COVID-19 / Coronavirus Pandemic

[Phlyra]

That doesn't bother me so much. An incredible amount of effort was required to combat this disease, so it's not surprising it's cost an awful amount. What's more concerning to me was the way the government went about paying for this stuff, as documented in this programme:

BBC Radio 4 - File on 4 Investigates, Contracts of Interest

Have some companies had preferential treatment for lucrative government contracts?

www.bbc.co.uk

Edit: @Phylra's post, if that wasn't clear.

But that’s precisely why it’s cost so much - just look at Good Law Project’s Judicial Review cases on the subject! - so it should bother you...

 

[Phlyra]

I'm more concerned about how they will resolve the debt in the coming years. (Assuming the "emergency" situation ends)

I’m no economist but there are questions over whether there even is a debt in the conventional sense... From an economics lecturer at the University of Adelaide: https://theconversation.com/please-...we-are-going-to-pay-off-the-covid-debt-158056

(Essentially a currency-sovereign nation is not like a household since a household doesn’t create currency so can’t be forced into bankruptcy/austerity and only really needs to take care to avoid hyperinflation.)

I’ve seen similar arguments in the UK, particularly by a Professor of Economics but I can’t remember her name atm. Not sure how the argument would work for the Eurozone either.

 

[ElPoco]

I’m no economist but there are questions over whether there even is a debt in the conventional sense... From an economics lecturer at the University of Adelaide: https://theconversation.com/please-...we-are-going-to-pay-off-the-covid-debt-158056

(Essentially a currency-sovereign nation is not like a household since a household doesn’t create currency so can’t be forced into bankruptcy/austerity and only really needs to take care to avoid hyperinflation.)

I’ve seen similar arguments in the UK, particularly by a Professor of Economics but I can’t remember her name atm. Not sure how the argument would work for the Eurozone either.

That's the Modern Monetary Theory. It doesn't apply to countries of the Eurozone since they can only spend the money the EU central bank loans them. But a EU-wide decision could still lead to something similar.

 

[Phlyra]

That's the Modern Monetary Theory. It doesn't apply to countries of the Eurozone since they can only spend the money the EU central bank loans them. But a EU-wide decision could still lead to something similar.

Didn’t Zeitgeist bring that up with reference to the US$ ~15 years ago?

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

(Essentially a currency-sovereign nation is not like a household since a household doesn’t create currency so can’t be forced into bankruptcy/austerity and only really needs to take care to avoid hyperinflation.)

Hyper-inflation is unavoidable because fiat currencies are literal Ponzi schemes. Thousands of fiat currencies have existed and all fell. The only ones still standing are relatively new ones and they are on exactly the same course as their predecessors. There is no question that they will go into hyper-inflation, the only question is when. The job of banks is to steal as much purchasing power from the producers as they can while still delaying hyper-inflation as far as they can. This is what they call "regulating the money supply".

 

[netcat]

At the local primary school a teacher has tested positive. Now all the other teachers track n' trace™ apps have ordered them to isolate, presumably due to contact in the teachers lounge. So all these containment bubbles around forms are useless. All children in the entire school were immediately sent home. It's 6 days before all these protocols become void. FFS.

Post automatically merged: Jul 13, 2021

Hyper-inflation is unavoidable because fiat currencies are literal Ponzi schemes. Thousands of fiat currencies have existed and all fell. The only ones still standing are relatively new ones and they are on exactly the same course as their predecessors. There is no question that they will go into hyper-inflation, the only question is when. The job of banks is to steal as much purchasing power from the producers as they can while still delaying hyper-inflation as far as they can. This is what they call "regulating the money supply".

Are you in favor of El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender?

 

[levi]

If we do ever find ourselves against a disease that mutates as often as a simple influenza, but is as deadly as SARS2 or Ebola or something like that, then we're well and truly fucked, but I don't think that's an automatic outcome from where we are now. Right now, being double vaccinated helps stop you develop some of the worse symptoms of covid-19, so it's worth having and worth sending out to parts of the world without enough.

