Covid-19 Outbreak of new SARS-like coronavirus (Covid-19)

[JGrimez]

A lot of words could be saved if we all just accept that the reason many people have such a negative response to anyone questioning the lock downs is because they have a strong aversion to the implications, rather than the details, of the argument that is made.

Most arguments I've seen so far are valid, yet many people reject them out of hand, often quite obtusely. Such people are obviously, therefore, not interested in the rights or wrongs of what you are saying, but rather that you are saying it at all.

For them, to question the lock downs implies much more terrifying things than a virus or the prospect of being virtually imprisoned in their homes and the economy destroyed for years to come.


‘It’s kind of a rule of thumb’: Adviser reveals UK govt’s 2-meter coronavirus distance instruction based on ‘muddy science’

Almost everything about this virus can be placed in the "conjured out of nowhere" category.

"The instruction for people to keep two meters apart from other people to reduce the risk of infection, advice which was “conjured out of nowhere,” according to professor Robert Dingwall.

“There's never been a scientific basis for two meters, it’s kind of a rule of thumb. But it's not like there is a whole kind of rigorous scientific literature that it is founded upon,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. Evidence exists that observing a one meter distance would be beneficial during an epidemic, but even that “comes out of indoor studies in clinical and experimental settings.”

Coronavirus pandemic is becoming a human rights crisis, UN warns
Apparently the UN can say what I've been saying.
But I really shouldn't for some reason.

"The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned on Thursday in a fresh attempt to bring the UN’s influence to bear on the crisis. He said what had started as a public health emergency was rapidly turning into a human rights crisis."

“He did not deserve to die like he did” – Cancer patient dies in COVID-19 unit while family waits on test
More evidence that the automatic (in many cases) move to intubate patients may be deadly.
Cancer patient killed by COVID treatment, before being tested.
In eight previous trips to the emergency room for similar symptoms, Gary had never been intubated before.
“How did we get from a fever of 99 at 7 a.m. to 2 o’clock he’s on a ventilator?” asked Rockmore.
Gary’s family said after the ventilator went in, his condition got worse by the hour.
“They just automatically assumed he was sick with this virus, and they didn’t take the time to look at his history,” his mother said.


Smoke fags, save lives
While the title is tongue-in-cheek, there seems to be clear evidence (as clear as it gets these days) that nicotine has a protective effect against covid-19.

Care homes' soaring death rate blamed on 'reckless' order to take back Covid-19 patients
And yet, apparently it's not ok for me to speak loudly and publicly in condemnation of the way this is being handled.
"A Government diktat that NHS hospitals should move hundreds of elderly patients to care homes has been branded “reckless” and blamed for the homes’ soaring coronavirus death rates."


Nearly all Covid-19 patients put on ventilators in New York's largest health system died, study finds
As several front-line doctors have already noted, ventilating patients with covid-19 may be doing more harm than good.

Fact check: Hospitals get paid more if patients listed as COVID-19, on ventilators
Yes, there is a financial incentive for hospital administrations to artificially increase the number of "confirmed" covid-19 cases.

Have stay-at-home orders really helped reduce air pollution?

Short answer? Not to any significant degree.

"Air pollution in the skies over some of the world's most crowded places has cleared significantly at the same time strict shelter-in-place orders have been implemented around the globe in response to the COVID-19 crisis. However, air quality experts say the improvements that are being observed aren't significant enough to make much of a long-term impact.

"This has not cut the amount of emissions and pollution by any amount that would be sufficient to significantly dampen the amounts of deaths and shorter lives that air pollution represents," Romain Lacombe, founder and CEO of Plume Labs, an environmental technology company that maps out pollution levels around the world, told AccuWeather in a Skype interview. "We're talking about 7 to 9 million deaths worldwide every year based on our best statistical understanding of how pollution impacts our health."

Two thirds of coronavirus victims may have died this year anyway, government adviser says
Probably more like seven eighths if you know anything about the official policies to record all unconfirmed cases as confirmed, but I'll take two thirds.

