For most of the past two months, Russian disinformation agents respectable Western Establishment voices such as the Surgeon-General of the US, the CDC, and the MSM (e.g. CNN, Vox) have churned out propaganda that masks are ineffective against containing the spread of the coronavirus. In perhaps the most “powerful” take, Forbes even claimed that they INCREASE infection risk.
This propaganda was bizarre on multiple levels. First, it violated common sense – even a T-shirt wrapped around your mouth and nose will ward off large droplets – there’s a massive amount of other evidence in favor of masks. Second, the conventional wisdom appears to be that this advice was given for a putative “greater good” – preventing runs on masks, so as to spare them for healthcare workers who are much more exposed to the virus. This, at least, made sense – though it had to be balanced against the negative impact on public trust towards “experts” and institutions. However, as Scott Alexander has noted, this explanation is likely false; in reality, the CDC and other American experts have been dismissing the efficacy of face masks for years, including during the H1N1 epidemic in 2009 and the MERS epidemic in 2015. So real explanation is much less altruistic and far more banal than even reasoned critics gave them credit for – it was just sheer bureaucratic inertia and unwillingness to adapt East Asian best practice.
In any case, there is evidence of a turnaround. Global mask production has been revving up, though East Asia remains far in the lead – China alone produces almost half the world’s masks at ~100+ million units per day, and its capacity to supply them will enable it to acquire massive soft power in the coming months. Moreover, an official recommendation to wear masks in public in the US appears to be imminent. The process is more advanced in several European states, such as Czechia, where according to Twitter, face mask adaptation has become near as universal as in East Asia.
This is very good news, if long overdue. Had these policies been adopted at the very start, it is entirely possible that the West not have seen the huge epidemics and morbid debates about whether to save the boomers or the GDP when a massive bunch of 5 cent face masks would have sufficed to keep r0 at close to 1. But this was left too late, and now there is no choice – POLITICALLY, at any rate – but to impose huge lockdowns that are going to crater the world economy (if only in the short-term… if we’re lucky).
The rest constitutes what I hope will be a useful reference on mask efficacy to convince people who insist that they are useless/won’t do anything/etc. Practical advice on face masks usage at my COVID-19 Survival Guide.
East Asian “Lived Experience”
Basic facts: No East Asian region outside Hubei, China – despite their FAR more intensive travel links with China – have experienced major COVID-19 epidemics as in Europe and the US. Not even South Korea, which experienced a freak occurrence thanks to Patient 31, a church-frequenting “superspreader.” Meanwhile, Japan has seen just a bit more than a thousand cases, despite adopting a very relaxed stance towards lockdowns, quarantines, and travel restrictions by global standards – there has not been a COVID-19 explosion as in Europe. Taiwanese cases capped out at 47, before Europeans started tilting their numbers modestly upwards again.
Science: Not wearing masks to protect against coronavirus is a ‘big mistake,’ top Chinese scientist says
Balaji S. Srinivasan: “… Asia shows it doesn’t have to be this way. And their playbooks are online. So it’s bizarre to watch Western leaders surrender to the idea of 40-80% infection rates AND extended lockdown. That’s not a manageable situation, it’s overnight impoverishment.”
Articles
- Scott Alexander: Face Masks: Much More Than You Wanted To Know. Does a large meta-analysis of different studies to conclude that surgical masks are effective.
Meanwhile, n95 masks are more effective than surgical masks, but only if you put them on properly – which is apparently not a trivial task:
I remember my respirator training, the last time I worked in a hospital. They gave the standard two minute explanation, made you put the respirator on, and then made you go underneath a hood where they squirted some aerosolized sugar solution. If you could smell the sugar, your respirator was leaky and you failed. I tried so hard and I failed so many times. It was embarrassing and I hated it.
I’m naturally clumsy and always bad at that kind of thing. Some people were able to listen to the two minute explanation and then pass right away. Those kinds of people could probably also listen to a two minute YouTube explanation and be fine. So I don’t want to claim it’s impossible or requires lots of specialized background knowledge. It’s just a slightly difficult physical skill you have to get right.
Bunyan et al, 2013, Respiratory And Facial Protection: A Critical Review Of Recent Literature, discusses this in more depth. They review some of the same studies we reviewed earlier, showing no benefit of N95 respirators over surgical masks for health care workers in most situations. This doesn’t make much theoretical sense – the respirators should win hands down.
The most likely explanation is: doctors aren’t much better at using respirators than anyone else. In a California study of tuberculosis precautions, 65% of health care workers used their respirators incorrectly. That’s little better than the general public, who have a 76% failure rate. …
Is a poorly-fitting N95 respirator better than nothing? The reviewed studies suggest that at that point it’s just a very fancy and expensive surgical mask.
The surgeon general tweeted: “STOP BUYING MASK, they are not effective…”. The Center for Disease Controls (CDC) states that surgical masks offer far less protection than the N95 respirator masks (which also must be perfectly fitted and only professionals can do it). The CDC recommends that healthy persons should not wear masks at all, only the sick ones. These guidelines are not rooted in scientific rationales but were motivated by the need to save the valuable masks for health professionals in view of a shortage. But they may have had unintended consequences: stigmatizing those that wear masks in the public (you are a hoarder, or you are contagious!)
Contrast this with the cultural habit, the encouragement, or even mandate to wear masks in Asian countries — which have now “flattened the curve” or even have had a flatter curve from the beginning.
- Less Wrong: Credibility of the CDC on SARS-CoV-2
Studies
- Yan, Jing, Suvajyoti Guha, Prasanna Hariharan, and Matthew Myers. 2019. “Modeling the Effectiveness of Respiratory Protective Devices in Reducing Influenza Outbreak.” Risk Analysis: An Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis 39 (3): 647–61.
It was found that a 50% compliance in donning the device resulted in a significant (at least 50% prevalence and 20% cumulative incidence) reduction in risk for fitted and unfitted N95 respirators, high-filtration surgical masks, and both low-filtration and high-filtration pediatric masks. An 80% compliance rate essentially eliminated the influenza outbreak.
- Davies, Anna, Katy-Anne Thompson, Karthika Giri, George Kafatos, Jimmy Walker, and Allan Bennett. 2013. “Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic?” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 7 (4): 413–18.
The median-fit factor of the homemade masks was one-half that of the surgical masks. Both masks significantly reduced the number of microorganisms expelled by volunteers, although the surgical mask was 3 times more effective in blocking transmission than the homemade mask.
* Radonovich, Lewis J., Jr, Michael S. Simberkoff, Mary T. Bessesen, Alexandria C. Brown, Derek A. T. Cummings, Charlotte A. Gaydos, Jenna G. Los, et al. 2019. “N95 Respirators vs Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Personnel: A Randomized Clinical Trial.” JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association 322 (9): 824–33.
In this pragmatic, cluster randomized clinical trial involving 2862 health care personnel, there was no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza among health care personnel with the use of N95 respirators (8.2%) vs medical masks (7.2%).
* Leung, Nancy H. L., Daniel K. W. Chu, Eunice Y. C. Shiu, Kwok-Hung Chan, James J. McDevitt, Benien J. P. Hau, Hui-Ling Yen, et al. 2020. “Respiratory Virus Shedding in Exhaled Breath and Efficacy of Face Masks.” Nature Medicine, April. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0843-2.
Your Lying Eyes
Researchers from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany made the following video illustrating the flow of droplets from normal breathing, coughing, and coughing into a hand, an elbow, a dust mask, and a face mask.
Ancestral Wisdom
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Corona-chan, I’m CDC.
Here’s what my workplace emailed to me about masks:
Of course it just demonstrates the libertarian argument that if the Government issues a baseline safety standard firms have no expectation to exceed it, since they can meet the minimum level and be safe from repercussions.
The Government saying masks are advised would surely trickle down and provide a positive effect, instead of this negative and negligent one.
“the libertarian argument that if the Government issues a baseline safety standard firms have no expectation to exceed it” – What stops them? Would private firms compete with each other to increase safety if there was no government? I think it is just another libertarian nonsense.
I don’t completely agree with their position, I’m just saying it demonstrates their argument in action. When firms can just parrot the Government and then escape legal liability of providing faulty health advice because “we just followed what the officials said!” it shows that there is an issue. If the Government issued good advice it would be fine, but when they offer bad advice everyone follows in-step making the problem worse.
Japan recently had more than 500 cases in two days. The people are not as disciplined and smart as foreigners think. There was a big case of a bunch of idiot students going on a trip in Europe at the beginning of March and then successfully infecting their friends at parties back home. The government was not doing enough tests because they were afraid to lose the Olympics and they are still far behind on testing now that that has been cancelled. Add to this the fact that the US military is now keeping coronavirus numbers secret, but just before that they reported some cases at the giant Kadena base in Okinawa, and it’s not looking so good in the past few days.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Japan
Taiwan soon to reach 13 million masks daily, N95 respirators in works
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3903194
3M Partners With Ford to Sextuple Respirators, Aims to Double N95 Mask Production From Previous Target
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/04/01/3m-partners-with-ford-to-sextuple-respirators-aims.aspx
“50 million masks per month in the U.S., starting June 2020”
I am up becaue of insomnia so in no mood for references but:
The bug is a fomite. It spreads on surfaces at least as well as through the air. Wearing a mask increases the frequency that you touch your face and thus your vulnerabilty to infection. That said, I am unique so far as I have seen locally in wearing a mask although some people wear scarves. I do practice very deliberate hand hygeine and take my gloves off to adjust my mask. Mask dscipline has to be combined with other hygeine practices to be effective.
The church of the Korean superspreader sent 200 people to Wuhan in December. It seems to me that there were asymptomatic youngish people in Wuhan in December. For example, it is notable that steel producing regions are #1 or #2 in all heavily infected countries other than the USA (which has a trade war with China). Wuhan is a major steel industry centre.
In Russia people don’t wear masks. I think you should be devoting 100% of your time to writing and broadcasting in Russian about the urgent need to institute mandatory mask wearing in public to avoid the unnecessary move of blowing up the economy in a lockdown overreaction. Also do randomized testing like in Norway and Iceland to monitor the actual spread of the virus. Rhetorically, I think it is not useful to rely heavily on examples from East Asia. Russians regard East Asia as too distant and the advice doesn’t hit home. Dig for data from Czechia, Slovakia, and Bulgaria.
This is an empirical assertion. Where is the evidence? I’m skeptical, since this seems to me at odds with self-observation while wearing a mask, when I am more, rather than less conscience, about touching my face, and hence better able to control my actions.
At my workplace which I won’t name we were given N95 masks with no training. After a week someone came to train us.
How exactly is this going to work? China either will sell masks, in which case no one will care that they are made in China (because everything is and no one cares.) Or they will refuse to sell masks, which will be in a galaxy-brained move that is sure to gain China tons of popularity and soft power (not.)
His theory could be plausible, but depending on the mask being a very shit one. Imagine an uncomfortable paper mask – like the useless ones Chinese as “aid” send to other countries of the world. Someone might touch their face to adjust it or because it is designed for a different face shape.
Removing it could also be dangerous, as the filter is so close to the face. And if it is not comfortable, it is likely useless for either not making a good face seal, or not being of acceptable quality.
On the other hand, a high quality mask, using comfortable materials (i.e. silicon), and correct fitting of size to face – is almost not noticeable you are wearing it.
Moreover, a full face mask means it is impossible to touch your face while wearing it, and when removing it anywhere a virus might land – the filters, the visor, should be safely distant from your face when you remove it.
The cost of a good quality mask is still less than a smartphone, which the whole world has – so there is not much excuse for citizens and governments not seek and attain these as some insurance in this kind of situation.
They could seem both plausible and false, partly because of the ambiguity of the word “mask”.
(a) If they are talking about surgical masks, that do not seal to the face. Intuitively, such masks might seem to useless to people wearing them, as they do not stop entry of droplets containing airborne viruses.
However, they intuitively seem to be useful if an infected person wears them, to reduce the amount of virus they can project into the air from the respiratory tract, and wearing such masks might hopefully reduce their airborne infectivity to other people.
So these are probably a bit useless to the wearer, but if enough people wear them, they may hopefully become useful to society in reducing overall infectivity in the epidemic.
(b) If they are talking about N95 and N100, P100, etc, masks, these might have seemed useless for personal protection because:
1. Certification is to remove particles larger than 0,3 microns, while the virus can be 0,1 microns.
However, this incorrect for two reasons. (i) Viruses released by the respiratory tract are attached to water droplets, which are larger than 0,3 microns, and can be removed by filters certified to that level. (ii) Despite lower certification requirement, competent N95 and N100 masks remove much smaller particles, down to 0,007 microns in real tests. So they will remove even unattached viruses, despite not being certified for removing particles smaller than 0,3 microns.
For example, Denis Protsenko wears 3M Aura mask with a beard, so that it does not have airtight seal with hs face (unfiltered air is entering under the mask). Wearing a mask was probably “worse than nothing” for him, as it gave him false confidence that he was protected, when he was breathing unfiltered air through the bottom of his mask.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2678790329020273
Solution here is to provide training to people on how to wear the mask . And to provide better quality masks, where it is easy to check face seal.
Although there is a question of what proportion of these are useful (ones which can protect you) and certified to international standards, and what proportion are more sold for the motive of scaming people with a false sense of protection?
China has a lot of industries which will require the need for respirators, and additional demand from citizens for protection against pollution, so I am sure they do have world’s largest production of useful masks. However, the majority of those 100 million masks?
As for comparison. in Russia, there is one factory in the country, that produces certified masks -this is the legendary Sorbet plant in Perm, which has been producing since 1939. But today, there are only around 1000 people working on respirator production.
Apparent lack of regulation for medical staff is surprising, because if you are working in another industry with dangerous particles and gases, you would expect employees to be trained in respiratory protection according to law – and that employers should go to prison if this is not provided, and employees are killed.
But this is what is happening now with many medical staff dying due to lack of protection from what is (a virus) for these purposes, just another dangerous substance, that employees have a labour right to be physically separated from.
For example, looking at photos of medical staff at the infectious diseases department of hospitals in Ekaterinburg, published in the media this week – they are wearing masks the opposite way, or with a cloth underneath, and with the wrong sizes.
In countries like Italy and Spain, a lot of doctors and nurses are already being killed during this epidemic, – which is ultimately responsibility of employers not providing adequate protective equipment or training in how to use it.
