TonyPrep
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Anything Russia does must be good and so if they seem to be doing something bad, there must be a reason. Putin is absolutely fantastic and the smartest leader in the world (perhaps that’s why he rushed to be the first to approve a COVID-19 vaccine) so if he cedes a city, no matter how strategically important, it must translate into a good tactical move. That seems to be the thinking here.
It’s just possible that destroying civilian infrastructure is a morally bankrupt idea. It’s just possible that rushing through referendums to pretend that the residents (or those left but only those in occupied areas of the regions) want to be part of Russia is a morally bankrupt idea. It’s just possible that looting towns and cities that it has had to retreat from is a morally bankrupt idea. But maybe such reports are all made up, because it’s inconceivable that Putin could do anything evil. Still, this is a war, not a special military operation, so anything goes, right? Any other country trying to annex another country may well do the same so that possibility make Putin’s actions defensible.
The saddest thing is that there was never any reason for this. You can paint off Putin as a crazy monster a million times, and the special action as completely unprovoked, but you would have to ignore all of Russia’s warnings over decades that this is an “existential” issue for their country.
I hope you’re not suggesting that this is some kind of justification for Russia attacking another country. It doesn’t really matter if Russia (AKA Putin) has been saying this for years; any independent country has a right to pursue its own course, providing it doesn’t attack another country in so doing.
Russia hasn’t yet won this war (which it claims is not a war) and it seems premature to claim it has, especially on its own terms.
So where do we go now? Small businesses cannot hold out forever.
I don’t know but, if NZ does get this outbreak under control the elimination strategy may be the best way to go for us. Small businesses have been supported, though some will not have survived. If we get a rapid recovery again, then I’m fairly sure we’ll stick to this strategy, despite being isolated in terms of individual travel (but not in terms of goods). Full restaurants, full events and lots of places internally to visit will seem like Nirvana to many others. Though some miss travelling abroad (though that’s still technically possible), no-one I know hates the approach that’s been taken here. Even opposition parties are on board (but only because the public is).
Maybe the UK is being watched closely as a possible end game. Looks like the virus is being held at a plateau with deaths and hospitalisations subdued due to the vaccines.
Shut you entire country down for one case, after 20 months, and people call you a success story.
It may have seemed ridiculous to those whose countries have a more lax approach, with perhaps predictable results. NZ has been lucky but it most certainly is a success story because of its approach. Going hard and early is in sharp contrast to New South Wales in Australia, which dithered and dallied and which now has daily cases up to nearly 700. The lockdown in NZ may have seemed over-reaction but the single case has already grown to about 10, with perhaps another 50-100 expected. The rapid lockdown may not seem so stupid in hindsight. NZ’s strategy has seen most residents able to live their lives normally and has seen the economy rebound strongly with an effective full employment situation (4% unemployment is often considered the minimum level, given the usual churn).
Apparently there have been protests in three cities but only a couple of dozen people in each place. In the past, most NZers have followed the rules and have had the reward.
Whatever the long term strategy should be, New Zealand has done pretty well with the pandemic so far. No-one has the answer but NZ has gotten this much more correct than most/all other countries.
By the way, a tweet from Nicole:
It was inevitable. The delta variant is too contagious for previous containment measures to work. At least we have the advantage of being able to learn from the mistakes of others
Right, so the post begins with a supposition that is probably false. The second paragraph also appears to impart some kind of intelligence to the virus (“the virus has no reason to mutate”). Evolution doesn’t need reasons, it just needs random mutations and selection pressures. If a mutation makes it more likely to spread, there is a good chance that that mutation will outperform the current variant. It doesn’t need a reason. Vaccination might increase the chances of more infectious variant becoming dominant but I can’t see how lethality is affected.
Does vaccination increase the chances of dying from the delta variant? I don’t think that enough research has been done into that. Older folk and more vulnerable folk have probably had the greatest rate of vaccination and this may be a factor.
However, from the bare figures, it seems likely that vaccination in the UK has had a downwards impact on the case fatality rate overall. Fiji, with far lower vaccination percentage, is also struggling with Delta and is seeing a much greater fatality rate than the UK.
As a virus mutates, it becomes more contagious and less lethal.
What is the source for this claim? I can’t think of a reason for such a selection pressure until it starts to run out of hosts.
