I have written about how Svetlana Alexievich, who won the Literature Nobel Prize for her dogged shilling against Putin and Russia, used to write panegyrics to Felix Dzerzhinsky – the ethnic Polish founder of the Soviet secret police – back when she served another set of masters.
But now comes this revelation via Radio Freedom’s Belarusian language service (the things that American taxpayers pay for…):
This [Corona] is the biggest problem since Chernobyl [AK: Yes, worse than WW2 – according to her]. We need to finally understand whether this is really the flu, or whether 5G influences the human immune system. In my opinion, scientists has no definitive answer. There are several complex processes of future technological development – the influence of humanity on the atmosphere, new technologies and the inability of the human as a biological entity to withstand all this. On the one hand, one can speculate about the philosophical aspects, on the other hand – about how humanity can cope with this. There is the example of Greece, where the nation managed to unify and not go along the Italian path. One can talk of many things…
What a word salad. At least the odes to Iron Felix made sense.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Interesting. She give opinion to variety of topics. Including Russian aircraft industry. Anyhow, I am floored to find out, there is Belarus language. And even more interesting is broadcasting via radio freedom. Americans really don’t make any blind spot when comes to color revolution. I will say, we will see color revolution in Belarus till 2025. As speak with Belarusian, they see them self in eu rather then elsewhere. What is your opinion?
…
Is there a point here?
Reddit of the home of Western public opinion, where your “best and brightest” congregate. They even know who Alexievich is, imagine that.
Hilarious
This lady seems to be concerned with radiation. This is fair, and must be investigated further. To do so, we must turn to another intermittent radiation source – Japan – and compare. What do Japan and Belarus have in common, that might have a radiation as a cause?
What are they good at?
Japan – electronics.
Belarus – video games (Wargaming).
So far so good.
What are they famous for?
Japan – Godzilla, sex pillows, and tentacles.
Belarus – potatoes and vodka.
At first glance, not related but wait! If you drink enough vodka, a potato will start looking like Godzilla. And favorite porn in Belarus is hentai, that covers the sex pillows and tentacles part.
When Japan got nuked in 1945, quality tanks appeared on the streets of Tokyo, belonging to American occupation army. When Fukushima happened in 2011, Wargaming had worldwide rollout of World of Tanks. And Japan responded with release of Girls und Panzer anime.
The relationship is clear – radiation causes both Belarus and Japan to do geeky stuff. It also causes quantity of both the tanks and cartoon girls to increase in both countries.
So what can we expect going forward with the 5G rollout and accompanying radiation?
In Japan, if combined with increase in potato diet, it will lead to increased profits for arms manufacturers as tank production is ramped up, as well as skill improvement for Japanese tank drivers. As a side effect, Prime Minister will be renamed “Батька Abe”.
In Belarus, it will lead to potato size growth and therefore sharp increase in Godzilla related incidents. Sex pillow sales with also go up. If those predictions pan out, i think this lady is a genius, and truly deserves her Nobel prize.
but having a coherent point is harder.
Thot-Leading critique at its finest.
We’ve known for ages that non-ionising radiation at microwave frequencies can seriously affect living cells, to wit microwave ovens. 5G operates over a host of millimeter wavelengths that, because of easy attenuation by walls, etc., require higher power than devices like WiFi or Bluetooth operating at lower power in the microwave spectrum.. It is very plausible that 5G screws human physiology in some fashion.
No we’re here on Unz
These country bumpkin type takes aren’t too uncommon here.
Ok 5G causing viruses is a weird idea, but the general question if some these technologies, that were never there for most of human existence, are good for our health is a valid question.
Ever since finding out Dzierzynski was Polish, I’ve began to spell his name the Polish way instead of the transliterated Russian way.
I read somewhere that he came form a patriotic Polish family. His brothers and sister were Polish and remained in Poland. A question can be posed whether he had some loyalty to Poland left in him and is it possible that his decisions through the position he held helping to establish the Bolshevik rule through a complete eradication of the old order and old Russian elites could have been motivated even if on subconscious level by his Polish anti-Russia sentiment.
Whether bright or not, people who use Reddit are mostly teenagers.
In the audiophile subs, users are often saying about how they need to ask parents for more money. And even in the few intelligent technical subs of Reddit, you can find the most popular discussions are about what college to apply for.
Honestly, if you’re aware of websites with more representative AND better informed audience, please tell me. I truly think that Reddit is peak Western civilization.