“I think you should be devoting 100% of your time to writing and broadcasting in Russian about the urgent need to institute mandatory mask ” – Agree and make the Dmitri the Mask Tsar.
German scientist casts doubt on how coronavirus is spread
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8182767/Scientist-casts-doubt-coronavirus-spread.html
‘We know it’s not a smear infection that is transmitted by touching objects, but that close dancing and exuberant celebrations have led to infections.’
Thank you very much for linking to the slatestarcodex item. That man occasionally has terrific information but he is horrible writer who is painful to read so I never read it unless there is a specific and good reason to do so such as in this case.
Surprisingly, non-disposable masks seem to be one of the least things that are made in China, even though they are simple plastic technology. I wonder if perhaps because fulfilling strict local safety certification/regulation is the one of the main costs and it is easier to match locally?
Dräger – masks say “made in Germany”
Scott Safety – mask says “made in UK”
Moldex – mask says “made in France”
MSA – mask says “made in USA”.
Honeywell – mask says “made in USA”.
Unix – made in Russia (in Perm)
You know… Robert Downey Jr, in full black-face, once said “never go full retard” (Tropic Thunder). We can all learn a lot from that.
Here’s better advice. If you feel you might be too much of a weak ass child to deal with corona how about staying home. Instead of asking me to do something ludicrous like put gay shit on my face.
Ventilators? Bag valve mask + volunteer = ventilator. Put those military boys to good use instead of lighting up civilians. Or a family member you are comfortable abusing.
Besides if I remember my training decades ago you gotta be clean shaven for masks to seal properly…
First boomers allowed feminism to fester, then they kill the economy, and now they want my beard?
Crossing some major red lines…
The most important thing is to have a cheap way to lower the R0.
Herd immunity is one, but it is expensive to get there.
Masks, widespread use of masks, is another, and it is relatively cheap. The virus lives mainly in lungs, after all. Accidental touching of mask’s dirty side etc. can be a problem, but the virus would have to cross one mask to reach out, then go into air to touch another surface, then wait for some accidents to happen to go through your mask to reach your lungs.
Social distancing, widespread use of masks, and contact tracing, and 14 days wait period for people suspected of infection. The pandemic can be controlled, and normal life can largely resume when we wait for vaccine and cure.
Ventilator for a lung virus disease, that is. You don’t want to put amateur volunteers into that kind of risk.
Ok, so everybody’s gone retarded.
You people don’t even know what a virus is.
First thing – a virus is not alive. It can’t “survive” (or anything of that sort) because it was never alive in the first place.
Second of all – has any of you read how those “tests” (I’m using scare quotes because they don’t really test anything) work ?
A virus is something so small you can’t see it under an optical microscope, you have to use an electronic one.
And it’s not even alive, so it’s not like you can look for signs of its metabolism in the sample.
So what that so-called “test” does is tell you that the sample contains a certain bit of RNA.
It doesn’t tell you what the source of that RNA is.
It could even be your own body (and most likely it is)
And it certainly can’t tell you that you have Corona-chan, since there’s no reliable way to tell it apart from the rest of the coronaviruses – outside of highly controlled laboratory conditions.
Read here – https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
It says there, black on white – “Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. ”
And even if you’re the nerdy kind and you don’t care for scientific gobbledygook, just look outside.
Where’s the pile of bodies ?
Oh right, there isn’t any.
This timeline is retarded, I liked the old one better.
Mrs. Big Red Scary went out to the shop yesterday and said that almost everyone was wearing a mask and gloves, a big change from last week when I had to go out to submit some documents. I do get out to walk in the woods, but don’t wear a mask since I see nary soul on my outing.
Went to get some groceries and was surprised to see most people outside wearing some form of mask, from homemade to n95’s and surgical’s
Government has been scaremongering for a good while now, seems to be finally having an effect at least where I live (Belgrade)
People have been bitching about the heavy handed measures and messaging being taken here but I’m in touch with a doctor and they tell me they keep having to send the cops after uncooperative retards who have Corona symptoms or were in contact with confirmed cases
High IQ liberals and lolberterians don’t seem to realize that the messaging and measures aren’t directed at them, but at the retards who are trying to turn themselves into superspreaders
You’re missing a perfect opportunity for a socially acceptable S.t.a.l.k.e.r. larp
Worst part is, if the virus is successfully stopped from killing millions we’ll have to listen to endless “I told you it was a nothing bUrGer brO” from retards like this
Serbs are not know for their intelligence. Nor their ability to read, apparently.
On this account, you are definitely and sadly spot on.
Having said that, do you have any acquintances in Lombardy, Catalunya or Madrid?
I do. Out of curiosity, if Europe and USA didn’t institute restrictions and special measures, what would be the body count, in your opinion?
Wow, you are a pretty tough guy.
I don’t know people in those specific areas.
But I have friends who work as medics in British / German hospitals.
Roughly the same as every year.
Which is exactly what we’re seeing.
End of conversation.
Now stop worrying and go outside. The weather is lovely.
I still haven’t heard a good explanation as to why the Boomer age group is the highest risk for Corona-denialism
So Covid 19 happens every year, we only just found out about it recently? Wow, you’re right, I feel better now and will go outside.
Covid-19 is just another flu.
The flu happens every year, with each year being slightly different.
Hysterical morons like you, on the other hand, are encouraged to stay indoors – you’re spoiling the view.
Higher this year, lower next year.
https://i1.wp.com/lesitedujapon.com/wp-content/uploads/Corona-Chan-vs-Toilet-Paper-Chan.png
Well considering that you need a flu shot every year, and immunity from coronavirus may last as short as 8 months anyway, probably it would make little difference. Plus the virus could always mutate into something that takes out 25 year olds with a fatality rate similar to MERS or SARS. Is it possible to have rolling lockdowns and have the ECB and the Fed to just print money and give everyone a 2000 USD or EUR check for every month of lockdown? I mean inflation only occurs if you print money and have full employment at the same time.
I believe most if not all readers of this blog know more than high school level of biology. But ok, I cannot talk like a professional biologist. I said the virus mainly lives in lungs. My bad.
As for pile of bodies. I mean, seriously?
And have the Fed, ECB, BOE, and BOJ provide unlimited liquidity and bridge loans to business for the duration of the lockdown.
Maybe the reason why Northwest Europe and the Anglo is so pozzed is because they banish and exile their seniors into retirement homes, and this practice causes mental issues among both the elderly and the young?
I’m not hysterical, nor, having a very large fenced in yard, am I staying indoors. I’m simply pointing out the lack of logic in your argument. Frankly, if you don’t understand what’s happening, calling me a moron is very ironic. But I understand your frustration, a lot of people have it hard right now and don’t know how to deal with it so they lash out anonymously online.
All yours.81 pages of it.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/316198/Masks_and_Respirators_Science_Review.pdf
You’re kidding, right?
You put untold amounts of currency into an economy to purchase a diminished supply of goods and services and you get the textbook definition of inflation … well, maybe the old, practical textbook definition. MMT types need to take a break from their crack pipes.
What’s it like being a stupid scared animal ?
lol Japan:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUlRddoUcAUIVt7?format=jpg&name=large
Maybe boomers in the US care less about their children because they know that once they hit 65, their children will send them to the retirement home to wither away and die?
Much better than being a spamming idiot.
What accounts for the difference in reaction between the European and American right over this coronavirus thing, I doubt whether right wing Europeans trust their mainstream media and centrist governments either. This also connects to why women seem to be more accepted and have a prominent role in continental European nationalist movements, compared to Anglo countries.
Is Marion Marechal buying into the coronavirus hoax thing?
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your circlejerk.
Meanwhile, I’d like an explanation for this
http://alongchat.com/stuff/germany1.jpg
The source of the data being here.
Looking forward to the incoming convoluted mental gymnastics.
“Life” is entirely semantic. It just depends on how one defines it. It is quite easy to come up with a simple definition of life, by which viruses would be considered alive. Indeed, I think the average person would have trouble coming up with a definition of life by which viruses were not considered alive. And, anyway, one would have to ask oneself, what is the point of excluding them?
As to using words like “live”, “kill”, “survive”: they make perfect sense, whether or not one considers viruses alive. It is generally better to use short words to carry across important meanings.
The problem with your point is that there are thousands of instances of manufacturers being held liable for harm caused by products that were legal, and often deemed safe, when sold. Cigarettes, for example. The state-of-the-art defense, at least in the US, usually doesn’t fly.
This applies to manufacturing processes too, like handling waste.
I respect your Autism, but the cases in NY double each 3 days.
You know, the exponential growth thingy…
Which brings to the following:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/shocking-footage-inside-nyc-hospital-reveals-covid-19-war-zone-infections-surge
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/shocking-footage-bodies-piled-manhattan-hospital
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/dhs-warns-nyc-morgues-near-capacity-local-hospitals-construct-makeshift-facilities
And they still need a couple of weeks to see the top of the epidemic and at least two more weeks to witness a significant decrease in morbidity.
Therefore pretending it is “just another flu” is in my opinion overtly optimistic.
But again, I respect your Autism…
Cheers buddy!
By your logic, HIV also does not exist and cannot kill anyone because the cause of death is a secondary infection. We could completely ignore the issues caused by the reduced immune count, we could ignore the existence of HIV in the system; indeed, at this rate, we could soon ignore the existence of virii as an entity.
The fact that victims of Coronavirus suffer very obvious, specific symptoms leading to death shows that it is the cause of death. Now, I’m not God(that’s Karlin after his Nurgle ascension) and I can’t say if in each case in Italy the individual would not have died, but evidence strongly implies that Corona-chan is the push that leads them over to death. Note that many of the co-morbidities are things like obesity and high blood pressure, common ailments that affect a huge percentage of the population and not seen typically as mortal.
https://texags.com/forums/84/topics/3102444
So they closed the schools (as well as partially or fully shut down important sectors of the economy), and the flu epidemic just stopped. Did you not expect that to happen?
Fortunately, this seems not to be the case:
https://twitter.com/PeterKolchinsky/status/1240498037958545410
The flu “epidemics” happen each year – and they magically also stop each year without requiring any mass hysteria.
But then again, since you (along with most everyone else) obviously suffer from said hysteria, I don’t expect any display of logic anytime soon.
Hopefully you people manage to recover before we all starve.
As reported by the same media that was totally truthful about – 9/11, JFK’s death, MKULTRA, worldwide pedophile rings, Pearl Harbour, etc
Get a grip, you hysterical moron.
Which part of “Covid-19 cannot be detected outside of laboratory conditions” is too complicated for your puny brain ?
Much of the testing(especially earlier on) is done through laboratory tests. They also be replicated and are consistent, which is the basis of all science.
But you know you know what? Its time for you to make good on your powerful poasting and go on a cheap trip through Milan and Madrid now. Be sure to hug your parents afterward.
Bye.
Anatoly: Have you ever addressed the estimates given in the Imperial College reports, and their implications (e.g. that, as of March 28, 15% of Spain’s and 9.8% of Italy’s populations had already caught the virus and that their death tolls should therefore be viewed in that light)?
The most recent report (March 30): https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-13-europe-npi-impact/
Buddy, no need to get aggressive.
As stated previously I respect your Autism.
Cheers!
Autism is unstoppable
AK: Look, I know you have very strong opinions, but if you’re just going to fling shit around, could you just stop posting on my Corona-related threats? So that I don’t have to ban you. kkthx
Read the fine print, idiot
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUnXjJmUMAU0XkB.jpg
Oh, what should one believe?
1) The entirety of South Korean testing methods
OR
2) one unsourced photo
You have to be gullible to have taken seriously the advice of “experts” who claim masks are ineffective. Some people will believe anything.
Adding to bank’s reserves does not automatically mean they will start loaning the money out. In times of low demand, frequently it just means they have excess reserves. Or they pay off debt, which reduces the amount of money in circulation. We have seen decades of this in Japan, yet no one seems to learn anything. Instead they make up stories about how deflation is the problem, and how it’s impossible to deal with.
The implications of the quantity theory of money are quite extraordinary actually. It implies that banks shouldn’t bother so much with searching people’s creditworthiness, because they’re going to lend a fixed amount of money anyhow. According to the quantity theory banks just passively execute Central Bank policy. The best they can do is compete with each other for who gets the most credit worthy borrowers. Even if no one was credit worthy banks would have to lend the money out according to the quantity theory(!) The idea that people change their spending and borrowing rates based on factors other than the quantity of money is assumed to be false. Central Banks are assumed to have almost limitless powers to control the rate of inflation, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The MMT people are right, although their insights are old, plenty of people have expressed the same idea. It’s amazing that anyone ever took for example Milton Friedman, who never got anything right, seriously(his son btw is even more nuts than he was).
Thanks, but I disagree, and offer John Law in 18th Century France and Weimar Hyperinflation of the 1920s as stellar examples of MMT already put in practise and failed. Governments can and have been forced into default on their own debt, and Central Bankers can only control the supply and velocity of money in an economy until they can’t, i.e. when the “holders” of the money realise the purchasing power of their “wealth” buys increasingly fewer tangible goods and services and rush to offload it in wheelbarrows before it loses all value.
The MMT BS about inflation only happening with full inflation is wishful thinking … Inflation is all about trading a store of value for a tangible good or service, which is a classic market driven by supply and demand.
I posted a link to an official FDA document regarding a so-called “test” where it openly says it doesn’t actually test for anything, it just detects a piece of RNA.
Is that also “unsourced” ?
AK: If you insist.
The only one flinging shit here is you, you cowardly waste of skin.
https://twitter.com/willripleyCNN/status/1245987181425983489
There are “safe harbor” provisions which operate in similar fashion to what @Tusk describes. For example see California’s Prop 65 from a few years back.
Libertarianism doesn’t work in practice but it can be useful as a yardstick and sandbox to examine some of the traditional dilemmas of governance.
A virus consists of RNA or DNA, some protein coating, and sometimes a lipid coating.
Indeed!
The tough guy worrying that his face mask will interferes in fellatio. He should contact Dmitri who probably already researched which upmarket face masks are best when giving a blow job.
Russian colonel says ‘It’s the flu, bro’
Полковник ГРУ: что скрывают за пандемией?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZJC9JM2u70
I wonder if that is really one of the main factors in people being resistant to wearing masks: masks help hide secondary sexual characteristics of the face.
