FY18: A $600 million expenditure on the strategic national stockpile, and $240 million spent on buildings and facilities. Which is perfectly reasonable -- expenses for things like building or restoring facilities, or replenishing a depleted stockpile, tend to be intermittent. You won't see them, every year.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126776Alright, let's have a look at 2018... the actual budget for Immunization and Respiratory Health was up $5,131,000 over 2017. The 2017 spending was $3,811,000 Less than 2016, and 2016 Spending was $115,000,000 less than 2015, so from 2016-2018, the overall budget for Immunization and Respiratory Health been cut by $112,000,000 Over what the budget was in 2014! QED!!!

What does that have to do with anything? We were talking about the budget for the CDC, overall. And if you're trying to make a point about COVID-19... it's still not relevant because there's a whole section for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases that you're ignoring. E&ZID showed an increase of $31 million between FY17 and 18, on top of the $5 million increase in I&RD.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126776First, the news media is full of BS. They are only interested in ratings not truth. Congress and the government have been playing a shell game for years, just one step ahead of a major disaster, and they have collectively defunded the CDC and the National Health Service, and many other branches of public service as well. The money which should have went to the CDC and NHS has been going to pay down the national debt, to keep that from rising out of control and derailing our economy. It is a serious problem, and only one solution has historically worked to correct that, and we are not exercising that solution right at the moment.

I agree the news media is crap, and I'm not familiar with the NHS, but the rest of that is nonsense. They haven't defunded the CDC, and the national debt is increasing, not decreasing.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126691The pandemic did start in China, it just wasn't their creation. The virus was likely engineered elsewhere, until of course, it became illegal for Americans to engineer viruses, which was back in 2015. Of course, the Americans shared their newfound love for virus engineering with their "respected peers" in a fucking communist Chinese country. And they are still so scientifically incompetent there, that they unleashed the beast.

You should really go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under, and just quit lying, it doesn't suit you well here. Even better you should learn how politics really works in the U.S. today and what is broken in our system:

https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/congress?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=congress&sc=MK1018SO57&fbclid=IwAR0limNXrqL_uydYD2Fe4aB8dFN2mkF5N_9Le0rvbNm_L0ALv1tv06Zhg4Q

Go back to watching Alex Jones and drown in your own froth.

Quote from: Pat;1126785I agree the news media is crap, and I'm not familiar with the NHS, but the rest of that is nonsense. They haven't defunded the CDC, and the national debt is increasing, not decreasing.

That would be the budget of the CDC you are talking about. Each line item is a separate expense, The facts are plainly presenting themselves when you read through it. In any years that the total CDC budget is actually increased actual spending for Immunization and Respiratory Health is cut, and when funding for Immunization and Respiratory health is increased and used, funding in other areas of the CDC are being cut. In 2018 funding was increased for Immunization and Healthcare by like six and a half million dollars. Meanwhile the same year seven hundred and four million dollars worth of buildings, warehouses, and office space was closed, because no money was spent to keep it open. Doesn't help to have more money for your pet program, if the offices, hospitals, and research facilities where the program facilities are being run, are closed.

That same year 2018, the budget for the CDC national stockpile was also eliminated. That would be money for the purchase and storage of ventilators, EKG, and other medical test and test equipment needed by the CDC for emergencies and crisis.

Having worked on the federal budget (in the Defense sector), any federal budget request, even if approved, is a use it or lose it deal. If you don't spend the money allocated, you don't get it. Worse, if you don't spend all of the money already allocated in the current budget, you don't get to ask for a budget increase the following year, so you have to spend it all to even get a shot at getting more.  When I worked R&D, my director would give me a credit card and invariably, at the end of any year we had a budget surplus he would say, "Go online and order some more equipment/supplies. Anything you even think we need, or anything that you might want to conceivably experiment with next year, we have to spend the budget so we can ask for an increase for next year." May God bless John Baldwin, P.hd, he's looking down from Heaven at you right now, and laughing out loud. We had a great warehouse to store all the stuff I bought too. It seemed liked that warehouse in the Indiana Jones movie, only for electronics, tools, and test equipment instead of archaeological artifacts. LoL.

Yes, the CDC, and NHS has been defunded, as has the National Science Foundation, also the National Endowment for the Arts. Even NASA has seen severe funding cuts over the years. The only branch of the government where the fed has been expanding budgets every year is the MILITARY, and rebates and tax credits for the PETROLEUM INDUSTRY and that money is going straight to private corporations, and private defense contractors, who don't have to report their actual expenditures, unexpected cost overruns, and actual operating budgets under the umbrella of the Patriot Act for national security. NASA doesn't get the money it needs for space exploration, but the United States Space Force has a pretty much unlimited budget to develop new toys in space that can kill. go figure.

