The Covid19 thread

[P-90_177]

It was OK....just didn't like how they kept nerfing the ability of humans to think outside the box

I mean...so the Scimitar's cloaking device could resist most forms of advanced sensor trickery...so I don't know why they didn't try less advanced forms...such as finding the exhaust like they did in "The Undiscovered Country" to defeat the BoP that could fire when cloaked

Or heck....it was evident that the Enterprise and their Romulan allies were hitting something solid with their weaponry.....they couldn't find a way to scatter the proverbial flour and have it stick to the Scimitar and light it up like a Christmas tree?

It might've been a bit more of an even fight then because even if the stealth of the Scimitar got defeated there's still the fact that it was built tough enough to hold its own against entire fleets of Dominion ships given how many disruptor banks and torpedo launchers it had and how much shielding it had.

I also didn't like how "Roddenberry's vision" as it's been called made the concept of the Federation having purpose-built combat vessels at all some sort of bad thing and had it be strictly exploratory vessels for Starfleet with shields and weapons enough to take care of ordinary pirates (and the largely poorly engineered Cardassian ships) but have zero chance of surviving a protracted combat situation against a more intractable enemy...that's why the Federation kept getting its backside kicked in almost every wartime scenario until their "better equipped for wartime" allies come to their aid

I say Adm. Leyton in DS9 "Paradise Lost" had the right idea.....the fleet was in serious need of an upgrade to its wartime combat capabilities....just didn't like how Leyton wound up going about it (the whole coup d'etat thing)

There's only really two wars where it was an issue though. The first Klingon war as shown in Discovery where the Federation had been in a state of near absolute peace for almost a century. And the Dominion war where their technology was just years beyond what the Federation had, hence why their weapons and transporters just cut right through their shields, and Starfleet quickly adapted in that regard. After that the issue was simply that the Dominon and Cardassians could build ships and grow troops faster than the Federation and Klingons could. In all other occasions it is made reasonably clear that Starfleet would be mostly on even footing with their enemies. I mean Starfleet can even detected most cloaked ships by the 24th Century, they just can't do so well enough to pinpoint them for a target lock. You could argue that the Klingon conflict in DS9 also saw the Federation on the back foot, but that could just as easily be down to the idea that they simply weren't expecting a war with them. They had been allies for years and all the ships that would have once been patrolling the Klingon boarders just weren't there any more. That particular war just happened without any real warning.

So otherwise the lack of dedicated warships has never really been an issue for the Federation. Hell, Voyager is effectively a science ship, or a light cruiser at best and it's effectively the toughest, most badass warship in the whole Delta Quadrant with only a few limited exceptions. Starfleet technology is just so far beyond what most individual powers are capable of, including the Romulans and Klingons.

Of course the biggest exception is the Borg, but pretty much the whole Galaxy struggles to fight off the Borg so having dedicated warships wouldn't really help all that much (which is probably why the only one we know of in that regard is the Defiant)

[P-90_177]

Having to be told 3 times to step back behind the line is downright being ignorant as hell (eye witness account by my sister when she went to the butcher's last week).



We do not. It's just me and my sister, and the cats. We are literally halfway the country -- the furthest removed from the rest of the family.



I have killed so many braincells watching TOS -- it's not even funny anymore.

The only episode I really enjoyed was The Trouble With Tribbles.
The banter between Spock and McCoy was OK in season 2 but McCoy has since gotten on my nerves.

There's been one episode near the end of season 2 that I nearly turned off altogether, where I was so horribly annoyed that it took me everything not to smack my screen.

I like Sulu, Checkov, Spock, Scotty and Uhura, and Christine who is simply hilarious fawning over Spock.

Kirk has the emotional range of a teaspoon, and McCoy is overly dramatic and annoying the hell out of my patience.



Might I remind you that the officers over here are of the polite versions.

I'm a little more ok with TOS but I have much the same problem. The show has great characters but it otherwise just doesn't hold up.

I do really like the Original movies. I think that fleshes out all of the TOS characters so much better. So when I do a rewatch I'll watch maybe a few key TOS eps like Balance of Terror and the Corbomite Manoeuvre and leave the rest.

