The Spread of New Covid Variants

I think this is part of why Trump hatred really flared in 2020. Trump’s handling was indubitably horrific, but focusing on him helped shift attention from the fact that every “white” nation except NZ and maybe Australia and Iceland handled it horribly. It really lays out the neoliberal created dysfunctions that prevented provision of basic public services. East Asian countries see white people losing their minds over mask wearing and realized the advanced West that they admired for 150 years is worse than a paper tiger, it’s a bunch of monkeys in tuxedos that are now freaking out and throwing feces.

As for what’s next. Given what I know about SARS and MERS and what I knew last March about infectiousness of COVID, I didn’t think it was going away once it spread into Japan, South Korea, and Italy. I was sure that the Chinese did such a hard lockdown early on because they *knew* and they were truly truly scared by the worst case scenario. I thought the talk of it maybe not mutating much or mutating into more benign forms seemed very optimistic, given the development pattern of the 1918 flu epidemic. Once knowledge about long Covid and organ failure issues came through. This looked like something with potential to trim years off of our life expectancy.

I think we’re at the stage where we better hope that the vaccines keep working, boosters quickly develop and can confer immunity or at least therapeutic improvements against everevolving strains, and none of the strains become the jackpot with measles infectiousness and MERS lethality.

Unless global warming gets us first. Or war with Russia, Iran, and/or China. Or maybe just some desperate asshole in 2023 robs my house and Manson tortures us to death for kicks. So many exciting options.

The Trump hatred was not shifting attention. He inflamed people. It lead to many local public health authorities having to resign after mob threats. It was hard to see all this unfold in real time and it’s very recent in memory.

In an alternative world where there was no Trump do I necessarily see the virus being handled well? I suspect there would have been a better attempt to contain it early, but without limiting spread after then, which can’t be done without closing borders, which neolibs of the Trump or Dem variety don’t do anyway and which might not even be possible, you still have virus. And also with a Senate as dysfunctional as our house of lords nothing gets done either as we now see.

However I have little doubt without Trump many more people would have gotten the vaccine when we finally, after so many months and deaths, got it. There is always a small anti-vac contingent, but it’s pretty small, only pro-Trump partisanship blew it way up out of proportion. Basically I agree with David Sirota’s take on Trump: he can be evaluated as a politician sure, and most of our politicians are fairly lackluster and Trump had almost nothing positive going for him as a politician either, almost 100% of his policies were bad. But he was ALSO injecting toxic venom into the culture 24/7, and plenty of people perceived this, saw cause and effects that weren’t just policy papers, and it’s what drove Trump hatred: https://www.dailyposter.com/the-toxic-slime-will-end-us/

Your chances of dying from covid in the US so far are 1 in 549. Your chances of having a serious adverse reaction to a vaccine like Pfizer or Moderna are 1 in the hundreds of thousands.

So the natural reaction of many people, many of whom are Trumpers, is that covid is a hoax and it is their God-given right not to be stuck with dangerous needles.

I used to say never bet against the math, but nowadays math and science have been reduced to just somebody’s opinion and people bet against them without blinking an eye.

As long as we’re talking about “math”, is the average age of “Covid” dead still higher than average life expectancy?

Locking people up because they might have the flu, and shooting them if they try to escape. Let’s hear about MUH ETHICS of Covid Concentration Camps. This is always who you guys were, and you’re showing your true colors.

We have no idea what Covid will do to the long term health of people who “survived”. We also don’t know what repeated vaccinations and repeated infections will do to the body. This may end up trimming more years off of younger cohorts than from deaths in the 70+ crowd.

I’m going to buy some more Ivermectin and N95 masks though. I bought Ivermectin from Tractor supply store. Anyone have recommendations on where, other than Amazon or eBay, to buy n95s?

Well two breakthrough cases out of 180 million clearly show that vaccines are trash.

Ivermectin may have some effect on covid but the jury is still out on it. The overselling of hydroxy chloroquine has apparently taught no one anything.

Hugh — The only jury that’s still “out” on ivermectin is the one that’s been paid to be that way by pharma, namely all mainstream media in the US (“ask your doctor if XYZ is right for YOU!”)