Here is what is really happening. That very same hospital that charged me $7,000 for a seven hour stay in the E.R. back in 2015 for kidney stones (By the way, here is what I got for my money spent, a battery of useless tests by a variety of nurses and techs completely unrelated to my actual condition, ten minutes with an ER doc that confirmed my case of kidney stones after reviewing an X-ray, and MRI... and one bottle of muscle relaxant pills which also had some painkiller mixed in. Seven hours, seven G. Three weeks ago they came to me with their hat in hand, asking if I would help manufacture face masks for them, because they ran out, as they didn't actually plan for having enough reserves for a real pandemic, and couldn't get any from the CDC BECAUSE IN 2018 THE CDC NATIONAL STOCKPILE WAS DISCONTINUED, AND CUT COMPLETELY OUT OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET.

The government doesn't work the way you think it should be working. Go back and examine your theories and premises. compare that to what is actually happening and adjust your working model so that the facts are matching what is actually happening. What you'll find is what I have said, the parts of Federal Government that traditionally served the public are being defunded with budget cuts and budget transfers and shutdown behind the scenes, while money is being handed over by the truckload to drive-by capitalists who contribute absolutely nothing to actually solving the problems the people are having, or the problems that  America is having.

Case in point, the federal reserve offering no-interest loans to banks in February of this year when they actually realized a new financial crisis was occurring... more on this here:
https://needtoknow.news/2020/03/the-federal-reserve-has-already-pumped-9-trillion-into-wall-street-in-the-past-six-months-and-now-is-offering-banks-another-1-5-trillion/

Case in point, the CARES act. The $550 Billion package to help small businesses. Is it really helping small businesses, NO!!! First off, these are loans that the small businesses are receiving, and are not income, operational funds, or even emergency reserves. These small business loans for payroll or whatever can't replace the actual income that businesses forced to close have lost being shuttered. Businesses traditionally get to keep their income less their expenses, but now businesses are being forced to take loans to replace that income. Congresses idea of saving all small business  involve LET"S FORCE ALL SMALL BUSINESSES TO GO DEEPLY INTO DEBT!!! and trust that the bankers and other private lenders they go into debt to is going to be all kind and forgiving. What a bunch of dicktards!!!

It gets worse though... the Payroll Protection Plan rollout has been a disaster so far. Here is the deal: Disaster. Fiasco. Debacle. That's how the rollout of the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) is widely described. PPP is the loan program aimed at helping small businesses and the self-employed keep their employees paid through the coronavirus crisis, with loans that can be "forgiven" – in other words, turned into a grant.  But frankly, it's just a mess.  

As part of the CARES act passed in late March, Congress allocated $359 billion for small-business relief. PPP enables businesses to get loans of 2.5 times their average annual "payroll costs" and have those loans forgiven if they spend at least 75% of those funds on "payroll costs" within eight weeks. It's designed to get paychecks to those working in small businesses quickly. It immediately became a very, very popular program.

Even though it is supposed to be "Forgivable" if the small businesses for any reason can't pay they are not being "forgiven" because of the way the program is being administered. The Senate wanted these funds to go through banks instead of the Treasury Department or the SBA.  This was supposed to get money to businesses faster. Instead, it created mass confusion and frustration. "Talk to 20 business owners, and they're all hearing something different from their banks," said Amanda Ballantyne, executive director of Main Street Alliance, representing more than 30,000 small businesses. Banks each have different online processes and require different documentation to meet federal guidelines. Most banks are accepting applications only from existing customers; at least one bank limits applications only to those with business accounts, wrongly shutting out those sole proprietors with only personal accounts.

More on this train wreck here:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/usaandmain/2020/04/07/ppp-loan-plan-rollout-disaster-small-businesses/2963901001/

It gets worse... Banks under fire for coronavirus loan tactics
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52043896

"Banks have been criticised by firms and MPs for insisting on personal guarantees to issue government-backed emergency loans to business owners. The requirement loads most of the risk that the loan goes bad on the business owner, rather than the banks. It means that the banks can go after the personal property of the owner of a firm if their business goes under and they cannot afford to pay off the debt. Their main home would be protected but the bank could go after other assets. Those can include things like personal savings, shares or holiday homes. And some think that will stop business owners from making use of the emergency loan scheme, which the government put in place to stop businesses from going under during the coronavirus crisis."

With friends like this, who needs enemies? As a small business owner, I am not and will not take out loans for my business to replace income lost from being forced to close. That's just like digging the hole deeper.

I really need to get back to that train wreck that is the financial shenanigans of the federal government, and how it is quietly being looted behind the scenes, without the knowledge, approval and consent of the American people.

...and yes, the National Debt is increasing, but not for the reasons you currently think!