Isn’t 5G blocked by umbrellas?
I only look at a couple of subs there. But that is mostly teenagers now, and definitely becoming younger every year. Maybe a few subs like r/programming have more proportion of people over 20 years old. Compsci are all undergraduate students and teenagers.
Some of subs are with the most clever teenagers like r/musictheory. Teenagers are asking things like “for my highschool project I am analyzing contrapuntal techniques in early Bruckner”.
Some subs are more bourgeois but stupid teenagers. In r/audiophile “I’m 16 years old and my dad gave me $6000 to buy speakers, what do I buy?”
I guess a lot of adults which were originally on Reddit, become inactive, and most nerds immigrate to places like stackoverflow. The more knowledgeable adults who used to be in the audiophiles subs, immigrated to forums like audiosciencereview.
And older American adults which are interested in politics, are probably writing comments directly under the articles of New York Times or Washington Post websites. New York Times always has thousands of comments under its articles The older adults also discuss politics on Facebook.
I cannot agree that New York Times comment section offers a better snapshot of American public opinion, compared to Reddit. In my observation NYT subscribers tend to be thickheaded partisans, and there is no shortage of folks like this on Reddit, yet Reddit’s audience is also more diverse: it has some rightwingers and people who are generally open-minded about things and capable of independent thought.
Anatoly Karlin says above that Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was purely an “ethnic Polish” guy.
Some sources say otherwise, and speak of Dzerzhinsky having a Jewish father named Rubin, with Felix himself speaking Yiddish.
https://www.deathofcommunism.com/felix-dzerzhinsky/
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a6/d9/2e/a6d92ea30669023fbcc4d163bf69a09c–russian-revolution-the-revolution.jpg
What is 5g for? So you can watch youtube outside of your house? That is probably bad for you.
5G causing viruses may be a weird idea, but 5G activating latent viruses isn’t:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9276003
Questioning NASA withholding information VS claiming they’re in on a conspiracy to hide the true shape of the earth
Wondering about 5g causing possible health damage VS claiming epidemics aren’t real
I blame glow in the darks.
What is the possiblity that the immunity is not possible with coronavirus, or that any immunity will only last for a few months? Or that any immunity that you get is only 60% and does not work all of the time, and only protects against some types, or that some people who have been previously infected get immunity while some do not, or that you never really flush the virus out completely once you get it?
No that’s imageboards and bulleting boards before that.
Interesting. I checked citations for the paper. No follow up except for other Italians.
Microwave radiation can deactivate virus in vitro.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114683/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15223557
But is it surprising?
Bad news for people in my scientific field, as we routinely spend lots of time next to giant machines which generate strong magnetic fields of several Tesla, and even those shields that have been put on them recently so that your credit card doesn’t get wiped out the moment you forget to empty your pockets several meters away and go to insert your sample, let a bit of the field bleed through. Plus the shield doesn’t extend below or above the instrument and I pretty regularly fiddle with stuff there….
At least it seems like I’m corona-free so far. Also for lots of other people in my field who worked more often before the era of magnetic shields seem to lead genetically normal lives. In fact, my child got a really high dose while he was in the womb. I later took him to the instrument room when he was older, and he did not run up to the NMR machine screaming “Daddy, daddy, it’s me!” and hug it, so I think there was no effect.
Hmm…. maybe it’s one of those famous cases of fake Italian science. They do have a big problem with nepotism and splicing of Western Blots.
Much like how some were quick to embrace Navalny. For that matter, Sorosian types have been prone to embracing svidos, while being more guarded towards comparatively more moderate Russian patriots who make their views known.
Pilsudski knew him:
https://www.google.com/search?ei=6tOiXrq-NseuytMPpfWqsAQ&q=pilsudski+dzerzhinsky&oq=pilsudski+dzerzhinsky&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQDDoECAAQQzoGCAAQBxAeOgQIABANOgYIABANEApQ0qwDWOPHA2DN1gNoAHAAeACAAZoBiAGbBpIBBDEyLjGYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwi62-vwgIHpAhVHl3IEHaW6CkYQ4dUDCAs#spf=1587729446779
Maybe we could come up with a respect for elders and coronavirus response effectivity correlation index, I mean countries where respect for elders is high, like China, Taiwan, and Korea, seem to have dealt with the coronavirus most effectively.
if that’s their best and brightest, perhaps my eternal proposal to rebuild the iron curtain then exterminatus on everything west of it has some merit
Russia does not seem to be doing any better judging by the daily increase in cases. And if it does not stop someday they will get Wuhaned.