Guess What? US States Without Lockdowns Are Faring No Worse Than the Lockdown States
I wonder how much more information has come to light before we reach a tipping point where the public begin to accept the fact that the lock downs are wrong.
There's a titanic struggle going on right now between people's desire to believe what their governments and media tell them on one side, and the facts on the other.

"After years posting stuff on so may different topics I've realised a few recurring themes. More than a few actually, but: Generally people don't like, or care, for truth if it undermines their inner image or causes conflict in their lives.

People perceive facts and questions as having a moral dimension - they can be 'unkind' - so if you think of yourself as a kind person, you may avoid certain questions or dismiss 'unpalatable' facts.

People also believe that objective truth doesn't exist despite often being convinced beyond doubt what they think is 'right' and true (remind you of someone?). So in that sense we are all absolutists even if we don't realise it.

Viruses (the information kind): People will mostly adopt mainstream, trending thinking on a subject rather than develop their own critique. Especially when a consensus is built. Sometimes this is out of laziness, fear of being ridiculed or excluded or because they draw comfort by aligning with the group. They believe experts are infallible even when, as is often the case, experts contradict each other and demonstrably fail in their own predictions and prescriptions.

One last thing, and this is a shame, many people do not have the courage or confidence to believe that they can discern the truth, they believe that it is outside their grasp, that they are incapable, and that serious thinking is best left to others.

The irony is, these 'others', whether politicians, experts or celebrities, have no such foibles or lack of confidence even though they may, in fact, be total fools. Odd world!"

Too many people today believe that everyone can have their own "truth". Of course, they CAN, but then we're not talking about the Truth anymore but opinions.

And yet, there is still the objective Truth about any given situation that stands apart from all opinions. A person may be closer to or further from the objective Truth in the opinion they hold.

Whether a person is closer to or further from the objective Truth may not be important for society as a whole in most cases. But in some cases, it may be very important indeed which side of the line a person falls on.

It may, in fact, mean the difference between life or death, and not just for the individual, but society as a whole.

I'm not the arbiter of Truth. But if you want a practical example. Consider who was telling the truth and who was not during the late 1930s in Germany. I think we can all agree that at that time, the large majority were wrong, while believing they were right.

What is the Truth anyway? Best I can come up with is that it is whatever is genuinely good for society as a whole. What is good for society as a whole? That which keeps it together, makes it prosper and provides as much real meaning in the lives of as many people as possible. What is real meaning in the lives of people? That which gives them opportunities to learn and grow.

For those who think that the rich and powerful movers and shakers of this world would never condone an illegitimate lock down because of its effect on the economy and, therefore, its effect on them, consider the fact that the US stock market is up 30% off the following lows:

4.4 million filed for jobless benefits, total 26.5 million
Existing home sales -8.5%
New Home sales -15.4%
Oil dropped below zero
Consumer spending -25%
New car sales -32%
Retail sales -8.7% in March
US Airport volume down 95.8%

Yes, money, power and influence can be increased by the few at the expense of the many.

 

[JGrimez]

Please listen:





HUGE! MN Senator and Dr. Reveals HHS Document Coached Him on How to Overcount COVID-19 Cases — WITH COPY OF DOCUMENT (VIDEO)

Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator said he received a 7-page document coaching him to fill out death certificates with a COVID-19 diagnosis without a lab test to confirm the patient actually had the virus.

“Last Friday I received a 7-page document that told me if I had an 86-year-old patient that had pneumonia but was never tested for COVID-19 but some time after she came down with pneumonia we learned that she had been exposed to her son who had no symptoms but later on was identified with COVID-19, then it would be appropriate to diagnose on the death certificate COVID-19,” Dr. Scott Jensen said.

Dr. Jensen explained that this is not a normal procedure.

Dr.. Jensen said for example if the same patient had pneumonia during flu season and he didn’t have a test confirming the patient also had influenza, he would never diagnose the patient with influenza on the death certificate.

