Lessons from COVID-19

[Sigmetnow]

XKCD Comic (@xkcdComic)5/13/20, 6:21 PM
Common Cold xkcd.com/2306/ m.xkcd.com/2306/

Alt/title text: "Not even metapneumovirus, easily the common cold virus with the coolest name, warrants our sympathy. Colds suck. No mercy."

https://twitter.com/xkcdcomic/status/1260696791726448641

[gerontocrat]

And here is the Lesson From Down Under

It's not BAU - it's even worse BAU

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/15/the-coronavirus-is-terrible-and-its-good-we-are-all-in-this-together-except-for-everyone-who-isnt

[Tom_Mazanec]

Will Everything Be Different Now?
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/05/20/will-everything-be-different-now/

I have a slightly different idea.  To prepare for the next unpredictable crisis, perhaps we should do what we can to make sure that nearly every business and person in the country has a three-month buffer to subsist on if the economy should come to a complete standstill again.

No more being highly leveraged, living on edge.  No being steeped in debt, so that even a week’s pause in business means financial ruin.   The top 85 percent of the economy should be able to survive for three months on savings, with no need for multi-trillion-dollar government bail outs, hand-outs, or loans.  Each person and business could be encouraged to think of being prepared in this way as his or her civic duty.

Civic duty?  Who thinks that way?  We should.  Too many people don’t.

[Sigmetnow]

How to memorably illustrate two-meter social distancing.

Evan Hadfield on Twitter: "The Canadian metric system”
https://mobile.twitter.com/evan_hadfield/status/1262795831444471809
And others...   More at the link.

[Neven]

CJ Hopkins at Consent Factory:

Brave New Normal (Part 2)



(...)

In order to understand how this works, imagine for a moment that you’re one of these people who are normally skeptical of the government and the media, and that you consider yourself an anti-authoritarian, or at least a friend of the working classes, and now you are beginning to realize that there is no Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu (just as there were no “WMDs,” no “Russian hackers,” no “pee-tape,” etc.), and so it dawns on you that you’ve been behaving like a hysterical, brainwashed, fascist minion of the very establishment you supposedly oppose … or at the very least like an abject coward.

Imagine how you might feel right now.

You would probably feel pretty foolish, right? And more than a little ashamed of yourself. So … OK, what would you do about that? Well, you would have a couple of options.

Option Number One would be admit what you did, apologize to whomever you have to, and try like hell not to do it again. Not many people are going to choose this option.

Most people are going to choose Option Number Two, which is to desperately try to deny what they did, or to desperately rationalize what they did (and in many cases are still actively doing). Now, this is not as easy at it sounds, because doing that means they will have to continue to believe (or at least pretend to believe) that there is an Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu which is going to kill hundreds of millions of people the moment we stop locking everyone down, and forcing them to “social distance,” and so on. They will have to continue to pretend to believe that this Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu exists, even though they know it doesn’t.

And this is where that Orwellian “doublethink” comes in. People (i.e., these “anti-authoritarians,” not to mention the majority of the “normal” public) are not going to want to face the fact that they’ve been behaving like a bunch of fascists (or cowards) for no justifiable reason whatsoever. So, what they are going to do instead is desperately pretend that their behavior was justified and that the propaganda they have been swallowing, and regurgitating, was not propaganda, but rather, “the Truth.”

In other words, in order to avoid their shame, they are going to do everything in their power to reify the official narrative and delegitimize anyone attempting to expose it as the fiction that it is. They are going to join in with the corporate media that are calling us “extremists,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” and other such epithets. They’re going to accuse those of us on the Left of aligning with “far-Right Republican militias,” and “Boogaloo accelerationists,” and of being members of the Russian-backed “Querfront,” and assorted other horrible things meant to scare errant leftists into line.

Above all, they are going to continue to insist, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that we are “under attack” by a “killer virus” which could “strike again at any time,” and so we have to maintain at least some level of totalitarianism and paranoia, or else … well, you know, the terrorists win.

It is this reification of the official narrative by those too ashamed to admit what they did (and try to determine why they did it), and not the narrative or the propaganda itself, that will eventually establish the “Brave New Normal” as “reality” (assuming the process works as smoothly as it did with the “War on Terror,” the “War on Populism,” and the “Cold War” narratives). The facts, the data, the “science” won’t matter. Reality is consensus reality … and a new consensus is being formed at the moment.

There is still a chance (right now, not months from now) for these people (some of whom are rather influential) to stand up and say, “Whoops! I screwed up and went all Nazi there for a bit.” But I seriously doubt that is going to happen.

It’s much more likely that the Brave New Normal (or some intermittent, scaled-down version of it) will gradually become our new reality. People will get used to being occasionally “locked down,” and being ordered to wear masks, and not to touch each other, and to standing in designated circles and boxes, like they got used to the “anti-Terrorism measures,” and believing that Trump is a “Russian asset.” The coming economic depression will be blamed on the Alien-Terrorist-Death-Flu, rather than on the lockdown that caused it. Millions of people will be condemned to extreme poverty, or debt-enslaved for the rest of their lives, but they’ll be too busy trying to survive to mount any kind of broad resistance.

The children, of course, won’t know any better. They will grow up with their “isolation boxes,” and “protective barriers,” and “contact tracing,” and they will live in constant low-grade fear of another killer virus, or terrorist attack, or Russian-backed white supremacist uprising, or whatever boogeyman might next appear to menace the global capitalist empire, which, it goes without saying, will be just fine.

(...)

[etienne]

Interesting article from CJ Hopkins, part 1 is also interesting, but I can't put all the pieces together.

What bothers me most is that he says that lockdowns are there to reinforce the grip of the powerful on society, but Trump is an anti-lockdown.

I'm not sure that the picture is so easy to take, but I agree with the fact that governments have difficulties to recognize that they could have been wrong. When you start with "it's a flu", make a lockdown, try wide testing but don't find many cases so you stop doing it - but people willing to be tested still can't excepted if they have the right symptoms, than require masks without providing precises rules so that the police can decide if you're right or wrong, do some tracking without giving yourself the capacity to do it (restaurants will open soon, but they won't have to keep a track of who was there - don't need a name, just a phone number)... somehow it looks like they recommend what they have the capacity to offer... some steps must have been wrong, but if you can't discuss it, than you loose your credibility, people stop following your advises, an your policies - even the good ones - can only be implemented with the help of the police.

Where I live, people don't inform the Police when neighbors don't respect the rules, even Policemen living here don't do it, but at work, policemen can be annoying, I guess they need to show some results.