HONESTLY WHAT IS THE MAJOR MALFUNCTION WITH WHITE PEOPLE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEIR BRAIN, DID THEY ARE LEAD PAINT CHIPS AS POTATO CHIPS WHEN THEY WERE KIDS, ARE THEY ALL SEVERELY MENTALLY RETARDED WHY CAN”T THEY PERFORM EVEN 10 PERCENT AS WELL AS EAST ASIANS IN DEALING WITH THIS THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE????????????????????????????????????????????????? EVEN A THIRD WORLD CRAPHOLE LIKE VIETNAM DOES A LOT BETTER THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Read first before you recommend the link. It’s a play, a fiction with an ax to grind by a crazy Lithuanian nationalist.
“According to Juozaitis, Pilsudski and Dzerzhinsky, being schoolboys, were possibly smoking in the same yard during breaks between lessons because both of them attended the same Russian school in Vilnius. ” – N0, they did not because P. was 10 years older than D.
I read the whole article and if this guy is a typical representative of Lithuanian national intellectual elite then we all should pray for Lithuania. Stupidity of nationalist intellectuals is proportional to the inverse of country size and inverse of its importance.
Russia is testing a lot more people, than most other countries. Which produces a lot of confirmed cases, and very low death rate. So far outbreak in Russia looks more like Germany, than Wuhan. Definitely looks better, than NYC, where estimated millions of people contracted the disease and 40.000 died!
Counterexample: The United States
What’s 50 Hz got to do with 5G? That’s 50G, at the very least. Please avoid 1 pettaherz until I advice safe.
American nationalism is not worn on their sleeve so you really do not see it that much. American politics discourse does not even include nationalism. You may see it on web forums but they are mostly yahoos and deplorables. Americans feel secure in their belief that they and their county is mostly good so they have no need to compensate insecurities and inadequacies with posturing and phony muscle flexing. They have nothing to prove. America had a very successful history. For decades now it has been in the phase of reevaluating its history to the point of deconstructing because it is secure and she can afford it. Americans do not create nation building myths anymore but question them. Americans are very fortunate people while on the other hand people from some smaller countries who were not too successful, who are in the process of creating their myths which they usually overdo, to the point of absurdity, they are insecure, they are touchy, they can get pissed off if you ‘disrespect’ the bread of a dog they consider to be theirs or if you dislike their food. Basically they are high maintenance pain in the butt, you have to tiptoe around so not to hurt their fragile egos.
This Harbin outbreak is actually a good test, if Beijing can survive this then they most probably can survive the winter without a second large outbreak.
Practice what you preach.
Your reference is a Lithuanian nationalist, who you don’t regard highly. It’s not out of the question for people in the same school district to know of someone 10 years their junior or vice-versa.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky
Can someone tell me where this idea that 5G is harmful came from?
Of course I am aware that ionization breaks chemical bonds in biological organisms, thus causing harm. However, my understanding is that the millimeter waves used by 5G (and airport detectors by the way) is too low of frequency to cause ionization. Websites I look at presenting the case for 5G being harmful often fail to differentiate between ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation and often discuss injury that is commonly known to be from ionizing radiation. Furthermore, none of the sites I’ve looked at present any detailed mechanism of how non-ionizing radiation damages biological systems.
Needless to say, all of this makes me dubious of claims that 5G has deleterious health effects.
Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country – Lenin
Well cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland can avoid another spike in cases this winter in a few months time then European countries can avoid another spike in cases this fall and winter if they know what they are doing.
“Practice what you preach.” – I do. I do not give irrelevant links to works of fiction as a factual evidence.
“Your reference is a Lithuanian nationalist”. – No, it was your reference.
“One of the older students at this gymnasium”. – P. was 10 years older. They could not have been at the same time in the gymnasium. Perhaps P. knew of D. and what he later “recalled” could have been just a concoction of facts and confabulations often happens in the memoir by famous and see-importnt people. The source of this quote should be cross checked. From what I have read now the estates of their families were only 50 miles away, so their families and children could have had some interactions. Furthermore, D. had early notoriety about him as there were rumors that he or his brother killed their sister who was 12, so he stood out among the numerous (8) siblings he had.
Anyway, I do not negate a possibility that P. and D. crossed their paths . I also do not negate stupidity of backing up historical claim with a piece of fiction.