That being said, if the rumours about having and Anson Mount led Pike series are true then I would love to have a remake of The Menagerie as the eventual series finale.

I can imagine a previous episode rounding off the story of the series and then the final two parter starts as the Menagerie, with a recast Kirk and original crew on the modern sets, with possibly a little tweaking to the script to keep it feeling fresh but more or less the exact same story with Spock trying to secretly return Pike to Talos and having the Court Martial where we see flashbacks to The Cage, again reimagined with the modern sets and characters.

I'm sure it'd never happened but this to me would be just the perfect send off for a Pike series which acknowledges both the Original Series and the Modern interpretation of the 23rd Century and these new actors in familiar roles, and also just gives the finger to all the haters who complain about how the Kurtzman show look doesn't match up with the old show. Instead it just says "This IS the old show. It just looks better than it did in the 60's"

[mad_gater]

There's only really two wars where it was an issue though. The first Klingon war as shown in Discovery where the Federation had been in a state of near absolute peace for almost a century. And the Dominion war where their technology was just years beyond what the Federation had, hence why their weapons and transporters just cut right through their shields, and Starfleet quickly adapted in that regard. After that the issue was simply that the Dominon and Cardassians could build ships and grow troops faster than the Federation and Klingons could. In all other occasions it is made reasonably clear that Starfleet would be mostly on even footing with their enemies. I mean Starfleet can even detected most cloaked ships by the 24th Century, they just can't do so well enough to pinpoint them for a target lock. You could argue that the Klingon conflict in DS9 also saw the Federation on the back foot, but that could just as easily be down to the idea that they simply weren't expecting a war with them. They had been allies for years and all the ships that would have once been patrolling the Klingon boarders just weren't there any more. That particular war just happened without any real warning.

So otherwise the lack of dedicated warships has never really been an issue for the Federation. Hell, Voyager is effectively a science ship, or a light cruiser at best and it's effectively the toughest, most badass warship in the whole Delta Quadrant with only a few limited exceptions. Starfleet technology is just so far beyond what most individual powers are capable of, including the Romulans and Klingons.

Of course the biggest exception is the Borg, but pretty much the whole Galaxy struggles to fight off the Borg so having dedicated warships wouldn't really help all that much (which is probably why the only one we know of in that regard is the Defiant)

There was still the issue though that most of the ships you saw in the fleetwide engagements against the Dominion were old 23rd century relics and it was the Galaxy, Sovereign, and Defiant classes along with their Klingon allies picking up the slack and there just weren't enough of those advanced Starfleet ships built to provide enough cover for the large number of 23rd-century relics they were throwing at the enemy ...although Leyton did show that those relics could be upgraded to at or near Galaxy-class firepower

[Annoyed]

I'm thinking you females might be in trouble finding underwear if this trend keeps going.. A bra shortage?

Might be a good idea for people who can't fabricate their own masks from scratch.

[VampyreWraith]

Came across some interesting postings elsewhere about this COVID19 bug. Some people who were discussing it, believed they already HAD it back in December 2019, in the USA. Problem ... every person who discussed this, thinking that they HAD the virus were also in different parts of the USA... I mean, WIDESPREAD area. Had some nasty symptoms for a few days, then got better, then bang! Got 2nd wave of it about a week later. Took a month or more to recover (at least from the dry coughing spells).

If this is TRUE -- back then -- NO ONE was wearing a mask, NOR gloves, and some people were being treated with a double antibiotic or Z-pack from some viral *bug* with a DRY COUGH that wouldn't quit.

I was one of those people. Symptoms eerily similar to COVID19. What I thought was strange was that the doctor who treated me, didn't even really look at my throat that long, because I swallowed almost immediately, and ended up DRY coughing right in front of him. He had NO gloves nor mask on either, then. Got immediately sent for chest X-ray (that same night), and told nothing significant showed up (then).