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126806That would be the budget of the CDC you are talking about. Each line item is a separate expense, The facts are plainly presenting themselves when you read through it. In any years that the total CDC budget is actually increased actual spending for Immunization and Respiratory Health is cut, and when funding for Immunization and Respiratory health is increased and used, funding in other areas of the CDC are being cut. In 2018 funding was increased for Immunization and Healthcare by like six and a half million dollars. Meanwhile the same year seven hundred and four million dollars worth of buildings, warehouses, and office space was closed, because no money was spent to keep it open. Doesn't help to have more money for your pet program, if the offices, hospitals, and research facilities where the program facilities are being run, are closed.

That same year 2018, the budget for the CDC national stockpile was also eliminated. That would be money for the purchase and storage of ventilators, EKG, and other medical test and test equipment needed by the CDC for emergencies and crisis.

Citation needed. The CDC operating plans don't corroborate those claims, and every article I've read contradicts it.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126806The government doesn't work the way you think it should be working. Go back and examine your theories and premises. compare that to what is actually happening and adjust your working model so that the facts are matching what is actually happening.

You can't make that claim, because you have no idea how I think the government works, or should be working. We haven't talked about any of that.

I'm quite aware of the new round of quantitative easing by the Fed, for instance. But it started before the coronavirus, last year, as they bailed out the repo market. The new wave that kicked off in February is just a continuation. They had gotten out of the money printing business for just the blink of an eye, and now they're doing more of it than ever. They clearly intend to keep propping up the financial industry and businesses that aren't making any money but can continue to grow as long as they take on more and more debt, at the cost of deflating everyone else's wages and savings. It's particularly disturbing that they stealthily eliminated the reserve requirement for banks, for the first time in American history

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126806...and yes, the National Debt is increasing, but not for the reasons you currently think!

Again, you have no idea what I think. We haven't talked about this at all.

Nothing else you posted has any bearing on what we were discussing, either.

Quote from: Pat;1126811You can't make that claim, because you have no idea how I think the government works, or should be working. We haven't talked about any of that.
.

Shit. Everything he posted tracks with what I've heard and suspect about the government. A corrupt and inept government! Who would have imagined!

Quote from: Koltar;1126782I just want it to be over - so that stores can re-open. Really, really miss the regulars at the store...

- Ed C.

I do too, man. Our Pathfinder Society group started playing online last weekend, and that's something. But it's just not quite the same.

Quote from: Pat;1126811Citation needed. The CDC operating plans don't corroborate those claims, and every article I've read contradicts it.

Again, you have no idea what I think. We haven't talked about this at all.

Nothing else you posted has any bearing on what we were discussing, either.

Yah, I see now the CDC's actual reports on it's spending is too dense for you to read, and doesn't count as an actual citation, not that you know what that even means.  I know exactly what you think, you are just here just fucking off, and wasting time, and pissing on other people. You sure aren't here talking about games. There are plenty of pages of us talking about this, You were lying when we started, and you are lying right now, ...rather unconvincingly by the way.

Everything I'm posting has a bearing on what we are discussing, What we are discussing is the budget of the CDC and the NHS, which has been cut, or curtailed every single year since 2008. What we are discussing is how the American government is getting hijacked by a few oligarchs stuffing moneys into their pockets with the average citizens having their rights, their civil services, and benefits that they have traditionally received from a free democratic government  curtailed or otherwise removed entirely by corrupt government officials at the behest of a few. What we are discussing is a government that right up until 2015 allowed private corporation free reign in genetically modifying coronaviruses for a wide variety of reasons. What we are seeing is a new coronavirus that was accidentally released into the wild with the Americans blaming the Chinese, but the fact is the virus is a direct variant of an already existing virus, one that was part of American experiments, that has been publicly documented in a variety of scientific journals.

With the current unchanged trajectory and trends our government is exhibited in actively suppressing democracy, and the will of the majority of people, none of this is going to end well.

For GameDaddy to have lost it, GameDaddy would have had to have had it, once. :p

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126819Yah, I see now the CDC's actual reports on it's spending is too dense for you to read, and doesn't count as an actual citation, not that you know what that even means.  I know exactly what you think, you are just here just fucking off, and wasting time, and pissing on other people. You sure aren't here talking about games. There are plenty of pages of us talking about this, You were lying when we started, and you are lying right now, ...rather unconvincingly by the way.

Everything I'm posting has a bearing on what we are discussing, What we are discussing is the budget of the CDC and the NHS, which has been cut, or curtailed every single year since 2008. What we are discussing is how the American government is getting hijacked by a few oligarchs stuffing moneys into their pockets with the average citizens having their rights, their civil services, and benefits that they have traditionally received from a free democratic government  curtailed or otherwise removed entirely by corrupt government officials at the behest of a few. What we are discussing is a government that right up until 2015 allowed private corporation free reign in genetically modifying coronaviruses for a wide variety of reasons. What we are seeing is a new coronavirus that was accidentally released into the wild with the Americans blaming the Chinese, but the fact is the virus is a direct variant of an already existing virus, one that was part of American experiments, that has been publicly documented in a variety of scientific journals.