“Can someone tell me where this idea that 5G is harmful came from?” – Putin?
Answer – Nothing. 50Hz is the power line transmission frequency in Europe (60Hz in the US and Japan). The paper may lend support to those who are concerned about living close to power lines but has nothing to do with 5G.
Incorrect. 5G is a protocol not a transmission frequency. In the US, T-Mobile 5G is at 600MHz a band that was stolen from home UHF Over The Air TV. This makes 5G much safer than 4G or any other previous cell phone protocols which all operate at much higher frequencies.
That’s nothing usual to America. It is the same situation in all current or former great powers – Russia, UK and also France.
In these countries, there is imperialism, jingoism and patriotism, and self-confidence in belonging to universalizing legislators of the world – or to write the latter more cynically: desire to make others confirm to what for weaker people would be only local idiosynacies, but for the strong can be called “civilization”.
But this is not real nationalism, which is a specialization of small and oppressed people. In the romantic sense of nationalism, that could attract Byron or Garibaldi – this is in the small and weaker losers who threatened by the domination of the strong, whether politically or culturally, and can only live as “free men”, with national liberation.
Although in reality, it is usually not so pure, as these nationalisms are often used as technology-ideological of great powers, to cause disruptions in each others’ empire or spheres of influence. So, panslavism (which was originally a genuine national liberation for little dominated Czechs) can be corrupted into an ideological tool of external policy and softpower of the Russian Empire, to enhance weaken and try to cause rebellions in rival empires in Europe, later replaced by more powerful tools of Marxism-Leninism in the 20th century.
This crazy self-love of the weak folkloric peoples, that is result of too much external domination by more powerful nations – can also be healthy and rather a sign that there is still some spirit for rebellion, and in creative professionals, the access to the romance of tragedy which belongs to losers.
For example, in the second half of 19th century, composers of little dominated peoples like Dvorak and Janacek – could organize their work to collecting of local myths and folk melodies, as part of a project that they saw as contributing national liberation. On the other hand, English composers and artists – living in an island that somehow controlled a quarter of the world -, were lacking such a project, and Elgar’s nationalism was sounding like “Pomp and Circumstance”, with lots of jingoism and without the necessary tragic dimension of great art. (Only after an English national disaster of the First World War, Elgar has access to such a tragic mood – and composes the amazing Cello Concerto).
Bourgeois Japanese people have been disregarding their government’s warnings and are exhibiting a similar carefree mentality to many bourgeois Western European nationalities, as can be seen in the photos and videos embedded in this article.
https://soranews24.com/2020/04/22/what-state-of-emergency-people-in-tokyo-defy-requests-to-stay-home-during-coronavirus-outbreak/
There are many famous works, justifiably or not, critising bourgeois attitudes dating from the 19th century forwards so such cultural hostility is nothing new, but it is not a direct racial trait.
It is also an attitude that tends to fade during difficult times as governments become harsher and crueler.
Also, try to avoid typing in all caps, it makes you look like you forget to take your pills.
My reference was a hyperlink to numerous search results under his name “Felix Dzerzhinsky” – not just the one you cherry picked. Another reference from that hyperlink, which I’ll once again note at this thread:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky
Dzerzhinsky was succeeded by someone with a Polish background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Menzhinsky
look this fool not considerate compounding effects of adding EMF at 1 pettaherz
That’s an over-simplification, there were separate threads in the first half of the 19th century. Czechs organized the first Congress in 1848, supported smaller Slav nations, Prague was the academic centre. But the politician who wrote the Pan-Slav theory was a Slovak, Ludovit Stur. The Poles had their own version, so did southern Slavs.
It was a reaction against the pan-Germanic movement and later Magyars. It was triggered by Joseph II who foolishly replaced Latin as the official language of the Habsburg Empire with German in the 1780’s.
AFAIK no EM radiation below 1000 THz is energetic enough (frequency/wavelength and energy per photon are directly correlated) to ionize things (kick electrons off atoms, ie turning them into oddly charged ions, causing chemical changes, damaging molecules, eg DNA, which can lead to cell abnormities like cancer).
That’s basically UVB/C, far above visible light.
Lower wavelengths can induce heating and so on, like dielectric heating when some leftover pizza is bombarded by a 2000 watt microwave emitter at a 10 inch distance in a small, enclosed space. But, no, not ionizing.
*Lower frequencies, longer wavelengths, sorry.
