Crazy (and not-so-crazy) shit about Covid-19

[Steve James]

Which makes me wonder what sort of hidden hot spots are out there that just haven't surfaced yet because we haven't really testing anyone out there.

Bingo. Almost nowhere starts testing until someone is diagnosed. It would be invaluable to test everyone, but that wouldn't stop the spread at this point. Well, if lots of people are able to take the recently approved quick test, that would be great. However, celebrities and lots of "non-essentials" will get tested before doctors and nurses. Shit. Harvey Weinstein was tested two weeks ago and found positive. There are doctors and nurses who can't get tests. And, many are scared it's because they can't work until the results come back.

but seriously...what are we going to do about this looming condom shortage?

Seriously, nine months from now there will be a baby boom.

[Michael]

Tough love in New York. Son went to Texas South Padre for spring break against his dad's wishes, Dad therefore refused to let him back into the house where grandparents also live.

Coronavirus-panicked dad locks son out of house after spring break trip

[everything]

smart parents.

[Steve James]

There's been several stories of parents kicking out offspring or refusing to let them back in. Yeah, if there were someone compromised in the household and the child didn't take it seriously, I can see kicking him out. Otoh, if he or she in infected, that will only spread the virus anyway. It's effective punishment, but it's just changing the location of the problem. It doesn't slow the spread. Better to confine the kid to the basement and bathroom.

[grzegorz]

my friend's boss is trying to get their business deemed an 'essential service' so they can keep working - he thinks it's a left-wing hoax and is telling his employees to keep working. He owns an insulation installation service.
.
.
'essential service'

Dealing with the public I see and deal with this type of thinking all the time. Now I just say I hope it is all being overblown because I have family members approaching 80 with compromised immune systems.

[grzegorz]

Tough love in New York. Son went to Texas South Padre for spring break against his dad's wishes, Dad therefore refused to let him back into the house where grandparents also live.

Coronavirus-panicked dad locks son out of house after spring break trip

LOL!

I heard a father tell me that this is what he would do.

[Michael]

Jay Dyer's Top 10 Virus Outbreak Movies for watching during QUARANTINE! (that also reveal "the plan")

11. The Crazies (2010) remake of 1973 George Romero
10. Outbreak (1995)
9. Contagion (2011)
8. The Andromeda Strain (1971) boring, but revelatory
7. The Stand (1994) TV mini-series
6. The Walking Dead series
5. World War Z (2013)
4. I Am Legend (2006)
3. The Omega Man (1971)
2. V For Vendetta (2005) did you forget there was a virus in this one?
1. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Runners Up:
Resident Evil series shows the whole plan
Train to Busan (2016)
Pontypool (2008)
28 Days Later (2002) not revelatory of the plan, but fun zombie flick
Carriers (2009)
The Faculty (1998)
The Invasion (2007) remake of 1978 remake of 1956 remake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmtIIKsiYtQ

EDITED: posted the wrong YT vid

[Michael]

Coronavirus - 21 Million Cellphones Disappeared in China



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1F_kWYdqUY

Something odd was noticed about the three telecoms in China (there are only 3): In January and February of this year, they lost 21 million subscribers, and they've never had any such losses before. The monthly subscriber counts for each three are publicly available on China Mobile 中国移动, China Unicom 中国联通, and China Telecom 中国电信 websites in English.

Some background info: as bailewen was saying a couple of days ago, cell phone/smartphone usage is the norm and you must have it in order to leave your house during the lockdown. Even before the virus, people used their phones to pay for and do everything, and phone numbers are attached to your national ID. They are also fairly cheap and many people pay per month, using wechat or alipay to send the money with their phone to their telecom carrier in order to pay that month's fee. Some people have contracts, but pay-as-you go is very common.

All of this makes the loss of so many subscribers extremely odd and the timing implies something happened to them to prevent their paying, such as death or being in a quarantine camp, but that is of course not confirmed.

Other news associated with trying to get real death numbers from China are the amount of cremation urns that are being ordered just in Wuhan, where China claims less than 3000 people died and somehow their number of infections just practically froze at 80K, less than Italy.

[bailewen]

I did hear some crazy Chinese social media chatter about the body count.

As for "only 3", I honestly thought the US had only 4 until I Googled it just now. I had always assumed all the other's just rented the use of the big 4's networks, like Cricket or whatever. "Virtual operators".