What worries me most is that science doesn't seem to be an issue. Why should airlines not be obliged to keep free seats, but restaurants have to ? Why were supermarket allowed to open the hobby section while hobby shops, bookstores... had to stay closed. Why do we save and open first companies that are worsening AGW ? If you can sit for two hours in a plane, why can't you in a movie-theater ? Why are kids playing together on the street, but not in school ? Cases are really very low now, being closer to one-another with masks outside of a building seems to be relatively safe, so what's the issue ? Why is it not possible to provide general guidelines, why is it not possible to explain what is safe and what is not ? Why is it not possible if some areas have no cases ? I feel that if people have to hide in order to meet makes it more dangerous, you can't open the window if you are having fun with friends, you would hear it from the outside. There is also an extra stupid question, why do some people feel that they are so important that they go to work with fever ?

[Archimid]

What bothers me most is that he says that lockdowns are there to reinforce the grip of the powerful on society, but Trump is an anti-lockdown.

I think this phenomenon is explained by the following meme:



If leaders act swiftly and decisively against epidemics, nothing happens. The leaders are successful but the measures are seen as draconian and unnecessary, precisely because nothing happened. A victory against the virus is defeat at the polls.

If leaders do not act swiftly and mass casualty events happen, then they can act because people get terrified and demand action.

Trump, Musk, and other influencers are betting the sacrifice of health care workers will succeed, so they are attempting to gain "credibility" on the backs of their sacrifice. They know one day in the not too distant future this will be over, like every pandemic before this one. Regardless of the body count, THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

At that point, they will say "see, I told you so" and most people will want to believe them regardless of the body count. Those who worked the front lines will be muzzled and forgotten. Those with dead families know but mourning is weird. Mourning is a very easy process to manipulate by fake "I told you so".

Is their bet a good one? Yes it is. We will sacrifice thousands of people and many healthcare workers will die, but this will eventually be over and we will want to forget it. Trump, Musk and other influencers will be there to reap the rewards while causing so much death.

[etienne]

Good article in Time about College graduating young adults in 2020
https://time.com/5839765/college-graduation-2020/

How COVID-19 Will Shape the Class of 2020 For the Rest of Their Lives
Elissa DeFranceschi, Drexel University Class of 2020, with her boyfriend in Philadelphia Elissa DeFranceschi, Drexel University Class of 2020, with her boyfriend in Philadelphia
Hannah Beier
By Charlotte Alter | Photographs by Hannah Beier
May 21, 2020 6:57 AM EDT

They call it commencement because it’s supposed to be a new beginning.

College graduation is one of life’s last clean transitions, a final passage from adolescence to adulthood that is predictable in ways other transitions rarely are. Relationships end with breakups or death, jobs often end with quitting or firing, but college is one of the only things in life that ends with a fresh start. Except when it doesn’t.

[etienne]

If the way lockdown were organised where quite similar, the opening is quite different and much more politically oriented. Movie-theaters, air travel and pubs open before playgrounds in Luxembourg, it's because social distancing is quite difficult between kids.

[NeilT]

If leaders act swiftly and decisively against epidemics, nothing happens. The leaders are successful but the measures are seen as draconian and unnecessary, precisely because nothing happened. A victory against the virus is defeat at the polls.

If leaders do not act swiftly and mass casualty events happen, then they can act because people get terrified and demand action.

I would put that slightly differently.  I would say that once terrified, they will accept action which could not have been contemplated before.

The first part is not supposition. It has a clear history and very recently.

In the years following Y2K I was challenged many times that "we spent all that money and nothing happened", therefore it was clearly a fraud.

With this mindset we are doomed anyway. There was enough clear evidence that Y2K existed. There was never going to be 100% success and that proved to be true.  However there were so few issues that it missed the notice of the masses.

Let's face facts, the general body of public don't want to pay to fix their problems, they want to pay people to tell them their problem is going away.

That is not a subtle difference although it might sound similar.

[Archimid]

I would put that slightly differently.  I would say that once terrified, they will accept action which could not have been contemplated before.

Correct. Wuhan/Iran/Italy hospitals and morgues overwhelmed, "it's just a flu", keep shopping.
NYC hospitals and morgues overwhelmed, its a pandemic, close everything.

 The same thing will happen with climate change. With both, there are points of no return.

[Neven]

One parallel between AGW and SARS-CoV-19 is the focus on adaptation rather than mitigation. Yesterday in bed, I thought about how much better it would be to spend those billions of dollars/euros for vaccine research on population health and resilience (sustainable agriculture, etc). But the system decides otherwise.

A population healthy in body and mind can prevent and cope with most things, especially pandemics. But the system wants sick, dependent people that are easily frightened by death.

[bluice]

Neven, a healthy diet, sustainable agriculture and functional well resourced health care system are all important goals. However Covid-19 is caused by a virus, not the lack of such things. We can eat healthy and exercise all we want but Covid would still infect and kill people.

If/when vaccine is available we can start to vaccinate risk groups (=old people) which will immediately reduce mortality and remove pressure from health care. Reduced mortality will allow governments to lift restrictions. Most importantly it will remove fear and increase confidence and thus enable the economy to recover.  I think it's fair to say that the worst Covid-19 impact is economical.

I don't believe for a second there is a "system" wanting this or that. Truth is much scarier. World is a web of conflicting interests pulling each way and major issues are mitigated simply because something must be done when they hit the fan. To prevent pandemics (or a catastrophic climate change) requires preemptive action, which is hard. Unfortunately some of the most powerful countries are utterly inept even to mitigate the problem.

[etienne]

Well, I think I agree with Neven. If we had been reasonable, hadn't put the older generation in retirement home, the younger generation in nursery, so that both parents can work like crazy, I think we would have been able to handle much better this pandemic.
Instead of going toward a more sustainable way of life, I feel that we are running toward a major crash. Well, good friends are getting good contracts from the state.

[Neven]

Neven, a healthy diet, sustainable agriculture and functional well resourced health care system are all important goals. However Covid-19 is caused by a virus, not the lack of such things.

Come on, bluice. The impact a virus can have is in large part determined by factors like general population health, demographics, etc. If your population has been systematically weakened for decades through profitable addictions, overprocessing of food and unsustainable soil-destroying agriculture, it becomes much easier for a virus - which is a natural occurrence - to wreak havoc and (help) induce panics that then cause further havoc.

We can eat healthy and exercise all we want but Covid would still infect and kill people.

Yes, that's what diseases tend to do. We would do well to accept that instead of declaring a war on death.