 

[sekio]

A couple months ago the WHO said that this virus was not transmissible from person to person.

I remember the publication, wasn't the phrasing "At this time, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission"? Not "human-human transmission is impossible" or anything like that. Yes, it's a bit of a weasel phrase, but it's just stating what we knew for certain at the time. The consumption of the story by clueless people with a tenuous grasp of English at best mutated it into "SARS-COV2 don't spread HURR", which objectively is incorrect. Anyone who passed basic high school biology would have suspected that SARS-COV2 would spread between humans. SARS did. Other coronaviruses do. Why would SARS-COV2 be an odd one out?

This shifting of the goalposts is unacceptable.

That would imply that nothing less than a perfectly accurate model, produced on the very first iteration, would be acceptable. Perfect world fallacy!

haven't been properly tested for safety

I guess all these vaccine testing protocols must just be a mirage. The vaccine adverse effect reporting systems set up by both the US and Canada (the two systems are independent) also contributes.

One more time with feeling: the statistics I see show rhat vaccines are much preferable to uncontrolled disease.

ventilating patients with covid-19 may be doing more harm than good.

So what's a guy supposed to do when faced with someone struggling to breathe, and SpO2 below 90% or even lower? I left my Star Trek injectible trioxygen compounds in the 24th century. Do they just switch you to an oxygen cannula or mask instead? (How well does that work when your lungs are full of inflammation?)

Guess What? US States Without Lockdowns Are Faring No Worse Than the Lockdown States

Corollary: States with lockdowns are functioning just as well as states without. Transitive property, woo.

 

[mr peabody]

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shakes hands during a ‘Reopen America’ rally in Austin, Texas, on Saturday.


Climate science deniers at forefront of downplaying coronavirus pandemic

Vocal influencers such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the Heartland Institute are hitting back at a time when people’s trust in science is rising.

by Emily Holden | The Guardian | 25 April 2020

Fringe climate science deniers who spread online disinformation are now downplaying the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis.

DeSmog, a blog and organization that tracks the culprits behind false information about the climate crisis, identified about 70 individuals and groups questioning the deadliness of the coronavirus and pushing for an end to social distancing, along with protesters who have been encouraged by Donald Trump.

From the conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the US-based Heartland Institute and UK-based James Delingpole, the review concludes that the same influencers trying to make the public question the severity of global heating are also discounting the science surrounding Covid-19.

“The climate war has largely been about confusing the public and making people trust in science and government less,” said DeSmog’s executive director, Brendan DeMelle. “And here we are in a pandemic where science and global cooperation are critical, and that’s a threat to the ideology of a lot of these … organizations."

“You end up with this conspiracy theory about big government taking over our lives, taking away our freedoms, subjecting us to stay-at-home orders that we have to liberate ourselves from,” DeMelle said.

DeSmog also identified fossil fuel and chemical industry aligned interests touting single-use plastics in personal protective gear, food packaging and grocery bags.

John Cook, who studies climate denial at the center for climate change communication at George Mason University, said he expected the overlap but was surprised by the extent of the parallels.

“People who are politically conservative and who value individual rights over collective responsibility are less supporting of social distancing policies, and also just have a lower understanding of the dangers of Covid-19,” Cook said, citing emerging polling data.

In the US, some of the same groups that have petitioned the Trump administration to debate human-caused climate disruption and to roll back climate standards are sowing distrust of epidemiological research.

Jay Lehr, science director of the Heartland Institute, on 30 March said people have been “barraged on the 24/7 news cycle for years” about climate change and now “face a more realistic fear of the most contagious virus any of us have ever experienced” but “both, however, suffer from questionable statistics and predictions that make us wonder what is real and what is someone’s best guess.”

Heartland’s communications director, Jim Lakely, in a podcast about the “Wuhan virus” on 15 March compared the virus to a bad flu season and said that while “the panic is definitely more dangerous than the flu – this has to be put in perspective.