[bailewen]

I have gotten into some weird arguments about this too, here and there.

I guess my super vociferous criticism of the US response and my call for the US to STFU about China makes it sound like I am trying to defend China. Could not be farther from the truth...

My anger at the US is more like the fury of a scorned lover. I want my fucking city on the hill back.

[rant]The fact that so much media is trying to lay the blame for the US epidemic on China IS HUMILIATING. Ok. Let's start from the fact that I AGREE CHINESE DATA IS UNRELIABLE. I agree they lie and they cover up. I thought that was where we were starting this whole thing.

So if they are a bunch of lying scheming dirty pink commie bastards, how they hell are we depending on them for our own well being?!? If there is an a priori assumption that they will down play the numbers and cover up the deaths, then doesn't it logically follow that we should assume it's much worse than they let on?

Since when did American exceptionalism depend on the behavior of some non-democratic, anti-liberal autocracy on the other side of the planet?

I grew up in the cold war. We were smug and secure in our superiority of liberal democracy over communist autocracy. We were in a war of ideas and when the Soviet Union put a satellite into space, we did not cry foul and complain that Soviet spies had stolen our technology. We launched a goddam space race and swore to put a man on the moon inside of 10 years, and then did it. When Russia seemed to be overtaking us technologically, we started heavily subsidizing organizations like IBM and JPL. We launched a massive propaganda campaign domestically to encourage kids to go into the hard sciences. Astronauts were national heroes.

But it seems like for the past 5 or 6 years or so, all I hear is a lot of whiney little bitches in the US crying to daddy that mean old China isn't playing fair. Yeah. Life ain't fair. I hear about how Chinese tech is only doing so well because the PRC is subsidizing them heavily. Well so what? We subsidize stuff. Maybe if we spent less on bank bailouts and oil subsidies and more on college subsidies and NASA, this wouldn't be an issue.

And now I have to hear this garbage about how effective an autocracy is at controlling COVID, because in the US, where we value our freedom (or Britain too), we could never accept the level of surveillance China is using to track the virus. But in the US I grew up in, we wouldn't need to. Voluntary cooperation is ALWAYS more effective than forced compliance. In WWII we kicked ass, and I do not mean on the battlefield, where honestly, Britain and Russia did most of the heavy lifting. We kicked ass in terms of mobilizing the entire country to manufacture stuff and invent stuff. The entire automobile industry converted to manufacturing war supplies and we invented a fucking A-bomb.

When the United States is all rowing in the same direction, it is a powerhouse like this world has never seen.

But no. These days we prefer to work to ref on international trade. We complain that we can't handle COVID because those irresponsible Chinese meanies didn't tell us everything...as if that we their job.

HTFU USA.[/rant]

[windwalker]

Was part of the cold war.
In Germany when they had the wall, Korea when they had martial law.
Have a student who was in and went through Tiananmen Square...many interesting conversations with him now a US citizen.

Like China, don't blame them but can understand what might have happened
and how they reacted and are still reacting...

Mosher agrees that animals were the likely origin. “That doesn’t mean [the virus] wasn’t collected, brought to the lab, and was being tested on in various ways, and escaped from the lab,” he says. Mosher also does not claim that China genetically engineered the virus. “I’m not saying this has been genetically engineered to be a bioweapon that’s escaped from the lab. . . . I’m just saying that [China is] collecting dangerous pathogens, [and] they have a history of letting them escape from the lab,” he says

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opin ... ence-67229

As there are still many unknowns about SARS-CoV-2, researchers worldwide are trying to uncover as much as they can about the virus. Chinese researchers “released the genomic sequence incredibly rapidly online. . . . They were very public in sharing the most important first piece of information” about it, McCray tells The Scientist. “The fact that scientists all over the world had access to that genomic sequence” made a lot of early research possible, he says

tends to make me feel it might have been an accident like they've had in the past....no matter
The US along with the rest of the world has to deal with it now..

[windwalker]

On January 29, Trump created a White House Coronavirus Task Force.

On January 31, Trump declared Coronavirus to be a public health emergency and implemented a ban on travel from China to the United States.

On February 5 , the Democrats' held its very first Coronavirus hearing in the House, after the impeachment trial had failed to convict the President.

Shortly after, Trump announced further travel restrictions on certain global hot spots namely Iran, South Korea, and eventually, all of Europe.
Returning from travel-restricted countries, Americans were routed to specific airports, where they could be properly screened and, if necessary, isolated.