Also, everything more energetic than UVC is decidedly ionizing, up into the more scary X- and gamma rays.
TBH, some nonionizing radiation has a chance of creating free radicals. But when you live in a world bathed by visible light (hence my jokes about 1 pettabyte), it is obvious your body has some selfdefense mechanisms.
OK
Soviet culture regarded 50Hz power lines with suspicision so Russia is fertile ground for anti-science with respect to wireless. It goes with antivax. How is Russia going to make a vaccine work now that antivax is an established ideology?
Americans are one of the most nationalist populations on the planet. Gigantic and active military, flag waving, moderate foreign travel, dismal language skills, total belief in their own rightness. What more is needed?
Having a nation in a traditional sense would help.
Must have slipped my mind that the Russian government consults its cretins for vaccination policy advice, and that vaccinations are similar impossible in Japan, France, and even Ukraine.
Well I just checked on YouTube, and it seems you are correct; Japanese are not socially distancing as I would expect – but there is an issue of degree with this criticism perhaps?
In March, it looks like Japanese pedestrians were definitely not social distancing.
However, videos dated for this month (April) – pedestrians’ behaviour looks a bit better in videos? (Well, more than half of people with some kind of face covering, which is at least more PPE than in North Western Europe).
That’s the weirdest comment I’ve ever read.
And yet just about <500 new cases/~dozen deaths per day, which goes further to suggest that social distancing is overdone and it's really all about masks-masks-masks.
In Germany, they seem to be passing the peak of the first wave of the epidemic quite early (while Great Britain plateaus indefinitely, despite expensive, badly obeyed lockdown).
I wonder what the difference of citizens’ behaviour in Germany, will be compared to the UK, as Germany had no more selfisolation measures than other Western countries.
I know they tested much more and that Merkel speaks more precautionary in videos, compared to other leaders.
https://twitter.com/BenjAlvarez1/status/1250563198081740800
But other than this, from what I read they had just for one month – limited interregional travel, meetings of more than two people, closed schools and non-essential shops. However, closing of non-essential shops was for less than one month, and they have re-opened those shops already.
Schools will re-open already in the first week of May (So it will be less than one and half months that they had been closed).
The issue is the number of cretins. Russians are a bit more superstitious than most Western Europeans. I had constant battles about the airconditioner giving people colds. Too many cretins and Herd Immunity won’t work.
Well, the early easy victories for Germany and Japan.
But reading Daily Mail’s main page at the moment, there could be optimism in the Allies.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8257233/Government-orders-50million-game-changing-immunity-tests.html
Germany and other old-style continental Europe countries are simply more competent in administration. They will do better than Anglo lazy incompetence, Latin chaos, and Russian existentialist contrarians. Plus the geography patterns matter.
Merkel is a good administrator, she speaks well about minutia. But she misses the big picture, what’s going on and the full context – it is a German weakness. Counting ‘infection’ rates is pointless if 90% of ‘infected’ people show no symptoms and so can’t ‘overwhelm’ the health system. They are plying with screws on a carburator in a car that has no wheels, typically German. But in this case, they will do well.
So why have China (assuming we can trust its figures), Macao, HK, South Korea, and Taiwan done so well, they have not even gone full lockdown, and unlike Sweden, which also his not gone full lockdown, have managed to avoid thousands of deaths and have all but stamped out the virus, despite sky high population density, its has been months since Macao or Taiwan has seen cases of corona, and Macao and HK are not islands.
Simple. Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Hong-kong also have good administration.
My point is that Latin countries with some exceptions have never had good administrative governments or rules based societies, self-discipline. They have a great culture instead. Anglos used to be great, but they are visibly in a post-government phase of their development with general sloppiness, individual greed-based lives, and very high level of laziness – they want others to work for them. That doesn’t work in a crisis.
Most comsoomers in the West believe in Greta, Fauci, MLK. When I was working there, I had countless imbeciles turning to the lights, although the gesture was more polluting. (The incandescent light bulbs life was limited by the number of on/off cycles.) What’s the difference?
At least silly worries about own well-being are more justifiable that worries about the future of humanity.
On topic, of course the HPV vaccine is essentially ineffective, and the rotavirus one is more harmful than beneficial. But comsoomers worship them. When I see a Jew like Plotkin, I don’t believe a word of what he’s saying. because I know he is trying to fleece me. That his MO, this is my reactive MO. But Western comsoomers worship Wiesel and Wiesenthal, and pretty much any Jew tries to sell them anything. Rotavirus vaccine is mandatory, intussusception be damned. Have you ever heard of the scourge of rotavirus before this vaccine became mandatory?