Smokers may be LESS likely to end up in hospital in the first place
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8184751/Coronavirus-warning-smokers-Public-Health-England-says-addicts-face-greater-risk-coronavirus.html
If only Lance Welton felt more strongly about smoking than race we could get completely different take on Covid from him.
And it is the Big Tobacco that may save us:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-vaccine-wildcard-from-big-tobacco-11585760118
“Lucky Strike owner British American Tobacco said that its U.S. biotech division is working on a potential vaccine.”
Too much to read I will put my 2 cents in. It’s practically impossible to stay safe under enough exposure. So don’t worry about masks not being able to protect you. They are meant to be temporary barriers.
I have never been trained in n95 use and I use any mask imaginable for work. If you use common sense it’s clear the masks either fit your face or they do not. Things like beards obviously also have an impact.
There is more to limiting exposure than just masks. Aseptic technique and engineering controls are also important. Most people will not fail at the mask level. So for anyone who wants to improve their chances when going out.
One. Layer up.
Two. Mask. Gloves. Goggles. (Air purifying respirator if you want to overkill). Mask cover and neck cover. This may overheat you so plan for that. Goggles will fog up.
Three don’t touch anything on your body and if you do keep that in mind.
Four when you get home. Spray isopropyl alcohol solution over your self in a thin mist and anything you bringing in. Remove gloves, clothing, goggles and mask in that order. Everything goes into the bag and then laundry. Take a shower. The entire time from gloves off to shower keep away from mouth/face and anything else. Disinfect any surface you had to touch in the way to shower.
All of this is obvious. Where you will unfortunately fail is remember the steps in the moment. But that is ok that’s just something you get with repetition. If you lucky you never going to come in contact with a sick person.
If you go out everyday, public transport or anywhere moderately busy don’t expect zero exposure. But practicing a bit of caution you can get less of a starting dose.
Well I’d certainly like to avoid living in a society where everyone is wearing a face mask. But during a serious epidemic, it’s one of the few things which should be mandated.
So Lucky Strike has gone to war…again.
These are also interesting stats on influenza since 2010, from the US CDC ….
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/images/about/burden/influenza-burden-chart2-960px.jpg
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/images/about/burden/Influenza-Chart-Infographic-high-res.jpg
By wearing a mask you reduce the probability of getting infected by x while a mask on an infected person reduces the probability of infecting another person by y and y>x (I can’t formally prove this inequality at this point but it is intuitively obvious to me.). Since you do not know whether you are infected or not by wearing a mask you are protecting other more than yourself on average. This is a rare case when a selfish motive to save your own life produce a greater good. Not wearing a mask would be an inverse-altruism where you are willing to sacrifice yourself for an idea of killing others , i.e., doing what a suicide bombers do who are aware of y>x calculus.
On masks and more.
Let’s say R = N * p, where R is the reproduction number, N is the average number of contacts between an infected and people without immunity and p is the average probablity of getting infected during a contact. In order to sufficiently slow the epidemic we need to push R close to 1. Below 1 in order to stop it.
The only relatively inconsequential way to lower N is to tell everyone with respiratory infections to stay at home for a couple of weeks. Other measures that reduce N are isolation-testing-tracing, social distancing and enough people getting infected. These are all bad.
Testing and tracing looks better than the other two because it doesn’t involve as much quality of life loses, but it doesn’t scale. People seem to be forgetting that thousands of trained professionals in full sets of disposable PPE doing swabs 24/7 and all the labs in the country running the tests overwhelms the system in its own way. That might change with mass production of reliable express tests, but I imagine that’s about as far away as effective antivirals.
Measures that lower p, on the other hand, only require competence. They might even end up being a net positive for the quality of life since incidence of other diseases will be lowered without disproportionate economic burden needed for social distancing.
Masks for all is currently such a big thing because it’s so obvious and yet our governments except for some East Asian and some Eastern European ones are refusing to implement it due to epistemic crisis. Masks alone don’t seem to be enough, at least not with the comliance level they get in Japan, but there are other things that can be done by the governments and the people that aren’t being done.
Better hygiene. Masks for all. Better ventilation everywhere (almost nobody caught Corona outside spaces with stagnant air according to the Japanese). Vitamin D and zinc supplements. Better sleep. Disease control specialists can probably come up with dozens of these public health measures. Their guidelines are usually not taken very seriously but the state shouldn’t limit itself to PSAs now. If anything, lockdowns showed that people are more than fine with enforcement of compliance.
Western epidemiologists were predicting that about 60-70% of the population need to be infected for herd immunity to do its job. Germans even went ahead and said it could be higher. That’s the thing that led to such an averse reaction to the plans involving letting her spread. The cost would likely be too high and no statesman wants to be the one responsible. But what really needs to happen is reduction of R by 60-70%, not that share of population getting immunity. If we lower probablity of getting infected during a contact by half through public health measures and allow people to decide on their own how much social distancing isn’t going to hurt them, we only need 15%-20% of the population to get immunity before the disease will start burning out. The epidemic would progress slower too, not overwhelming the system the way it does when left unchecked. It doesn’t have to last years like in some projections because the number of people that need to be infected is much lower.
I believe this is the exit unless we can outright eradicate the disease. Implement as many p lowering measures as possibe. Cancel large events. Make sure hospitals don’t turn into hot spots. Tell people to stay at home if they are sick unless they get severe symptoms. Tell high risk groups to stay at home period. Allow the low risk groups to get it over with without straining the healthcare too much.
That sounds a lot like what the UK wanted to do but they didn’t consider all that many possible measures for p reduction except hand washing and didn’t want to enforce compliance. That obviously didn’t work out very well. Now the entire population is under house arrest and it’s not even a reasonable long term solution. Japan and Sweden seem more successful but failing in similar way trying to depend on generally cooperative population.
Now, places that are already in the world of hurt need to shut down. If a sizeable proportion of the local population is already infected and the hospitals are collapsing then even radically slowing the spread won’t do anyone much good. These places need to either implement very hard lockdowns or accept that some people will die. Places with low number of infected per capita should concentrate on investigating ways to lower the probability of getting infected during a contact and enforcing compliance instead of focucing on reducing contacts. Even 10% of the cost of a month long shut down of a first world country should be enough to fund every transmission prevention measure in the books.
Looks like some doctors in battlefield start to wonder why ventilators seem to make matters even worse – ICU DR in NY doubts Covid19 is really ARDS. Claims to witnesses dozens of unexplained symptoms. Patients breath “as if they’ve been dropped on top of Everest with no time to acclimate.” He’s saying that the lung/oxygen interface is damaged, and that ventilators programmed for ARDS – in most circumstances – will cause more lung damage and fatalities. One suggestion is hyperbaric chambers to enhance oxygen saturation, but that’s really not feasible. It would however be a good test to determine if his theory warrants a rapid readjustment in treatment protocol:
https://vimeo.com/402537849
https://thinkingcriticalcare.com/2020/03/28/covid-clinical-discussion-w-cameron-kyle-sidell-nyc-ed-icu-doc-in-the-trenches-foamed/
Good news for Russia and Ukraine?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-02/fewer-coronavirus-deaths-seen-in-countries-that-mandate-tb-vaccine
Nations with Mandatory TB Vaccines Show Fewer Coronavirus Deaths
New study finds a correlation, but clinical trials are still in progress
БЦЖ in Russia.
Looks like jumping on the covid publication bandwagon. IMO, too early to do correlations as there are too many confounding variables and the epidemic is not over yet. The countries that look good now still may get worse. Here is the article:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042937v1.full.pdf
Some years ago there were claims that BCG reduced susceptibility to HIV infections.
I was seeing this idea do the rounds on Twitter several days ago, a quick glance at Wikipedia lists of countries immediately threw up a bunch of exceptions (e.g. France). In reality I am sure it’s just a confound of Corona coming to the ex-commie world later than to the more globalized West.
Just like the idea that most people have already been infected, it’s a cope, IMO.
Probably.
In Canada, Quebec was the only province that had mass vaccination (maybe – wiki says a citation is needed). It would be interesting to see if rates are lower in Quebec than in the rest of Canada.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zoxpvDVo_NI
There are a ton of people coming off ventilators healthy. So there is that.
Another case of jumping on the covid publication bandwagon is this paper:
Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v2
which if true would suggest that Europeans are more susceptible than Chinese.
Perhaps just for fun somebody could calculate relative risk for various ethnic groups. Lance Welton would love it. Use blood type data from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_distribution_by_country
Do you have any hard data from the West with the source to back it up? Make no mistake, would be really glad to be it truthful thing, but people are often confusing it as being in ICU, even with oxygen mask is not equal at all with being intubated and hooked on the ventilator. One Chinese patient cohort study demonstrated that 97%(!) of people on ventilators eventually died:
https://twitter.com/AbraarKaran/status/1238284994117881857
As an example, famous photo of initial Chinese whistleblower doctor roughly a week before his death, what looks like lot of medical equipment on to him, but really here he was not still not intubated and hooked on ventilator yet, just with oxygen mask:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/03/22/26787610-8186173-image-a-25_1585947979164.jpg
I guess you are aware of the many differences between SARS-CoV-2 and the flu.
Most people have had the flu over the past few years (or received the flu shot), which provides at least partial immunity against it. This greatly limits transmission. Whereas no-one has any kind of immunity against SARS-CoV-2, because it’s… novel.
SARS-CoV-2 is more infectious than the flu, so even ceteris paribus, it’d infect a larger portion of the population, and faster.
Covid-19 is significantly more deadly (mortality rate of 1.5-2% instead of 0.1% for the flu even under ideal conditions, that is, if hospitals are not overwhelmed).
Severe cases of Covid-19 take way longer to heal than serious cases of the flu. So several weeks in the hospital instead of just maybe one, rarely two weeks. This is regardless of outcome – some who survive spend several weeks in the hospital, just like some who eventually die.
Known antivirals don’t seem to work much on it, though this is just one reason for the previous point, so not very important in itself.
Okay, and obviously mortality rates are going to be higher still if hospitals were overwhelmed. (That’d be true of the flu, too, but the regular seasonal flu is incapable of overwhelming the hospitals, due its lower virulence, lower infectivity, less severe illness with shorter stints in the hospital, and the partial immunity of a large portion of the population. These are all well-known, but perhaps worth repeating them.)
So the flu epidemic is going to stop all by itself once it burns itself out. The same would be true of the Covid-19 epidemic – except that it’d kill way more people, including lots of doctors and nurses, and cause way more damage, along the way.
It sounds like projection. I’m pretty calm in my analysis, even if its results are gloomy. Your analysis is also gloomy (“mass hysteria causes a global economic depression”), but then you are the one who is calling people names and using cuss words. So, I would say, you have hysteria.
I guess you need trained medical personnel to employ those masks etc., so even if you had an unlimited supply of those (questionable), you would run out of trained medical personnel anyway.
So how do you see a way out this, slapping on a mask like what Japan does not not seem to be a solution, and Westerners who are individualistic will not abide by intensive contact tracking efforts using cellphones, which are too invasive of privacy.
We’re already in a lockdown anyway, so adding masks would help us get to a point where we can lift the lockdown. I disagree with your point about privacy. Many western countries have already made special rules for epidemic control, which means privacy rules won’t have much of an impact. Just like how 911 destroyed lots of civil liberties, the epidemic could do the same. Hopefully just temporarily, though I suspect they will try to make it permanent.
In Southern European countries like Spain, Italy – and surely also Serbia and Greece – people are behaving better, and following directives, than in Northern Europe.
A large proportion of anglosaxons just ignore any directives during an epidemic. Situations you can see in supermarkets are a real disaster.
Lots of people are touching things in supermarkets (including products), without wearing gloves. People talking to each other and talking to staff, people queuing for checkouts close together, and most people are without masks, let alone goggles. Small proportion of people wearing paper masks.
And this behaviour includes a lot of nerdy looking demographics, who are probably professors, engineers, scientists, i.e. people who should understand the germ theory of disease.
Moreover, there are old people with grey hair behaving like this – without masks and goggles.
You have to feel sad sad for supermarket staff, who have to work in such an environment – they have almost no protection, except this week provided cashiers with “spit guards” (which might block the main part of a customer sneezing on you, but are not airtight).
Weimar Germany was forced to pay reparations in foreign or hard currency. To do this, they exchanged as much of the mark as was necessary to acquire foreign currency to pay reparations. This is what caused the inflation. The relevance of this to modern Central Bank policy in the Untied States is zero. You ought also to look up the difference between a fixed and a floating exchange rate.
John Law’s ideas are not consistent with MMT or Keynesian liquidity preference theory. He thought money was simply a means of exchange, which actually makes him more, not less, similar to orthodox economy theory and less to MMT people. Any sensible person knows money is a store of value.
Money or M1 is usually defined to include bank deposits, so the Central Bank does not in fact control the supply of money since they do not originate bank loans.
The idea that MMT people believe inflation is only caused by printing money while there is full employment is false. That’s some strange misunderstanding. Warren Mosler for example has for years made the point that the U.S. inflation of the 1970s was caused by the increased price of Middle East oil. He and others have also mentioned wage indexing as a cause of inflation in Latin American countries. Any theorist who believes inflation can be boiled down to a single cause should not be listened to.
“Full employment” is a theoretical concept. In practical terms, defining it involves playing games with who we count as part of the labor force. I question its utility as a policy metric. One criticism of MMT people is their uncritical use of full employment as something to be targeted.
In my nearby supermarkets the staff all have gloves and masks, a limited number of people are allowed in and only for a limited amount of time (around 5 minutes usually)
This is in Belgrade
A large proportion of anglosaxons just ignore any directives during an epidemic. Situations you can see in supermarkets are a real disaster.
Lots of people are touching things in supermarkets (including products), without wearing gloves. People talking to each other and talking to staff, people queuing for checkouts close together, and most people are without masks,
Other than the bit about masks none of this applies to the “anglosaxons” where I am. Most of our stores have had partitions built between service staff and customers for about a month now, staff scanning without touching, marked spots two metres apart at check-out, enforced limited store entry, no-touch hand sanitizer stations when you enter, and all staff and maybe 80% of customers wearing gloves. The social distancing in grocery stores took a while but for the last two weeks or so just about everyone is adhering to it.
It’s my understanding that COVID-19 is a type of coronavirus in a similar subgroup like SARS and MERS.
So why have these other coronaviruses not spread as rapidly or extensively as this new iteration?