Shortness of breath... well, yeah... seemed obvious that most of the chest pains were from coughing too much (I mean, at 20 minute, non-stop sessions and yah couldn't stop coughing long enough to breathe). Stomach hurt from the super strong medicine I was prescribed...EAT food with... so I did, and it minimalized the discomfort. Took me about 45 days before I fully stopped coughing. Diagnosis listed some sort of bronchitis that just bloomed within a few days of starting out like a cold and typical, scratchy sore throat... that almost went into pneumonia had I not gotten on the antibiotics.


So, ever since we've been on this "shelter in place" order, I couldn't stop thinking about the December-2019 viral bug, cold-like thing that hit me in the way it did. I increased my Vitamin C, ZINC (chelated), D3, selenium, and magnesium oxide. The (increased) zinc helped dry up my sinuses. Added pineapple juice daily to break up whatever was in the chest, which sort of helped. Nyquil at night with Vicks Vapo-rub under my nose. Tastes were a bit off, but not so horrible that I lost all sense of potent smells.

The discussion I came across mentioned that there were visiting (Chinese) students in our area... close to NYC airport hubs... yeah, okay...maybe that makes sense. Maybe they *had* the COVID-19 bug and were passing it on to other people via breathing... I do know that 2 other people, my coworkers... whom one traveled, had this same nasty DRY cough back in November 2019. The day he stopped coughing a month later, I started... weird... I figured it took that long to wrap itself around our building.

As for touch... those of us who had the *bug* hugged each other, but didn't breathe on each other, as it happened during the Christmas holiday season. Plus, most of us were already sick.. some even were hospitalized, because it was so severe.

And if * *that* WAS the same COVID-19 virus (perhaps a milder? mutation of it), then WHY are we under restricted quarantine NOW ...being forced to wear masks and wear gloves...treating everything we touch outside our home, as if harboring the contaminated virus...? I could easily see if *that* is the situation, then yes, there might be a bigger issue going on with the lock-downs and potential future forced vaccinations. If people who were exposed to whatever was going around in December 2019 were only concerned about getting "sick" for a few days, but are NOW terrified and seriously *paranoid* of this labelled virus bug AND their neighbors or coworkers, what makes what happened in December any different than March and April 2020 in the USA?

If the severe viral bug from December 2019 (across the USA) is the same as this COVID19 now,
then yeah... something don't smell quite right... only difference is the testing for COVID19. People who *may* have had it, are now negative, because they developed some sort of immunity to it... (??) or else are practicing very good, health cleaning habits... Unfortunately, pollen's allergy season is also swinging into full mode, now... so anyone coughing or sneezing is getting stared at -- as IF they are contaminated with the COVID19 bug.

I think what everyone who was sick in the US had in Dec/early Jan was a cold or flu (or other common upper respiratory infection). Almost everyone I knew had some kind of cold or flu in dec/jan (that's basically peak cold and flu season). They all recovered without going to a hospital. My kids were both sick towards the end of Christmas break into Jan, I had multiple co workers with really bad coughs and flu like symptoms (one of them even had chest pains due to soreness from coughing so much). Some of them actually got sick multiple times during those months with different things. I even had a bit of a sore throat and head cold. I don't think any of that was Covid.

[P-90_177]

There was still the issue though that most of the ships you saw in the fleetwide engagements against the Dominion were old 23rd century relics and it was the Galaxy, Sovereign, and Defiant classes along with their Klingon allies picking up the slack and there just weren't enough of those advanced Starfleet ships built to provide enough cover for the large number of 23rd-century relics they were throwing at the enemy ...although Leyton did show that those relics could be upgraded to at or near Galaxy-class firepower

Well I think the point of the Excelsior and Miranda classes is that they were continually upgraded to 24th Century Specs. Sure, the upgrade made to the Lakota brought it up to specs at that time which is why it could take on the Defiant directly, but I have no doubt that they had comparatively powerful weapons before then, just not as powerful.

Ships in Star Trek are just like real life battleships. They get continually upgraded with the latest power plants and weapons until the Hull is no longer of use. If a design is sound and it's easier to upgrade that than build brand new then it will last a good long while. And unlike in real life where a ship is at sea and will degrade over time thanks to corrosion from salt water, a space ship will last more or less as long as you want it to. So all the Excelsior and Miranda classes that you see throughout TNG may be relatively out dated but so are all the 23rd Century B'Rels that the Klingons use, which are ships that later still prove themselves in the Dominion War along with even old K'Tinga classes.