PhoenixVoice,
Yes, it’s not enough but at least that city is having a go and apparently making some progress towards their goals. If all cities did something similar, it may at least buy us some time to come up with a more effective plan.
We really need to figure out a completely different way of living that doesn’t rely on the rape of nature. Phoenix’s plan is a very long way from that but at least a start.
Almost any face covering will reduce the risk. This study shows that only one tested face covering was as bad as, or worse than, no covering at all. Surprisingly, a valved N95 mask wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The study was for particles leaving the nose and mouth, rather than for the particles being blocked the other way (though I’d guess the ranking would be similar for the reverse). Whilst no mask would stop all transmission, reducing the risk is better than not reducing the risk. A mask also protects the wearer by reducing the viral load, if infected, which lessens the likely impact of the disease, as the body has more time to mount a response.
Regarding doses of medicines, anti-virals need to be administered as early as possible. Although early treatment of hospitalized patients would likely help, it is better if they are administered almost before an infection is confirmed. This would make it very difficult to get the doses to those who need it (remember that the positivity rate is over 5%, so doses should be administered to the other 95% before and until their results come back).
I don’t know what to make of all this. You don’t learn history from statues or movies, so I don’t necessarily see the censoring of those things as the re-writing of history. At the same time, we need to remember what was bad about slavery and the mistreatment of minorities (or the mistreatment of anyone who we don’t think of as “in our tribe”). However, although I don’t think human nature can be altered (just as the characteristic behaviour of no species can be altered), I can’t help thinking that the near constant picking out of particular races or particular traits (e.g. “policeman murders unarmed black man who posed no threat”, rather than “policeman murders unarmed man who posed no threat”) , doesn’t help us think of people as all having the same rights and responsibilities.
I’ve been wondering about gloves for some time. I just can’t think of a reason why gloves would be effective in the crisis. I’ve called for everyone to wear masks plenty of times here in NZ but I can’t find any good information on the effectiveness of gloves, nor can I think of any. The virus doesn’t exude or enter through the skin (as far as I’m aware) so wearing gloves should be the same as not wearing gloves. In either case, don’t touch your mouth, nose or eyes when out in the community (without sanitizing first).
However, I’d love to have more information on this. I wore gloves once when shopping for groceries but then couldn’t figure out why.
There was a very recent study using the Diamond Princess data to estimate the infection fatality rate or IFR (deaths among all those who contracted the virus). With such limited data, the errors are high but the IFR was estimated at 0.5% (in a range of 0.2% to 1.2%). Currently, the fatality rate of all resolved (those cases which resulted in recovery or death) known cases worldwide is 5%-6%.
Assuming that the Diamond Princess population was fully tested, the fatality rate is about 1% of those who contracted the virus. Not 0.18% (you can’t include cases that weren’t cases). If there are still unresolved cases (I don’t know), then the fatality rate may increase.
I’m not sure why you think the death rate will go down further. If you add the number of deaths to the number of recovered cases, you get the total of resolved CoVid-19 cases. The death rate is then the number of deaths relative to the total resolved cases. In the portion of the table above, this comes out to just under 6%. This seems to gel with the way the apparent death rate (deaths divided by total cases) has been creeping up (it was about 2% in the first few weeks). Eventually, when most cases are resolved, just dividing the deaths by the total cases will give a fairly good estimate. I would expect the apparent death rate to go up, not down.
Of course, we don’t know how many cases are not reported but that is the only unknown that would reduce the death rate. As we can’t use an unknown number in any calculation, we should assume that the death rate is over 5%.
Well, the elites will make money out of any activity that they can exploit. Climate change is no different in that respect. It is different in that it is one of a number of environmental stressors that could spell, and has spelled, the end of countless species, possibly including our own. I don’t listen to everything Thunberg says but I don’t think she espouses any particular “solution”, instead trying to point out that we should listen to climate scientists and that no significant actions have been taken in 30 years of talking about the issue. You’re right, though, that humans will consume as much as they can as rapidly as they can. With no significant predators and a temporary ability to constantly increase that consumption (through tool use and high density energy), we seem to be on a collision course with catastrophe.
Thunberg is doing just fine, I think. Somehow, she’s getting away with speaking truth to power. However, though she’s doing as much as can be expected, she will have no definable impact because the human species has a characteristic behaviour which doesn’t allow us to use our ability to see the long term consequences of our actions. As an example, take anticlimactic’s comment above; he/she has “no idea how CO2 is supposed to affect climate,”, despite a quick Net search yielding reams of information on that.