The study run by Hector Carvallo (a hospital director in Argentina if my memory serves) of 1200 people showed zero infections among the 800 healthcare workers receiving prophylactic ivermectin, and 56% infected in the control (just standard PPE) group. Most of the other studies I’ve seen are in the same ballpark, as is my personal experience with both prophylaxis and treatment.

This question is coming from somebody who just went in and got the vax, so if you’re an anti-vaxxer please disregard. But I’m curious.

I’m certainly no virologist, but how the hell did somebody come up with the idea that using a roundworm medicine for horses would treat covid in humans? Sounds like something an Arkansas farmboy might ‘discover’ after a late night with the foals.

Is there a credible back story to this discovery?

“We have a pandemic turning into a plague (in the words of Umair Haque) because we have refused to take this seriously.”

Oh, it’s being taken seriously by sociopath lucre hoarders. It’s the only serious thing in this world anymore. Profit.
Heard a piece on the radio this morning talking about how BigPharma has no dogs at all in the antibiotic resistant bacteria fight b/c “markets.”
Wut?
They drink and dance. We die.

David Veale:

Go piss up a rope with that trash. Cases get through every vaccine. A small percentage of people die from every vaccine. This bad actor crap is boring.

Climate change will make Covid look like a walk in the park. People are dropping dead like flies in these heat waves. Look up wet-bulb deaths. This used to be very rare but it looks like this will become more commonplace, My guess is that a warmer earth will lead to the increased chance that we’ll see more deadly viruses like Covid. The tipping point is here. It makes sense that the 1% want to colonize other planets.

NR writes

“here are currently 1,563 breakthrough cases in the state, which amounts to 0.1% of the vaccinated population. ”

That’s not much less than Ioanidis’ recent, best estimate of Infection Fatality Rate of .15%.

So, if it cuts fatalities by 1/3, that’s something. (Less than ivermectin’s 80%, but hey, you don’t want the drug companies to go broke, do you?) However, in the long run, the POTENTIAL downside far outweighs such a modest benefit. I heard a recent interview by a virologist who talked about the downside of mRNA vaccines, saying that because they’re not sterilizing vaccines, they are providing selective evolutionary pressure to mutate the virus at an accelerated rate. (Sorry, don’t remember his name.) Just today I heard Gary Null talk about doctors in Israel afraid to deal with vaccinated individuals, because they shed at an accelerated rate (don’t remember if they’re shedding just the spike protein, which they’re now producing in large numbers; or the virus, itself, also). Apparently, there are suggestions for quarantining the vaccinated, as they pose a danger to others.

Speaking of Ioannidis, if anybody is interested enough in rational arguments in the vein of “following the science”, you could do worse than listening to “EXCELLENT Presentation by Professor John Ioannidis – Covid Reality Revealed!” on youtube. I’ve only heard about 5-10 minutes, and learned more facts than I see ‘displayed’ in this post, and the comments. I find it amusing that Ioannidis is squishy on masks, saying something like he “still believes they help”, but is honest enough to mention the Danish study that cast doubt on them.

Ioannidis mentioned Singapore, as did Gary Null, who have lost about 35 people to covid. I need to listen to the entire presentation, about 35 minutes, to find out why. Hopefully, he addressed this, even if he has to admit that he doesn’t know why. I really appreciate the humility of this world class expert, so unlike the certainty of the, ahem, politically motivated, who stick with their favorite narratives, no matter what has been learned.

Ioannidis also talked about countries that engaged in draconian lockdowns having WORSE outcomes than countries that had milder lockdowns. This flatly contradicts suggestions by Ian, and others.

Unfortunately, I can’t see a transcript, so I won’t know if he talks about ivermectin until I listen to more of the lecture. However, Gary Null did mention that ivermectin is used in Singapore, though he wasn’t specific. So, that ‘observation’ is of little value, and doesn’t rise above the level of many comments, here.

I’m fairly sure the Gary Null podcast where he talks about Singapore covid is in the June 28 “the Gary Null Show”.

The 2003 European heat wave was said to kill 70,000. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

But I wouldn’t write off Covid yet. We’re only on lambda strain now. Let’s see where we’ll be when it’s omicron strain and we run out of Greek letters.