[VampyreWraith]

This could possibly be good news for NY, but things can just get worse tomorrow, but who knows.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nyt...pdate.amp.html

New York State reported 630 new deaths on Saturday, but 594 on Sunday. The governor cautioned that it could be a “blip.”

New York City’s mayor says it now has enough medical supplies to get through “a few more days.”

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...n-ny-daily?amp

The governor also reported new hospitalizations were down to 574 Saturday from 1,095 Friday, which he said could be an "interesting blip" or the "hopeful beginning of a shift in the data."



Daily ICU admissions have also decreased to 250 from 395, and daily intubations fell slightly to 316 Saturday from 351 Friday, he said. Meanwhile, the discharge rate has boosted "way up" to 1,709 on Saturday compared to 1,502 Friday, which Cuomo said was "great news."

New Orleans isn't doing too well now arrording to this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost....at-of-nyc/amp/

[P-90_177]

Norway is fortunately now starting to stabilise. We went into lockdown on the 13th March. Hospitals are on the edge but are coping. Deaths are still in the double digits and the number of hospitalised is hovering around 400 but not increasing. The Government is due to re-evaluate the situation at the end of this week so we'll see what they decide going forward.

[SoulReaver]

Might I remind you that the officers over here are of the polite versions.

you might

and it's all up to them so if they choose to be less polite you might also get a reality check

see I know you're in Belgium. and I know Belgium's like France (I know you've a bit of an identity crisis going on but for simplicity's sake let's just see it as a mini-France). and I know the frogs are barely better off than the mericans in the civil liberties department

SR is an anarchist. He hates any enforcement arm of any government.

most
hoho anarchists - that's how Big Government-worshipers call libertarians

[SoulReaver]

Norway is fortunately now starting to stabilise. We went into lockdown on the 13th March

not a true lockdown though?

[P-90_177]

not a true lockdown though?

Probably not to the extent as elsewhere. Travel wasn't too restricting by law, people just more or less did what they were told. Any place of work that could operate from home were told to do so and restaurants and cafes could still open as long as they could guarentee a minimum of 1m separation between patrons. Nightclubs and bars were ordered to close and mass gatherings were banned. A lot of stores have shut. But many are still allowed to open including anywhere that sells homewears or clothes as it's figured people will still need such things.
For my part, I work at a bakery for a chain of cafes here. When the lockdown happened a bunch of the cafes needed to close cos they were too small and the rest began to limit their orders so our trade was cut down to bare bones. So other than a few essential staff members myself and most of my colleagues have been off work since then.

[mad_gater]

Well I think the point of the Excelsior and Miranda classes is that they were continually upgraded to 24th Century Specs. Sure, the upgrade made to the Lakota brought it up to specs at that time which is why it could take on the Defiant directly, but I have no doubt that they had comparatively powerful weapons before then, just not as powerful.

Ships in Star Trek are just like real life battleships. They get continually upgraded with the latest power plants and weapons until the Hull is no longer of use. If a design is sound and it's easier to upgrade that than build brand new then it will last a good long while. And unlike in real life where a ship is at sea and will degrade over time thanks to corrosion from salt water, a space ship will last more or less as long as you want it to. So all the Excelsior and Miranda classes that you see throughout TNG may be relatively out dated but so are all the 23rd Century B'Rels that the Klingons use, which are ships that later still prove themselves in the Dominion War along with even old K'Tinga classes.

unfortunately the Excelsiors and Mirandas still tended to crumble like tin cans.....the extra firepower was only half the battle.....the vast majority of them still hadn't been upgraded to be able to take the ridiculous amounts of punishment that get dished out in wartime scenarios

The Defiant had ablative armor which sort of acted as a backup shield....quite fortuitous when the Lakota's unexpected upgrades saw it taking out the Defiant's shields in 2 hits....the Defiant was tanking the rest of those hits on the ablative armor and I would imagine that most of the other 24th-century powerhouses such as the Galaxies were also refitted with ablative armor (now picture a Cardassian commanding a Galor-class being like "as if the Galaxy-class starships weren't hard enough to take on now they're even harder to take on" )

[SGalisa]

The discussion I came across mentioned that there were visiting (Chinese) students in our area... close to NYC airport hubs... yeah, okay...maybe that makes sense. Maybe they *had* the COVID-19 bug and were passing it on to other people via breathing... I do know that 2 other people, my coworkers... whom one traveled, had this same nasty DRY cough back in November 2019. The day he stopped coughing a month later, I started... weird... I figured it took that long to wrap itself around our building.