If/when vaccine is available we can start to vaccinate risk groups (=old people) which will immediately reduce mortality and remove pressure from health care. Reduced mortality will allow governments to lift restrictions. Most importantly it will remove fear and increase confidence and thus enable the economy to recover.  I think it's fair to say that the worst Covid-19 impact is economical.

To me, focussing on a vaccine is misplaced, if only because of the massive conflict of interest due to industry pressures. But I agree that it will bring psychological relief, now that we're mired in this overhyped situation.

I don't believe for a second there is a "system" wanting this or that. Truth is much scarier. World is a web of conflicting interests pulling each way and major issues are mitigated simply because something must be done when they hit the fan. To prevent pandemics (or a catastrophic climate change) requires preemptive action, which is hard. Unfortunately some of the most powerful countries are utterly inept even to mitigate the problem.

Of course they are inept, as they have been made inept, and are now willfully inept. Because there is a system that wants something, namely the further growth and further concentration of concentrated wealth. Everything that has to do with this SARS-CoV-2 crisis (its coming about, its impact, the reaction to it, the consequences) has been directly caused or indirectly influenced by this system. The main reason it is hard to prevent these things - for instance, by making populations more healthy physically and mentally, so they become more independent - is because it would be bad for concentrated wealth.

Hence the castrating expression: How ya gonna pay fer it (if you need to pay me first)?

[blumenkraft]

declaring a war on death.

Try to hold your breath for 5 minutes.

The moment your reflexes kick in and make you breathe, that's the war on death every living thing is declaring.

[bluice]

Come on, bluice. The impact a virus can have is in large part determined by factors like general population health, demographics, etc. If your population has been systematically weakened for decades through profitable addictions, overprocessing of food and unsustainable soil-destroying agriculture, it becomes much easier for a virus - which is a natural occurrence - to wreak havoc and (help) induce panics that then cause further havoc.

Correct, but that is a massive if. When was the point in time people were healthier and more resistant to disease than nowadays? With the exception of the US with its disastrous health care industry people are living longer than ever. In fact we are panicking because we are so used to NOT dying to a contagious disease. Early/mid 20th century people still regularly died to small pox, diphteria, measles, TB etc. etc.

I do agree the comparison between present day and last century is a bit unfair. It's not either-or. We could have used all our medical knowledge and technology AND better sustainable general health to build a more resilient society.

Of course they are inept, as they have been made inept, and are now willfully inept. Because there is a system that wants something, namely the further growth and further concentration of concentrated wealth. Everything that has to do with this SARS-CoV-2 crisis (its coming about, its impact, the reaction to it, the consequences) has been directly caused or indirectly influenced by this system. The main reason it is hard to prevent these things - for instance, by making populations more healthy physically and mentally, so they become more independent - is because it would be bad for concentrated wealth.

Hence the castrating expression: How ya gonna pay fer it (if you need to pay me first)?

There obviously is a part of our society whether you call it 1% or The Concentrated Wealth or whatever that is out of touch with the realities of the rest of us. No question about it.

I don't like treating them as a one single entity however as it's too obvious people like Soros, Putin, Trump, Gates or Murdoch are all part of this establishment but have nevertheless completely different and conflicting interests. To group them all as one running a secretive system is too close to conspiracy theory or marxist class war IMO. It's more like a feudal society or 19th century great power game where the Powerful fight each other for glory and the small people get trampled by their war machines. A history repeating.

[gerontocrat]

An Old Lesson re-learnt - To survive The Empire must give The Peepul their Bread & Circuses.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/29/take-that-covid-19-you-cant-stop-the-compulsory-emotional-juggernaut-that-is-footy

[Neven]

There obviously is a part of our society whether you call it 1% or The Concentrated Wealth or whatever that is out of touch with the realities of the rest of us. No question about it.

I don't like treating them as a one single entity however as it's too obvious people like Soros, Putin, Trump, Gates or Murdoch are all part of this establishment but have nevertheless completely different and conflicting interests. To group them all as one running a secretive system is too close to conspiracy theory or marxist class war IMO. It's more like a feudal society or 19th century great power game where the Powerful fight each other for glory and the small people get trampled by their war machines. A history repeating.

There are a handful of pundits, the most known among them being Anand Ghiridaradas, who discuss the problem of concentrated wealth, but almost all of them talk about 'the rich', being out of touch, etc. Last year or so, Joe Biden stated that the rich shouldn't be demonised and I agreed with him. Of course, he said it because he is a loyal servant of the rich, but I still agreed with him.

Because 'the rich' aren't the problem. The problem is their wealth. We think that people are in control of everything, but actually it's the wealth that is in control. The rich are just temporary stewards. It doesn't matter if they are out of touch or not, they are the servants of their wealth. Their wealth owns them.

And what their wealth wants, is to get bigger and eat up the wealth of other servants. It may seem as if these patches of wealth have 'completely different and conflicting interests' , as you call it, but they all want the same thing: Grow and get further concentrated.

This entity or phenomenon comes about as soon as a large enough group of people join together in some enterprise (like a society), but it's not a conscious or intelligent being, which is why it ends up destroying itself at the end of each cycle.

This isn't about the rich, it's about their wealth. It needs to be capped, so it cannot grow endlessly and destroy itself.

[nanning]

Dear Neven, capping will not work because our whole society is now built on a social hierarchy where your status/successfulness is measured by the amount of accumulated material wealth. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence)

I think you have to go one step further.

In my opinion it is material wealth (=affluence) that is the problem. Affluence (always having/getting more than you need, disposable income) is unsustainable and destructive for human society and living nature. In living nature (all other lifeforms) there is only, for some, temporary/seasonal affluence/wealth (food/shelter/safety/water).

People must stop with having the incentive to accumulate material wealth. That means that many aspects from society (status in material wealth hierarchy), culture and economic systems must change. That will not happen without the whole globalised high-tech civilisation crashing. Which is imminent (<10 yeas imo).

In the end it all boils down to the use of (high) technology and lack of responsibility/awareness for the wider consequences of its use (morality w.r.t. all other lifeforms). Our use of tech is because we think we have supremacy (we are 'higher', better) over all of living nature, over all other lifeforms, over all other leaves-on-the-tree-of-life. Our high-tech acts as Agent Orange on The Tree-of-Life.

[etienne]

Maybe it would be easier to limit the size of the companies, but technology makes that people all want the same product, we have the same problem with fashion, most teenagers want the same t-shirt, I was never able to convince my kids to design their t-shirt themselves, and when buying organic cotton ones, they only agree with the plain ones.