Eric Anderson — as for me, after a decade of making major lifestyle changes (weaning myself of dependencies on fossil fuels for heating/cooking/food production/transportation) while expecting the masses to follow suit, I gave up spring of 2019 after battling with family to not fly out to visit me.

This is probably in line with your opinion of me thus far (as a nut case?), but I don’t expect humans to survive this century. I worked in a climate change lab in the 90s, and have been closely following all developments for over 35 years now. I’ve watched as the place I grew up is now covered with smoke for weeks each summer (Seattle area, where Gates also happens to live), and watched as sea life succumbed to new heat waves, and forests started to die. This all started about 5 years ago.

Now imagine yourselves in the shoes of the world’s elite. They’re the only people who have any ability to stave off certain disaster, with the massive resources and influence they carry. The motivation of these people is nothing less than saving the world. Add to that the fact that most have been made largely sociopathic by their vast wealth (if they weren’t that way to begin with). Add to that their insistence that everyone must get the vaccine, despite the fact that many clearly have naturally acquired immunity from previous infection, as well as their insistence that nothing but the vaccine is effective.

The evidence, to me, says they’re going to try to save us by eliminating most of us. I don’t think their scheme will work (either at population reduction nor at giving us a chance of surviving past this century), but I can’t say they’re completely insane for trying. Humans have demonstrated a complete inability with behavioral change to rectify the situation, which leaves this last option imho. What do you think?

Yep, when it comes to healthcare in the West, as far as being on our own, the message is clear. Heal Thyself but let Uncle Sam pay exorbitant profit to insurance companies on your alleged behalf so shareholders can increase their wealth even further and corporate execs can have even larger bonuses so they can afford second and third homes and outrageous tuition for their kiddies in private school.

What Obama did to healthcare, which was ensure insurance company profits well into the future when health insurance is a failed business model, Biden is doing with infrastructure. A corporate government hybrid partnership that uses the dispossessed as a means to grift even further. How much blood can they extract from us stones? All we are are foils. Placeholders.

Here’s a well-deserved indictment of the medical establishment from an unlikely source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LX_JRHZdkI

I witnessed something similar. Years ago, my mother was sent home with anxiety meds. I knew something was wrong and took her back to another hospital. She had had a stroke and was later operated for a clot, fortunately with success. The emergency doctors who dismissed her said she was a “nervous woman.”

This woman’s experience and many people’s experiences indicate those who say the COVFEFE-45 are overinflated are full of sh*t. COVFEFE-45 is grossly underreported and many are suffering in silence.

This woman was lucky to be able to afford to try many docs before she could find any who would listen. Most don’t have that luxury and suffer and ide in silence.

Hugh:
No kidding. What kind of brain does it take to seek information about life and death consequences from a YouTube video instead of a peer reviewed journal article?

Signals to me the absolute dearth of scientific education in this country.

And Ian, my betadine post got modded out of existence. How come?

@Ian Welsh,

Canada might still have the social cohesion to adopt the quarantine approach you outline, if a united Federal and All Provinces Provincial Movement of GoverNational Unanimity were to agree on it and advance it.

The US just doesn’t. Sorry about that.

I have had both shots of the Moderna-brand mRNA neo-vaccinoid. If we get told that we will need neo-neo-vaccinoid boosters every year for decades to come, I will start getting suspicious and aprehentious.

In the meantime, I will continue living the semi-shut-in life I led before Covid, and during it. My “social contact” level is naturally lower than that of many people, and it was not so hard for me to shrink it further.

The little I have read about Ivermectin indicates that it may have some counter-viral action IF STARTED EARLY in the infection process. IF that is so, then studies designed around starting it very LATE in the infection process will NATURALLY produce failure, almost as if deSIGNED to produce a discrediting failure which can then be cynically pointed to.

Hydroxychloroquine? I have read somewhere that it has an “ionophoric” type of action facilitating the passage of bio-active zinc into cells which use it for counter-viral resistance in various ways. That again would be more effective, if at all, starting well before infection so the body’s cells are all zinc-ed up and waiting for the virus to attack. Since I don’t know if mass prophylactic H-chloroquine is indicated or even available for several billion people for years to come, are there “natural ionophores” which also facilitate the passage of bio-active zinc into body cells? Is green tea one such “natural ionophore”?