I have no problem reading budgets, as should be clear from the way I pointed out the many mistakes you made in reading the CDC's operating plans.

The CDC operating plans we discussed either show an increase in the overall CDC budget, or an increase in all areas of the CDC budget except for 2 non-recurrent expenses. That does not support your claim that the CDC's budget has been cut for 12 years in a row. The article I cited in my first post also contradicts that claim, as do all of the other sources I've read. That means the obligation is on you to provide a source for your claims, or at least a plausible argument of some kind. Which you haven't; you're just ranting.

Are you confusing me with other posters? Because we haven't been discussing this for "plenty" of pages, nor have we talked about anything on that long list of things you claim we've been talking about, except the CDC's budget.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1126757Based on what, that it came from a lab?  Virology labs are full of non-engineered viruses as well as the host organisms.

The patent Gamedaddy's talking about is for chicken coronaviruses.  SARS-CoV2 bears genetic resemblance to SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV bat coronaviruses with possible relation to snake coronaviruses.

Ahhh, I see what you mean. You mean specifically created, not isolated. Well, that's still up for debate...the US State Department is investigating it further. I think it's indisputable it came from a lab, though.

Quote from: Pat;1126829I have no problem reading budgets, as should be clear from the way I pointed out the many mistakes you made in reading the CDC's operating plans.

The CDC operating plans we discussed either show an increase in the overall CDC budget, or an increase in all areas of the CDC budget except for 2 non-recurrent expenses. That does not support your claim that the CDC's budget has been cut for 12 years in a row. The article I cited in my first post also contradicts that claim, as do all of the other sources I've read. That means the obligation is on you to provide a source for your claims, or at least a plausible argument of some kind. Which you haven't; you're just ranting.

Are you confusing me with other posters? Because we haven't been discussing this for "plenty" of pages, nor have we talked about anything on that long list of things you claim we've been talking about, except the CDC's budget.

Not sure where you are getting your information from. Please provide links. Health and Human Services by the way confirms the CDC budget cuts...  That is the reports directly from two government agencies now CDC and HHS, versus your made up fantasies,,,

Here is the 2019 CDC budget from Health and Human Services website. Please note; It is not available and you are referred to the CDC website instead... BECAUSE THE BUDGET HAS BEEN CUT!

Here is the 2018 CDC Budget report from Health and Human Services, showing a 1.3 Trillion dollar cut in the CDC 2018 budget including the closures of many facilities I referenced earlier as well as the elimination of the NATIONAL STOCKPILE of equipment and emergency supplies.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2018/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html

Here is 2017 a net loss of two hundred million dollars from the CDC 2016 Budget...
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html#overview

Here is a link to HHS 2016 budget review of CDC... linking directly to the CDC PDF instead where the Budget was cut 116 Million dollars from the 2015...
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2016/fy-2016-cdc-operating-plan_1.pdf

Really I can go all the way back to 2008 with budget cuts from respiratory illness and emergency response plans the CDC every single year... You need all twelve years of data, look it up yourself you lazy!!! I already know, or would not have made that claim in the first place!

One tiny little interesting highlight I did find was back in 2016, a 12 Million dollar surplus grant from CDC to combat Polio, even though the real problem that year was the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The Bill & Melinda gates foundation has been throwing tens of millions of dollars at eliminating the new polio outbreak, and that is a private foundation.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126837Not sure where you are getting your information from. Please provide links.

WTF?

You know exactly where I'm getting my information, because they're your links. You linked to the CDC operating plans, made a bunch of false claims, I looked at the operating plans you linked, and then pointed out exactly where you were reading them wrong. You still haven't addressed a single one of those errors.

For reference:
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/operating-plans/index.html

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126837Health and Human Services by the way confirms the CDC budget cuts...

Here is the 2019 CDC budget from Health and Human Services website. Please note; It is not available and you are referred to the CDC website instead... BECAUSE THE BUDGET HAS BEEN CUT!

Here is the 2018 CDC Budget report from Health and Human Services, showing a 1.3 Trillion dollar cut in the CDC 2018 budget including the closures of many facilities I referenced earlier as well as the elimination of the NATIONAL STOCKPILE of equipment and emergency supplies.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2018/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html

Here is 2017 a net loss of two hundred million dollars from the CDC 2016 Budget...
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html#overview

Here is a link to HHS 2016 budget review of CDC... linking directly to the CDC PDF instead where the Budget was cut 116 Million dollars from the 2015...
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2016/fy-2016-cdc-operating-plan_1.pdf

Really I can go all the way back to 2008 with budget cuts from respiratory illness and emergency response plans the CDC every single year... You need all twelve years of data, look it up yourself you lazy!!! I already know, or would not have made that claim in the first place!