[gerontocrat]

Too much is invested in the pre-Covid economy to prevent a determination to return to BAU

"I'm back!" Air pollution in China returns to "normal".

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/03/air-pollution-in-china-back-to-pre-covid-levels-and-europe-may-follow
Air pollution in China back to pre-Covid levels and Europe may follow
Cleaner skies were a silver lining of pandemic but data indicates air quality receding as lockdowns eased

“The rapid rebound in air pollution and coal consumption levels across China is an early warning of what a smokestack industry-led rebound could look like,” said Crea’s lead analyst, Lauri Myllyvirta. “Highly polluting industries have been faster to recover from the crisis than the rest of the economy. It is essential for policymakers to prioritise clean energy.”

The energy consultancy group Wood Mackenzie predicts China’s oil demand will recover to near normal levels in the second quarter of 2020.

In Wuhan, the city at the centre of the epidemic, NO2 levels are now just 14% lower than last year, having briefly dropped by almost half. In Shanghai, the latest levels are 9% higher than last year

[sidd]

America's Finest News Source: unexpected death, grief and loss

"they had left their elderly relative Beverly Foley to die in a nursing home, but not like this. "

"we figured we’d leave her there and forget about her until she died, obviously"

"I thought I’d at least see her one more time, next year, on her birthday."

"heartbroken that they were legally not allowed to attend the funeral that most of them would have skipped."

https://local.theonion.com/family-left-elderly-grandmother-to-die-in-nursing-home-1843922346


sidd

[blumenkraft]

I think the people in both pictures are tools of the ruling class. Divide and rule...

[wili]

The world's 25 richest just made over a quarter trillion dollars in just the last two months

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/05/22/billionaires-zuckerberg-bezos/

[nanning]

wili, that hyperlink is full of facebook identifications. You should cut it off from the question mark onward.
When I enter the cleaned up link in the browser (firefox) I get this working link without identifiers:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/05/22/billionaires-zuckerberg-bezos/#5f6d137ed610

That's $60,000,000,000 per person per year.

Wow, those guys (&dolls?) must be really hard workers.
Good that our governments are helping them out with our money.

Is this what they call "earned income"? Are these people what's called "The hard working American"?

Lesson from COVID-19: don't try so hard, because the system is rigged!

[wili]

Thanks, nan

[gerontocrat]

Lesson from COVID-19: don't try so hard, because the system is rigged!

Shock horror, amazement.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/10/its-not-capitalism-why-are-global-financial-markets-zooming-up

'It's not capitalism': why are global financial markets zooming up?

“It’s quite sickening to see Mr Powell bail out Wall Street types at the expense of the man on the street,” he said. “Socialise the losses, privatise the gains. It’s not capitalism.”

Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser of the insurance giant Allianz, says massive Fed support was not just propping up unproductive “zombie companies” but risks creating “zombie markets” which are so distorted that capital is not used properly. “It also adds to the disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street [and] worsens wealth inequality,” he says. Damien Klassen of Nucleus Wealth in Melbourne says the feeling that investors could not lose is stacked with risk and moral hazard. “It’s OK if the money created by central banks goes into productive things like infrastructure but it has no value if it goes into bidding up asset prices. That’s where the moral hazard comes in..

...the current action on stock markets appears to be totally disconnected from the real world economy.

[gerontocrat]

After this I think a visit to the foul language thread is necessary

Are the Master of The Universe listening?  I rather think the answer is NO.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/17/pandemics-destruction-nature-un-who-legislation-trade-green-recovery
Pandemics result from destruction of nature, say UN and WHO

Experts call for legislation and trade deals worldwide to encourage green recovery[/b]
Pandemics such as coronavirus are the result of humanity’s destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as the devastation of forests and other wild places were still the driving forces behind the increasing number of diseases leaping from wildlife to humans, the leaders told the Guardian.

They are calling for a green and healthy recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular by reforming destructive farming and unsustainable diets.

A WWF report, also published on Wednesday, warns: “The risk of a new [wildlife-to-human] disease emerging in the future is higher than ever, with the potential to wreak havoc on health, economies and global security.”

WWF’s head in the UK said post-Brexit trade deals that fail to protect nature would leave Britain “complicit in increasing the risk of the next pandemic”.

High-level figures have issued a series of warnings since March, with the world’s leading biodiversity experts saying even more deadly disease outbreaks are likely in future unless the rampant destruction of the natural world is rapidly halted.

Earlier in June, the UN environment chief and a leading economist said Covid-19 was an “SOS signal for the human enterprise” and that current economic thinking did not recognise that human wealth depends on nature’s health.

“We have seen many diseases emerge over the years, such as Zika, Aids, Sars and Ebola and they all originated from animal populations under conditions of severe environmental pressures,” said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, head of the UN convention on biological diversity, Maria Neira, the World Health Organization director for environment and health, and Marco Lambertini, head of WWF International, in the Guardian article.

With coronavirus, “these outbreaks are manifestations of our dangerously unbalanced relationship with nature”, they said. “They all illustrate that our own destructive behaviour towards nature is endangering our own health – a stark reality we’ve been collectively ignoring for decades.

“Worryingly, while Covid-19 has given us yet another reason to protect and preserve nature, we have seen the reverse take place. From the Greater Mekong, to the Amazon and Madagascar, alarming reports have emerged of increased poaching, illegal logging and forest fires, while many countries are engaging in hasty environmental rollbacks and cuts in funding for conservation. This all comes at a time when we need it most.

The WWF report said 60-70% of the new diseases that have emerged in humans since 1990 came from wildlife. Over the same period, 178m hectares of forest have been cleared, equivalent to more than seven times the area of the UK.
[/size]

[Sigmetnow]

Lesson in leadership.

New York governor's final coronavirus briefing marks end of '111 days of hell'
For 111 consecutive days, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sat before PowerPoint slides and graphs of Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations in the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in America. On Friday, he delivered his final briefing of the crisis.

"Today, we have done a full 180, from worst to first," he said. "We are controlling the virus better than any state in the country and any nation on the globe."

An average of 25 people per day died in New York this week, he said. The number of people hospitalized with the virus was 1,284, the lowest number of the outbreak. ...

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/19/us/andrew-cuomo-final-coronavirus-briefing/index.html

[Pmt111500]

"what does not kill you makes you stronger"-phrase is starting to get some testing with this disease, as some cases seem to continue long after the initial fever. Are these cases future examples of a virus inducing autoimmune diseases or how can these be explained?