This is the second time Ian has said some truly spooky things about tossing people in camps. I must have been out of the loop, but holy moly.

(Ian said:) “This isn’t a hard problem, though. Build a bunch of small huts in a field (you can even stack them), each with its own ventilation, and put them in there. Pre-fab companies and militaries are great for this. Build a fence around it and bring them food and have public health nurses visit every day. This is relatively cheap and keeps them from breathing each other’s germs, if set up with a bit of care. Have a few military police guard the place, that will keep most people from running.”

I got chills reading this. Is this not a concentration camp? Am I just jumping at shadows here? My first thought was “What if they conveniently forget to bring food and water to the people locked up by themselves in a field?”

If this were happening in my country, I’d be trying to get out as soon as possible. It’s a terrifying precedent to set. Why not just restrict tourism?

Joan,

The point of having a proper quarantine at the time of arriving at the border is that everyone else does not have to bear the cost of travel (disease) and the travellers can decide if its still worthwhile for them to travel. If they find a 21 or 35 day quarantine unacceptable, they can just stay home and not move across borders.

I support this as someone who adores international travel (though we limit it to usually 1-2 longer trips per year). It would not be fair for other people to bear the cost of my desire to travel, even if the quarantine means I’m stuck in the US for the foreseeable future or I have to be stuck paying for quarantine at the border.

Joan, my mother was quarantined in a sanitarium after she got tuberculosis, a common practice in the New Deal era. She spent a year there. I’m unaware of exactly what she herself paid but the cost to her was minimal, since she had been working as a seamstress after immigrating to the USA with nothing but the clothes on her back.

As an elderly woman she got pneumonia which apparently found those tuberculosis scars and after a few days of intubation she called it quits. The hospital bill for basically a private room with nursing, drugs and intubation was well into six figures. Fortunately a combination of medicare and insurance paid for most of it.

I think that’s what Ian meant – something like that.

When everybody competes, everybody does better. And when everybody is less regulated, everybody’s more efficient. At least in the magical world of ideological theory that is. Unfortunately, those people seemed to conveniently forget the part where an awful lot of people under those two conditions can and will cheat any way they can. Can’t have one without the other to achieve the desired competitive result.

The reality is that without regulation, a big medical version of the Phoebus Cartel is almost certainly going to happen. If it aint broke, they’ll make sure you can’t fix it, and as an added bonus, that it’ll soon break.

Yet much common culture belief in the magic of unregulated competition remains.

I admire the people around here who’ve figured this out and are always on the lookout for simple and cheap solutions to covid. I myself, do my own plumbing. But lucky for me I have lots of leftover plumbing stuff to experiment on, none of it involving a live human. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d still rather hope we’ve got some integrity left in big medical research to find out if any of the simple solutions pan out. And then they can put out the Youtube video.

Quarantine is also controversial because anyone can see it’s currently full of holes and class-based, like the entire Covid response. If you have a private jet, no worries, carry on. If you’re a poor smuck who wants to go to the next province to see family after a year, or want to touch your spouse in a long-term care home, no.

None of the underlying dis-ease in our societies is being addressed, killers like heat and poverty and mental health are accellerated, while the PTB methodically don’t control Covid – and damn well _DO control their populations.

–

In a rational world, sure: quarantine is a cheap, core, basic, low tech, effective tool, and pretty easy to do right, as Ian noted. Almost, THE tool.

Che:
“Quarantine is controversial because the whole idea of “public health” has been lost in the quest for “freedom” — principally the freedom to get away with causing harm to others.”

You spelled it wrong, man. The type you’re referring to is spelled “freedumb.”

Ian:
I’m with you. This post needed to be written in order to push the Overton window toward collectivism in this country. The discussion needs to be had, and so, here it is:

Defense of individual liberty is killing us all. But, as demonstrated above, we’ve been so brainwashed by the capitalist propaganda we’re steeped in from birth that when a post like this is written even the large majority of so called leftists in this country react like you’re all set to send them to the showers. It’s fallacious pearl clutching crap.