Dey smart, dey belive in the six millioon.
*turning off the lights
Anglo countries are highly regarded as having among the most efficient administrations in the world, which are considered much more effective and easier to navigate than the bureaucratic German and French systems that are obsessed with mountains of forms and paperwork.
One thing English people who live in Germany often comment on is the terrible bureaucracy, almost all say that dealing with the authorities is much easier and more straight forward in the UK.
Most Americans definitely see themselves as a real nation and people, especially white Americans. I would argue white Americans have mixed to the extent that they have formed a new ethnicity and national consciousness.
Most white Americans even feel a strong sense of kinship with black Americans, even if the same is not true vice versa. The average white American would side an American negro before a foreign white any time, without a doubt.
Highly ‘regarded’ by whom? Themselves? That’s usually the case with the modern Anglos, they are very narcissistic and self-referential.
I stated above what is others’ perception:
Things just don’t work well among the modern Anglos, they are sloppy. Germans are frustratingly bureaucratic, but their systems generally work – and that matters in a crisis. French are bureaucratic, but things don’t always work there.
Again, the self-perception thing. It is a bit of a mental condition among modern Anglos. ‘But we are virtuous’, ‘we are good’, ‘we mean well’… It is not about how you see yourselves, it is about reality – it is hard to have basic national characteristic with 40% of the population with a different culture, often even language, and frequent hostility to the majority. It only works under the best of circumstances. It is not a real ‘nation’ in a classical sense. Creating a post-nation with heterogeneous, feuding groups is an experiment – it is unlikely to work well.
There is a reason why Africans (and Gypsies, previously) would die to get from France to UK, and it has to do with paperwork. There are fewer checks, and lots of hand waving. No work visa – no problem. No PPE at work, no lawful connection to power network. Most importantly, no checks on claims for housing / unemployment / refugee status.
It’s not a favor done to the Africans. Illegal immigrants make pennies, and public housing for the underclass is quite similar to jail. But who is checking how many cows a neofeudal duke is claiming on their EU subsidy request? Who is getting most of the profit when you eat horse lasagna? If you will ever be able to make Africans work in half-lawful conditions, they’ll make richer some already-rich guy.
China was successful with interregional quarantine.
In China, there were around 25000 deaths from coronavirus in early February. In Hubei, there was collapse of health system (which has not happened New York or Milan), and then months of a total lockdown.
The greatest successese of China were an interregional quarantine, which helped to prevent the virus spreading to other regions of the country – and also Chinese strong policies to stop the epidemic in other regions (quaranting of people into hotels, though not always in well organized way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Xinjia_Express_Hotel ) during the self-isolation regime.
China shows the effectivity of interregional quarantine. Wuhan was like New York and Milan combined. But now in Russia, Moscow is far less infected than Wuhan, yet they have brzenly allowed it to spread seeds of the epidemic around the country.
Higher German capacity for administration, could be cause of its larger testing regime – and therefore contraining epidemic in this mechanism.
Otherwise (apart from the larger testing regime), German government policies do not seem superficially different to the UK.
So I wonder if the German citizens might also be conforming more to self-isolation guidelines during lockdown, compared to English ones? In UK, almost no-one has a mask, but in addition people are walking in large groups, leaving their house for non-essential reasons, talking to neighbours, careless in supermarkets, etc.
The British government and the NHS seems to be underperforming even the Italians, Greeks, and Spanish, not to mention the French and Germans.
I though the British were famous for their discipline under fire during the Victorian, Edwardian, and Napoleonic eras, witness the Thin Red Line and the infantry squares holding at Waterloo, as well as British troops not mutinying unlike the French in ww1. And between WW1 and the Napoleonic War the British army was always regarded as being very small in size but highly effective.
Having a highly centralized form of government help in this case, otherwise you have individual states doing well, like NY and California, states doing a shambolic job like Georgia and Iowa, states that are somewhere in the middle like Texas, and no good way to stop interstate travel.
All of the lockdown violations you have previously highlighted in Britain were outside, and so probably contributed very little to the spread.
If true, then the pro-medical mask wearing argument will be weak as well. E.g. Chinese, Ukrainians and Czechs are wearing these medical masks in the streets or in the supermarket, not in the office or home.