[gerontocrat]

"what does not kill you makes you stronger"-phrase is starting to get some testing with this disease, as some cases seem to continue long after the initial fever. Are these cases future examples of a virus inducing autoimmune diseases or how can these be explained?

That phrase is a heap of crap.

[jens]

Lessons from Covid-19 in my view have been the following:

* ecological crisis - from which corona ultimately derives from - has firmly hit the entire industrial civilization and nobody can say with a straight face any more that global problems don't affect them. Well, theoretically of course they *could* say, but deep down they would know it's not true.

* the era of uncertainty has been properly kick-started. A year ago nobody would have predicted covid-19, but here we are. Let's see, what will be happening a year from now onwards, etc. There won't be a "rest" for humanity any more. Just more and more problems keep coming with each passing year to deal with.

* fragmentation of the world has sped up. This has been a "test" or "warm-up" of countries locking themselves in, going into isolation, etc. We will see more and more of each country protecting themselves due to mounting global problems, with international order gradually breaking down.

* I don't think we have seen full economic effects yet as they keep mounting, but the gradual process of dismantling the global industrial civilization has started.

* as far as humans are concerned, they are hopeless as ever in grasping the implications of the situation, so nothing to see there. The majority of population think that "soon we will go back to normal and from there onwards it would be good life again". Well, they will be repeating the same thing after every climate and ecological problem we face literally till death.

[Sebastian Jones]

Lessons from Covid-19 in my view have been the following:

* ecological crisis - from which corona ultimately derives from - has firmly hit the entire industrial civilization and nobody can say with a straight face any more that global problems don't affect them. Well, theoretically of course they *could* say, but deep down they would know it's not true.
TRUE

* the era of uncertainty has been properly kick-started. A year ago nobody would have predicted covid-19, but here we are. Let's see, what will be happening a year from now onwards, etc. There won't be a "rest" for humanity any more. Just more and more problems keep coming with each passing year to deal with.
NOT TRUE- Johns Hopkins led three major pandemic preparation scenarios. They were so prescient that some think this pandemic is a conspiracy...

* fragmentation of the world has sped up. This has been a "test" or "warm-up" of countries locking themselves in, going into isolation, etc. We will see more and more of each country protecting themselves due to mounting global problems, with international order gradually breaking down.
TRUE

* I don't think we have seen full economic effects yet as they keep mounting, but the gradual process of dismantling the global industrial civilization has started.
TRUE The pandemic has exposed the fragility of the just-in-time global economic model.

* as far as humans are concerned, they are hopeless as ever in grasping the implications of the situation, so nothing to see there. The majority of population think that "soon we will go back to normal and from there onwards it would be good life again". Well, they will be repeating the same thing after every climate and ecological problem we face literally till death.
PARTLY TRUE.  Many people- here for example- are fully aware that the world has changed.

[jens]

* the era of uncertainty has been properly kick-started. A year ago nobody would have predicted covid-19, but here we are. Let's see, what will be happening a year from now onwards, etc. There won't be a "rest" for humanity any more. Just more and more problems keep coming with each passing year to deal with.
NOT TRUE- Johns Hopkins led three major pandemic preparation scenarios. They were so prescient that some think this pandemic is a conspiracy...


* as far as humans are concerned, they are hopeless as ever in grasping the implications of the situation, so nothing to see there. The majority of population think that "soon we will go back to normal and from there onwards it would be good life again". Well, they will be repeating the same thing after every climate and ecological problem we face literally till death.
PARTLY TRUE.  Many people- here for example- are fully aware that the world has changed.

Fair enough about the first point. I meant more in the sense of "general population". In mainstream the main critical prediction talked during 2019 with regards to 2020 was that "probably we would enter economic recession." But that was roughly it and fairly vague.

Even then it's probably very hard to predict what exactly is going to happen and when exactly even when you have various scenarios at hand. For example what would 2021, or 2022 look like?

About the second point, yes, people on this forum logically would be clearly above average in terms of awareness about the world situation. However, in everyday life in other spheres I have encountered plenty of what can be called "normalcy bias".

[Neven]

Here's another insightful piece by CJ Hopkins on how nothing is being learned from the Corona-crisis, and that the disproportionate reaction to it is leading the world straight into totalitarianism. The links can be found on the ConsentFactory website, and the bolded bits are by me:

Invasion of the New Normals

They’re here! No, not the pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We’re not being colonized by giant alien fruit. I’m afraid it is a little more serious than that. People’s minds are being taken over by a much more destructive and less otherworldly force … a force that transforms them overnight into aggressively paranoid, order-following, propaganda-parroting totalitarians.

You know the people I’m talking about. Some of them are probably your friends and family, people you have known for years, and who had always seemed completely rational, but who are now convinced that we need to radically alter the fabric of human society to protect ourselves from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or absolutely no symptoms at all) in over 95% of those infected, and that over 99.6% survive, which, it goes without saying, is totally insane.

I’ve been calling them “corona-totalitarians,” but I’m going to call them the “New Normals” from now on, as that more accurately evokes the pathologized-totalitarian ideology they are systematically spreading. At this point, I think it is important to do that, because, clearly, their ideological program has nothing to do with any actual virus, or any other actual public health threat. As is glaringly obvious to anyone whose mind has not been taken over yet, the “apocalyptic coronavirus pandemic” was always just a Trojan horse, a means of introducing the “New Normal,” which they’ve been doing since the very beginning.

The official propaganda started in March, and it reached full intensity in early April. Suddenly, references to the “New Normal” were everywhere, not only in the leading corporate media (e.g., CNN, NPR, CNBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Forbes, et al.), the IMF and the World Bank Group, the WEF, UN, WHO, CDC (and the list goes on), but also on the blogs of athletic organizations, global management consulting firms, charter school websites, and random YouTube videos.

The slogan has been relentlessly repeated (in a textbook totalitarian “big lie” fashion) for going on the past six months. We have heard it repeated so many times that many of us have forgotten how insane it is, the idea that the fundamental structure of society needs to be drastically and irrevocably altered on account of a virus that poses no threat to the vast majority of the human species.

And, make no mistake, that is exactly what the “New Normal” movement intends to do. “New Normalism” is a classic totalitarian movement (albeit with a pathological twist), and it is the goal of every totalitarian movement to radically, utterly transform society, to remake the world in its monstrous image.

That is what totalitarianism is, this desire to establish complete control over everything and everyone, every thought, emotion, and human interaction. The character of its ideology changes (i.e., Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc.), but this desire for complete control over people, over society, and ultimately life itself, is the essence of totalitarianism … and what has taken over the minds of the New Normals.

