Hope youre enjoying the unusual weather for this time of year and can take a moment out to be thankful to Donald Trump whose likeky responsible.

Good luck getting China to play ball when Europe gets its house in order and the great USA is run by sensible climate change deniers or non-deniers.

While reading this a coal power plant is under construction in india baby.

I must have the covid.

For all you Friday the Thirteenth fans:

One of those dates when you can't tell that americans have it wrong again

BTM may recall why I find this, otherwise interesting, story so infuriating

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54951648

The paragraph with the 90% comment is both wrong and misleading?

I missed off the title which didn't help.

It's the placebo effect. and it's not that mysterious.

https://youtu.be/ZnpnBYgGARE

English is not his first language so he is not the easiest to listen to, but he makes points everyone needs to understand.

Cliffs.

Covid 19 is the disease. A positive pcr test doesnt indicate one has the disease. It may mean one has some amount or fragments of the disease- causing-virus in their nose or throath.
The WHO piblished Dr. John Ioannidis paper. The science suggests lockdowns dont work. There is no real hard science for mask wearing.

Sweden will look like a genius in a world that went collectively insane and continued to ignore science and reason in 2020/2021. Then the world will go on. With or without you.

Might book in for a flu vaccine when i get a chance. I was knocked dead last january from the flu or covid-19. Im not sure but it must have been one of the two. Or, ill take my chances. That seems like more fun tbh.

Covid is to be taken very seriously. Sure enough one could have a small chance to get into trouble. But there may be longer term consequences, the virus can still also mutate further and become harder to eradicate by single vaccines. So it is important to keep the number of people that experience it as little as possible and not take a stupid no problem attitude. You see the problem is not just yourself at 0.4%, it is the 100 other people in your probability tree/branch that get it because you did not say no to its attack on you. And then being reckless allowed 5 people to die later because of you and a small chance the thing became hard to solve by mutating. If you have 10^16 viral particles out there trying rare things its worse than having 10^14.

Since we do not yet know everything about this disease we cannot take the fact its not very lethal lightly. It is actually unacceptable to have lost 250k people in US and even 100per day in Greece currently because some mfers take it lightly and have to have their fun no matter what. All it takes to stop the chinese communist party virus (this is what i call it lol not the China virus, if you have to call it something other than covid 19) is to :


1) Lock down everything for 2 months everywhere civilized society exists in the planet. Have police and military monitor violators in streets and issuing big financial and ultimately time in prison penalties. $100 and mask packet on first time. $300 next time, then $1000, then prison. If anyone has any emergency the case is reevaluated.

2) Print money in all countries of the world and issue 2k monthly income to all that have lost their job or say 50% of society for 1 to 2 months.

3) Use 20% of society in 10% and 10% sets to run the essential services while 80% is locked down working from home. First 10% runs hospitals, police, agriculture, food processing and delivery services and industries and other essential services that are hard to shut down like energy and essential chemical instustries. They do not come in contact with their families or their families are monitored. After 1 month the other 10% replaces them. Good luck to virus.

4) Nobody travels in planes or ships outside country without being tested. Also they are isolated on arrival for a few days and monitored.

5) Continue to develop vaccines and treatments and testing equipment like there is no tomorrow. 5 tril to it. Force industries to work on it.

6) Open up system again when numbers are so much down that tracing can happen now better. Initiate testing to all students and teachers once a day for schools to operate because 1$ per test kit is available (thats what the 5 tril above does for you, it saves 20 trill later to the economy).

7) Masks everywhere and restrict all social gathering for 6 months. Continue to pay all affected people some essential minimum. Ask people that continue to be profitable every month to direct 30-50% of their profits to a fund to help the fraction of society that is is suffering due to closure. Give them incentives in the future for such conduct today.

8) Bill China 10 tril$ on behalf of all planet for not containing it and locking down all their people and foreigners from leaving the country with proper control of health once they knew about it in early December.

9) Fine to death all mfers that propagate lies in any country. Vote down all ahole leaders that do not behave rationally and lie. All civilized countries join together and condemn all mfer leaders that do not cooperate and saction the facking hell their interests everywhere.