The reluctance to order Western populations to go into face masks is simply most won’t. I have tried to wear them and they are most stifling esperically in heat waves due to climate change. It is odd East Asians appear to have little problem despite being generally hypochondriac. My wife and stepson go nuts at a single fly in their environment. If authorities tried to impose masks, they would get blanket opposition and of course they would be expected to wear them too. I myself carry a new one in my back pocket every day. When I am in a situation that breaks the two meter rule, I slip it on over my orifaces. But this has to be done before being noticed as that causes fear.
My white wife initially had some issues with the idea that it’ll make her look weird or intimidating, but after she began to sew her own covers and got to iron on kitty paws, etc, she really had no issues with it.
Its cold here rather than hot.
Serbians are evidently clever and cautious behaving people in epidemics, compared to Northern Europe.
(Not my video) But this is how in England people are walking around supermarkets. Typical kind of thing seen at 1:50 in his video – old people without protection, people walking close to each other in narrow corridors of supermarkets, people touching doors and products.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9QwBA1ieA
In my opinion, this is probably increasing your risk of contamination.
By putting your mask on while in the threat zone, you are surely adding a contact of potentially contaminated objects to your face, and you cannot easily check for an air seal.
I would recommend fitting the mask before leaving the home. This way you can easily check there is an airtight seal for the mask/goggles.
I’ve seen supermarkets added spots on the ground for people to queue, but they are too close together, and people are ignoring them anyway and walk where they want.
Moreover, people still walk alongside you in narrow corridors of supermarkets (when they should wait until all people have cleared before entering the corridor), talk to staff loudly (which is projecting droplets into the air), touch products and return them, and most do not wear masks (even this week when I start to see a few people starting to wear surgical or disposable masks, it is only a minority of people with them). Partitions for staff I have only seen with M&S.
The sad thing is most people dying now, were infected at least 3-4 weeks ago – when precautions were even less than now. Hundreds of people are dying each day now – they are the victims of a lack of precaution in the society of early March.
If there are victims of the still current lack of precaution, we will know in 3-4 weeks in the future.
Here in Bangkok where it’s always hot people wear them all the time – in fact, nine months ago half the population was wearing them anyway(mostly to filter dust and pollution). Now of course, they are required in public spaces, and it isn’t all that terrible once you get used to it..
This is true. The definition of life is a topic in philosophy of biology. One of the intro texts has a chapter on it, but I can’t remember which one.
They are certainly an edge case by a lot of definitions.
Another sanitary social custom that hasn’t been mentioned is “shoes off before entering abode .” I do know that some Scandinavian countries follow the custom, but I am certain the U.S. and some other western nations don’t. The east and certainly Japan does…
Shoes pick up all sorts of nasty shit(dog shit) so it is much more sanitary to leave them outside the front door…
SARS&MERS were/are spread human to human only by already symptomatic sick people (fever, coughs etc.) whereas SARS 2.0 can be spread by already infected, but absolutely normal feeling people prior them being unwell. btw, this was even predicted quite long ago:
From book Spillover by David Quammen (2012)
I haven’t finished reading AK’s article but did read there reason for believing that masked won’t help most people, which is a proposition you appear to criticise, because most people don’t use them properly.
Westerners already accepting extraordinary limitations on their freedoms and privacy due to the crisis. They’ll accept massive invasions of privacy without making a peep. Those who won’t accept such invasions of privacy will simply be prosecuted and forcibly quarantined and most people will see that as a good thing.
You’re underestimating how much people will put up with when they’re really panic-stricken, as they are now. When people are badly scared they’ll put up with things usually associated with a police state. And they’ll cheer on the police for enforcing the most draconian regulations.
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” — Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
I was always wondering, did Göring really say this? I’m not saying it’s impossible, he did say things like that, but it’s quoted so often on social media platforms, I’m just wondering if there’s an original German quote from a reliable source (best would be a video) of him really saying this.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-games/.
The quote cited above does not appear in transcripts of the Nuremberg trials because although Goering spoke these words during the course of the proceedings, he did not offer them at his trial. His comments were made privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking American intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book Nuremberg Diary. The quote offered above was part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Hermann Goering in his cell on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess:
Later in the conversation, Gilbert recorded Goering’s observations that the common people can always be manipulated into supporting and fighting wars by their political leaders:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Mask — or no mask, avoiding “face touching” is very difficult indeed. Once you become conscious of it, you realise just how often you do touch your face.
“Where’s the pile of bodies ?” In Spain (?) I think they’re bunging ’em into ice skating rinks (or is that NY ? Honestly, I can’t recall.)
It seems that touching might not be the main mode of transmission.
So it seems that Mask+Distance is the most important measure.
American Dmitri with a sense of humor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTYxDMYKyiI
I think the issue is not what the government said, how they instructed the feudal servants they protect, with legal fail safe instructions.. but the fact that the governed masses were denied access to the information (all of it) that would allow the governed to develop their own narrative and to decide for themselves the proper course to take.. the holier than thou denial<=politicians impose on those they govern <=is the problem.. Where are the government webinars to educate the people each day that explain the virology, biology, and to tour the labs and see the research that is being done, where is the open access to the research articles and the interviews with those who wrote the papers, and who are leading the government funded research institutions and such, an opportunity to educate the masses should be a first priority of all governments everywhere… what an opportunity CoVID 19 offered to educate the masses, instead the bastards in charge keep that stuff to themselves and used it to figure out how to make money from the situation before they issued orders to the population to wear the mask (cause the PTB now have mask to sell to you) and to the police, to be sure the orders are enforced so the PTB that supply the mask can make money from their investments in masks).
BS i say. the mask is exactly that problem.
Lack of a supply of and availability of a mask seems to me to be a far greater problem to the masses than how to cure the already sick patient.
But we don't need mask made of cotton suppose we made an acrylic (or other polymer) facial spray put it in a aerosol bottle and covered the eyes, put a breathing tape over the nostrils, and sprayed the face,, let it dry and walk around in public, when back home in safe place, wash or pull the facial off, dispose of the breathing tape, outside with a hose.. or something like that and then wash the hands and face with soap and water, and hands 70% alcohol.. The fallacy is top down government is that it denies the invention that competition invites.
Cant wait for designers masks to hit the market. I want a mask with a print of a corona virus located over the mouth
Obviously surveillance cameras and facial recognition software wont work in a masked society, so we will need to be chipped with digital id and built in RF transmitters
Anyone caught with a full facial tan will be convicted for unlawful exposure. Full facial nudity will become X-Rated stuff, bare breasts with smiley faces painted on will be the new normal
Safe sex includes mask and condoms, so matching condom/masks will be packaged together
I am all for wearing masks in enclosed spaces and on public transport – as a temporary measure.
However, wearing masks in the street and in parks is ridiculous.
https://news.mb.com.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/download-13-3.jpg
Thank you for bringing a little sense to this discussion.
However, I think that people have an innate need to be afraid of something. Since Osama bin Laden is no longer with us, a virus will have to do instead. 🙂
https://storage.googleapis.com/conservativereview/2018/05/Bin-Laden-Al-Jazeera-Getty.jpg
lol no, we’re just getting 24/7 panic raising and screaming
The state telecom sent everyone alarming messages on their phones and the President is on TV every 5 mins sweating and pleading with people to take this seriously
Theres viral footage of cops beating a retarded dog walker and soldiers marching around big city centers with masks and assault rifles
Mentally fragile people in my family were having nervous breakdowns because of it so we told them to stop watching the TV
Hilariously enough there’s liberal retards on twitter saying we should immitate democratic Sweden instead of authoritarian Hungary and Denmark, apparently they haven’t checked on the death tolls
I look forward to rubbing the stats in the faces of retarded Serbian Swedophiles (not a small community), provided the measures we take actually work
What Serbs do know is how to survive in this type of crisis, especially shortages of essentials like flour and alcohol, since we had this happen like 3 times in the 1990s (and to some in the early 2000s during the reign of our merciful NGOverlords)
I suspect older Russians can handle it aswell, although your Government is much better prepared for the economic crash, what with that massive war chest n all
Pretty decent so far, we have good reason to be worried as AK pointed out so best not to take chances, I won’t be shocked at all that they start calling Aleks “the second Milošević” because the heavy handed tactics and anti-EU rhetoric
Then they’ll start pumping out pieces about heroic CNN newsreporters fighting to break the siege around Sarajevo in the 90s
“when the “holders” of the money realise the purchasing power of their “wealth” buys increasingly fewer tangible goods and services and rush to offload it in wheelbarrows before it loses all value”.
The most important first question is who holds the money ?
As the Fed, & its decade or so of QE & other alphabet soup liquidity programs shows, when the money goes to the banks, & the 0.01% generally, inflation occurs in Equities, financial products generally & housing. Very little of this money got down to the 90%.
We are essentially seeing a repeat of that (arguably worse). The bulk of Liquidity is going to that self same 0.01%.
We are unlikely to see a repeat of other periods of rampant inflation. For instance, the inflation (stagflation) of the 70’s was linked to a whole gamut of freak incidents:
Nixon going off the gold standard (US $$ linked to gold, most other currencies linked to the US $$)
The Vietnam war — deficit spending on both guns & butter.
The Oil Shocks ( eventually, sorted out by guaranteeing all oil sales in US $$.)
The wage-price spiral. Impossible now: either no unions or no union worth a damn. No where near full employment.
Inflation is always possible — however, when money supply is in line with productivity & labour its highly unlikely.
Hitler was able to use a fiscally unorthodox method to bring Germany’s economy back to near full production/employment, without the danger of inflation. Known as MEFO bills. President of the Reich Bank, H “Schacht believed that the duty of the central bank was to make available to the economy as much money as necessary to facilitate output production. The issuance of bills of exchange was instrumental to this end – as each bill stood against the sale of newly produced goods, and each issue of money was based on the exchange of the new goods, central bank money issuance against bills could not be inflationary. Indeed, the employees of MEFO checked that every MEFO-bill issued was tied to a quantity of newly produced goods, and only bills issued against the sales of these goods were granted. This way, the circulation of money and the circulation of goods remained in equilibrium.4″ https://voxeu.org/article/macroeconomics-germany-forgotten-lesson-hjalmar-schacht
“and sometimes a lipid coating”
Its that lipid coating that makes hand washing so important. The soap destroys the lipid coat, the virus then has its structural integrity undermined.
The Orange Buffoon is taking an active role in #coronahoax, it’s as if Julius Caesar drew his own dagger and stabbed himself during his assassination.
The DNC announced #coronahoax ends when the economy is totally destroyed and the mail-in ballot fraud setup is firmly in place.
I am beginning to feel that people on this website have become more than a little paranoid. A fundamental misunderstanding of how feedback mechanisms work.
The reality is that getting any virus in small doses encourages your immune system to adapt in preparation for a larger dose. That is what antibodies are all about.
1- Wearing masks which actually work – most of them don’t – will hinder this process.
2- Wearing masks that don’t work – the vast majority of them – is merely a cosmetic artifact. A bit like dancing and hoping for rain. 🙂
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-zHEISlEriQ/maxresdefault.jpg
The fix is in guys. Please wake up!
Did Bill Gates Just Reveal the Reason Behind the Lock-Downs?
Meet the world’s most powerful doctor: Bill Gates (2017)
https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/billgates_250x162-1160×773.jpg
May be the moral dilemmas is not between GDP and boomer removal, it is pondering whether the people who were castigating and physically assaulting Asians for wearing masks, deserve to die from the virus.
What is going on in the west is obviously bizarre to the Chinaman. I have no other explanation for the irrational aversion against masks except that it simply reflects the lower average IQ of white people and their psychopathic tendencies.
I think it is a wake up call for most Asians about human biodiversity. To Asians, white people are ruled by the passions and too idealistic. Asians are just practical and empirical. I can understand why white people say Asians are boring and can’t innovate. Our brains are wired differently. There are strength and weakness to each approach.
Look up the definition of “gerontocracy”. That’s what’s driving the hysteria.
I am just saying there are solutions to this without going full retard.
I understand some here haven’t played with medical PPE ever in their lives and this novelty is entertaining them but I assure you it’s going to get old fast.
The survival rate of this thing is too high to even entertain illiteracy like masks. The general public doesn’t even know how to wear the damn things properly….
It genuinely feels like boomers are butt hurt over their vulnerablility so they’re forcing everyone to eat shit instead of doing the adult thing and stay home (hopefully to die quietly).
No. It’s because it’s uncomfortable and unnecessary. Try the simpler answer first.
Masks just add a dystopian face to the whole charade. I’m tired of seeing them, to be honest. However, I understand that people will do what they feel is best for them.
Some people say the something about pants and shirts, but there are laws for a reason. Nobody wants to be forced to see your junk nor your ugly mug….
I should add to my previous comment that there’s a hint of fetishism that has been built up around wearing masks. It seems that way to me, at least.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/czechs-get-to-work-making-masks-after-government-decree-coronavirus
The effort has been almost universally embraced – although there have been instances of people lowering their masks in public parks to smoke, or to drink beer outside the few pubs still serving takeaway beer.
Some have flouted the rule in less conventional ways. Police reported sunbathers at a nudist spot outside Prague failing to comply with the rule, while ignoring a separate ordnance forbidding gatherings of more than two people.
In so publicly and brazenly changing their minds on this issue, does it instill confidence in you that these doctors know what they are doing?
I still haven’t heard a good explanation as to why the Boomer age group is the highest risk for Corona-denialism.
Because we are the age group with the most experience with disinformation being spread by our government. A significant % of us have not believed most of the government propaganda since the early sixties.
Remember, the people giving advice now are the very same people who advise the public to wash their Romaine, all the while knowing full well that much of the E. coli cannot be washed off the lettuce.
AaronB.?
I have no other explanation for the irrational aversion against masks except that it simply reflects the lower average IQ of white people and their psychopathic tendencies
I can understand your frustration with people here often being rude to you, but trying to impose your cultural values on us is like an Englishman trying to stuff roast beef down your throat. 🙂
Where is the proof that masks lessen influenza in the UK?
The toll of this virus has dropped over many years – without anyone wearing masks.
Please come back with some data and don’t just make assertions.
There are many reasons for this drop – better diet, less pollution, more holidays in sunny places in the winter and so on. The role of vaccines is debatable as those who are vaccinated fare little/no better than those not vaccinated.