So people will continue to believe what they want to believe.Environmentalists are no different – most want to believe a modern civlisation can be operated on electricity which doesn’t have environmental effects, even though no such power source exists. Given that the effects of environmental toxins is fairly well known, we can be sure that such effects will be effectively ignored.
Weren’t those documents part of what the impeachment inquiry was trying to get out of the administration? If the documents contain no incriminating evidence, why was the administration refusing to release them to the committee? Trump et al are not cooperating in the least and that, itself, must raise questions, surely?
One of the issues that gets forgotten, I think, when people complain about other countries getting a free ride on climate is that the agreements usually talk about action on an equitable basis. This means that those populations that have contributed the least (especially on a per capita basis) to the climate crisis should be allowed more leeway than those who’ve polluted heavily for decades or centuries. Of course, it’s a bit more complex than that but developed nations should be slashing their emissions now and developing nations should be slashing their emissions very soon. However, it’s a convenient excuse for the contrarians to think all countries should take the same actions regardless of the past contributions by those countries, so if that doesn’t happen, there is no reason for anyone to take action. And so down the hill we go.
I didn’t see that piece of the testimony, Raul, but, from the parts I’ve seen, the republicans aren’t denying what took place, instead trying to deflect attention to the process and stuff around the inquiry. Nunes constantly uses his closing remarks to completely ignore the testimony. So I don’t know why you rail against the Dems when the republicans are far worse, from what I’ve seen. It’s clear, to me, that Trump did abuse the office in this matter (and many other matters), so it all comes down to whether that’s an impeachable offense or not.
At least Nunes, today, didn’t try to pretend that the American people elected Trump, rather that it was an “Electoral College landslide”. And they like to think of themselves as a democracy.
almost entirely ignore Trump’s real sins and instead focus on his imaginary sins or at most penny ante sins.
I’m not sure why you think it matters how they get him, as long as they get him. Definitely not imaginary sins, though. What worries me is what they end up with if they do get him (which seems unlikely, given the gutless Republicans’ position). Still, it seems like it would be hard to find a worse president than the current one.
Sorry, the embedding of Nicole Foss’s tweet didn’t work. Go to: https://twitter.com/NicoleFoss7/status/1197353812937166848
Regarding Schiff:
<p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Agreed https://t.co/yL83lwMlfy</p>— Nicole Foss (@NicoleFoss7) November 21, 2019
<script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
As I understand it, a couple of witnesses today actually heard the July phone call so it’s not really 2nd, 3rd, 4th hearsay, is it?
By the way, “the American people” didn’t elect Trump, the Electoral College did. Trump got 3 million less votes than Clinton. So please don’t repeat the GOP lies about the election. I’m not commenting on whether Clinton would have been any better (that is questionable) or saying that, with a different system, Trump would not have won but he certainly was not elected by the American people.
As I understand it, a couple of witnesses today actually heard the July phone call so it’s not really 2nd, 3rd, 4th hearsay, is it?
The entire inquiry rests on the assumption that Trump is afraid of Biden.
What? That seems to be a similar line to the Republicans; ignore the central charge and deflect as much as possible. At least Nicole’s retweets seem to suggest she’s still got her head screwed on.
What all these allegations have in common is that there is no evidence any of them are true.
I cringe when I see statements like the above. What they usually mean is “I have not seen any evidence which leads me to believe any of them are true”. Others may differ from that opinion and there may be evidence of which you’re not aware. Some of those incidents have had much investigation, including the collection of much evidence, testing and analysis. Of course, not everything one hears from official sources is true, or even remotely true, but that doesn’t mean that everything one hears from official sources is not true. It seems there are those here who think everything done by certain actors is just dandy, but that is most unlikely to be the case.
I also see we still have a healthy dose of human caused climate change denial here, some of which includes something like the opening quote of this comment (e.g. “no good science”). Sheesh, no wonder we’re heading over the cliff.
anticlimactic, there has not been cooling since 1998. 2002 beat 1998, as did 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and, likely, 2018 (though 2 or 3 of those were statistical ties). In fact the four warmest years on record (for the surface of our planet) are the last 4 years (though not in order). By the end of this year, it’s likely that the 5 warmest years on record will all have occurred in the past 5 years. That doesn’t happen when the earth’s surface is cooling.