True collective societies don’t even blink at sacrificing individual rights for the good of the whole when times are tough. We, however, are pathologically selfish. A collective society knows there are no rights without attendant duties. And, when you live in a country that believes there are, guess what, you live in hellhole like the U.S.

Grow up you jerk wads up- thread crying like selfish three year olds. The continued exercising your “rights” without practicing your duty to the collective whole is the surest way to guarantee that our children won’t have any rights at all because we’ve devolved in fascist surveillance hell hole.

Shame on your pitifully shallow souls.

Why was my last comment deleted? I saw it up, with no hint of being in moderation, and now it’s gone.

“Now that we have vaccines, vaccines are the way to go. But as Fauci said recently, if a virus is allowed to replicate, it will mutate. So the anti-vaxxers are putting us all at risk just as the failure to get as many of our fellow human beings around the world is.”

The sheer idiocy and irresponsibility of this comment astounds, even to somebody who is used to reading and, in my past life, extensively interacting with, irrational political animals.

Of course, it’s not the “anti-vaxxers” that anybody should be alarmed about, but the pro-vaxxers who, nevertheless, see through the hysteria of foisting an experimental gene therapy on the public, and have been sounding the alarm. Likewise, it’s not “climate change deniers” who anybody should care about, but rather intelligent and honest scientists, who find the idea of no climate change laughable, but who call out BS, when they see it.

Both the falsely smeared “anti-vaxxer” scientists, and the falsely smeared “climate change denier” scientists, are willing and able to articulate their arguments. It’s the other side of those two issues who cowardly run from, and suppress, serious debate, with rare exception. They thus violate scientific ethics, as laid out by Lee Smolin in “The Trouble with Physics”. Trusting the cowards is a fool’s errand, but some people just can’t help themselves, can they? They’ll even quote gain-of-function Fauci, who recently, cowardly, refused to show in Congress

As per my comment that was deleted, with no explanation, the translation from animal models to humans of “spongiform and Mad Cow disease” is only a year and a half. Just yesterday, I found out that a relative is being tested for vCJD, which has an incidence of about 1 in a million. This relative took the J&J vaccine about 2 months, ago, and it landed him back in the hospital.

Let’s hope that if this returns positive, it is just a coincidence, and not a bellwether.

I’ve been listening to Gary Null for over a period of 40 years, and he’s generally positive, sometimes arrogant, strident and insulting. I’ve only heard him sad, twice. The first time was when a good friend died, a doctor named Martin Feldman. The second time was just recently, when he alluded to what the people of Israel have done to themselves, apparently with their aggressive vaccinations.

I also think that’s why we are seeing cracks in previous (and still very successful by world standards) success stories of Taiwan and Vietnam, and Singapore and China are both looking really hard for off ramps. Even resilient societies can only go on for so long before it starts impacting their functioning. I suspect China can go on for a lot longer, as long as global shipping and trade is not too interrupted, but it’s reasonable to start looking for ways to cope with the disasterous outcome of the West’s largely insane Covid policy.

The economic feasibility of quarantines gets talked about greatly in negative. But I would argue household economics is a big part of why it was so successful in China and Vietnam. Both have populations with high household savings rates and was occurring around the lunar new year, when household savings tend to peak (hundreds of millions of migrant workers end their working year right before lunar new year).

That may have played a part, but without full transparency and propagandists always painting a rosy picture when it comes to China, we’ll never know the true impact of China’s draconian pandemic response.

Most Americans have no savings and are instead deeply in debt. So if an effective quarantine requires savings to get through it, it’s a no go in America without government financing.

And yet despite this, the housing market is inexplicably burgeoning into a bubble and none of the leading experts can provide a satisfactory reason as to why. Same goes for automobiles. Something is afoot and it’s operating in the shadows.

Are you kidding me? There was nothing in that comment that required it to be removed. Nothing. What is going on here? It was a cogent rebuttal to one of Astrid’s comments with no ad hominem. Why would you remove it? It posted in fact, and now it is gone. In its place, is a comment from Astrid. If you didn’t remove it, someone else did. Astrid, maybe?