Lessons from 40 years’ surveillance of influenza in England and Wales (National Centre for Biotechnology Information)
http://alongchat.com/stuff/InfluenzaUK.jpg
there’s a hint of fetishism that has been built up around wearing masks
I agree completely. Many ugly women in Iran were delighted when the pretty ones were forced to wear hijabs. Now, the boot is on the other foot and the pretty ones have found ways of flouting their beauty once more. 🙂
https://live.staticflickr.com/6040/6237555713_b3002b341b_z.jpg
With the newest numbers I can find. there have been a total of approx. 125k corona cases in Italy, with approx. 15k deaths. Italy has approx. 18.6 people aged 50 or older, the age group with the overwhelming number of the deaths.
If ALL of the cases and deaths were completely restricted to those 50+, the odds of a person 50+ catching the virus are 0.7%. The odds of dying from the virus 0.09%. Sucks to be an old, sick person who gets this, but in absolute terms the effect of the virus on the population as a whole is negligible.
This is hardly 1348, with the black death killing somewhere between a third and half of the population.
Florida has about 3k traffic fatalities a year. 250 per month. In the last month it has had 195 Corona fatalities. You could make the argument that locking people down in their homes,and the resulting lack of miles driven has saved more lives than all the hoopla over corona.
True researcher’s works such as Jon Rappoport’s will never be featured here at Unz, so I will share it as long as I can.
Jon Rappoport has worked as a free-lance investigative reporter for more than 20 years. He is the author of the 1988 book AIDS Inc., one of the first to critically examine the HIV/AIDS hypothesis and the political maneuverings of the AIDS industry.
http://aidswiki.net/index.php/Jon_Rappoport
THE CREATION OF A FALSE EPIDEMIC BY JON RAPPOPORT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbjQ1sC0ahk
Mainly because we ajn’t ascerd a no stinking cold/flu virus. We’ve experienced a life time of illnesses, and long ago figured out you either get over them or die from them. It’s called the game of life here on planet earth. Cutting off ones head(scuttling the global economy)is an insane over reaction to cure a case of the sniffles(corona virus).
More food for thought:
https://i2.wp.com/www.winterwatch.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/EUwwJRlWAAEXtrg.jpg?w=680&ssl=1
https://www.winterwatch.net/2020/04/soviet-style-economic-collapse-ushers-in-america-2-0/
The tricky part of having sex in our new reality is keeping six feet apart from each other. If you get within six feet of your partner you’ll be arrested.
Chinaman is proud of his ancestry, hence the handle. In accordance with those assertions that Chinese are highly intelligent he should try to also make his comments so. Some of the stuff he writes are absolute nonsense as if he wished to show his skill at being stupid.
The virus can easily go through the pores of a cotton mask. Our own immune systems (which no one believes we have anymore) takes care of germs on ourhands. Gloves do not have an immune system.
The fact that no one sees through this baloney, when the facts are there for anyone to see if they stretch themselves and spend four seconds of their time, tells me that they all must love the titillation of a horror movie. Is that why there are so many made in Hollywood lately?
What the media is doing is called “cruelty”.
What they are doing to the residents in nursing homes is called “cruelty”
What they are doing to the people in hospitals is called “cruelty”.
I once said to someone when they were pushing euthanasia and DNR’s, that when the nurse comes over to take away your food and water, she’s going to have a benign smile on her face
The West would not see huge epidemics if the Chinese cleaned up their living conditions and stopped eating dogs, bats, eels, bird nests, worms and other filth and then travelling here. For all our lower IQ I notice you Chinks flock to our psychopathic west hungry for permanent residence and our culture now dominates yours ie you wear our clothes, dye your hair blond, install blue contacts, try to talk like blacks and eat copious amounts of our fast food. If we were not buying your widgets all of China would be a shithole as it has been for the past 4 millennia. I completely agree it is a wake up call for Asians, you people should pack up and return to China and stay there. Asians are indeed practical and empirical LOL I note that in all these thousands of years you Slopes have invented the rickshaw, the won ton, chopsticks and noodles. You say you can understand why whites find Asians boring and cant innovate. I also understand !
All that you say is just so much drivel. I suggest you put on your mask and sleep with it in place. The virus must have invaded your brain because you write utter shit !
Another author I used to like, that I may have to cross off over my anger towards the Corona fear mongers.
Feel like simply looking at the numbers presented in a way that is easy to understand?
Andrew Mather, British Mathematician
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LydLELH49rc
And the previous videos in the series.
The Surgeon General is a politician who is also a doctor. Jerome only looks like he’s in high school but he is board certified in anesthesiology.
This comment will have no effect but, just because it needs to be said:
Karlin’s Chinese categorization of the virus as “XX-Chan” is not cute. It is insensitive, ideologically stupid, borders on being obscene, and is ignorant as hell.
And, for his (and your) information, the new name is COVID-US.
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/04/02/facing-us-bio-warfare-an-open-letter-to-president-trump-from-the-people-of-the-world/
Nothing to see here sheeple, just keep huddled up in the corner of the slaughterhouse pens, bawling for help from the same SOB’s who are always terrifying you.
If the chinamen had been kept away from the West none of this shit would have happened … dirty rogues are just that, dirty.
First, the traitors in the West dismantled the industrial economy while building up the enemy’s and now, the same bastards are yelling out loud that we need to emulate the filthy rats and their mumbo jumbo, like killing rhinos for their horns so a slanty-eyed bug can get laid when the cockroach is octogenarian.
The West is great because it’s the WEST and not the superstitious East!
It’s too bad those Persian beauties have to follow social taboos of the 6th century nomadic Arabs!
Apr 1, 2020 “This is Beginning of the End of the Pandemic” – Dr. Stephen Smith Announces COVID-19 Game Changer
Hydroxy-Choloroquine Study that is “Game Changer” in Battle Against Coronavirus.
https://youtu.be/k4VPnjIXAb8
Mar 31, 2020 More good news?
Citizen reporters go & do what the media won’t!
https://youtu.be/5pIMD1enwd4
I hope when all this is over we can go back to getting all our stuff from over crowded, filthy, corrupt China. Corporate America wants its cheap labor back.
I guess that first sentence can be interpreted in bizarre existential ways, but what I’m talking about most specifically are viruses.
How is it that some people say viruses are not alive? That they have no motility? Well, plants generally have none either and are considered life. How about the fact that they need to reproduce inside host cells? Well, this is true of many organisms which aren’t viruses – some of these are bacteria and some are not, but are more complicated eukaryotes.
There are many parasites, and many species of organisms that require other species to live. Of course, one could come up with a discrete definition that excludes viruses, but I just don’t see the point of refining a definition to exclude them.
They have biological effects, organic constituents, and work to propagate themselves. That is good enough for me. Some might add that they have genetic material, but then that would exclude prions. Prions might be a fuzzy area. A logical argument can be made to either include or exclude them, but I think viruses should be included.
but to impose huge lockdowns that are going to crater the world economy (if only in the short-term… if we’re lucky).
IF WE’RE LUCKY!?
Whose side are you on anyway?
I cannot provide any source as most have been deleted within days of appearing, but these are what i read too in various front line China Drs circulated discussion. I can share what i read:
There are two group of Drs treating patients in China hospitals: the Western Medical(WM) Dr vs Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) Physician.
The WM Drs are explaining the initial high death rates are due to shortage/ lacking of respirator/ ventilator and EMCO. Without any proven therapeutic drugs, they are only following China leading chief epidemiologist Dr Zhong Nanshan’s advocated treatment: large dosage of Antibiotics + corticosteroids(A+S).
But TCM Physicians are uploading clinical records to prove, once you are on ventilator, you are dead meat, so are those on EMCO. Which is in line with your report now.
They have also shown statistics to prove, all under high dosage A+S treatment, mostly died, while few that survive come with severe side effect. TCM Physician also explained such treatment had already proven disastrous in 2003 SARS advocated by Dr Zhong, and is again been advocated by him.
WM Dr Li Wenliang treatment record was also uploaded to prove why he died, while his female Dr colleague who infected at same time had recovered.
Dr Li record shown he was treated with A+S too. He was still in high spirit when admitted. As his condition deteriorated day by day, A+S dosage increased, until he died. He was expected to recover quickly as he was still young and strong without serious symptoms.
The reason given by TCM physicians was A+S therapeutic treatment actually weakened patient immune system via suppression, leading to his inability to resist virus, and antibiotics are useless for virus. But Drs argued they are useful to prevent infection.
Whereas the survived female WM Dr had opted to self quarantine at home with self treated TCM. Her record was also uploaded. She didn’t select correct herbal treatment initially, but managed to trial and eventually get the right combination to recover herself fully.
Those highly touted as magical cure anti-malaria chloroquine, anti-HIV drugs, Remdesivir, etc. initial clinical trial result was also uploaded showing only below 85% recovery rate, i.e. non effective, since another group given lollipop had similar 85% self recovery rate.
As infections and death rate soar in initial phase with no effective Western medicine, CCP actually step in with official order to have TCM physicians takeover most hospital treatment, making it mandatory option available to all patients. Over 4900 TCM physicians were despatched to Hubei alone.
TCM has proven its effectiveness to quickly contained the outbreak. 91.5% (74k) cases were treated achieving over 90% effectiveness, all with zero death, zero complications, zero deteriotion. All death cases are those didn’t opted to try TCM. This is very conclusive clinical test result.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0324/c90000-9671689.html
Well….
https://www.facebook.com/groups/117202582284906/permalink/504397210232106/
…………………….
People ask how we know that the coronavirus were not made by Chinese (or Americans, or someone else). So I wrote them the answer, and here it is here – feel free to copy and share where you need it.
We who deal with bio engineering have a series of tools available to us. From Classic Enzymes (Enzymes, combinations, etc. ) through new technologies (Crispr) until the use of chemical changed biological molecules (such as the use of click-Chemistry in molecular biology), design can be done in many different ways. Each of these ways leaves very clear tracks, which can recognize the designed organism, general, or part of the body.
If it weren’t so, among other things, we wouldn’t have a discussion over GMO, because companies could create GMO bodies and just say that these are natural things. But I can’t.
On top of that, we also have a few extra players. Our current ability to design anything is limited in certain aspects that are complicated to explain; but in short, it can be said that we either have to design from scratch, or to “steal” something that already exists in nature.
Say, I could take the genius of the human coronavirus and put into it some protein from the bat, and to produce a more dangerous virus (this was actually done once six years ago in a series of studies that were exploring how dangerous virus are created, and how can we Let’s find them faster and to defend against them). But then I would make a virus that is obviously engineering, since it has the humanity of the human coronavirus and then the pag, one part that is been copy from another kind.
If I don’t work like that, I would have to design from scratch, which produces very bad results so far and produce the genetic that do not look like anything from nature (and they are again recognized as engineering).
None of that is in the SARS-2 virus. On the contrary, in the section we clearly see the signs of the gradually evolution that the virus has customized to everyone. Two specific parts of the virus that are critical to the epidemic not only show the previous evolution, but continue to develop before our eyes as the virus is spreading and shared into new fruits. For a complete study on this issue, check here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
The evidence is quite absolute. If we know something about this virus, we know it wasn’t created artificial.
Those that not wearing masks are being assaulted by patriotic citizens. Attacking mobs believe those without a mask are contaminating the environment by coughing on food in the marketplace. Coughing on an infant is punishable by the mothers wrath. The president refuses to wear a mask and is safe from punishment.
Singapore gov & Drs were strongly discouraging mask wearing initially, except for those sicked or in high risk occupation. They stated various reasons, such as giving false security, mask scarcity, and low community infection cases.
One senior CDC Dr even claimed she was okay treating SARS patients in 2003 without a mask to convince public COVID is not so scary and infectious afterall.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/wuhan-virus-frontline-doctor-brenda-ang-ncid-12375708
Then Gov make a 180 deg turn recently after cases rise quickly, with asymptotic ones also proven can infect others.
Gov will no longer discourage people from wearing face masks, reusable masks to be distributed
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-coronavirus-reusable-face-masks-singapore-pm-lee-12606598
But using reusable / washable normal cotton mask will only give false security. It cannot prevent virus totally due to large pores. The only help is to prevent us touching our nose and mouth unknowingly after contacting public area. Jp gov was heavily criticized for distributing washable cotton masks recently.
IMO, Its better to recycle surgical mask after regular sterilizing it, with a few to rotate daily. Although the mask will lost its static effectiveness soon (which is what actually capture all these tiny virus), its still help reduce asymptotic user from infecting others via direct saliva aerosol when coughing or talking.
Unfortunately, the efficacy of the combination therapy of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin has not been definitely established. The initial small scale study (11 samples) done in France was inconclusive:
“No Evidence of Rapid Antiviral Clearance or Clinical Benefit with the Combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in Patients with Severe COVID-19 Infection”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X20300858
Last I checked certain countries made specific anti-terrorism laws in covering ones face. Governments and their laws… all they do is stand in a mans way. Wikipedia calls its “anti-mask laws”. Try harder.
False. Went out today to get my usual supplies and supplements. Only saw one couple wearing masks (and to be fair they were ancient looking). Yes, people were pointing and laughing at them. Including the Chinese lady that saw them exit the store (without a mask, of course).
Jeez. Are you people so bored that this riled you up to put on retarded ass PPE?
China 1400M people will need a billion proper surgical/ N95 masks daily as they resume normal working life, so how did they find enough capacity to provide aids & export in tens of millions daily?
Xinghua: China’s daily mask output exceeds 110 million units
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-03/02/c_138835152.htm
So what is constraining the world & China to increase medical grade mask production? => The shortage melt-blown fabric.
COVID-19 Has Caused A Shortage Of Face Masks. But They’re Surprisingly Hard To Make
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/814929294/covid-19-has-caused-a-shortage-of-face-masks-but-theyre-surprisingly-hard-to-mak
The CDC now recommends everyone use cloth masks in public
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/4/3/21202792/coronavirus-masks-n95-trump-white-house-cdc-ppe-shortage
The frightened middle class joined the elite to crush the poor, working class. Most middle class people kept their jobs and salaries during this panic-demic, but the hourly wage workers mostly lost their jobs. During times of fear the relatively well off always join the super rich in order to protect their own. Nothing takes away a person’s humanity more effectively than fear. People throughout the industrial world learn to fear from the time of birth until death. Fear from nukes, to commies, to terrorists, to SARS, Mers, swine flu, polio, mumps, measles, space invaders, Muslims, Chinese, Nazis, Koreans, etc., etc., etc. Americans for decades have thrown their money at the Government to create a giant military and massive police forces who did nothing to “save” them.