As for touch... those of us who had the *bug* hugged each other, but didn't breathe on each other, as it happened during the Christmas holiday season. Plus, most of us were already sick.. some even were hospitalized, because it was so severe.

And if * *that* WAS the same COVID-19 virus (perhaps a milder? mutation of it), then WHY are we under restricted quarantine NOW ...being forced to wear masks and wear gloves...treating everything we touch outside our home, as if harboring the contaminated virus...? I could easily see if *that* is the situation, then yes, there might be a bigger issue going on with the lock-downs and potential future forced vaccinations. If people who were exposed to whatever was going around in December 2019 were only concerned about getting "sick" for a few days, but are NOW terrified and seriously *paranoid* of this labelled virus bug AND their neighbors or coworkers, what makes what happened in December any different than March and April 2020 in the USA?
. . .

We had the same where I live in the UK.
The university in the town I live in has a high number of students (several thousand) from the far east arrive each October. My job brings me into close contact with them and I and a number of my workmates went down with something that bore a striking resemblance to Covid - 19 a couple of weeks after the uni opened for the winter term.

WOW. That's just amazing that you went thru a similar scenario with exposure to the *students*, like I did. I wish TPTB in the medical world would clearly explain what we had. My doctor wouldn't even tell me what it was. He was looking for signs of pneumonia on the X-ray, but I didn't think my lungs were that bad at the time.

I think what everyone who was sick in the US had in Dec/early Jan was a cold or flu (or other common upper respiratory infection). Almost everyone I knew had some kind of cold or flu in dec/jan (that's basically peak cold and flu season). They all recovered without going to a hospital. My kids were both sick towards the end of Christmas break into Jan, I had multiple co workers with really bad coughs and flu like symptoms (one of them even had chest pains due to soreness from coughing so much). Some of them actually got sick multiple times during those months with different things. I even had a bit of a sore throat and head cold. I don't think any of that was Covid.

Normally, I would agree with you (or anyone) that what I experienced was a really bad cold. And I have severe allergies (to nearly everything green that grows outside...especially cut grass and most trees), so I know the difference between having a cold and *severe* allergies. However, this was definitely different. It had different symptoms than the usual cold, even a bad head cold. Faucet in my head didn't stop. Coughing wouldn't stop either.

For one thing, I have never been put on an antibiotic for any type of cold.
Went to the doctor, because I wanted this thing diminished and under better control before Christmas get-togethers.
Anywho, if this was a typically bad cold, why did I have to get a chest X-ray, and WHY the super strong antibiotic...? My hubby had a cold around the same time, which he got from being at work. I had something far, far worse... and was fortunate to have enough holidays cushion my days off, then, to rest up and recuperate.

Whatever I had, it matched the same symptoms as my coworker, who we all nicknamed "patient-Ground ZERO". He had several bouts during the day where he just didn't stop coughing. Another girl in the office near him got sick with the same DRY, continuous coughing spells... lasted for weeks. Most cold coughs sound like a smoker's cough, or like someone with COPD. This was a definite DRY cough, and continuous. I was sent home the first week, and got worse over the weekend. Much, much worse. My boss just didn't want me making noise...

What made my situation even worse, was about 3 days into my 2nd antibiotic treatment, I got dizzy and lost my balance and fell head first ...on the concrete sidewalk. That is not normal with a standard "cold" ...or it's never ever happened to me with any of my previous colds. I skidded for about 12 inches and skinned my hand right down to the muscle and bone (exposed a good 1/4th inch area of actual bone!), and whacked my knee pretty bad too with a serious internal, bleeding bruise. Because I was coughing so bad, I just figured God knew I was going to fall, so HE had the doctor put me on a super strong antibiotic to ward off any infections in my hand and knee, too.