Wow, this is now a serious CCP hang. Unreal. Use your eyes, for Christ’s sake.

Plague Species,

I don’t have any relationship with Ian except the occasional small no strings attached donations. He has explained his moderation policy many times, several times specifically to you as I recall, and I’ve gotten moderated just like everyone else.

Despite your disgusting trollishness against me and others, I’ve never called you to be censored. Why am not surprised that you behaved otherwise?

What likely happened is that both metamar and plague species failed to notice the small “in moderation” notice at the bottom of their moderated messages. I have one in moderation right now and expect that Ian will liberated it and their rants when he had time.

I guess despite living through life with ADHD enabled bad grammar and missed words, I still somehow noticed stuff that escape the “greatest in the universe” minds of that pair.

Still trying to figure out Hugh’s “facts” though. Will somebody please tell poor old ADHD afflicted me how to find them and also how to tag my posts so he can find mine?

This bears repeating:

“True collective societies don’t even blink at sacrificing individual rights for the good of the whole when times are tough. We, however, are pathologically selfish. A collective society knows there are no rights without attendant duties.”

Pin this to your bathroom mirror until you can accept its truth. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only thing that will save us, which really means the US is cooked, except in certain pockets around the country.

Joan, in a collectivist society, there would be little to no worry that the food won’t show up. So in a way, given your (and my) upbringing, there is reason to worry about quarantine in non-collectivist societies. There’s reason to worry about pretty much everything in non-collectivist societies, and this is a “feature”, not a bug. Lots of drumming up fear of TS Elsa here in the mid-Atlantic, but for us at least, it was a rainstorm, and not much rain at that. Not yet sure about the eastern shore.

Thanks, Eric Anderson, for that great post.

And that was a great Salon link, someofparts.

Interesting. Flyers have appeared on the local grocery store bulletin board saying that “vaccinated people are spreading COVID!!!!`1” As I’ve said, there aren’t a lot of vaccinated people out here, and those who are tend toward the politically lefter end of the spectrum. No one at the store seems to know who’s been posting the flyers, and the workers take them down as soon as they see them. I haven’t run across anyone making the claim that vaccinated people are spreading COVID, but maybe one of the commenters here has. If so, please share.

Both of the medical centers I go to have refused me an antibody test; my rheumatologist sent me a message saying the American College of Rheumatology advises against ordering antibody tests or booster shots for immune suppressed rheumatology patients. He and his medical group follow that guidance. What he’s told me in the past is that the immune suppression medications I’ve been taking will probably prevent any of the vaccines from have much effect, but it’s worth a try to get vaccinated anyway. But now I learn there’s no followup to find out whether there is any protection from the vaccine, nor are boosters advised. Hm.

I know in parts of the immune suppressed community (about 1% -2% of the population) there is considerable confusion and anxiety and no clear understanding about what one should or should not do vis a vis COVID risks. I brought this up with my rheumatologist, and this was his response verbatim:

You need to live your life and enjoy it. Should be fine to get together with vaccinated people. Do what you are comfortable with. Wash hands often. We’re all figuring this out together.

He’s Canadian, so I don’t ascribe bad intent, but what he’s been saying all along about how to respond to COVID for people like me has been more or less the same. Yes, we might be at higher risk, but there’s no reason for that to keep us from living and enjoying our lives. Do what you’re comfortable with and don’t worry about contracting the disease. Hydroxychloroquine does not prevent it. Vaccines work for some, and may work for me, but for many immune suppressed people they don’t work at all and can’t. Don’t worry about it. Just get on with your life.

And for Zen students, it’s all transitory and illusory anyway, right?

You know, talking about quarantines and public support, one aspect of it in the West keeps getting dropped from being mentioned. The population that can be counted on to be the most vulnerable and suffer the worst negative impacts will always be single mothers.

When I hear that fact disappear from the conversation over and over, especially when the single male without children default assumption pops up instead, that is when I know this culture and its toxic Abrahamic death gods do not deserve to be saved.

And while I’m at it, let me throw a little shade back on the ladies who are pulling the strings on Biden’s sad puppet dances. There is a special place in hell for women who let this happen to poor women while they preen about their own advantages.