10) Six months later all economies are restarted nearly 70% and 100% over a year and continue to monitor situation everywhere. Vaccinate only after very confident, start with high risk people of young age, then vulnerable groups and doctors, etc, then rest of people. Win!

This is all so easy in a rational world and impossible in ours. Guess why we facking need scientific society like a decade ago.

Masque, thanks for your contribution. The ifr is wrong for me and everyone under 70. The science about lockdowns is mounting and the sience on masks is massively weak. I disagree you based purely on the science and its unfortunate to read what i just have coming from you. Ill respond better when i have the time.

Missed cancer diagnoses due to hysteria and fear, world starvation, job losses, substance abuse, domestic abuse, should be taken more seriously, All of which are direct consequences of taking covid very seriously.





Sure enough one could have a small chance to get into trouble. But there may be longer term consequences, the virus can still also mutate further and become harder to eradicate by single vaccines.

Viruses become more sucessful for their survival when the mutate by becoming less deadly. Hence, the four coronaviruses most people cant name that are endemic to us we could care less about.


You see the problem is not just yourself at 0.4%

We have a 5 in 10000 chance of dying, so 0.05% if under 65. More kids have died from the flu than from covid19 this year, side fact.


,

Since we do not yet know everything about this disease we cannot take the fact its not very lethal lightly. It is actually unacceptable to have lost 250k.

Dying due to covid19 and dying with covid 19 are different. Dying due to covid19 and dying after having a positive pcr for a coronavirus is worlds apart. As are hospitilzations driven by covid 19 compared to hospitilizations who incidentally tested postive on a pcr test. Look into those 250k now knowing a positive pcr for sars-cov-2 does not mean you have covid-19. Also note how many people die in the USA everyday and compare that number to those who actuall die of covid 19. Look into their median age also.






4) Nobody travels in planes or ships outside country without being tested. Also they are isolated on arrival for a few days and monitored.

The virus is in every land in the world and was so in no time. Limiting travel is futile and so silly.

Ill cite scientific papers on how lockdowns have minimal effect on deaths per million if you want to talk about it.

What science on masks do you need?

It's airborne. It lingers in the air. Your mouth disperses virus into air.

I'm in Victoria, Australia - we've had one of the longest lockdowns in the world but we've gone from 700+ cases per day to 0 cases and 0 active cases in less than 6 months. Our population is 6.36 million.

Why?

Partly lockdown. Partly masks. Masks. everywhere. Including outside when you're walking the dog or walking to the liquor store or falling asleep on park bench with single malt in hand.

What sort of question is that?

The rest is all conjecture above.

Note how the cases began dropping in australia as it entered out of its coldest months of the year. That is much more likely why.

*Deaths..not cases. You have the exact opposite trend to us here in the northern hemisphere. Some of us here locked down at exactly the wrong time, in the summer when the epidemic had ended

USA! USA! USA!

Two-year old genius solves trolly problem:

The weather had nothing to do with it.

We beat the virus during one of the coldest months of the year in Melbourne, where 99% of the virus was.

Our summer has shifted over the last few years (warming related perhaps) - it doesn't actually get warm now until January/February.

Some art for Brian:

Very British. Well done.

And from Portland, Oregon:

Which month out of interest.
Beat the virus ?
Yes, its a seasonal virus. Look at the death trend of the UK and compare it to that of sustralia. South africa is another place worth comparing to those two. Then check Peru, who had a militaristic lockdown but check their trend.

There is enough data currently available that your confidence should be just slightly above 0.

Unless you are just ranting because you are sad and want to go outside again. If that is the case, then your confidence should be approximately 200%.

PairTheBoard

I'm confident enough with my knowledge of this virus to not say anything unlikely. I do want to go outside. If for example, it was not in best interest to be left outside, i would stay inside, unlike the masses who are staying inside because they are told to based on some above or below 0 confidence. Theres not enough to data to say whether its safe to go outside, therefore stay inside, accept and don't go raving.