In the New Normal society they want to establish, as in every totalitarian society, fear and conformity will be pervasive. Their ideology is a pathologized ideology (as opposed to, say, the racialized ideology of the Nazis), so its symbology will be pathological. Fear of disease, infection, and death, and obsessive attention to matters of health will dominate every aspect of life. Paranoid propaganda and ideological conditioning will be ubiquitous and constant.

Everyone will be forced to wear medical masks to maintain a constant level of fear and an omnipresent atmosphere of sickness and death, as if the world were one big infectious disease ward. Everyone will wear these masks at all times, at work, at home, in their cars, everywhere. Anyone who fails or refuses to do so will be deemed “a threat to public health,” and beaten and arrested by the police or the military, or swarmed by mobs of New Normal vigilantes.

Cities, regions, and entire countries will be subjected to random police-state lockdowns, which will be justified by the threat of “infection.” People will be confined to their homes for up to 23-hours a day, and allowed out only for “essential reasons.” Police and soldiers will patrol the streets, stopping people, checking their papers, and beating and arresting anyone out in public without the proper documents, or walking or standing too close to other people, like they are doing in Melbourne, Australia, currently.

The threat of “infection” will be used to justify increasingly insane and authoritarian edicts, compulsory demonstration-of-fealty rituals, and eventually the elimination of all forms of dissent. Just as the Nazis believed they were waging a war against the “subhuman races,” the New Normals will be waging a war on “disease,” and on anyone who “endangers the public health” by challenging their ideological narrative. Like every other totalitarian movement, in the end, they will do whatever is necessary to purify society of “degenerate influences” (i.e., anyone who questions or disagrees with them, or who refuses to obey their every command). They are already aggressively censoring the Internet and banning their opponents’ political protests, and political leaders and the corporate media are systematically stigmatizing those of us who dare to challenge their official narrative as “extremists,” “Nazis,” “conspiracy theorists,” “covidiots,” “coronavirus deniers,” “anti-vaxxers,” and “esoteric” freaks. One German official even went so far as to demand that dissidents be deported … presumably on trains to somewhere in the East.

Despite this increasing totalitarianization and pathologization of virtually everything, the New Normals will carry on with their lives as if everything were … well, completely normal. They will go out to restaurants and the movies in their masks. They will work, eat, and sleep in their masks. Families will go on holiday in their masks, or in their “Personal Protective Upper-Body Bubble-Wear.” They will arrive at the airport eight hours early, stand in their little color-coded boxes, and then follow the arrows on the floor to the “health officials” in the hazmat suits, who will take their temperature through their foreheads and shove ten-inch swabs into their sinus cavities. Parents who wish to forego this experience will have the option to preventatively vaccinate themselves and their children with the latest experimental vaccine (after signing a liability waiver, of course) within a week or so before their flights, and then present the officials with proof of vaccination (and of their compliance with various other “health guidelines”) on their digital Identity and Public Health Passports, or subdermal biometric chips.

Children, as always, will suffer the worst of it. They will be terrorized and confused from the moment they are born, by their parents, their teachers, and by the society at large. They will be subjected to ideological conditioning and paranoid behavioral modification at every stage of their socialization … with fanciful reusable corporate plague masks branded with loveable cartoon characters, paranoia-inducing picture books for toddlers, and paranoid “social distancing” rituals, among other forms of psychological torture. This conditioning (or torture) will take place at home, as there will be no more schools, or rather, no public schools. The children of the wealthy will attend private schools, where they can be cost-effectively “socially-distanced.” Working class children will sit at home, alone, staring into screens, wearing their masks, their hyperactivity and anxiety disorders stabilized with anti-depressant medications.

And so on … I think you get the picture. I hope so, because I don’t have the heart to go on.

I pray this glimpse into the New Normal future has terrified and angered you enough to rise up against it before it is too late. This isn’t a joke, folks. The New Normals are serious. If you cannot see where their movement is headed, you do not understand totalitarianism. Once it starts, and reaches this stage, it does not stop, not without a fight. It continues to its logical conclusion. The way that usually happens is, people tell themselves it isn’t happening, it can’t be happening, not to us. They tell themselves this as the totalitarian program is implemented, step by step, one seemingly harmless step at a time. They conform, because, at first, the stakes aren’t so high, and their conformity leads to more conformity, and the next thing they know they’re telling their grandchildren that they had no idea where the trains were going.

If you have made it through to the end of this essay, your mind hasn’t been taken over yet … the New Normals clicked off around paragraph 2. What that means is that it is your responsibility to speak up, and to do whatever else you can, to stop the New Normal future from becoming a reality. You will not be rewarded for it. You will be ridiculed and castigated for it. Your New Normal friends will hate you for it. Your New Normal family will forsake you for it. The New Normal police might arrest you for it. It is your responsibility to do it anyway … as, of course, it is also mine.

[nanning]

We have heard it repeated so many times that many of us have forgotten how insane it is, the idea that the fundamental structure of society needs to be drastically and irrevocably altered on account of a virus that poses no threat to the vast majority of the human species.

Sorry Neven to pick this piece from the text but it stopped me for a moment to think.

Civilisation requires its " fundamental structure of society" "to be drastically and irrevocably altered" because of AGW/Biosphere collapse.
Not because of this virus!
This virus is nothing more than a consequence of our unaltered fundamental structure of society.

I hate to think that via mixed messages such as in the text you posted there's a possibility that virus-related doubts and fears will hinder the main process of mitigation and necessary fundamental change to the existential problem we face (0% survives).

[Neven]

Hopkins doesn't say that the fundamental structure of society does not need to be altered. He just says that it's insane to do it on account of this virus. I hope you notice that global capitalism doesn't think that's insane (otherwise it would get much less media attention, like AGW). The idea is to use this virus to alter society in a way that is more beneficial to global capitalism. That's why it's hyped 24/7 for more than 100 straight days (and counting), at the expense of everything else.

[nanning]

Lesson from COVID-19:

The average contemporary human acts when something threatens her/him and/or loved ones' health and stability in the short term e.g. a pandemic with lots of awareness (Mitigation: physical distancing, hygiene, mask wearing).

The average contemporary human does not act when something in the long term will hurt them and their loved ones, especially if there is still debate and they have to actively search out the threat e.g. AGW (Mitigation: stop emitting GHG).

I can understand why the virus is 'hyped' and AGW isn't. I also understand your point but I'm having trouble seeing the clear signals you see in all the noise and turbulence of associated interests and media coverage motivation. I am not sure if it is possible to calibrate the measuring of the signals. There are many very insane and malign powerful 'operators' (vested interests etc) and insanity is a hard to grasp factor until you know all the motives of that group of people and the difference between the vested interests.