In March, the president closed the southern and northern borders of the United States to prevent further virus cases or problems from coming here.

The US considering it had a late start, following initial reports from the WHO that the virus was not easily transferable, actually reacted quickly when
empirically it became evident this was not true, the administration acted unilaterally amide much criticism at the time.
Most of the problems encountered IMO are to a large part due to how the US is set up....

n a March 22 interview, Fox News host Mark Levin said to Dr. Anthony Fauci: “There is this statement by some in the press, some in the opposition party, that the president doesn't follow the science. Is the president following the science?”

After replying that in the daily Coronavirus Task Force meetings “we make all of our decisions and recommendations that are based on the science,”

Fauci said: “I have never in that room had a situation where I said, scientifically, this is the right thing to do and they said, don't do it. Or [I have never said] scientifically, this is the wrong thing to do, and they did it anyway. Then we get up and we present it to the president. And he asks a lot of questions. That's his nature. He is constantly asking the question, and I never, in the multiple times that I've done that ... He has never overruled me.”

The US as with many things once it gets focused is able to do things in a very short amount of time.
Just takes it awhile to get focused

[bailewen]

On February 5 , the Democrats' held its very first Coronavirus hearing in the House, after the impeachment trial had failed to convict the President.

What you you quoting anyways? The non-sequiter about the impeachement labels it pretty clearly as sycophantic Fox news.

That sort of news is why we have this sort of news:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... help-china

[Franklin]

I don't agree with the points in this article that sate the WHO basically did what it was supposed to do
I take heavy opposition to that
-------------- rant on---
-- for example
see the video posted earlier by Micheal - where the WHO dr - (from canada)
when asked about taiwan -- he pretends he doesn't hear and then hangs up the call...
and at the end - when asked about taiwan response to the virus-
he states -- that he has already discussed China - and that they did a good job

the fact that he can say that so smugly
because he is so sure that their will not be any consequences for these lies.....

he knows perfectly well it is a lie he is telling
he knows if he wanted to travel to taiwan - he would have to obtain a visa from taiwan and not china
he knows as a scientist that repeating a lie does not make it true-- no matter how many times..


this motherF&&&ker

----------------


but this article does make the point --
that the WHO recommendations and guidelines
give countries an excuse for their inaction
as they delayed response in accordance to the WHO recommendations--
and can then say - that they did nothing wrong...
the author does does say that it really isn't a valid excuse

but i am pretty sure that is what people are going to use as an excuse...

the same way the CCP quotes the WHO -
to show that they did an exemplary job...

"Those who wanted to have no ears and no eyes for themselves were free to follow the politicization that Tedros clearly brought to the WHO’s communication process, and to use it as an excuse for delayed responses. The excuse might be valid for smaller, less developed and less experienced nations. It does not hold for larger member states with strong participation in the WHO process. "

https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/bl ... ganization




Franklin

[Michael]

Addendum to the post about the loss of 21 million phone subscribers in China during January and February of 2020 because I need to emphasize who extremely inconvenient changing your phone number in China is. It can interrupt all your financial transactions for days. Nobody ever does this without an extremely good reason.

In China, your phone number is linked to your national ID card, but more importantly, your phone number is linked to your bank account and used for two-factor authentication. Your bank account is linked to your mobile phone apps Wechat (parent co. Tencent) and Alipay (parent co. Alibaba) that are used to pay for everything: rent, food, transport, etc. Your phone number is also linked to most of your other commercial activities, your relationship with the management company for your apartment complex, your gym, etc.

If you for some reason have to change your phone number in China, you have to physically visit every bank where you have an account, which could include multiple branches of the same bank in different parts of the same city, and show them your ID and let them know your new phone number. One such bank visit can be a rage-inducing, multi-day affair, or it can be a 15 minute easy in & out, you never know what may transpire. And many people easily have 5-8 bank accounts.

I remember the days when instead of logging onto your Bank of China web site with Windos 95 and Internet Explorer 6 in order to check your balance, I'd pop down to the local branch and go into the ATM; of course I would mind my 6 for knockout artists!. Then I would wait and wait in line for extended periods of time so that people with multiple shoulder bags moved stacks of 100 RMB notes around different accounts in the same bank. I was never sure if they were doing it for a financial reason or just to show that they could. I honestly think they were just having a bit of fun with their money, lol.