“We have to think about the economic damage this is doing to the country. This is incalculable,” Lakely said.

The Heartland Institute also posted a piece by economics professor Daniel Sutter arguing that alternative strategies to social distancing – like sheltering vulnerable populations – “could have mitigated the human toll at a significantly lower economic and social cost.”

The Manhattan Institute, which calls itself a free-market thinktank, ran an article from Heather MacDonald in which she wrote: “Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of 0.000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to 0.12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.”

The Media Research Center in a video said: “This is exactly how they incite mass panic: through lies and deception and exploiting ignorance. It’s how they convince people that we’re all going to die because Trump doesn’t believe in science or something.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who founded Infowars, has called the virus a “hoax” and appeared at a “You Can’t Close America” rally in Austin on Saturday, where he shook hands with unmasked supporters.

Fossil fuel supporters have also capitalized on the pandemic to warn of the costs of climate action.

Alex Epstein, the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress which DeSmog cites as associated with various groups connected to the rightwing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, called the current recession a “mild preview of the Green New Deal,” and said that “our biggest ally in the fight against coronavirus is the fossil fuel industry.”

The links between climate science denial and Covid-19 downplaying reach outside the US. In the UK, Delingpole, a rightwing commentator, has reposted calls to rapidly return to regular life.

In a recent podcast, he called doubters of quarantining measures “lockdown skeptics,” and referred to those who support social distancing as “hysterical bedwetters.” He accused the media of promoting panic in “hysterical tabloids.”

Climate science deniers at forefront of downplaying coronavirus pandemic

Vocal influencers such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the Heartland Institute are hitting back at a time when people’s trust in science is rising

www.theguardian.com

Ever wonder what I really think about all this? - pb

 

[Captain.Heroin]

NO GUARANTEE ANTIBODIES WILL PREVENT REINFECTION

This is rich.

 

[atara]

4.4 million filed for jobless benefits, total 26.5 million
Existing home sales -8.5%
New Home sales -15.4%
Oil dropped below zero
Consumer spending -25%
New car sales -32%
Retail sales -8.7% in March
US Airport volume down 95.8%

Am I seriously supposed to believe that this is worse than hundreds of thousands of people dying?
Like holy shit, other than cancelled flights, all of those things are agreements. That's not a decline in the manufacture of any physical objects. You're recording declines in imaginary stuff and comparing them to real people's lives! Even a job only exists in theory.

Imaginary things can be brought back at a moment's notice. People cannot. Those jobs will be back when the world is ready for them.

 

[neversickanymore]

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shakes hands during a ‘Reopen America’ rally in Austin, Texas, on Saturday.


Climate science deniers at forefront of downplaying coronavirus pandemic

Vocal influencers such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the Heartland Institute are hitting back at a time when people’s trust in science is rising.

by Emily Holden | The Guardian | 25 April 2020

Fringe climate science deniers who spread online disinformation are now downplaying the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis.

DeSmog, a blog and organization that tracks the culprits behind false information about the climate crisis, identified about 70 individuals and groups questioning the deadliness of the coronavirus and pushing for an end to social distancing, along with protesters who have been encouraged by Donald Trump.

From the conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to the US-based Heartland Institute and UK-based James Delingpole, the review concludes that the same influencers trying to make the public question the severity of global heating are also discounting the science surrounding Covid-19.

“The climate war has largely been about confusing the public and making people trust in science and government less,” said DeSmog’s executive director, Brendan DeMelle. “And here we are in a pandemic where science and global cooperation are critical, and that’s a threat to the ideology of a lot of these … organizations."

“You end up with this conspiracy theory about big government taking over our lives, taking away our freedoms, subjecting us to stay-at-home orders that we have to liberate ourselves from,” DeMelle said.

DeSmog also identified fossil fuel and chemical industry aligned interests touting single-use plastics in personal protective gear, food packaging and grocery bags.

John Cook, who studies climate denial at the center for climate change communication at George Mason University, said he expected the overlap but was surprised by the extent of the parallels.