From your above post I interpret that there are different vested interests with different views and that the AGW-mitigation-required fundamental changes are not the changes that you think will happen, because of the 'hyped' pandemic and the virus-mitigation-changes that vested interests 'force' on us.
To blow up he difference: It is about working towards an enlightened society (AGW mitigation etc) OR an enslaved and deprived society (the changes you fear or see).

Sorry Neven, to have implied in my previous post that the text you quoted is your text. I'll try to be more careful.

[bluice]

IMHO that article is a big steaming pile of horse shit.

[nanning]

bluice, that is not a humble opinion and you don't bring any arguments.

[Neven]

IMHO that article is a big steaming pile of horse shit.

In that case you are probably a New Normal. 

I can't help but worry about the Brave New World aspect of this pandemic hype. I'm going to have to read that book again.

[Neven]

Latour, in translation by Howles (i cannot find the original french yet): Economy as format

"It would certainly be a shame to lose too quickly all the benefit of what Covid-19 has revealed to be essential.  ... there is at least one thing that everyone has been able to grasp: something is wrong with the economy. First of all, of course, because it seems that it can be suspended in one fell swoop; it no longer has the appearance of an irreversible movement that can neither slow down, nor by any means stop, without risk of catastrophe. Next, because all those in lockdown have noticed that class relations, which were solemnly declared to have been abrogated, have become as visible as they were in the time of Dickens or Proudhon"

"we are now saying that something is wrong in the way the economy defines the world."

"in certain recent societies, a concerted work of formatting has tried (without ever completely succeeding) to reduce and simplify these relations, to extract from them certain types of passion, affect, know-how, technique and invention, and to ignore all the others."

"The doubt that has been introduced during this hiatus is too profound; it has insinuated itself too widely"

"By himself, nobody becomes a detached individual, able to calculate a self-serving agenda and to enter into competition with everyone else in search of profit. These highlighted words identify properties that truly exist in the world, but only because they were first extracted, maintained, connected and assured by the immense assistance of accounting tools, title deeds, business schools and scholarly algorithms. Homo oeconomicus is just like a strain of bacteria cultivated in a petri-dish: it exists, but there is nothing natural, native or spontaneous about him. Alleviate the conditions, and see how it is emancipated"

"If the experience of the pandemic has any meaning, it’s to reveal the speed with which the notion of productivity has come to depend on accounting tools. Yes, it’s true, you can’t calculate the productivity of teachers, nurses, housewives very accurately. What conclusion do we draw from this? That they are unproductive? That they deserve to be paid less and kept at the bottom of the ladder? Or that it doesn’t matter, because this is not the issue? Whatever name you give to their “production”, it is both indispensable and incalculable; well, let others grapple with this contradiction; it simply means that these activities belong to a type of action that is non-economizable. The realisation by everybody that this resistance to countability is of “no importance” casts doubt on all other operations of economization. This is where the economic grip on the conditions of life breaks away from what it describes"

"A hiatus of just two months is all it took to achieve what numerous studies by sociologists of markets and anthropologists of finance would never have achieved: a widely-shared realization that the economy holds in place only as long as the institution that performs it – and not a day longer."

"This is the turning-point; this is the doubt; this is the point of no return: not what and how to produce, but is “producing” a good way of connecting to the world?"

"we have ended up questioning the value and politics of life – what makes it possible, what sustains it, what makes it liveable and just."

"we began to see proliferate in full view the work of these “forgotten people” [petites gens], who we noticed, more and more every day, were indispensable – here was a return to the question of class relations, clearly racialized. There was also the return of hard geopolitical relations and of inequalities between countries, made visible (this has also been one of the enduring lessons) product by product, value chain by value chain, migration route by migration route. As a third stage, employment hierarchies have been shaken up: we began to notice a thousand qualities in less well-paid, less well-regarded jobs, the ones demanding care, attention and multiple precautions."

"even fathers working remotely noticed that to teach arithmetic to their children required a thousand qualities of patience and obstinacy, the importance of which they had never suspected."

"The formatting provided by economization, just as was the case for asepsis, had precisely as its goal to multiply preventative measures in order to limit the number of beings to be taken into account, in every sense of the word. It sought to prevent proliferation, to obtain pure cultures, to simplify the grounds for action, which was the only way to make microbes or humans knowable, calculable and manageable."

"Without this other crisis, the pandemic would probably have been addressed as a serious public health challenge, but not as an existential question: people in lockdown would have been cautious about infection, but would not have set about discussing whether it was really useful to produce aeroplanes, to continue cruising on giant ships that look like container vessels, or to expect Argentina to provide the soya required for Breton pigs. The new climactic regime, when superimposed upon the health crisis, casts such fundamental doubt upon the whole question of production that it took only two months of lockdown for the issue to be reinvigorated."

"If the health crisis has reminded us of the role of these forgotten jobs [petits métiers], if it has given new significance to the caring professions, if it made class relations more visible, it has also gradually reminded us of the importance of those other participants in our ways of life, first microbes, and then, one thing leading to another, all that is needed to maintain in good condition an economy we had hitherto supposed constituted the totality of experience and that would recover. Even the most obtuse reporter, who continues to contrast those who care about the climate with those who simply wish to “restock the fridge”, can no longer ignore the fact that there is nothing in the fridge that does not depend on the climate – not to mention the countless microorganisms associated with the fermentation of cheese, yoghurt and beer."

"[Graeber] the idea of the labour theory of value was self-evident in the nineteenth-century, before disappearing under the neoliberal barrage of the twentieth, a century that was so forgetful of the conditions of life"

"the world that is now appearing in the full light of day, absolutely refusing to accept the status of “mere resource” granted to it condescendingly by the standard definition of the economy and breaking through all the preventative measures that should have keep it distanced."

"Underneath the capitalists are the workers, and underneath the workers are living things!"

"where we thought we should have an Economic Recovery, instead we will probably have to learn to exit from the Economy, that simplified summary of forms of life."

Read the whole thing, and let me know if you find the original french, please.

www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/P-205-ECONOMISATION-AOC-GB_1.pdf

sidd

[jens]

The idea is to use this virus to alter society in a way that is more beneficial to global capitalism.