One tiny little interesting highlight I did find was back in 2016, a 12 Million dollar surplus grant from CDC to combat Polio, even though the real problem that year was the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The Bill & Melinda gates foundation has been throwing tens of millions of dollars at eliminating the new polio outbreak, and that is a private foundation.

Compare the two "budget" pages you linked:
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2018/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html

The FY 2017 page claims the CDC earned more than $4 billion from vaccines for children, in 2016 and 2017. While the FY 2018 page claims the CDC spent more than $4 billion on vaccines for children, in the same two years. The entire section has the plusses and minuses inverted. There are also wild irregularities in the URLs, structure, content, and so forth. Looks like an intern hand-crafted each page.

So not only are the numbers questionable, but Health & Human Services clearly considers their own website to be the secondary source in those matters, because if you go back to the main budget page, (https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/index.html) and tunnel down by fiscal year and then agency (CDC), the links all go back to the operating plans on the CDC's own website.

So if you want to continue the conversation, please address the false claims you made about the CDC operating plans.

And that's the second time you've said trillion with a T, when you mean billion with a B. The CDC budget is not greater than the budget for the entire federal government.

...bullshit reading errors snipped.

Quote from: Pat;1126848WTF?
 ...And that's the second time you've said trillion with a T, when you mean billion with a B. The CDC budget is not greater than the budget for the entire federal government.

Please note that all Federal Budgets being presented here on both HHS and CDC websites are expressed in millions of dollars; from the third line on the CDC budgets (dollars in thousands).

So a line item like
 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FY 2019---- FY2020------- Final
Immunization and Respiratory Diseases -BA----- $476,224---$433,105-----($43,119)

really means this:-----------------------------------$476,224,000----$433,105,000-- $(43,119,000)

See. this is what a 43 million dollar loss actually looks like on a line item federal budget, if of course, you could actually read. Your stupid is burning everyone on the interwebs now.


Pretty certain I have made my point now for everyone that matters. QED

Quote from: Pat;1126848WTF?
The FY 2017 page claims the CDC earned more than $4 billion from vaccines for children, in 2016 and 2017. While the FY 2018 page claims the CDC spent more than $4 billion on vaccines for children, in the same two years. The entire section has the plusses and minuses inverted. There are also wild irregularities in the URLs, structure, content, and so forth. Looks like an intern hand-crafted each page.

So not only are the numbers questionable, but Health & Human Services clearly considers their own website to be the secondary source in those matters, because if you go back to the main budget page, (https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/index.html) and tunnel down by fiscal year and then agency (CDC), the links all go back to the operating plans on the CDC's own website.

And that's the second time you've said trillion with a T, when you mean billion with a B. The CDC budget is not greater than the budget for the entire federal government.

How can the Health and Human Services  be the secondary site when CDC is just one department of Health and Human Services? The answer, is it's not. The CDC literally have had their budget cut, and I'm certain Health and Human Sevrices has had their budget cut as well.

And you are right, I meant CDC only had a ONE POINT THREE BILLION DOLLAR BUDGET CUT IN 2018. ....OOooohh my bad!!!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4270[/ATTACH]

Is this really about gaming...

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126860...bullshit reading errors snipped.

You made a bunch of bullshit claims, and provided a few links. I went through your links, found your errors, and proved you wrong with own data. And you just ignore that, and made up a bunch of new bullshit claims, and provide a few new inks. And I proved you wrong, using your own sources, again. And now you're trying to change the topic, again.

That's your pattern.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126860Please note that all Federal Budgets being presented here on both HHS and CDC websites are expressed in millions of dollars; from the third line on the CDC budgets (dollars in thousands).

So a line item like
 ----------------------------------------------------------------- FY 2019---- FY2020------- Final
Immunization and Respiratory Diseases -BA----- $476,224---$433,105-----($43,119)

really means this:-----------------------------------$476,224,000----$433,105,000-- $(43,119,000)

See. this is what a 43 million dollar loss actually looks like on a line item federal budget, if of course, you could actually read. Your stupid is burning everyone on the interwebs now.


Pretty certain I have made my point now for everyone that matters. QED

No shit, Sherlock. Why do you think I posted this, back in post #129:

Quote from: Pat;1126785In any case, you've clearly never read a budget before. There was not an overall decrease in spending on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases between FY19 and FY20. That $43 million was subtracted from one of the line items (BA), while almost $50 million was added to the other line item (PPHF). I&RD saw an overall increase, of $6.6 million.