I think Astrid’s point about support within families is so true. In my own immediate experience, the way it works is that elders and females are on their own. Only sons get family support. Among the people I know, here and there, who do have families that are supportive of everyone in the group, there is a level of resilience that is just not possible in the families who abandon their most vulnerable members.

So the take home lessons of this thread are science is whatever your prejudices happen to be and China is great. That period from the Opium Wars in the 1840s through Tiananmen in 1989 never happened. Uighurs don’t exist or shortly won’t so no problem. Ditto Hong Kong. I expect I will shortly hear that covid started somewhere else but that China handled it perfectly and that its delays and denials are all lies or overblown because China is GREAT!!!

Just as everybody plays the fool sometimes, everybody also calls somebody an idiot sometimes too. Doesn’t automatically make them smart though.

The problem with CPC China is that getting qualified dictators is a crap shoot. Sometimes they get lucky, other times they get Mao’d to death. Not saying Xi is good, but qualified in an Augustus sorta way. Qualified at conquering shit then distributing the spoils in ways the mob finds satisfying. Still, I can’t wait til their version of Nero comes along.

Wouldn’t all be a little smarter if we could figure out why some organizations strive and thrive while others flounder and fail?

I note the recent stark contrast between SpaceX and Boeing. Boeing’s investor and management class has clearly lost all faith in its engineering staffs ability to develop a simple new airplane variant. Yet underqualified Musk can spout utter aerospace blasphemy on behalf of his crew, like casing 2 stage boosters over unproven engines and exotic fuels inside of steel, and be given carte blanche, and then from the looks of it, succeed.

This comment will almost certainly get lost in the noise, but “the thing has to be tried”.

Ian, look at the history of the 1918 influenza pandemic before you get terribly upset about the fact that the variants are spreading beyond their countries of origin. If you haven’t found a favorite reference, you might want to consult John Barry’s “The Great Influenza”. During the 1918 pandemic, only one municipality in the entire US managed to enforce a quarantine. Everywhere else, influenza laughed quarantines to scorn. The problem was, victims often became dangerous to be around before they actually showed any clinical symptoms. Typical behavior for influenza. Note that Influenza’s base reproduction rate, R₀, is less than 2.

The original strain of Covid that spilled over to humans in Wuhan had an estimated R₀ of 2.5. But that strain quickly became history. What hit the US East Coast in late spring 2020 was a variant that’d sprung up in Europe, D614G. That was quickly eclipsed by “Alpha”, from Kent, which became the dominant strain in the US. Alpha’s R₀ is estimated at between 4 and 5. Now we have Delta, whose R₀ is estimated at between 5 and 8.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

The entire history of this pandemic, in nearly every country afflicted by it, is one of repeated detection of new variants, well after they have already successfully established themselves, completely under the radar.

Remember that first US case, the guy who walked off a plane from China on January 15, 2020, and ended up plonked into an ICU in a hospital in Everett? It took more than another month before the horror story in the Kirkland nursing home came to light. Here’s a choice quote from Helen Branswell’s piece:

“While there is some spread in some communities, there is not national spread of Covid-19,” said Nancy Messonier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “CDC and the federal government are working to keep it that way.”

At the end of February 2020, nobody really understood that Covid could be transmitted by people who had no symptoms whatsoever.

If there is any single “signature” experience that countries dealing with this disease have had, it’s that of being blindsided. At this point, we cannot reasonably expect that vigilance will suffice to remedy this. When has it ever?

Willy,

The Romans had a good run with the 5 good emperors. The Chinese did okay by not repeating families in their leadership roles in the last 70 years. The weakest one I can think of is Li Peng, who was sorta adopted by Zhou Enlai (I know there’s a 2014 denial but believe me, only old cadres liked him because of the Zhou connection and everybody else in China found him odious). Keep out the spawns at all cost.

We all have to get past the next 20 years first, then maybe join a horse-y Eurasian steppes warband, to survive.

(Apologies to all for my thread jacking sprees as of late. Not feeling like working as I should, so a lot of thinking/typing as I go going on.)

Willy,

Elon would do what capitalists do. Liquidate his assets and move to another country.

