Covid-19 News

Quote from Wyttenbach

By the way: Why did WHO tell that masks won't help??

I believe this was a ploy to reduce the use of masks by non-medical civilians outside of hospitals. I think it was done because there was a severe shortage of masks. It was disingenuous. No one in Asia followed this advice. On the contrary, governments there insisted that everyone should wear a mask, and they took steps to manufacture and distribute them to all citizens. Especially washable cloth masks.

This is partly because wearing a mask is a normal, everyday thing to do in Asia. It is done partly to keep cold air from bothering you, like wearing a muffler.

Quote from Navid

Google, Facebook, Microsoft are all in on the game.

That is not likely. They are commercial rivals. If one was engaged in bad conduct, it would be in the interests of the other two to expose it. Along the same lines, even before antitrust laws were passed, conspiracies to secretly fix prices seldom worked for long. It was said that the agreement lasted only until the first person out of the meeting reached a telegraph office to make an offer to the customer undercutting the agreed-upon price.

A test for COVID-19 antibodies and possible immunity. This is not an endorsement. I just ran into the web page incidentally. I have no idea where to buy this or how accurate it is.

https://www.assaygenie.com/covid-19-rapid-poc-test/

Quote from Alan Smith

The WHO (initially), and now the UK government are saying that masks are not generally required to be worn by the public, but it might be useful in future. What they don't want is a stampede to buy masks when there are not even enough t

Yup. Sort of cynical but many people wouldn't act on the truth. Strong suggestion: if you go outdoors where you might encounter other persons, wear a mask- the best one you can get. Also a hat and eye protection. Even a bandana is better than nothing but a banana is not.

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…06.028431v1.full.pdf+html

This is a really clever and useful idea, pooling samples in PCR machines to achieve overall throughput many times larger than individual testing without extra complexity. The only trade-off is slightly higher false positive rate.

THH

Quote from Alan Smith

What they don't want is a stampede to buy masks when there are not even enough to supply hospitals.

I think it would have been better to come clean, and say that was the reason. They could have said that, and then recommended that people make their own masks, either by sewing or using paper towels and Kleenex, as shown here earlier. Many people pointed out the contradiction of claiming that doctors and nurses need masks, but masks will not do any good for ordinary people on the street. If a mask does us no good on the street, how can it protect doctors? Or did they mean we will not encounter a sick person on the street? If that were the case, the epidemic would not spread.

Quote from Shane D.

Accidentally deleted post. Dang phone. Anyway, here is what the article said Jed. Everyone can decide if the governor went too far, and if the Church was being unreasonable to challenge him:

"His order would have barred Christians from driving to their church parking lots and sitting in their vehicles for Easter services—all while maintaining proper social distancing—while imposing no such restrictions on drive-up and drive-through restaurants, liquor stores, grocery stores, or parking lots generally."

Ah, ha. That article turns out to be wrong. The person writing this article, and the judge, misunderstood the order. It did not prevent anyone from driving to church parking lots and participating in services. It did discourage that. The mayor who issued this order tried to communicate with the court saying that was not what the order said. See:

https://slate.com/news-and-pol…-bench-justin-walker.html

It feels like a tinge of optimism is taking hold in the U.S. Gov. Cuomo said he thinks the worst could be behind NYC, and they are talking about a staged reopening of businesses.

Having only glanced briefly below at the daily new cases I see some cause for concern, namely China and Singapore. China had 30 daily new cases on April 4th and today it has 108. It could just be a random blip on the radar. But we certainly don’t want to see that number continue to increase at that rate. It would point to how difficult it is to reopen an economy. Also, tens of thousands of people left Wuhan recently. We will see what effect that had.

Singapore is also seeing substantial growth in daily new cases despite being as proactive on testing as anyone, and being a very small country. Not sure what to make of it.

South Korea is the one Country that gets an A+ for how they are managing this. They have managed this as well as anyone and their cases always seem under control. My guess is they must have an amazing system of testing and contact tracing there.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Quote from Deleo

South Korea is the one Country that gets an A+ for how they are managing this.

There are a few more countries to consider.. being islands is not the only factor

Taiwan is below the radar,,, NZ channeled Taiwan in their response to Covid... not the WHO.

Quote from Navid

Google, Facebook, Microsoft are all in on the game. I've spoken a lot, Wyttenbach why don't you tell us more!

What and why do you want to know more?

All People walk around with a transponder (mobile phone) . > 80% of the internet is now on the NSA provided AKAMAI back-bone. They can spoof you any time any place malware or fake info pages if they want. You never get through to the actual page host first. They always send you a cached version based on time-stamps.

The US patriot act exists in two versions: The public one and a secret part for companies that are mission critical like apple, MS, Google, "Face-fuck".

From time to time you read news like Apple won't help FBI to hack the I-phone. But that's FBI not NSA that has free access to all phones...