Whaddya know, I do know what $43 million looks like.

On the other hand, let's look at what you said.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126776Here is last years Budget. 2019. They cut immunizations by 43 Million dollars, and added just six million dollars for respiratory diseases. This was offset by a decrease of $704 Million Dollars for buildings and facilities, In fact, what was actually spent by the CDC was $914,550,000 less than what was actually approved in the budget at the beginning of the 2019 fiscal year. So a net cut of almost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!! YOU ARE SO FULL OF BULLSHIT EVERYONE CAN SMELL IT EVEN OVER THE INTERNET!!!

[snip unreadable attachment]

So you can verify this for yourselves, the actual link to the CDC 2019 Operating Budget
https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2019/fy-2019-cdc-operating-plan.pdf

I'll direct to to the bottom line, which is the total budget for the CDC, including all non-recurrent expenses. Look in the FY 2019 box:
$7,339,025

If that's in millions, then we have to add 6 zeros:
$7,339,025,000,000, or $7.3 trillion

Wow. That's almost twice the entire federal budget. A a third of the entire GNP of the US. Roughly 1/10th the GNP of the entire world....

Oh, wait. The top of the chart says "(Dollars in Thousands)". Sorry, GameDaddy. The CDC's budget in FY 2019 is not $7.3 trillion. It's $7.3 billion.

So no GameDaddy, there wasn't (deep breath) "a net cut of almost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!!"

But you didn't have the grace to accept it, or even just drop it, when I pointed out your error (https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41822-Coronavirus-gaming-related-thread&p=1126785&viewfull=1#post1126785)....

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126837Here is the 2018 CDC Budget report from Health and Human Services, showing a 1.3 Trillion dollar cut in the CDC 2018 budget including the closures of many facilities I referenced earlier as well as the elimination of the NATIONAL STOCKPILE of equipment and emergency supplies.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2018/budget-in-brief/cdc/index.html

You're referring to the total discretionary budget authority line, final column, which shows FY 2018 - FY 2017. Here's the precise number:
-1,315

Checking the top of the chart, we find a little note: "(Dollars in millions)". So we add 6 zeros:
-1,315,000,000

That's not "1.3 Trillion dollar"s, GameDaddy. It's slightly under $-1.3 billion dollars.

And then you tried to blame your mistakes on me.

And since we've seen one table where the numbers are expressed in thousands of dollars, and another that's expressed in millions of dollars, we've also disproved your other claim, that "all Federal Budgets being presented here on both HHS and CDC websites are expressed in millions of dollars".

You remind me of C++/Matthew.

Quote from: trechriron;1126867Is this really about gaming...

:)

Quote from: GameDaddy;1126863And you are right, I meant CDC only had a ONE POINT THREE BILLION DOLLAR BUDGET CUT IN 2018. ....OOooohh my bad!!!

Since you deleted your original post, I deleted my reply and accept your gracious concession.

Quote from: trechriron;1126867Is this really about gaming...

Of course it is, it shows you that some people need help when calculating their character abilities.

Quote from: trechriron;1126867Is this really about gaming...

Of course, when it isn't getting sidetracked by the causes of the Coronavirus.. The latest convention report from the last convention that I attended, just a week before the national lockdown went into effect, CincyCon 2020 held the first weekend of March.


CincyCon 2020 (https://wp.me/P9hv1e-oW)

Also my review of the new Secrets of Blackmoor Kickstarter Dvd

Secrets of Blackmoor Volume 1 - The True History of Dungeons and Dragons (https://tamerthya.blog/2020/04/10/the-true-history-of-dungeons-and-dragons/)

Quote from: trechriron;1126867Is this really about gaming...

I thought this was a thread where people shared their game-related, made-up conspiracy theories that were inspired by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Now I'm starting to wonder whether I may have misunderstood some of those posts....

Quote from: Bren;1126931I thought this was a thread where people shared their game-related, made-up conspiracy theories that were inspired by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Now I'm starting to wonder whether I may have misunderstood some of those posts....

There's the Dark Web, and then there's the Deep State Web. Which is hidden, in the open. The wild inconsistencies, errors, and strangeness of various government websites like H&HS aren't the result of ineptness or inefficiency. They're a code, a message, to those who can read them. Deciphering the messages is part cryptography, and part numerology.

Quote from: trechriron;1126867Is this really about gaming...

Good Damn Point.

What the Eff does arguing about the CDC have to do with RPgs or Tabeletop gaming?

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;1126968Good Damn Point.

What the Eff does arguing about the CDC have to do with RPgs or Tabeletop gaming?

- Ed C.

I don't know. This seems to me to be a perfect example as to how rumours and suspicions work in game. Haven't you looked ever looked at a module and gone 'Really? They're using that as a premise as to why they're doing whatever they do? Would anyone believe that? ' Well you've just been provided an example how it can occur!