The sort of hard headed, realistic, and frankly brutal thinking necessary to pull this country out of its nosedive, is going to take an extraordinary and possibly extraordinarily unlikeable man, an Augustus or Genghis Khan figure. And most of the world probably would prefer it doesn’t happen, all things considered.

What I find comical, is that all these former free love, free drugs, hippie types are arguing for collectivism, and state-corporate controlled narratives now. Now, freedom of movement, speech, and religion, is called “freedumb” simply because they don’t agree with it.
These people may get their collectivism, but it won’t be your free love and free drugs, but rather a Kublah Khan-type where anyone who knows anyone or is related to anyone who does drugs, or commits a petty crime, including adultery, will be killed as a conspirator against the community. On a similar note, where they are aiming, with quarantines for a disease that’s about as deadly as a flu, is not much different than the Catholic Church excommunications of the middle ages, with book burnings and forced recantations of anyone who says the earth is not the center of the universe. The Catholic Church viewed these as deadly heresies, but in reality, were nothing but freedom of thought.

Back somewhat to COVID, this alarming study suggests that part of the reason delta is more infectious is because it releases more virii and earlier in the infection course. Up to 1,000 times the viral load of the original strain on day of detection, whatever the heck that means to me (am definitely not a medical doktor).

https://virological.org/t/viral-infection-and-transmission-in-a-large-well-traced-outbreak-caused-by-the-delta-sars-cov-2-variant/724

In addition to being more infectious and result in a more severe course of disease (it’s been noted that those who start with a larger dose of infection often endure more severe disease courses), it also appears to mean an acceleration of variants formation in delta lineages because those infections generate more virii, each virii replication representing an individual opportunity for mutation.

If so, it won’t merely be number of infected patients driving variant formation but improvements in virus reproduction.

If I am correctly understanding the implications of this, we are so fucked. So so fucked. And we won’t even know it until weeks after the really really lethal strain had already spread everywhere.

Elon is just another Trump.

Had to post that one again for posterity. You’re not much into engineering, are you?

One of Ian’s top mantras appears to be: “It doesn’t have to be this way.” All I try to do is stir the pot to inspire ideas to try and figure out why this is so and how we might counter. If everything doesn’t all turn to shit as quickly as some say it will, then maybe some ideas or seeds for ideas might be useful in ones own daily life.

Musk is literally the opposite of Trump Yes, he does that ‘showman figurehead’ thing. But I see all that stuff as a required behavior, because of the way the human condition works. ( Musk is far from my ideal in either the social or political senses.)

There’s the old Lenny Bruce bit where Einstein was imagined to have been born in backwoods USA instead of Ulm Germany. He goes on stage for the first time in front of elite physicists: “I wanna talk to ya’ll ‘bout nukular fishin” and then gets booed offstage before he even has a chance to get into it. I knew some incredibly smart people who labor as design grunts because their colloquial stage presence is pathetic.

Caesar, FDR, Edison… all had to play variations of the superconfident ubermensch role just to get their foot in the door. Hell, even Hawkings made sure his computer voice sounded more like Forbin’s Colossus than the more loveable Playstation.

Had he not been born into wealth, Musk probably would’ve just finished his education to become some anonymous materials scientist helping some other famous rich guy divine the alloys used in their own Raptor engines.

Grammar and typing on Smartphone obviously not strong space lizard capabilities.

“I have some idea about feasibility and desirability of WHAT Elon is proposing and I want to NO part of it. “

Anybody sane want to discuss the whys behind the glaring differences between Boeing and SpaceX?

My goals are in line with Ian’s perception that: “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Considering Musk and Branson are both Chairman of the Board of both their respective organizations, perhaps this is their theme song considering their lofty expectations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQR0bXO_yI8

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
A-Jupiter and Mars

I don’t need to be polite to people on the internet who show no interest in having a good faith conversation and is willingly misreading what I write. I have extra hate for Americans who think they’re entitled to dictate the lives of others around the world because they really believe they’re God’s chosen people.

When you’re nasty to me, I have no qualms about calling it as I see it. I am not afraid to be called nasty names, but I will hold you up to your words. I can be persuaded with facts and understanding, but gaslighting stopped working on me around the time Obama picked his 2009 cabinet.