Now Huawai does the same for 5G as the others like CISCO did for the old standards: Base channel splitting what allows to read all traffic. The question is: Who is your master?

But you know the real problem?? Already 2002 they collected petabytes of data stored in Sybase IQ databases that allowed high speed correlation of mass data but in the end somebody has to verify it. Somebody has to decide what is important.

Now we see cricket brains running WHO not checking whether the world is prepared for SARS II. E.g. in Switzerland they did not stock masks albeit they had to do it - just for profit optimization. What is security ????

And now comes the point: Most secrete services work just for profit optimization of private individuals not for you the citizens. Why do we need security checks at airports?? It's the most easy way to implement trade protection etc. and a huge business for some companies - friends.

You have to understand where you live. A nomenclature currently rules all countries. They don't trust anybody they don't pay. The same now works for corona too. The nomenclature is the endangered group, most of them with bad live style, old and preconditions and they wish to every day move to any point of the planet they enjoy.

The death rate outside this group is 20x lower!!! Start to think.

(Did you see Putins hospital visit in class III lab protective suit??? - start to think.. ask what the doctors did wear...)

Quote from Deleo

China had 30 daily new cases on April 4th and today it has 108. It could just be a random blip on the radar.

It is mainly people coming back to China from the EU and other places with high infection rates. That's according to the Japanese mass media. Japan has banned entry to foreign nationals from many countries, including the U.S. There are some exceptions such as foreign nationals married to Japanese citizens.

Quote from Shane D.

This virus is expected to be around for a long time. That means it is inevitable, that everyone at one time or another will get infected.

Not all! At present rates of infection, in Korea, Japan and China it will not even reach ~1% of the population before a vaccine is expected.

Quote from Alan Smith

I would like to see more figures adjusted for population size.

If one looks adjusts the worldometer spreadsheet according to deaths / milion... NZ is down the pack below Japan..

and Taiwan is way down below that.

.but then Taiwan has a CECC.. central epidemic control centre. since January..

CECC confirms 5 more imported COVID-19 cases; four passengers on Coral Princess confirmed to have COVID-19

https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bull…EoRibShNOYV1xw?typeid=158

Both countries were exposed to coronavirus by international travel.. and are even now..

it took ten or more 77W flights or more to evacuate the German tourists... This is for Shane..

Its a shame.. maybe they can use the 77Ws for B&B establishments after this.

Quote from Shane D.

"Rather, Fischer’s spokesman clarified that police would merely be “discouraging organizers from proceeding,” noting: “This is not a law enforcement matter, it’s a community matter.” And on Friday, Fischer reiterated this point, stating that the police would merely be “handing out information detailing the health risks involved” to worshippers who congregate, and taking down license plate numbers to expedite contact tracing if any worshippers get infected."

I think that crosses the line also, and civil libertarians will rightfully have a field day with that.

I think it is common sense during the worst and most dangerous pandemic in 100 years. It is no exaggeration to say that if we let this get out of hand, millions of people will die. Millions of people! Just as many proportionally as died in 1918. Do you understand that? Do you doubt it??? The numbers are there for anyone to see. Let cases double every three days, and you soon have millions of unburied corpses in houses and rotting in the streets, which is what some South American countries report. It can happen in the U.S. as easily as anywhere else. Our medical science and our technology will do us no good if we cannot access it, because the hospitals are overwhelmed.

Read what it was like in 1918. It would be just as bad if we overwhelm the hospitals. We will be no better off than people were then.

In any earlier time in the U.S. these people would have been subjected to much harsher treatment. Civil libertarians should stuff it up their . . . agendas. Civil liberties must be suspended during a hurricane, an epidemic or a major war. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Civil rights must be restored after the emergency ends. Take that video of the police in New York City blasting the orthodox Jewish funeral with sirens and bullhorns, chasing people off the streets. In normal times that would be an incredible violation of rights. I would take it as some sort of extreme Nazi anti-semitism, if I did not know the context. However, under the circumstances, it is totally justified, and there was never a time in the U.S. or England when the police would not have done that. Those people are in a Dance with Death. They are endangering themselves and everyone else in the city.

Quote from Wyttenbach

All People walk around with a transponder (mobile phone)

Not me.

If you don't want to, you don't have to. It isn't like there is a law you have to carry a cell phone. If you do carry one, you should know darn well they are tracking your every move. This has been described in the mass media and trade publications for years. It is your choice to live in a fishbowl. If you want the convenience, you must accept the surveillance. Perhaps a law will be passed against it, or competing service providers will emerge who promise not to do it, but until then, you are stuck with this.

In the early years of telephone service, the operator and with party lines, the neighbors would listen in on conversations. There was no privacy. People accepted it because that's how the technology worked. They knew it. If you didn't want people listening, you didn't use the telephone.