So real explanation is much less altruistic and far more banal than even reasoned critics gave them credit for – it was just sheer bureaucratic inertia and unwillingness to adapt East Asian best practice.
Thanks for this, Anatoly. If only our SJWs would work for good and start targeting the US establishment for “racism” for ignoring the “ancient Chinese secret:” masks work.
Thank you for coming to this thread. As Mr. Karlin wrote in #1, he does not want contrarian comments on his piece and I understand. We have done that all over, the corona worshippers want to have their pandemic and we must allow them to have it.
I could argue, that a face mask could help against a flu, and that people in East Asia are possibly clever in using them, and even in using sophisticated ones. But that is not the point. The coronistas want their killer virus, they want it now, and they want to freak out.
I am really sorry that one after another the articles are trotted out and NONE even adresses the holes in the narrative. At least, below the line there is some space for sanity. I fear that this shift is here to stay. Corona is the new 9/11, the big one.
Please klick “troll”
“SARS-CoV-2 is more infectious than the flu, so even ceteris paribus, it’d infect a larger portion of the population, and faster.”
Is it? It’s either not very infectious or not very deadly, or neither. It cannot be both:
https://www.aier.org/article/what-does-the-growing-number-of-coronavirus-cases-really-mean/
I would have to go through the archive, but I guess that I have never agreed with a comment of yours until this one.
For now we may still laugh at the idea that people be put to the torch for not accepting the supreme reality of Corona, the unspeakable enemy of humanity. However, walking along the street (as I still dare), I see how fast people are adapting to what we know as “Vorauseilender Gehorsam” (Forward-thinking obedience (?)).
If you have good nerves, get out the pop corn, if not, you’d better run.
As the response to this virus discredits the FedGov ever more, I think more people will come around to this vision.
To mangle past American rhetoric, “A trillion for defense, but not a penny for masks.”
All clips of the government killing sheep and birds to fool the public in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND have been scrubbed off the internet.
“I agree completely. Many ugly women in Iran were delighted when the pretty ones were forced to wear hijabs.”
That’s a laugh riot! I didn’t think of that angle. Great picture too, by the way.
Bag mask manual ventilation creates aerosol and is one of the sure ways to spread infectious particles in a cloud which hangs for 3 hrs.
Interesting poll results:
In your opinion, which country has the best approach to the coronavirus?
https://sputniknews.com/vote/202004051078847104/
Tougher than the little girls in this forum that’s for sure.
One commentator said it best… everyone here is drunk with fear and hysteria.
Everyone! Pease take a breath, and then take a minute to learn what a virus really is. Especially the authors, Anotoly Karlin included, who publish this drek. Rather than furthering the fear porn, educate yourself, then us. There are still a few honest and moral virologists talking out, such as the good German doctor. Stefan Lanka. Interviewed here : http://whale.to/a/lanka.html
There’s even a couple of honest investigative journalists too: Torsten Engelbrecht and Claus Kohnlein’s book, VIRUS MANIA is available free online. Here’s a link.
http://www.whale.to/c/Virus-Mania55tt66.pdf
Agreed.
But people are determined to believe that there’s a magical miracle cure. People don’t want to admit that any new therapy requires rigorous long-term trials. Especially when you’re dealing with a disease that isn’t very lethal – there’s a real chance that the side-effects will mean that will kill more people than it saves. And even more especially when you’re dealing with a disease that is still not well understood.
The same applies to a vaccine – if the disease has a rather low lethality then it’s an insane risk to contemplate using a vaccine that hasn’t undergone rigorous long-term trials.
In the real world these things unfortunately take time. Quite a long time. COVID-19 is nowhere near lethal enough (even if you accept the worst case scenarios of its lethality) to justify using unproven therapies.
It’s not a virus problem. It’s an enviromental problem, and the conditon of one’s health that matters.
http://whale.to/a/lanka.html
Thank you for your response and I agree. White men should use their creativity and unlimited imagination to find innovative ways to defeat the virus. Chinese cannot innovate so we have to be stuck with masks and ventilators.
What we need now is innovation and not old ways of practical thinking .
You should insist that they don’t plug you in a ventilator if you have coronavirus since that is too boring and unimaginative. (One idea might be that they stick it up your ass to see if it ventilates your BS better.) anyway, they are most likely made in China or have parts made in China or donated by a chinese guy.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/04/tech/joe-tsai-clara-donate-masks-ventilators-new-york/index.html
This cofounder of alibaba should leave New York and go back to China with his mask and 4000 ventilitors. White people don’t need them.
I know you would rather die than to received alms from a chinaman. It is most degrading for a white man and you should uphold your racial pride to the very end.
Last generation that wasn’t brainwashed by the educational system and almost half our lives with a less controlled MSM. We went to school when teachers taught us to question everything. Critical thinking was considered an asset. Of course there are many dumb boomers who are easily fooled and some smart younger people who see through the lies
But after JFK, Vietnam (started from false flag), RFK/MLK, USS Liberty, Operation Mockingbird, Watergate, Irangate, 76 Swine flu fraud, Gulf War (over incubator babies), 2000 Chad election, 9/11, Anthrax letters, Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria, 2009 Pandemic bust, 2008 subprime crash (orchestrated by Sir Bubbles Greenspan), Global Warming Fraud, this ones too easy
There are a few others too but don’t want your head to explode
As of yesterday Quebec has 7800 infected and 94 deaths, Ontario (similar size population) – 4300 infected, 123 deaths. However, due to immigration from all over the world, Canada is not a good study group for the effect of BCG on COVID19 succeptibility. Not to mention that its Health autorities went rapidly from absolute apathy to histrionics.
Dr . Raoult explained this. Late stage COVID-19 that has caused significant lung damage in susceptible patients (mainly elderly and those with other diseases) wont get the same results as those with only moderate symptoms. The reason is the virus has been mostly eliminated by the immune system, but the extensive lung damage caused in the battle continues a damaging immune response due to many damaged/dead cells.
One needs to treat patients earlier in the disease. The French banned use of hydrochloroquine for this purpose and only allow it at late stage disease where it will show no benefit. Furthermore, the drug used to be available OTC in France but in January the French Health Minister made it prescription only. Sounds fishy to me.
With many generic versions available and its low cost, there is no profit in it so the Medical Industrial Complex and their MSM lackeys fight it
However, BCG is one of the best vaccines ever made, with very low and nonlethal complications. Bacterium Calmet Guirin is a live weakened bacterium, it stimulates the immune system in a significant way not only against TB , but in a more general way, even against bladder cancer. It is possible that people who had BCG can get infected with COVID, but will be asymptomatic or have milder course of the disease.
“the libertarian argument that if the Government issues a baseline safety standard firms have no expectation to exceed it” – What stops them?
(There is a reason for regulation. Remember the Melamine baby formula disaster, where Chinese baby milk producers put melamine in the formula, to then lower costs… and hence make a higher profit? Or how about Fukushima nuclear power plant, where the board didn’t entertain spending money placing diesel generators above Tsunami level?)
Lolbertarian arguments are infantile in almost all cases.
Would private firms compete with each other to increase safety if there was no government?
Did Detroit and other automakers compete with each others to make cars safe? Or was it government regulation that forced the issue.
Even now, regulators are forcing automakers to install better headlights, to improve safety – automakers won’t do it on their own.
Lolbertarian arguments are infantile and they conflate bad government with what is a human defect. Conflations of this type are sophomoric and indicate lolbertarian ideology is not well thought out, or is more likely purposefully deceptive.
If you put defective humans in any sort of hierarchy, then you will get defective outputs. Corporate hierarchy populated by sociopaths will have negative outputs in the same was as a government hierarchy.
There is always hierarchy, another point lolbertarians refuse to admit.
The real question then becomes, how to you keep psychopaths out of government and their crooked hands off of the levers of power?
Sociopaths and Psychopaths in government who told the public not to wear masks are little different from those who infused melamine into baby formula.
Everyone who believes this hoax deserves to lose everything. You gullible people are the reason the jew mob has so much power in the first place. I have told everyone OI know about the jew mob for over a decade and now most of them are losing their shirts. I have been telling them they deserve this for defending the jew mob with ad hominims and straw arguments for so many years. Many are starting to see the truth.
The jew mob will not stay in power after the coming crash no matter what they try to pin the blame on.
Most NYC residents are rule compliant and wear face masks. Most remain in their homes and will only venture out for essential articles. The all clear siren will be given when the eternal virus disappears. NYC residents will soon be dependent on a mailed in welfare check. Feds cannot continually support NYC couch potatoes. Habitual TV watchers will starve unless they leave their habitats and return to work within 90 days.
I know this is tongue and cheek. Chinese can innovate… perhaps not at the same rate as white men, which can be proven statistically. There is a smart fraction of Chinese creative genius, and white people need to stop thumping their chest.
Or, as I call it, whistling past the graveyard,
I know it is ridiculous. China is actually a good example on how to do things properly.
China is doing well by using the American System of Economy. White people have been duped by the usury method and cannot see up from down. They don’t know left from right, and up from down, and have been thoroughly duped and parasitized.
Damn! Now you are riding shotgun for him. Does not compute.
Just an ancedotal observation…
Not long after spring breakers were ordered off Florida beaches, an article appeared at ZeroHedge which included a tweet purportedly showing anonymized cell phone tracking data using area searches which selected for all phones located on a specific south Florida beach on a particular date. After beach closures those cell phones were followed for about a week which showed them spreading out over eastern portions of the south and midwest.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/stunning-visualization-reveals-where-spring-break-covidiots-traveled-after-flooding-florida
Previous to this, had been watching coronavirus spread in the US using the map posted by the John Hopkins’ Center for Systems Sciences and Engineering (GSSE) here:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Before the spring breakers returned north, noted that early coronavirus spread outside large cities was mainly occurring along interstates and highways in rural areas, with the exception of Mississippi (for some reason early cases were more generally distributed in rural counties there, possibly because of Gulf Coast and Mississippi River casinos?). In fact, this effect was so pronounced that it was easy to identify highways not displayed by the CSSE map projection.
However, after the spring breakers returned north, coronavirus spread became far more generally distributed across the rural South and Midwest. Not sure if spring breakers were the direct cause of this more generalized spread, but it appears that spread was given a bump by their travels and cavalier attitudes.
P.S.: Not a fan of big data, cellphone tracking and citizen surveillance (government or corporate) in any way shape or form.
It is customary to remove your shoes when entering a home in Alaska, but haven’t seen that, generally, in other states.
In light of the Coronavirus, I have 2 options:
1) turn into Howard Hughes and grow paranoid about prevalent parasites
2) us my common sense, be informed and act accordingly
I wear a mask for 2 reasons
1) I don’t want to get sick
2) I don’t want to infect others [given the fact it takes up to 5 days for CV symptoms to materialize]
If that makes me an idiot, I want to remain crazy for ever.
It is quite simply disgusting to wear your outside shoes inside your house. Filthy. I can’t imagine what people are thinking when they do it. Do they never sit on the floor in their house? Are they not aware that the streets – especially in the inner cities – are shit-gardens for dogs? But then they track that in onto their floors? Bizarre. It is an especially crazy thing about the West.
The most basic disqualification of libertarianism is that it should begin with a description of what it believes to constitute human nature – because that is what defines what humans can and will do – and then take its arguments from there. But I have never seen a libertarian do that.
Libertarianism has no observations or philosophy of psychology, sociology, or anthropology. So whence does it derive its politics and economics (so-called)?
The trouble with girls of this ethnicity is that they look okay at the club when they have spent all of the previous afternoon depilating, but they next morning you roll over and see that her entire body has a five o’clock shadow.
Beautiful Western women are easily the most beautiful women of all.
Blyth Masters engineered the first derivatives ever manufactured into existence, Max ‘Archie Bunker’ Payne. That festering Feminist killed the so-called ‘economy’ long before you watched Bear Stearns & Lehman Brothers Inc. take dirt naps.
RW
There’s beard snoods for surgeons, oby other Drs who insist on wearing beards. It’s like a bag for the beard with loops around the ears and like a bandage with adhesive for the mustache and of course barrettes and elastic bands for long hair
A cool look.
I’d rather have a 1000 ancient fucks die before wearing whatever-the-fuck you’re describing.
Now, now, Chinese invented wallpaper, the most useful construction material ever.
You’re not a surgeon or an oby, so you’ll never be required to. They only wear them in surgery and delivery rooms.
Libertarianism is my pet peeve. From my older comments:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/socialism-not-dead/#comment-2041466
For TPTB the libertarianism certainly is a very useful delusion to infect young (mostly male) minds with and render them at least harmless if not cheerleaders for the neoliberal NWO paradise. The paradise for the uber rich class, the oligarchs. Ayn Rand books created greatest devastation in young Americans minds and psyche. If she was the product of CIA or NKVD she would be one of the most successful psyops they ever conducted or dreamed of.
https://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/why-is-the-gop-terrified-of-tariffs/#comment-2234429
Libertarianism regardless of its provenance whether from Ayn Rand or Ron Paul has only one function which is to promote egoism, individualism leading to atomization of society in which individual optimization of individual merit functions prevents ever attaining better global optimum (this stems from Prisoner’s Dilemma). In the end the strongest win which leads to oligarchy and neoliberalism. The masters and the owners of the world like libertarians very much.
Complex civilization is possible only when natural human instincts like egoism is controlled. Ayn Rand ideology puts egoism in the driving seat and extolls it: Greed is good and so on. This is not the way to build a society. It is a possible way but it leads to hell. American is on the way to it with the help of Satan little helpers, the libertarians useful idiots.
4chan doesn’t care.
Look who’s dying now? Not the heathens, but the barbarians…….
What virus? Biometrics?
Libertarianism has its factions, like anything else, although they are all thoroughly evil and destructive of human beings.
The Rothbard/Hoppe/(((Austrian))) economics faction is directly connected to the Mises interests, to the Rockefellers, and the Habsburgs-sponsored Mont Pelerin Society.
They of course are also connected to Warburg, the Rothschilds, and Coudenhove-Kalergi, among many other nefarious enemies of Whites and christianity.