(The argument is that the medical mask will reduce airborne infectivity of virus, as the infected people with the mask will not be able to spread the virus in water droplets to the long distances with coughs and sneezes)
In my view, it is better to choose the precautionary option, as no-one knows the answers either direction. And yet everyone is paying a fortune of money for each day of lockdown.
I don’t think disobedient behaviour of populations during pandemics, is anything that would transfer to discipline of their army either direction.* Besides, a lot of the problem of the English response to the pandemic, has been that they are too calm about it, and the politicians’ relaxed accepting that there will be large deaths.
—
* English football hooligans are some of the world’s weakest, unfit and histrionic clowns, but their army is one of most stoical and professional ones – i.e. things like this do not generalize from a population to a army. You can see the video from 1982, where their ships are incompetently undefended, and the soldiers are massacred by a missile attack from Argentinian aviation – and still the soldiers are calmly and professionally evacuating, without any losses of discipline.
The human body is interacting with the environment in all sorts of ways that we don’t fully comprehend. Lack of proof of danger is not the same as proof of safety.
If Alexievich is a virologist, I am the Emperor of the East. Just shows how low Radio Freedom has stooped out of desperation.
Is this sarcasm? NY screwed up big time, NYC is now the world capital of coronavirus infections and deaths.
SKorea experts downplay possible reinfections https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/amp/skorea-experts-downplay-possible-reinfections/1818085?__twitter_impression=true
Any thoughts about this ?
I am not a virologist. My profession is biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell signaling. Unlike some people, I have areas I do know, so I can compare, and therefore I don’t live under illusion that that I know it all.
All coronaviruses suppress our immune response. So, they might succeed enough in some people to make reinfection possible. However, in this case I don’t understand how these people got rid of the virus after the first round. So, reinfection must be rare, even if it’s possible.
Anyway, I’d like to see someone who really knows about coronaviruses answer your question.
Thank you very much
With $6000 I’d buy a pair of Acoustic Research AR-9s, get them delivered, recone the woofers, rewire the internals with solid silver-plated wire and replace the large electrolytic capacitors in the crossover networks.
For budget of $6000, I would go for a pair of Genelec 8341 studio monitors. But then they are small and volume does not go high enough for some people.
Though not an audiophile I listen to something like 2 hours of music a day on my smartphone (mostly apple music/you tube premium but occasionally FLAC files on a neutron music player app).I am looking for a pair of affordable(under $200) portable headphones to replace my Sennheiser PX 100 ii which are sadly no longer in production.
In my modest collection of headphones I really like the way Sennheiser HD 598 and PX 100 ii sound but not the audio technica M 40 X.
My smartphone is S9+(exynos) which has problems driving any headphones with impedance above 50 ohms though I find the SQ comparable to the LG V40 for low impedance headphones like the PX 100 ii(32 ohms).I believe this is because it has a good DAC made by Cirrus Logic but a weak amp.
Do you have any recommendations?
I don’t have that phone, but there might perhaps be some kind of volume cap related to EU law? If you have an EU model, sometimes you have to reprogram the phone’s location to disable that.
Does it have problems to drive Sennheiser HD 598/599? I would have recommended those (if you needed open, wired headphones), as they are usually quite easy to drive.
Otherwise maybe the best option for your phone would be bluetooth headphones that will work with aptX or LDAC codec, as that can often be at a CD or almost CD quality.
I just use Sony WH-1000XM3 headphones in the office. Noise-cancelling isn’t all that great for blocking peoples’ voices – but if you feed them with FLAC files over the LDAC codec, it is playing like an acceptable CD quality.
The 598 I have sounds great but it’s not something portable enough.
I am looking for either a very light weight headphone like the px 100 ii or an IEM for on the go listening.
I like the sound signature of 598 and PX 100 ii,I dislike the sound signature of AT M 40X..I don’t know enough technical jargon to describe the sound signature I like any more.
I would also like something with good build quality this is something in which Sennheisers/Audio technicas consistently outperform Chinese brands.
How is the Grado S80e?
Hmm I have those headphones as well, but I found they are a bit heavy and not comfortable to wear. (I think even HD 598/599 are more convenient for portable use).
For portable use, I would recommend bluetooth headphones like Sony WH-1000XM3, as avoiding the wire is the main convenience for portability in my opinion. (Just disclaimer that don’t wear noise-cancelling if you wear headphones walking to your office, crossing roads, or cycling, etc – anything where you can be hit by a car.)