“People who are politically conservative and who value individual rights over collective responsibility are less supporting of social distancing policies, and also just have a lower understanding of the dangers of Covid-19,” Cook said, citing emerging polling data.

In the US, some of the same groups that have petitioned the Trump administration to debate human-caused climate disruption and to roll back climate standards are sowing distrust of epidemiological research.

Jay Lehr, science director of the Heartland Institute, on 30 March said people have been “barraged on the 24/7 news cycle for years” about climate change and now “face a more realistic fear of the most contagious virus any of us have ever experienced” but “both, however, suffer from questionable statistics and predictions that make us wonder what is real and what is someone’s best guess.”

Heartland’s communications director, Jim Lakely, in a podcast about the “Wuhan virus” on 15 March compared the virus to a bad flu season and said that while “the panic is definitely more dangerous than the flu – this has to be put in perspective.

“We have to think about the economic damage this is doing to the country. This is incalculable,” Lakely said.

The Heartland Institute also posted a piece by economics professor Daniel Sutter arguing that alternative strategies to social distancing – like sheltering vulnerable populations – “could have mitigated the human toll at a significantly lower economic and social cost.”

The Manhattan Institute, which calls itself a free-market thinktank, ran an article from Heather MacDonald in which she wrote: “Even if my odds of dying from coronavirus should suddenly jump ten-thousand-fold, from the current rate of 0.000012 percent across the U.S. population all the way up to 0.12 percent, I’d happily take those odds over the destruction being wrought on the U.S. and global economy from this unbridled panic.”

The Media Research Center in a video said: “This is exactly how they incite mass panic: through lies and deception and exploiting ignorance. It’s how they convince people that we’re all going to die because Trump doesn’t believe in science or something.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who founded Infowars, has called the virus a “hoax” and appeared at a “You Can’t Close America” rally in Austin on Saturday, where he shook hands with unmasked supporters.

Fossil fuel supporters have also capitalized on the pandemic to warn of the costs of climate action.

Alex Epstein, the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress which DeSmog cites as associated with various groups connected to the rightwing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, called the current recession a “mild preview of the Green New Deal,” and said that “our biggest ally in the fight against coronavirus is the fossil fuel industry.”

The links between climate science denial and Covid-19 downplaying reach outside the US. In the UK, Delingpole, a rightwing commentator, has reposted calls to rapidly return to regular life.

In a recent podcast, he called doubters of quarantining measures “lockdown skeptics,” and referred to those who support social distancing as “hysterical bedwetters.” He accused the media of promoting panic in “hysterical tabloids.”

Climate science deniers at forefront of downplaying coronavirus pandemic

Vocal influencers such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the Heartland Institute are hitting back at a time when people’s trust in science is rising

www.theguardian.com

Ever wonder what I really think about all this? - pb

I think I have found religion through this article and by receiving its light have been lavished with a Devine gift as I can clearly see the hidden devilry that bind all these stars together. So long have I searched for the wisdom that stitched and bound the universe together, so I also could also understand. Who would have known such stars alighned?

 

[JessFR]

I was thinking the other day, about these protesters, and the relative lack of them here in Australia where these restrictions are arguably stronger.

I was thinking that maybe part of the reason Australians are more willing to tolerate losing their jobs, is they won't lose things like medical coverage as a result, and are far less likely on average to wind up homeless.

In other words, Americans might be more likely to demand to sacrifice lives for the economy, because they are risking so much more on average by being unable to work for a period of time.

Which is all insane. It doesn't have to be like that at all. It's crazy a country so rich can have so many people so poor.

It is not wrong to use tax money paid for by the people... To fund public services for use by the people...

Medical services, social security, ensuring everyone gets to share in prosperity to at least a minimum level, is not a bad thing.

 

[mr peabody]

I was thinking the other day, about these protesters, and the relative lack of them here in Australia where these restrictions are arguably stronger.