Quote from: Bren;1126931I thought this was a thread where people shared their game-related, made-up conspiracy theories that were inspired by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Now I'm starting to wonder whether I may have misunderstood some of those posts....

Matt Collville made an interesting point in one of his postings about the multiple roles that GMs take.  Sometimes an NPC can say something that they believe but is wrong but (mostly starting) players will accept it as it comes from the GMs mouth and the GM normally states truths about the world.  Players have to learn when the GM is playing an unreliable narrator. I find sometimes you just have to slightly amplify to flaws in the NPCs position so you can see that realisation dawn on the players' faces.  

What we can witness on this board is members authoritatively stating hypotheses, which they might well believe, but that doesn't mean that they are true. I also think it is natural to tend to trust the opinion of someone that you acknowledge as an expert in one field, i.e. here RPGs, even when they are talking about something on which they know nothing - but perhaps dress up with faux authority with references and technical jargon.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is now quite well known. Another way to look at that is that the more you know about something the better you are at understanding the complexity or difficulty of a problem. The higher your Climb skill, the better you are at knowing the difficulty level of a climbing skill challenge.  Do you know any games that incorporate this idea?

Quote from: Anselyn;1127023The Dunning-Kruger effect is now quite well known. Another way to look at that is that the more you know about something the better you are at understanding the complexity or difficulty of a problem. The higher your Climb skill, the better you are at knowing the difficulty level of a climbing skill challenge.  Do you know any games that incorporate this idea?

Pathfinder 2e incorporates how skilled you are (Untrained, Trained, Expert, Master, Legendary) into your skill roll.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127023Matt Collville made an interesting point in one of his postings about the multiple roles that GMs take.  Sometimes an NPC can say something that they believe but is wrong but (mostly starting) players will accept it as it comes from the GMs mouth and the GM normally states truths about the world.

I've even seen experienced gamers throw this under the "GM must never lie to players" category.  It seems that the distinction between "GM lies to you and says you should spit in the king's face" and "GM truthfully tells you that an NPC said you should spit in the king's face" is too subtle for some to be comfortable with.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127023The Dunning-Kruger effect is now quite well known. Another way to look at that is that the more you know about something the better you are at understanding the complexity or difficulty of a problem. The higher your Climb skill, the better you are at knowing the difficulty level of a climbing skill challenge.  Do you know any games that incorporate this idea?

EABA uses a (more or less) stat-plus-skill system, with Awareness as one of the base stats and no general "perception" skill.  Instead, for perception-type rolls, you roll Awareness plus the associated skill.  The usual example in the rulebooks is Awareness plus Firearms to spot hidden weapons, on the basis that someone skilled with guns will have a better feel for what to look for, where guns could be hidden, and so on.  Although it's not specifically mentioned in any rules I've seen, rolling Awareness plus Climbing to judge the difficulty of a climb seems appropriate in that context.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127023Players have to learn when the GM is playing an unreliable narrator.

Yes. The more the GM can make it clear about whether a statement is (a) something an NPC is saying or has said that they observed or experienced, (b) something a PC is directly observing or experiencing, or (c) something about the game system itself the less confusion there will be. I expect the GM to provide completely accurate information (to the limits of their recall and ability) regarding (c), but I expect (a) and (b) to have some inaccuracies, e.g. the NPC may be lying or just wrong or the PC have a mistaken impression or be missing data (they can't see invisible so they don't see the Invisible Stalker silently lurking in the room).

Interesting examples people gave on Dunning-Kruger. I've seen systems where different skill levels provided different levels of information (even without a roll). So higher skills provide more information or more detail. Many systems abstract rolls to the point where there isn't a differentiation between reasons for failure, e.g. a failed climbing roll could be you slipped because you aren't a good enough climber or it could be you slipped because you weren't a good enough climber to pick a better route. I suppose one could introduce a two-step process where a climber makes a skill roll to assess and select a route for climbing then the degree of success (or failure) with that roll is applied as a modifier to the climbing rolls for everyone traversing that route. That would have the added advantage that it allows a good climbing leader to benefit the entire group for the group's individual climbing rolls.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127023The Dunning-Kruger effect is now quite well known. Another way to look at that is that the more you know about something the better you are at understanding the complexity or difficulty of a problem. The higher your Climb skill, the better you are at knowing the difficulty level of a climbing skill challenge.  Do you know any games that incorporate this idea?

Too well known. At least on the internet, most of the people who throw the term around seem to embody the concept.