Libertarianism is quite simply a tool designed to smash White and Christian solidarity and even the nation-state itself.
Guilt by association you might object. To which I would reply, “But birds of a feather…”
https://www.big-lies.org/coudenhove-kalergi/
The Mont Pelerin Society, Ford Foundation and Tavistock Institute
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/world_order/WorldCh07-4.htm
Wouldn’t that depend on the individual? Isn’t COVID practically a death sentence for some (such as someone 60+ with underlying lung damage)? For such individuals, at least, the potential risks of an unproven therapy would seem to be outweighed by the potential benefits.
The nomadic English….
https://www.unz.com/article/claremonts-codevilla-on-the-coming-revolution-americans-will-be-nostalgic-for-donald-trumps-moderation/#comment-1608122
In my experience, committed libertarians usually have some single quirk of personality that expresses itself in at least one socially disapproved behavior (i.e., recreational drug use) that they defend by use of the libertarian ideology. It now seems that marijuana will be decriminalized, and gay marriage has already been written into the Constitution, so I think libertarian ideology is quickly running out of those hooks with which they win converts.
https://www.unz.com/article/claremonts-codevilla-on-the-coming-revolution-americans-will-be-nostalgic-for-donald-trumps-moderation/#comment-1608266
Libertarian events are seriously depressing things. The only sane people at them are the organizers, various think-tankers (i.e. the speakers), and the goldbug people running their scams. The rest range from the autistic to the profoundly mentally ill. And a few dentists who want their taxes cut.
https://www.unz.com/article/reflections-on-hilaire-bellocs-the-jews-1922/#comment-3411058
There was no push for libertarianism in an age when the so called libertarians were not protected by large nations as they are today, and were subject to large group competition. There were no sane, non-suicidal early Germanics, Levantines, or Romans looking to be “free” from their tribe. It would have meant death.
Libertarianism is a frontier ideology and pipe dream for the modern world at best, and a malignant / subversive replacement ideology that played a large part in weakening our post WWII ethnic self defense against Marxist ideology at worst. Hint: it’s the latter. It’s not a coincidence that false conservative Jewish gatekeepers for the Right love libertarian ideology.
The vast majority of those 60+ survive. It would be barbarous to expose them to the unknown risks of an unproven treatment.
It might seem like a worthwhile option for those who are 75+ and in poor health but they’ll probably die anyway so we won’t learn whether the treatment works or not. We need to know if the treatment works and if the side-effects are manageable which requires rigorous long-term testing.
A lot of those (probably most) who die from COVID-19 are essentially dying already. They’re just not going to give us useful data.
If we’re not going to worry about proper clinical trials we might as well try voodoo or witch-doctors or homeopathy or humidifiers or any number of quack cures.
It’s frustrating but governments have already been driven by panic into making decisions with inadequate data. We don’t need to compound the problem.
It appears that the only ones likely to benefit from the treatment are people with mild symptoms who will almost certainly recover anyway. Before we start experimenting on such people we need to know what we’re doing.
Reading the headlines from various news sites, I must say this is the stupidest hysteria in a long long time.
I get it, it’s something we need to take seriously, but news story after news story, it’s Covid-this, Covid-that, as if everything is connected to Covidity.
Enough already.
First time in my life where world news, national news, state news, local news, sports news, and entertainment news were mostly about the SAME thing.
For protection, I recommend a pro dive mask filled with sea water.
Salt will kill and water is a protective barrier.
Place cotton balls in end of snorkel.
If in a weakened state, go for the entire wet suit plus tanks.
Shark knife is good but optional.
Or,
wear sandwich board with Commander Cuomo’s pictures.
5 dancing shlomos
My wife, being a theatre nurse, has a brain snap whenever the news comes on and shows the public getting around wearing masks. Some have only got their mouth covered with their nose hanging out. Some have taken the mask off their face and have left it dangling around their neck, with the inside surface open to collecting and scooping up foreign bodies, before using it again. As she says, it really has to become second nature not to touch the mask, especially the front section before the mouth as it leads to contamination.
I think in the hospital situation though they are doubling up on masks, with the lighter mask on the outside protecting the inner one. And when it comes to using the masks with multi straps, she says they can be very difficult to setup properly. And when time is of the importance, suiting up successfully the first attempt can mean life and death for the patient. I think in one of their first exercises somebody looked at the clock and reminded them that the patient would be dead by now. The big thing about using masks out in public is giving people a false sense of security.
Wearing a mask will not prevent Covid-19. Most masks or scarves do Nothing for you. This, according to more than one doctor. Of course, the USA Surgeon General changed his tune because it opened the Trump Admin to criticism. Just like 9/11 this is turning into an Operation where if you don’t follow the script then you might be out a job.
Read this article by Doctor of in Italy (who has been threatened with jail). Even he says this is over-hyped and gives his reasons on why they are doing it.
“The Coronavirus and Galileo: An Interview with an Italian Nano-pathologist Dr. Stefano Montanari”
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/04/04/the-coronavirus-and-galileo-an-interview-with-a-italian-nano-pathologist-dr-stefano-montanari/
And plenty of doctors have said that coronavirus does not kill you, but the underlying disease. Many common colds are coronavirus.
Fresh air and sun is important. I have not seen so many people walking around as this weekend. Couples walking together, kids with parents. The only good thing about this is that people are re-connecting to family. I have been going up to the Track and running and doing stairs and many people there. Was never that many people before. Nobody in masks….good for them!
This whole thing is B.S. We need to find out WHO (no pun intended) is responsible for this operation and what it’s for (likely the first round).
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/04/04/the-coronavirus-and-galileo-an-interview-with-a-italian-nano-pathologist-dr-stefano-montanari/
To continue your line of inquiry and logic…
It concerns me that a mob capo recently wrote he was worried about the health and welfare of all us working stiffs. Now I don’t know too much about mobsters, or their lingo, but it seems that in every mob movie when a made man suddenly takes an interest in your health and welfare you ought to be concerned. Sorta like when one makes you an offer you shouldn’t refuse by offering fire or life insurance with a convenient weekly payment plan.
So why is our capo (well, emeritus capo) suddenly concerned about us? Why is he so worried that if we don’t get back to work soonest, we might suffer from depression, suicide and all other sorts of ills? It’s not like he hasn’t visited plenty of economic and financial destruction upon us in the past, so why worry now?
And why are you so determined to do exactly what he wants?
Funny that. Right after he made his pitch quite a few posters began really trying to hammer their opinions home that Covid-19 isn’t nearly all that bad, that in fact it’s just a hoax, and working stiffs need to get back to their grindstones right now.
Aren’t you just the least bit suspicious about that?
Vaccines are NOT what you think they are; you may be attracting more disease in future with other viruses. If you don’t feel like watching the entire interview, skip to 30 min and watch from there for 10 mins:
https://videoplayer.telvue.com/player/0yMvL7SaaePCh8raohYoxsp1MzZ6gHeT/series/2470/media/546082?sequenceNumber=2&autostart=false&showtabssearch=true
I have 2 in Trentino-Alto Adige. One is a retired GP and the other a Pediatrician. Both say cure is worse than the disease: As of March 30, does this look like an epidemic in Italy?
Death Rate age of population:
0-19 = 0.0000%
20-29 = 0.0000%
30-39 = 0.0003%
40-49 = 0.0010%
50-59 = 0.0039%
60-69 = 0.0157%
70-79 = 0.0583%
80-89 = 0.1099%
90+ = 0.1120%
How to get the above numbers. Age distribution of death divided by relevant population per age bracket.
Age distribution of deaths (Source: ISS Report, 30 March). Age of deaths with Covid 19:
0-19 = 0
20-29 = 2
30-39 = 20
40-49 = 89
50-59 = 369
60-69 = 1162
70-79 = 3458
80-89 = 3984
90+ = 940
Divided by the relevant population (Italy Population Pyramid, 2019) per age bracket:
0-19 = 10843908
20-29 = 6135226
30-39 = 7100743
40-49 = 9225165
50-59 = 9453168
60-69 = 7391126
70-79 = 5935048
80-89 = 3626542
90+ = 839166
The total percentage of the Italian population that have died WITH the novel coronavirus is 0.0167%.
Video shot April 3 outside Mount Sinai, NY. In my city, I’m seeing the same. Hospitals more quiet than usual (outside) and no ambulance or paramedic vehicles going in and out….far less than a normal day but this is exactly the opposite of what the media is reporting locally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msTGeAVuSxs&t=343s
Judy Mikovits, PhD who worked at bio-weapons lab in Fort Deltrick says in last 50 years, all pandemics are man-made:
https://videoplayer.telvue.com/player/0yMvL7SaaePCh8raohYoxsp1MzZ6gHeT/series/2470/media/546082?sequenceNumber=2&autostart=false&showtabssearch=true
The thing is, that if it became a habit where I live, I would also wear a mask just not to run into trouble just for going out to do my shopping. I would not want to drive the people around me into a hysterical fit.
Whenever I get to talk to people (nearly impossible in these conditions), I rather try to raise their spirit by saying anything positive. I would not dare tell them that this is all a complete lie and that they’d better return to normal for their own spiritual health. The step to fundamentally contradict the authorities, media and everything that you are meant to depend on in regular life is so huge, that you cannot ask people to take it in a time of (manufactured) existential crisis.
On the thread under the article by Heiner Rindermann(which I don’t follow much now) somebody wrote that Corona-contrarians include numerous Germans. Maybe an explanation would be that to come to the conclusion to regard your authorities and everyone around you as completely in the wrong should be history 101, if anyone had listened at school.
That is an interesting point, as with us there are quite generous government grants on offer, which are handed out without much ado via internet. I read the fine print and found that these grants are meant to support you in keeping up your business, not your livelyhood, for which you would have to go on wellfare.
This means that – unless the bank that is in charge of handing out the grants forgives its clients – the people who take them will have to pay them back sometime next year after they have declared their taxes. This will hit them at a time when many will be out of work. I do not see this as intentional, it is simply stupidity on the part of the authorities who within days have decided to lockdown the economy and start supporting everyone with free money.
No problem.
Welcome to the internet
You really have to evaluate costs vs. benefits very carefully in mild and moderate cases, because of some nasty adverse effects of hydroxychloroquine such as irreversible retinal damage, damage to heart muscle, cardiac arrhythmia, muscle and nerve damages, bone marrow depression, acute liver failure etc etc.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/009768s037s045s047lbl.pdf
Um, to be completely correct. He uses a Chinese cartoon girl. But the xx-chan is Japanese in origin.
Also, it is just a meme.
But I agree it does affect people as most are too dumb to tell the nuances and just assumes “omg, Chinese virus”.
AK isn’t trying to do that though.
Is this reliable? That would be huge if true.
Hard to say, since in China Western Drs call the shot in medical field like ours, and China official news are very regulated. TCM is often considered an alt treatment.
In China media, im seeing a huge campaign of Western drug pharma giants to heavily suppress every news of TCM and anything negative about their drugs, often deleted within few days. Writer accounts are quickly banned.
They also spread voluminous of obvious fake news advertising many Western drugs as magic cure, which my country Drs have category debunked.
Yet many reputable Chinese Drs are openly endorsing these Western drugs. Some are even responsible for writing gov health policy, which determine certain drugs as standard treatment for Drs.
But they are often exposed as ones related to the pharma selling these unproven drugs, with serious conflict of interest. These Drs simply lack basic ethic and im rather surprise China gov isn’t regulating at all.
There are also a few China gov hospital TCM physicians seem more authentic in their sharing, at least back with clinical records and trial test result. Since herbal treatment has no patent, anyone can produce or buy off the shelves anywhere with the prescription. So these physicians have less conflict of interest to benefit.
After comparing both sides stories and the actual patients cured records, it seems the TCM physicians are more reliable to me. At least they are transparent to show clinical test result, unlike Chinese Western medical Drs are opaque giving only personal opinion.
Eg. Dr Zhong Nanshan often openly touted chloroquine as very promising cure for early stage treatment with little side effect. But China gov has infact prohibited all hospitals using the treatment after patients died of toxicity is contradictory. A preload of 200mg seem to be deadly killing patients within hours. Yet this important news is only been share by TCM physician.
There’s no proof that chloroquine is an effective treatment for coronavirus
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/coronavirus-chloroquine-hydroxychloroquine-not-proven
Those are some very very nasty side effects. It’s silly to be panicked into embracing a treatment that involves such high risks if the treatment it likely to be effective only for people whose symptoms are so mild that they’ll almost certainly recover anyway.
People are not thinking rationally at the moment. They’re being driven by panic. And in this situation far too many people are being driven by political considerations as well (hydroxychloroquine must be a miracle cure because Trump says so and it’s only wicked Democrats who are standing in its way).
In a situation like this there are inevitably going to be all sorts of miracle cures and quack cures being promoted by cranks. We need to be sceptical of wild claims about miracle cures.
I think Dr Li is on “non-invasive positive pressure ventilation” (NPPV or NIPPV).
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/niv-100221094543-phpapp02/95/non-invasive-ventilation-update-20-728.jpg?cb=1412670077
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arantxa_Mas/publication/264989372/figure/fig1/AS:295981972246555@1447579009891/nterfaces-for-noninvasive-ventilation-Notes-A-nasal-mask-B-and-C-oro-nasal.png
This is oxgen mask where patient breath by himself with exhale air vents on sides.
https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-bed-oxygen-mask-hospital-600w-114585613.jpg
Agreed.
Only Thailand is using chloroquine with HIV drug liberally. Vietnam may be too. Oz reported one case, hospital was urged to imitate this by a dying patient’s family and it work.
Pepe writes a good article on it. But it actually said follow “Asia success in vigorous testing filter out infected one” for Prof Raoult recommended “treatment with chloroquine in very early stage as preventive measure”.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-france-is-hiding-a-cheap-and-tested-virus-cure/
So chloroquine is not a proven cure as many falsely touted, though it exhibits some preventive effect. Its known toxicity side effect is another topic.
That made some sense, which in line with China and Thailand limited small clinical test result in 100. France is said to start 20k trial cases.
“Raoult was part of a clinical trial that in which hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin healed 90% of Covid-19 cases if they were tested very early. (Early, massive testing is at the heart of the successful South Korean strategy.)