 

[JDTAY]

Oh man, Time is still talking about herd immunity.

MSN

www.msn.com

I mean, I even got lectured in this thread for forgetting that vaccinated people still get infected and spread COVID-19. There is no herd immunity.

Post automatically merged: Jul 13, 2021

To follow that up, if the US did reach herd immunity, when would they start producing enough vaccine to give the rest of the world herd immunity?

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

Are you in favor of El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender?

I have no opinion about that. Bitcoin seems ethically OK now, but so did Ethereum before they corrupted it by violating their founding principle of "code is law".

 

[JDTAY]

COVID-19 hospitalizations in my state are up from 409 to 469 in just the last three days. Of course, numbers for the last two days are preliminary, but that can go in either direction. Yesterday's number was 448 yesterday, 451 today, so even that 469 could be revised upward.

 

[FBnil]

 

[FBnil]

 

[JDTAY]

Meh, Yuval Harpaz doesn't seem like any sort of official source from what I can tell. Do you know where he got his numbers from?

 

[FBnil]

We have had less patients in Intensive Care than previous years.

Post automatically merged: Jul 14, 2021

Do you know where he got his numbers from?

Nope, but are they not as manipulated as any official?

Probably from here, if you scroll down his tweets:
googledocs

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

Official numbers are the perfect propaganda tool because everyone takes them as gospel. But I have seen some cases where official numbers were just straight-out lies, thus causing me to lose my faith in official numbers.

 

[pyrat]

I mean, I even got lectured in this thread for forgetting that vaccinated people still get infected and spread COVID-19. There is no herd immunity.

Well I guess there's always eventually herd immunity. Given enough time and too ineffective prevention, any virus will eventually reach all humans, so the ones left alive after long enough must be because they became immune.
Worst case, the herd gets to size 0, but hey, all of those 0 are immune.
Not saying herd immunity is anywhere near a good policy. It's more like a NOP.

To follow that up, if the US did reach herd immunity, when would they start producing enough vaccine to give the rest of the world herd immunity?

As you say, vaccines don't give herd iimunity, at most might let people become infected and survive, and that infection give them better immunity, but I have no clue whether natural infection (with or without vaccine) leaves you any less likely to spread than vaccine.
I simply think nobody knows and the world is basically divided into those who don't want to see the problem, and those which want to do anything that might be sold as a solution. I'm almost alone in thinking that the solution is not something to do, but some things to stop doing.

 

[levi]

Not doing something arguably requires more thought than actively doing something. They both carry intent, so I couldn't split them up personally. And of course, not doing something, such as staying too close to someone often requires activity i.e. to move away if they get too close.

 

[FBnil]

herd immunity,

It's the the GNU/Herd immunity on VAX/vms

Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19​

Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19 | International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research

ijvtpr.com

Which is work done based upon the work of this other paper:

https://scivisionpub.com/pdfs/covid19-rna-based-vaccines-and-the-risk-of-prion-disease-1503.pdf

Basically it says that:

RNA is immediately dissolved by Enzymes, so the vaxmakers changed it so it can't (quickly) be broken down.
Now a Spike is a Prion. A prion is where the proteine does not fold in a normal way. In the case of Spike, two aminoacids in the fusiondomain have been replaced by proline (also an aminoacid). This prevents the proteine from folding itself in such a way it fuses itself to the membrane (and hence, it stays spikey). Ramifications of this is a possible priondisease (which are at worst deadly, at best degenerative; see: MadCow disease, also caused by prions)

 

[FBnil]

The inventor of the mRNA vaccination method is still in the Dutch (and German) Wikipedia:

RNA-vaccin - Wikipedia

nl.wikipedia.org

But not in the EN wikipedia:

mRNA vaccine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(only as a footnote)

This guy got kicked off LinkedIn for uh, going against the narrative or something...
... because he said something about that the lipid nanoparticles (the "carriers") get accumulated in organs and tissues.

 

[FBnil]