I did have to wrap my entire hand, sterilized about twice daily for a week, then sealed the wound area up completely, so any coughing "bug" wouldn't get into my hand. It literally took 3 weeks to heal my hand enough, before I could wear a normal band-aid.

Okay, maybe I just had a bad cold. However, my neighbor tested positive with COVID-19 over a week ago, went thru the exact same (symptoms) scenario I did. About 3 days after seeing her doctor, she had a dizzy spell and lost her balance on a flat, concrete sidewalk and fell head first. She got her test results later that week, POSITIVE for COVID-19. I was *never* tested for COVID-19, because at that time (in December 2019), no one was looking or testing for the COVID-19 virus in the USA, back in December 2019 nor early January 2020.

So, call it whatever (generic) you want, but I'm still not convinced what I had was just a regular, cold -- bad or otherwise.

[Gatefan1976]

[P-90_177]

unfortunately the Excelsiors and Mirandas still tended to crumble like tin cans.....the extra firepower was only half the battle.....the vast majority of them still hadn't been upgraded to be able to take the ridiculous amounts of punishment that get dished out in wartime scenarios

The Defiant had ablative armor which sort of acted as a backup shield....quite fortuitous when the Lakota's unexpected upgrades saw it taking out the Defiant's shields in 2 hits....the Defiant was tanking the rest of those hits on the ablative armor and I would imagine that most of the other 24th-century powerhouses such as the Galaxies were also refitted with ablative armor (now picture a Cardassian commanding a Galor-class being like "as if the Galaxy-class starships weren't hard enough to take on now they're even harder to take on" )

Well yeah but again the Dominion are a bad example since their technology was so far ahead of the Federation's. Stick a Miranda up against a Klingon B'rel or K'Tinga and it's safe to say that the Federation would be able to dish out as good as it got.

The Miranda's get a lot of teasing for being always torn up in the war but I think their very inclusion is indicative that they are much hardier than they seem. I mean there are a lot of classes of ships that we know exist but we never see in those fleet battles. We generally see Galaxies, Excelsiors and Akiras as Cruisers and then they are backed up by Sabres, Steamrunners and Mirandas. But we know for a fact that there are newer and supposedly better ships in the fleet. Intrepids, Novas, Norways etc. So the logical conclusion we should draw is if we see none of those classes, but loads of the Mirandas then there must be a reason why. We might logically conclude that it is because there are far more Mirandas than those other classes and that's fair, but the fact that there are none of those other classes at all is more indicative that the Miranda has an inherent advantage in combat over them. Now that doesn't necessarily need to mean it has the stronger shields or hull. It can be something as simple as having a larger torpedo loadout or is more manoeuvrable at high impulse. Hell we see in Sacrifice of Angels that two Mirandas were able to keep up with the Defiant as it barrelled through the Dominion Fleet. Yeah they might be all in all less powerful than those other classes, but if you build a ship for that long and with those numbers and it is in every single battle fleet then there has to be a logical reason for it. Easy to construct? Able to be manned with a minimal crew? They're all good reasons why you would want a Miranda as part of the backbone of your fleet over newer designs.

The thing is that the Defiant is in desperate need of ablative armour or it would be obliterated. Most starships in the fleet have a fair amount of internal volume. The outer regions of the ship are filled with crew quarters, cargo bays, mess halls and observation lounges. In combat these basically act as an outer layer of protection before an enemy can get through to the meat of the ship. The Defiant has none of this, it's only four decks and all of its essential equipment is all very close to each other. I always got the sense that the armour was almost prohibitively expensive to create. They even noted in that battle with the Lakota that no one had even told command that the Defiant was equipped with the armour. Now that could be due to it being classified admittedly. Or it could be down to the fact that O'Brien or Sisko came up with the idea of the armour and had in place their own resources to refit the Defiant with it and keep it operational, but realised very quickly that it would be impossible for the entire fleet to implement it and so just didn't bother.

...Starting to think that this conversation may be getting off topic somewhat.