But that's a good observation about skill and assessment. I wrestled with something similar, a while back: Skill is also associated with surety. If you're an expert, you're not just better at assessing the difficulty of a task, you're also more likely to perform at your ability. Amateurs by contrast tend to be very swingy, able to perform brilliantly one day, and then awful the next. It doesn't make sense to just shift the bell curve of a dice roll up as skill increases; the range also narrows.

But that's only one of the many problems with most skill systems. I find skills to be one of the least realistic (versimilitudistic?) aspect of most RPGs.

Quote from: Pat;1127087But that's a good observation about skill and assessment. I wrestled with something similar, a while back: Skill is also associated with surety. If you're an expert, you're not just better at assessing the difficulty of a task, you're also more likely to perform at your ability. Amateurs by contrast tend to be very swingy, able to perform brilliantly one day, and then awful the next. It doesn't make sense to just shift the bell curve of a dice roll up as skill increases; the range also narrows.

Now that you say that, I have a vague memory of reading about a skill system in which increased skill was represented by rolling a smaller die size and adding a larger constant to the roll.  So, e.g., a total beginner might roll 1d20, while an expert rolls 1d10+10 and a grandmaster rolls 1d4+16.  In this completely ex recto example, they would all have the potential of rolling a 20, but it's more likely as skill increases, and the more skilled are also guaranteed not to roll extremely low results.  Alas, I don't recall the name of the system which did this, or even whether it was an actual system or just a theoretical discussion.


I'll also repeat my earlier reply's mention of EABA.  It's a d6-only system, in which skill levels go 1, 2, 1d+0, 1d+1, 1d+2, 2d+0, etc., but you only keep the best three dice for your roll, so, once your skill exceeds 4d+1, the range of likely results starts tightening up at the high end instead of going ever-upward.  (Why when it exceeds 4d+1 instead of 3d+2?  Because there's an option to forego rolling one die in exchange for making the constant addition a +2, which you pretty much always want to do.  So 4d+0 and 4d+1 would normally be rolled as 3d+2, and you would only start rolling four actual dice at 4d+2 and above.)

The system also has options which play with this mechanic to tweak the range of possible results in certain situations.  On one side, there's the "Larger Than Life" advantage (mainly intended for characters with some degree of superhuman ability) which allows you to keep the best four dice instead of the best three, thus raising the high end of your possible results, provided you have sufficient skill to get there in the first place.  On the other, skills can be bought at a discount if you declare them to be "Hobbies", but, when used in a real-world situation outside of the scope of hobby activities, you only keep two dice.  e.g., A black belt martial arts hobbyist wth a skill level of 4d+2 would always roll his full 4d+2 and would keep the best three dice in a tournament, but only keep the best two dice in a no-rules street fight.

Quote from: nDervish;1127028I've even seen experienced gamers throw this under the "GM must never lie to players" category.  It seems that the distinction between "GM lies to you and says you should spit in the king's face" and "GM truthfully tells you that an NPC said you should spit in the king's face" is too subtle for some to be comfortable with.

One of the reasons that I stress first person roleplaying is that it mitigates this noticeably. It far clearer when I am roleplaying an NPC versus making a ruling or explaining a detail in my referee voice.

Quote from: nDervish;1127125On the other, skills can be bought at a discount if you declare them to be "Hobbies", but, when used in a real-world situation outside of the scope of hobby activities, you only keep two dice.  e.g., A black belt martial arts hobbyist wth a skill level of 4d+2 would always roll his full 4d+2 and would keep the best three dice in a tournament, but only keep the best two dice in a no-rules street fight.

That's an interesting idea. I've seen something similar done for tournament/target shooting vs. a real fight by providing a bonus to the skill or ruling that such usage is automatically successful if you have say a 60% skill (in d100 based skill systems) or using a lower difficulty level (in systems like WEG D6 with variable difficulties).

Quote from: estar;1127128One of the reasons that I stress first person roleplaying is that it mitigates this noticeably. It far clearer when I am roleplaying an NPC versus making a ruling or explaining a detail in my referee voice.

Does your referee voice actually sound different?

Quote from: Bren;1127162Does your referee voice actually sound different?

Greetings!

Well, yes, speaking for myself, I am quite animated when portraying an NPC, and use a variety of distinctive voices for them, male or female, as appropriate. Then, when speaking as the DM, I speak in a different tone, and manner, more in-line with my normal way of speaking. There is always a distinct difference between the way I speak as the DM, compared to when I am portraying an NPC.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK;1127174Well, yes, speaking for myself, I am quite animated when portraying an NPC, and use a variety of distinctive voices for them, male or female, as appropriate. Then, when speaking as the DM, I speak in a different tone, and manner, more in-line with my normal way of speaking. There is always a distinct difference between the way I speak as the DM, compared to when I am portraying an NPC.

That definitely helps the players keep straight who they were listening to. I find I can't do different voices/speech patterns for every NPC. There are just too many of them.