I don't see, how can a virus be beneficial to global capitalism. I mean consumption is going down, lockdowns mean businesses are going bankrupt, several industries (e.g tourism) are hit extremely hard. Virus can perhaps benefit certain sectors of economy (i.e IT, make everything more digital). But in general? World economy is already in deep recession. Also there are already uprisings and riots in the world due to poor economic situation and unemployment. I think everyone in power would rather prefer "business as usual growth" rather than this trouble.

I view the situation more as the global capitalism is trying to adapt to a bad situation. They know they are going to crash due to ecological crisis, so the totalitarian fascist phase is the last stage of capitalism to try to make a face everything is fine and the economic system could still keep going. But totalitarian system arrives because it is impossible to keep going in the old way. It's an adaptation, they aren't doing it voluntarily. If people can't keep consuming in the system, because the world is falling apart, they have to be kept forcefully there.

[Archimid]

Assume global warming is real and way worse than what politically correct government agencies can acknowledge.

Assume the powerful knows that unless there is drastic change, their riches will be worth nothing. Then you forget capitalism. Forget about democracy. Embrace autoritarianism.  Consolidate power and protect your position.

Trump was already working on that. Then the virus came along. It could have been contained as Ebola, Sars, Mers or H1N1, but why let a good pandemic go to waste.

This virus has some irresistible qualities for some:

1. It is very dangerous for the sick, but it is mild on the healthy.
2. It kills the old  but spares the young.
3. If allowed run through as if it was nothing it will cull society.


To those looking to reduce the world's population coronavirus would be perfect. In the mean time the chaos it causes can be used to gain and consolidate power. Can you think of a better voter suppresion scheme than an airborne virus?

That's why no mask, no test, virus is a hoax, it is just a flu, hydroxychloroquine. Continual sabotage of the fight against the virus.

The real power grab is from those telling you to get infected.

[wili]

I wish to express (by and large) agreement with this part of what neven is saying (and which I copied with credit to him at another site...I hope he doesn't mind), and I am wondering how many people agree (generally) with this much of what he is saying:

...when you have a system that for decades makes people unhealthy and sick (for profit), to then prop them up with all kinds of medications (for profit), you basically have a house of cards that apparently tumbles down when a minor, novel virus comes along.

So, the question is: Is that virus the great culprit, or is it the house of cards?

If it's the former, do you solve that by trying to make the house of cards stronger (via even more meds/vaccines)? Or do you dismantle the house of cards and learn from this experience to make society more resilient to this kind of crisis, and changing the system so that people's health isn't compromised by profit?

I think everyone would agree that the answer is 'both', with emphasis on the latter.

As to the Hopkins piece, I disagree with bluic (whose absence I also mourn, though I often disagreed with his/her posts) in his characterization of it...I would look with yearning and desire at a steaming pile of horse shit, thinking about how nice it will be to work into my garden once it has composted a bit!

I think much about that piece is much more toxic. That kind of inflamed rhetoric is the kinds of things that are leading many people in the US (at least) to threaten the lives of public health officials and their families,  including close friends of mine. I hope he (and others) can join with me in condemning such attacks. And I hope we can discuss the potential threats to democracy that covid might pose without citing, distributing and promoting such inflammatory toxic waste.

We should always watch out for ways that we might be manipulated into willingly giving up our liberties, but wearing a face mask to prevent a disease spreading to others is not that, nor is attempting to maintain a reasonable distance between people in most (especially indoor) situations.

Health officials face death threats over coronavirus policies

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/06/24/health-official-threats

[Neven]

I think much about that piece is much more toxic. That kind of inflamed rhetoric is the kinds of things that are leading many people in the US (at least) to threaten the lives of public health officials and their families,  including close friends of mine.

You have a point, wili. Often, fighting totalitarianism too fanatically leads to the same end result: totalitarianism. You see it with people with an unhealthy focus on Trump (also known as TDS), without any regard to how Trump came about, how his election victory was a reaction (populism) to something (neoliberalism). But then the reaction to that is also not leading to anything good.

I hope he (and others) can join with me in condemning such attacks.

I can't speak for him, as I don't know him personally and discovered his writings only recently, but I think he would condemn it, while at the same time stressing that it's a reaction to something that leads to totalitarianism. It's not just the masks, but also this idea that the enemy is everywhere around you (which to me is Al Qaeda on steroids) and that the only way to fight this enemy is through mandatory vaccinations, vaccination passports, tracking apps etc. And that anyone who doesn't support this, is an insensitive, dumb person.

One of these days I will try to convey how I would like the presentation to shift (by media and politicians), and make an effort to evade polarizing pitfalls.

[Archimid]

You see it with people with an unhealthy focus on Trump

Trump is a mass murderer.

Climate change will end civilization.

All the evidence points at both of them being true but saying either of them makes one look deranged. Most people opt to be quiet about both. Some people welcome both.

[sidd]

House and Senate on break in the USA: no relief deal, nuttn to see here

" there are few senators in the Capitol, and no negotiations or votes have been taking place. The House is out of session."

"The Senate appears likely to recess on Thursday for the remainder of the month. "

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/08/12/trump-coronavirus-relief-congress/

Amazing. I guess the proles can starve on the street until they done with their holiday. 

sidd

[longwalks1]

Learned of a new way to destroy good data.   

https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2020/08/17/iowas-covid-19-website-has-backdated-some-cases-for-months/

state officials are aware of the problem and working on a fix.

The backdating means that publicly available numbers underestimate the positivity rate for COVID-19 tests conducted over the past two weeks, a key metric for measuring community spread.

Many people tracking Iowa’s COVID-19 numbers have noticed that case counts on the state’s website keep changing, even for dates in March or April. While some delay in recording cases might be understandable, there is no reason it would take weeks or months for data to reach the IDPH. Hospitals and clinics that conduct COVID-19 tests are required to report their positive and negative numbers to the state daily.

    I would like to know why new positive COVID cases were added to dates as far back as March over the last week. This has been a consistent occurrence since I started following the data.

Jones noted that state education and health officials will use 14-day positivity rates for counties “as one of the main factors” in determining whether it is safe for schools to continue to teach students on site.

Ramaekers replied to Jones on the morning of August 14. Full text of his email:

    Thank you for your question. As of this email the x-axis of the positive chart is the date first reported to IDPH. This is a system generated date that never changes once a case is made in our system. So if I tested negative in March and was reported to IDPH, I would have a ‘Reported to IDPH’ date of March. If I was tested again today and came back positive, my ‘Reported to IDPH’ date does not change and now suddenly I appear on the graph in March. We recognize this is a problem and have been working on logic to handle it. We are shifting to using the first positive lab collection date. This change could happen as early as today.

At this writing, nothing has changed.