Raoult is opposed to the total lockdown of sane individuals and possible carriers – which he considers “medieval,” in an anachronistic sense. He’s in favor of massive testing (which, besides South Korea, was successful in Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam) and a fast treatment with hydroxychloroquine. ”
Zhang Nanshan, who says that treatment with chloroquine phospate had a “positive impact,” with patients testing negative after around four days.
The key point has been stressed by Raoult: Use chloroquine in very special circumstances, for people tested very early, when the disease is not advanced yet, and only in these cases. He’s not advocating chloroquine for everyone. It’s exactly what the Chinese did, along with their use of Interferon. ”
In general, 85% patients will has mild or no symptoms require no treatment at all. 12% may need hospitalization & recover with care, 3% will be in ICU.
So Dr Raoult methodology is to prevent that 15% from happening at very begin stage of outbreak by wide testing like SK, not as a cure. Since this is what overwhelmed all hospitals and kill many patients.
If a dosage of $1 cheap chloroquine to every early stage tested positive ones can act as effective prevention, it warrant attention. But huge resources will be required to test very rigorously with 97% risking unnecessary toxicity complications, which may harm more than COVID did(3% ICU cases with 0.1% fatality)? A preload of 200mg might kill the patient within few hours.
So we should be open to wait for France 20k clinical study completed to see its merit. Drs should use with due care as of now only if there is no better option.
Agreed.
Only Thailand is using chloroquine with HIV drug liberally. Vietnam may be too. Oz reported one case, hospital was urged to imitate this by a dying patient’s family and it work.
Pepe writes a good article on it. But it actually said follow “Asia success in vigorous testing filter out infected one” for Prof Raoult recommended “treatment with chloroquine in very early stage as preventive measure”.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-france-is-hiding-a-cheap-and-tested-virus-cure/
So chloroquine is not a proven cure as many falsely touted, though it exhibits some preventive effect. Its known toxicity side effect is another topic.
That made some sense, which in line with China and Thailand limited small clinical test result in 100. France is said to start 20k trial cases.
In general, 85% patients will has mild or no symptoms require no treatment at all. 12% may need hospitalization & recover with care, 3% will be in ICU.
So Dr Raoult methodology is to prevent that 15% from happening at very begin stage of outbreak by wide testing like SK, not as a cure. Since this is what overwhelmed all hospitals and kill many patients.
If a dosage of $1 cheap chloroquine to every early stage tested positive ones can act as effective prevention, it warrant attention. But huge resources will be required to test very rigorously with 97% risking unnecessary toxicity complications, which may harm more than COVID did(3% ICU cases with 0.1% fatality)? A preload of 200mg might kill the patient within few hours.
So we should be open to wait for France 20k clinical study completed to see its merit. Drs should use with due care as of now only if there is no better option.
thanx, very useful info, now I wonder whether this mild form of ventilation was also included into that Chinese study with 97% mortality rate or was that just “hard” ventilation with sedation and intubation through mouth/throat into trachea?
Also there was Sky news video report from Italy where most patients were shown with soft plastic helmets, so “mild” ventilation, but the Italian nurse still said that all patients on ventilators died:
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/07/03/26892552-8193359-An_Italian_patient_receiving_CPAP_treatment_as_seen_in_a_Sky_New-a-56_1586225119654.jpg
This is not astonishing at all, as it is household knowledge that Antibiotics and Corticosteroids work marvellousely, but in a prolonged course of a disease kill. The antibiotics won’t touch the virus at all, because that is impossible. They will remove the bacterial infections that enter the lungs after they have been weakened by a viral infection. As anyone knows who ever has taken Antibiotics, they leave the body seriously debilitated, because they kill any sort of other, useful bacteria at the same time.
Coricosteroids (as far as I understand, I am not a doctor) suppress the antibody reaction. Thus they diminish the inflamation and relieve the patient. The problem is that if the disease is not overcome in the course of the treatment, there is in a fragile or elderly patient no second chance.
Regarding respirators, I fear that unless a patient is otherwise physically very stabile, they are for the dying.
Corona death are probably more due to panicy, bad doctors then anything else. But if the official advise as the WHO is as bad as it is, this is nothing strange.
Who would seriously advise people from staying indoors and not get fresh air in spring? Who would lock up the elderly indefinitely instead of explaining risks to them and letting them decide over their own lifes?
As I like it so much, once more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg
Perspectives on the Pandemic | Professor Knut Wittkowski | Episode 2
“Social distancing was effective. It prevented the sky from falling down!”
The report i read didn’t specified if its Non intrusive or the intrusive intubation. Usually its serious case that required intubation. Trachea is most intrusive. But once the lung failed, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, which delivers oxygen directly to a patient’s bloodstream is required.
The helmet type is also one kind of positive pressured non invasive ventilator. You can Google to see many designs. So the Italian nurse is correct.
The TCM physician that wrote the article only explain once lung starts fail to function, blood oxygen will drop fast requiring ventilator to pump in oxygenated air directly into lung. Then you are mostly gone case since Western medicine has no proven effective therapeutic treatment. You are simply on your own immune defense that likely will deteriorate further in vicious cycle.
Whereas TCM herbal treatment is to remove whatever elements that offset the immune system, purge the toxic(virus) & liquid, balance back & boost immune for self recovery. They don’t care what virus, just make sure get the damn immune system balance & work until fully recovered. It sound logic to me.
You can read this interesting article by a US trained Chinese MD who took up TCM in China later. He published his work “The Art and Science of Traditional Medicine” in http://www.sciencemag.org which you can search using keyword traditional medicine or TCM. Otherwise, Google translate this to your language.
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JLBsY70zl_DT3N6eOncqLg
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/04/04/covid-19-ventilator-deaths-are-high/
Jon Hamilton writes ~ Ventilators Are No Panacea for Critically Ill COVID-19 Patients (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/02/826105278/ventilators-are-no-panacea-for-critically-ill-covid-19-patients
Some China WM Drs wrote that they are very worry about doing intubation procedure. Because most Drs get infected while doing it, as patients airway get open coughing out much droplets carrying virus in enclosed ICU.
One of their leading snr Dr get infected this way and succumbed quickly. He refused to let his juniors do intubation to avoid infecting them, and died soon. It was quite a sad situation.
If only Chinese Drs have accessed to powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR), these Drs need not sacrifice. But last mth i read they have managed to design & produce themselves 1000 sets for all ICU Drs. They might unable to get supply from US & EU.
http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c77ab8f1-fb3f-4fba-b8a0-0af5c8207413/en
https://www.osha.gov/dts/osta/otm/otm_viii/otm_viii_2fig03.gif
Spore Drs learned about that during 2003 SARS after some Drs died getting infected in ICU filled with concentrated virus during intubation. Only PAPR work.
Also I do remember reading somewhere that Chinese doctors reportedly had quite a success just when continually mechanically(?) sucking the fluids out of patients lungs, but not placing them on to ventilators, as this methood had quite better survival rate than ventilation, but can’t anymore find the source atm.
Amerikwan Corona-chan for equality!
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/768/769/eaa.jpg
“Paranoia runs deep, into your heart it will creep” – Buffalo Springfield circa 1966
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVBtQnYWsAAB0k8?format=jpg&name=medium
I never read about that, as China Drs don’t share much about their treatments since mostly failed. Its TCM physicians have much to share but quickly get censor.
But these 40,000 Chinese Drs, physicians & nurses, are all heroic to volunteer themselves to risky frontline working tirelessly. 3400 got infected, a dozen died, yet not a single withdraw. They deserved our respect.
They live in hospitals, sleeping on floors, and use diapers in PPE suits working 10hrs shift wearing tight goggle & mask is very tough challenge. Many face serious shortage of PPE, yet no one complaint. They just soldier on to save life.
These comics are wilfully painting the COVID as Asian woman in Chinese costume. Are people spreading these unwisely helping US to demonize & xenophobic Chinese?
Yes.
I didn’t think of that angle
It is true. The ugly old women were like the Stasi. They would report the girls or just shout at them in the street for not hiding their hair. It was so sad. But all of that is history now.
Beautiful Western women are easily the most beautiful women of all
That was true 50 years ago. But now it is hard to find a pretty one. All the models seem to be from Russia or Ukraine.
I guess when this depression gets going for a few years, the young women will realise that they have to make an effort. The older ones need to lose all that fat and to remove their tattoos. It won’t be easy. 🙁
http://www.tattoostime.com/images/457/black-and-white-tattoo-on-girl-both-sleeves.jpg
Smokers may be LESS likely to end up in hospital in the first place
Smart people smokers!
http://alongchat.com/stuff/chinese-man-smoking-a-cigarette-through-hole-in-face-mask.jpg
Welcome to our new Amerika comrades.
AMERICA HAS DIED. NEW AMERIKA IS HERE. IT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMAmJoKJQRg
You can multiply this woman by the 100’s of thousands of Chinese that also market for Daigou by buying products that are in demand in China and exporting them. Or we can mention the large Chinese corporations that were instructed to have their employees scour the countryside for masks back in January. Unfortunately it’s a scattered story because the MSM wants the Chinese market. What doesn’t help is the lack of coverage on this issue because it will happen again. If China wants something, be sure your country will face a shortage regardless how necessary the item is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQtGvcsrHpM
Just has finished watching the clip. Prof Knut is very confident with his 35yrs of epidemic experience.
TCM physicians have another twist, why not prevent & treat the seasonal influenza by boosting immunity instead of doing nothing waiting of 1% death!!!
*Such “influenza virus” can still be well utilized as a useful geopolitical tool if deploy(PNAC).
China TCM treatment clinical result has achieved over 90% effectiveness, with zero deteriotion & death. Drs & nurses taking herbal prevention have also achieved zero infection.
Cost per patient treatment for Western medical vs TCM is $60~80k vs below $1k. Hence TCM preventive measure & treatment is economically viable.
http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0324/c90000-9671689.html
On Herd Immunity,
China found that some recovered patients have relapsed or tested positive again. Some also have few or no antibody. SK has similar finding in latest. That will be a huge concern of 2nd wave.
Another latest finding is asymptotic carrier can also be infectious. China is now actively tracking these and adding them as infected cases.
https://www.rt.com/news/485438-reactivation-reinfection-coronavirus-tests/
There are also studies that find some infected patients have organs failure and brain infection. The virus might be able to stick for long time deteriorating immune system like HIV.
LatestCoronavirus Research Reveals That The Virus Has Mutated Gene Similar To HIV and Is 1,000 Times More Potent.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-latestcoronavirus-research-reveals-that-the-virus-has-mutated-gene-similar-to-hiv-and-is-1,000-times-more-potent-
Hence Herd Immunity might be impractical with an unknown great risk to entire nation.
That’s probably the reason why China took draconian action to lockdown entire 1400M, taking on devastating damage to its social economy even at astronomical cost in many $T.
On Professor Knut Wittkowski numbers, he is totally contradicting himself and what all other epidemiologists have modelled on.
Prof Knut is of opinion that if nothing been done, US total deaths will only in range of 10~15k based on 1% deaths, with epidemic dies off within 4wks providing herd immunity. The mild or no symptoms cases will be approx 70% requiring no hospitalization.
Whereas a social distancing will only prolong the epidemic. He opined that what required is to have medical insurance coverage, and seek treatment at early stage.
These totally don’t tied up, and is absolutely unrealistic. Even we will to assume every Americans has health insurance coverage or free treatments, its will still not work.
Taking most typical global profile assume on the best ends:
80% of 350M infected = 280M
85% of 280M infected with no or mild symptoms= 238M
12% hospitalized= 33.6M in 4wks,
This will simply overwhelm all US hospitals with only 700k beds. How many will deteriorated to ICU & die due to lack of medical care? 33M deaths with no bed!!!
3% ICU = 8.4M in 4wks,
Where to find so many ICU beds & ventilators when each treatment last a few wks typically? These will see a spike of death rate like Wuhan or Italy initial outbreak with 4%~10% (11.2M~28M).
Even based on Prof Knut 1% death rate of 280M infected = 2.8M
This is still far from his 10k deaths and unacceptable high!!!
Even taking typical 0.1% flu death rate, that will be 280k, which is what US gov is trying to project as ideal case, with 100k deaths at best if the lockdown and social distancing work excellently to flatten the curve, thus avoid overwhelming hospitals.
So following Prof Knut advice without any action, US will see something like 33.6M hospitalizations, 8.4M ICU, 2.8M~28M deaths all within 4wks!!!
And this is EXACTLY what WHO, China and the whole world epidemiologists are trying to warn everyone from very beginning, TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!!!
Hence UK herd immunity policy was later modified with some social distancing due to projected 800k deaths (based on 60% infections) is deemed unacceptable.
What EU, UK, US and the world are doing now is to try flaten the curve to avoid overwhelming hospital, hence minimizing death rate to below 1% with least infections.
IMO, Professor Knut Wittkowski view is over simplistic and fundamentally flawed. He is talking based on an unlimited medical system that can handle 33M hospitalizations & 8M ICU cases all within 4wks.
If China will to do nothing to protect its economy, following on such herd immunity advice, it will has 1120M infections, 134M hospitalizations, 33.6M ICU, with 11.2~112M deaths all in 4wks!!!
So now can we understand why China CPC leadership is so determined and decisive in its containment policy at all cost. And it works spectacularly to contain within 2mths, achieving an impressive 84k infections, 3.4k deaths so far.
Correct me if I am wrong.
@sudden death
@refl
What we had discussed previously, eventually are now brought up by NY ICU Drs and various Drs globally. They are finding the same result as China TCM physicians mentioned few mths ago, you are dead meat once on ventilator that actually killed.
The right therapeutic recommended by TCM physicians is to remove the cause that make liquid built up in lung obstructing oxygen intake.
Strange thing is China’s Western Medical Drs are completely silence on this, still trying to sell their proven failed treatment (antibiotics + steroid + ventilator). A protocol written by pharmaceutical giants?
Video: COVID-19: 70% of Patients Are on Ventilators. Is It a “Solution”?… Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell
“Around 70% are in Ventilators So, that’s a very, very high percentage in general, when one thinks of a medical disease.”
By Dr. John Whyte and Dr. Cameron Kyle-Sidell
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-do-covid-19-vent-protocols-need-second-look/5711080
https://youtu.be/Elgct0nOcKY
Are Ventilators Killing More People Than They’re Saving??
https://www.globalresearch.ca/are-ventilators-killing-more-people-than-saving/5709562