37mm

As well as continuing work on the People's Militia campaign and its maps... I've also begun a, relatively quick, People's Army conversion of a @Fredrock1957 CMA campaign...

Again, to be fair, there were a lot of "experts" (who obviously should have known better) comparing the exact same scenes in Wuhan as "just a flu" not that many weeks ago... if it takes some of the people a little while to catch up to the rapidly changing circumstances I'm not overly concerned. Of far more concern are institutions (like Oxford & Stanford University) & experts basically selling the same "it's just a flu" message. Where were all these people concerned about the economic consequences of a potential lockdown in January & February? Why are all these supposed experts using the "seasonal flu" numbers without any hesitation (often using the colloquial phrase 'seasonal flu' rather than the correct "Influenza Like Illness' term)? Why are some experts, all of a sudden, considering asymptomatic cases as cases for the purposes of producing a mortality rate? I'm pretty certain that's never happened before... certainly counting asymptomatic flu cases would decrease that mortality rate much further? Personally, I think quite a few bank accounts need to be checked after all this... and I doubt you'll find much money being flung around by a few fringe quacks.

I don't deny that... I just don't think the Flat Earth Society or other fringe quacks can be "blamed"... quacks have always existed. I certainly don't blame the people who are confused & (justifiably) skeptical after decades of institutional lying on so many different subjects... and, let's not forget, have also been told to support themselves with a measly $1200 cheque (whilst Wall Street recieves its usual Trillions). If institutions are not trusted then perhaps the Institutions themselves need to look in a mirror... trying to implement "suspicion control" seems a process doomed to failure.

To be fair, one of the problems with these comparisons is a massive institutional hoax has been played for many years across the West. I've mentioned this before but here we see a Doctor make very similiar points. Allow me to translate a few of his phrases... it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case. What he actually means is that he's always known the flu numbers were hoaxed. I decided to call colleagues around the country who work in other emergency departments and in intensive care units to ask a simple question: how many patients could they remember dying from the flu? Most of the physicians I surveyed couldn’t remember a single one over their careers. Some said they recalled a few. All of them seemed to be having the same light bulb moment I had already experienced: For too long, we have blindly accepted a statistic that does not match our clinical experience. The phone calls never took place of course, what he actually means is that he & his colleagues have long known that the flu numbers were hoaxed & they have discussed it for years over drinks & rounds of golf. The CDC should immediately change how it reports flu deaths. While in the past it was justifiable to err on the side of substantially overestimating flu deaths, in order to encourage vaccination and good hygiene, at this point the CDC’s reporting about flu deaths is dangerously misleading the public and even public officials about the comparison between these two viruses. I have my suspicions that "vaccination and good hygiene" means "vaccination and vaccination"... as for his final point? He clearly realizes now that, whatever the benefits the hoax was meant to generate, it has backfired substantially during a real crisis. I suggest to you, that having institutions pushing hoax agendas for decades is probably more responsible for the breakdown of trust in our societies than a few fringe quacks... the Flat Earth society didn't tell me that Iraq did 9/11.

You may have a tendency to mock the heavens themselves with your games... but you have the correct narrative on this thing. China is not the issue (heck it's an astroturfed argument anyway & probably is being used as part of a "play off Indian peasant workers vs Chinese peasant workers" scheme)... the West has had a LOT of issues, getting progressively worse, long before this virus ever emerged. Climate Change has been mentioned a few times in this thread... consider the latest Michael Moore documentary on how "the West" has "chosen" to deal with the issue (basically make rich men richer whilst burning down forests) for decades.

Yes, one of my plans for 0.98 (after the 0.97 "People's Beta" is released) will be to turn the low intensity campaign concept of @puje "up to eleven" (or, I suppose more appropriately, "down to one") with a campaign based, in part, on the Bing West book... a single platoon, a bunch of irregulars, a large map & lot's of skirmishes/patrols. The (almost ridiculously compact) book must be somewhere in the house @Erwin... it'll turn up eventually. I only started chapter two before it got misplaced but I'm already impressed with the Police Officer (Lam?).

I recently purchased a copy of Bing West's "The Village"... although it was a smaller copy than I was expecting & has since been misplaced... sigh. https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/swj-book-review-village-bing-west

As per 'Heaven & Earth', that's the "ME soundscape" mod alongside (subdued) HQS voices.

Continuing with the "Advanced Tutorial campaign"... ... I know I should be getting back to the jungles of SE Asia, but I'm quite enjoying this foray into WW2 Italy.

Clearly, with the whole "Constellations in CM are upside down" debacle, you could probably have done with an Astronomy degree... which reminds me I need to run by you a great idea for CM3! I feel we need a "Maintaining the Grooming Standard" button to repeatedly click... if players click fast enough they can power up the Grooming Standard bar & earn extra XP points for their units.