I was thinking that maybe part of the reason Australians are more willing to tolerate losing their jobs, is they won't lose things like medical coverage as a result, and are far less likely on average to wind up homeless.

In other words, Americans might be more likely to demand to sacrifice lives for the economy, because they are risking so much more on average by being unable to work for a period of time.

Which is all insane. It doesn't have to be like that at all. It's crazy a country so rich can have so many people so poor.

It is not wrong to use tax money paid for by the people... To fund public services for use by the people...

Medical services, social security, ensuring everyone gets to share in prosperity to at least a minimum level, is not a bad thing.

Maybe I'm wrong, but Australia seems a lot more progressive to me socially.

 

[JessFR]

Ehhh, it's hard to say.

I don't think it can be simply said that Australia is more progressive. Gay marriage took 2 years longer to happen in Australia.

Legal Marijuana still hasn't happened to any real degree.

The two societies are far more alike than not compared to most of the rest of the world.

One difference is I'd say Australians aren't nearly as distrusting of the government, and haven't been given as much reason to be. And they don't have the same kind of philosophical views about "freedom" that result in such extremes in the US.

 

[SunriseChampion]

We had a protest here today at the Ontario legislature here in Toronto. Our premier straight called them "a bunch of yahoos".

It was small though...maybe a hundred people or so. My fav line from a video I saw: "It's a global conspiracy, but I'm not a conspiracy theorist".

Says it all.

 

[mr peabody]

One difference is I'd say Australians aren't nearly as distrusting of the government, and haven't been given as much reason to be. And they don't have the same kind of philosophical views about "freedom" that result in such extremes in the US.

Maybe that's a good thing.

 

[JessFR]

Maybe that's a good thing.

For whom?

In the past I've been very frustrated with the interpretation of civil rights I've heard argued by some Australians I've known.

But seeing the profound foolishness of many Americans has caused me to rethink a lot of my previous opinions.

I dunno what the ideal approach is, but the status quo isn't it.

 

[mr peabody]

For whom?

In the past I've been very frustrated with the interpretation of civil rights I've heard argued by some Australians I've known.

But seeing the profound foolishness of many Americans has caused me to rethink a lot of my previous opinions.

I dunno what the ideal approach is, but the status quo isn't it.

Australia may not be perfect, but trust me, you wouldn't want to be here.

 

[JessFR]

Well I don't. Quite the reverse at the moment, I wish I could get my remaining family in America down here.

 

[mr peabody]

Well I don't. Quite the reverse at the moment, I wish I could get my remaining family in America down here.

Godspeed.

 

[Flynnal]

So it's not just respiratory system being affected, now it looks like we have added another huge danger affecting the vascular system. I wonder what they will discover next? People dying from cancer or some degenerative disease (perhaps ALS, MS, etc) many years after catching this virus?

 

[mr peabody]

So it's not just respiratory system being affected, now it looks like we have added another huge danger affecting the vascular system. I wonder what they will discover next? People dying from cancer or some degenerative disease (perhaps ALS, MS, etc) many years after catching this virus?

It's early days, but yes, so many systems - lungs, kidneys, nasal passage, intestines - even relatively young adults are apparently at risk of stroke. There is, I think, no way to predict the long term neurological effects of the virus, at this stage, although in another report, researchers said that some of those exposed to COVID-19 could have an increased risk of developing neurological and mental health disorders in the long term.

 

[Flynnal]

It's early days, but yes, so many systems - lungs, kidneys, nasal passage, intestines - even relatively young adults are apparently at risk of stroke. There is, I think, no way to predict the long term neurological effects of the virus, at this stage, although in another report, researchers said that some of those exposed to COVID-19 could have an increased risk of developing neurological and mental health disorders in the long term.

Well, there is yet another problem - neurological and mental health problems - to add to the list.

It's not looking good, no matter how you slice it. This coronavirus is a disaster in the making.

 

[Captain.Heroin]

everyone is at Walmart and won’t stay the fuck home.

lol

very true.