The thing that gets me is that, in the early reports, it was stated that there is a law, in the Netherlands, that rallies intended to influence the politics of another country are not allowed. If that’s true then that’s all that needs to be said and Erdogan’s comments are ridiculous on that basis alone; does he expect other countries to disregard their law for his benefit?
However, this aspect seems to have been missing from later reports, as the incident escalated, so I wonder if the earlier reports were correct.
Raul said, “Or is the problem perhaps that Obama and Clinton seemed good alternatives to someone rational?”
This can be taken two ways but I suppose you meant that, to a rational person, Obama and Clinton seemed good alternatives (supposedly alternatives to Trump). But I don’t think this meaning or the other meaning (that Trump is rational) are necessarily true. I doubt whether any candidate who puts their hat into the ring is a good choice – surely, any rational person would see that they are either mad or beholden to their financers. Trump is just crazy and packs his cabinet and main picks with crazy people to ensure that the craziness goes on for four years. I can’t think of one sensible person that he’s nominated in his administration (though I don’t know much about some of them, admittedly). The only plus is that it probably won’t make much difference to the serious long term issues that face all of us.
I’d go along with hotrod and ExponentialAbsurdity but, since I doubt any candidate could really have addressed our predicaments (since they are predicaments), maybe Trump can at least do something for this one little thing, though it’s not clear at all that he has any inclination to do anything sensible.
“I cannot imagine 50% of the French are crazy enough to vote for her,”
Hah! I guess that’s what many said of Trump. He didn’t get 50% of the vote but he didn’t need that under their system. This is beginning to sound like the serious denial we saw in the US, where the unimaginable actually happened.
Very good, Illargi. You just about nailed it but I think you let a little bit of hope creep in, in the section starting “Mankind’s only chance …”. You probably know that there is no chance. That section probably accepts that humans can’t use that available energy benignly (humans are a species and so have a characteristic behaviour that can’t consciously be altered) and so the only chance it to somehow stop using all of the energy we can get our hands on; to do something different from what other species typically do. That also isn’t going to happen since we are a species.
The question then is what certain anomalous members of our species do with that awareness. That’s a tough one.
I wasn’t particularly surprised, nor particularly concerned. Two bad choices (since very few seem to consider other parties). However, I do note that Clinton won the popular vote, thus rendering the result undemocratic (if not everyone’s vote is equal, then it isn’t a democracy). Perhaps the US ought to fix that, since this is the second time it’s happened in 5 elections.
“<i>There is zero proof of that, as there is of everything the US claims about Russia.</i>”
Wow, that has to be a gross exaggeration but, otherwise, a nice piece. I hate Trump as much as Clinton but I totally see the bias in the media at almost every report. Trump’s lewd remarks a decade ago were just that, and indefensible, but they were just as he says, locker room talk (or bar-room talk); I’ve heard almost as bad myself from people who are fantastic blokes otherwise. Seems that fantasizing is wrong, now.
Arnold, thanks for those links. It makes very interesting reading and, at a cursory glance, I’d tend to agree with you.
Arnold, so you’re saying that all the evidence that the investigation team apparently uncovered is manufactured? How do you know that the missile was fired by the Ukranian government forces?
I’m willing to believe anything at this stage but I don’t know how some people can be so sure of the “facts” when they haven’t seen any hard evidence. Unless you have?
I have a vague recollection of the Russians carrying out some kind of investigation. Does anyone have details on that?
Re the MH17 report. Why did it lose credibility long before it was released? Is the evidence garbage?
You’ll never get rid of the drive for growth but there’ll come a time (soon, if it isn’t here already) when that drive cannot be satisfied except by fiddling the GDP figures even more. Even that will eventually reach the end of the road and cold reality will bite even for the elites.
As garymoo says, even in New Zealand, it’s easy to detect the media bias against Trump. I guess I could say he deserves it except that I hate the media controlling our thoughts, although we don’t get to vote on “the most powerful person in the world” over here.
By the way, gary, the world is already burning, but that’s a different matter and I don’t think either Trump or Clinton would alter that.
Hey Nassim, I’m not American, can’t vote in the US elections and don’t support either Trump or Clinton. But, at least superficially, Trump is probably the least equipped candidate of all time to deal with our predicament. Having said that, I don’t expect Clinton will do anything either but Trump? He would be the last candidate I’d expect to see defended here.