The graphs you posted indeed show we will hit a million confirmed at some point in the Summer... which is all that I claimed. As for everything else... I have little interest in models or theories about medical miracles or predictions about hospitals or anything else. I have repeatedly mocked the "experts" who told us not to worry about Covid & instead worry about "stigma" & "seasonal flu". All the resulting millions of deaths & economic chaos that has been, & will be, caused was entirely preventable. As to a sense of perspective, although I may agree with your perspective (perhaps I would go further & say I consider "abortion" to be nothing more than recreational human sacrifice) I must point out how utterly useless "perspective" can be when used as a prediction tool. Consider this "Conservative" article written in late February... we could probably agree it has a sense of perspective but, in hindsight, it seems to be somewhat lacking in predictive power. Meanwhile, at the same time, I was telling my family that the schools would close when the UK death toll reached a hundred... on the 18th of March the UK death toll hit a hundred & the school closures were announced that day. Useful predictions need to take into account observed reality & (often irrational) human behaviour.

I was talking about the scenario "Rats in Gabes". I have the modpack already.

I indeed have dropbox.

The campaign that this scenario teased was apparently released but I can't seem to find it anywhere. Anyone have a link?

Anybody have this?

Millions will definitely die, that's no longer a fact in doubt. Even at the current rate we'll hit a million "confirmed" in June... and logically as the global South moves into Winter that rate should increase (we're already seeing the Brazil death toll start to rise). The current point in time, with nowhere on Earth having Winter conditions & lockdowns near everywhere, is probably the best it's going to get for quite awhile.

I'm still not too sure what happened with the sniper team or my mortar OP getting spotted (and the thing with setting up the mortar too close to the house was just embarrasing)... but overall it went better than I expected. I treated the Yanks like a really, really poor Syrian force & that seemed to end up being an appropriate mindset. Next mission looks trickier... I expect I'll mess up more in that one!

My first CMFI video...

Probably... but that rarely seems to detract Banks or mega-corporations. The Fed has purchased one and a half trillion dollars worth of stocket assets already (and, obviously, will purchase a lot more)... it seems to me that some small business relief would be far less than that. As an aside I always find it odd how people only become "Fiscally Conservative" when discussing helping the middle/working class. As to the "wheelbarrows of doom", no-one is advocating that a foreign power defeats the US in a war & steals the US gold reserves... well okay some are... but very few. Either way, somebody has to unlock their country first & conduct a mass-experiment with re-infection & viral loads & HIV-like spikes and mysterious strokes/heart attacks & all the other stuff we don't understand yet. If the US wants to do that first... I'm kinda okay with that (at the very least it appears the US strain is less dangerous the European one).

Presumably as long as they can find someone to keep typing the zero's... heck they could train a dog to do it (they're immune right?). The lockdowns obviously won't last forever but our governments, OUR governments, should provide us enough of OUR money to tide us over. They have no problem bailing out their penthouse friends (again and again and again and again)... why not us for a change? I understand our lives are not as valuable... but feel they should at least try to avoid rubbing our faces in that fact.

This is the real issue... your Government is asking you to stay at home but not providing you the means to do so. "Do you know the name of the 80% program in the UK? It's intriguing to me; how it's financed." No idea about jargon or terminology... I imagine it's "financed" like every other government program... by someone typing a few zero's & pressing enter. Serious question: When a bank or a mega-corporation asks for (and inevitably recieves) a bail-out, do you think they ever ask themselves or care how it is "financed"? @sburke Forgive my "cut the Gordian knot" style... I have little spare time myself & forget many of you are probably bored. It is true you did not explicitly advocate against a bail out for the people... however I think if someone is (justifiably) worried about the economy then they may respond better to a direct discussion on that topic. PS I'm not prepared to discuss scenes from some TV movie about North Korea I haven't seen... but I imagine the movie doesn't really change the real life facts.

Boomers... @kevinkin If the economy is hurting too much then why not just pump up the economy... I've lost count how many times banks or mega-corporations have recieved bailouts, no questions asked, in my lifetime... in fact they're recieving such bailouts right now. Why not, for once, demand something similiar for yourselves? Why do UK citizens get 80% of their salary paid whilst you lot get a measly $1200 tax rebate thing? I very much doubt the UK is richer than the US? @sburke As to "trust the experts" you & I, together, have already established that North Korea has superior experts... many of our current crop of wonderful experts were telling us to ignore this novel virus & worry about "seasonal flu" not so many weeks ago. This all got forgotten about quickly didn't it? Perhaps it would be more productive to help out your fellow citizens by advocating for a financial bailout on their behalf?

I realize what I was doing wrong now... yep I've got them too. With that guide & this new knowledge, I should be able to navigate more ably through these TOE's. Thanks!

Hmm if seems likely this option was removed as part of the engine 3/4 upgrade, I recall a similiar "equipment quality" option in CMSF... but that's no longer present in CMSF2. I'll have to have a rethink. Thanks @MOS:96B2P that should make things a little easier to navigate!

I've decided to purchase a WW2 game & CMFI with its vast number of environments, nations, vehicles & weapons seemed the obvious purchase. However with that complexity has come some confusion... is there a basic guide on which toe's are available when & where? For instance, is it possible to get US troops with tropical uniforms & bolt action rifles? I see the tropical uniforms are in the brz's & the M1903A3's are mentioned in the manual... but I can't seem to find them in the scenario editor.