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Post by miscmisc on Dec 1, 2020 18:56:10 GMT 1
We'll clearly lose more people in this winter surge than we did in the spring. That won't be the case in some countries, but globally that's what's going to happen. It hasn't been the straightforward 1st/2nd wave pattern in countries like India, Latin America, the US, Japan etc., but it's basically exactly the same as Spanish Flu in 1918, where most of the deaths actually occurred in the 2nd wave globally.
I did predict back in the late summer that a big infection-fatality surge/wave would come in a few months, but I kept saying it would be smaller than the one in the spring.
So, yeah, I think I was wrong. I underestimated the virus too after all.
The vaccines came remarkably soon, but unfortunately not soon *enough*.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 1, 2020 19:27:34 GMT 1
Again, I told you to leave Sweden alone, and then clearly reneged on my own advice. I know. That's because contrarian dweebs and cranks never leave the country alone, and frankly the country's own state epidemiologist pours gasoline into the crank fuel on the weekly basis. The discourse around the country has become a cesspool of Covid misinformation and conspiracy theories. I just couldn't ignore it. Anti-mask, anti-lockdown, pro-"herd immunity," racist Covid theories (blaming immigrants) etc. - These have been neatly gathered around Sweden. Every crank who has a platform brings up the country and praises it, and now that the situation doesn't look so good over there, employs all kinds of sophist arguments and ecological fallacies to deny that the Covid situation there is worsening at all. FYI, it is definitely worsening. Will probably reach 100 deaths per day around the beginning of Jan., and even that might not be the peak. The official daily death count is still 10-ish, but in actuality it's probably already >50 now (I talked about the peculiar way Sweden reports deaths). I think those cranks - an overwhelming majority of whom are NOT Swedish - should be crushed. They are very clearly harmful. EDIT: According to this, the (predicted) actual daily death count is already at 70. A lot higher than my rough calculation. Yes, when it comes to Swedish Covid death counts, you actually have to *predict things that have already happened*. I know it's so confusing, but blame the Swedish government! |
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 1, 2020 21:35:09 GMT 1
I know many American leftists are dismayed by Joe Biden choosing Janet Yellen for Treasury and Neera Tanden (!) for the OMB, particularly the latter. I know, she's a fucking clown, almost like a caricature of a centrist liberal.
I agree. But first of all, what the hell did you except from Mr. Centrist?
And most importantly, at least, they are a clear improvement over Obama's choices. Remember 2008? In the middle of the global crisis?
Obama chose Tim Geithner and Peter Orszag, lol. The second sentence that Orszag uttered in his first speech as director contained the word "balanced budget." Geithner kept talking about the danger of inflation. These two men were almost completely subservient to Wall Street too.
Those two women, OTOH, are at least not austerian fools. Yellen is not an anti-austerian, but not an austerian fool. Tanden is a fool, but not an austerian fool.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 1, 2020 22:51:53 GMT 1
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 1, 2020 23:15:12 GMT 1
Obama's choices really were fucking garbage in hindsight. I mean, not just in hindsight. I said they were garbage back then, but holy shit, man. I reviewed his first-term team yesterday, and it's really a pile of garbage.
Obama indeed set the progressive liberal movement back several years at least. He had BOTH the Senate majority and House majority for TWO FUCKING YEARS. And all we got from that is a lousy fucking T-shirt.
That man was mostly a failure.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 2, 2020 1:35:58 GMT 1
As was expected, after the holiday weekend lull, the US Covid stats came back with a vengeance.
Nearly 100k people hospitalized. Incredible.
I'd expect the hospitalizations and deaths to continue to rise.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 2, 2020 2:05:27 GMT 1
What a moron. California has imposed the most strict restrictions, for the longest. Yet Newsom, and now Breed, both caught dining/partying at the fucking French Laundry of all places.
Who on earth in California will ever listen to them now?
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 2, 2020 2:18:04 GMT 1
Great. Just great. San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo was also caught attending a Thanksgiving dinner with family members from FIVE households, clearly breaking the state regulations.
"we wore masks when not eating."
But were you silent while eating, mayor? Of course not, you imbecile. Stupid excuses only infuriate people further.
Since the White House is basically AWOL, now it's up to the governors and mayors.
And then, they do this.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 2, 2020 11:18:06 GMT 1
I was disgusted with Colbert the last time he cried on his show, but this one, I agree with him. She can choke *me* up with no effort like this.
Dolly Parton is an American national treasure. She is one of the few people that I was truly awestruck by when I met them.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 2, 2020 11:56:08 GMT 1
OK, so the latest argument form Anders Tegnell is that the vaccines won't be rolled out until late 2021 or/and early 2022 in Sweden (Hmmm... why?), so... I don't even know what. He basically says we shouldn't be too happy about the vaccines. Or something. I really don't know.
He's very clearly upset that the vaccines are coming so soon. I got that much from his comment.
This is no laughing matter especially for Swedish people, but he *really* sounds like he's upset about the vaccines, lol.
What kind of a public health official is that, seriously?
I suppose herd immunity was actually his goal all along! I always gave him the benefit of the doubt as he denied it in public, but maybe I shouldn't have.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 2, 2020 13:41:06 GMT 1
These people are extremely annoying. "the day the UK led humanity’s charge against this disease"? WTF?
Pfizer is a US company, who funded German lab BioNTech, with volunteers from various countries in the world participating in the trials, and the vaccines will be manufactured primarily in Belgium.
And just because the UK took a shortcut in the emergency approval process they now somehow "led humanity's charge against this disease"?
For these delusional British conservatives, the calendar always says it's 1850, I guess. Congratulations to the EU on parting ways with these clowns who simply don't know their place in the world.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 3, 2020 15:10:18 GMT 1
If you think:
1. Vaccines are more than a few years away
2. Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of Covid-19 is higher than that of the flu, but not by much
3. It's very, very contagious, a lot more so than the flu, but the transmission pattern is linear
4. You would need to shut down everything and close the borders for months to significantly slow the spread
5. Through some flexible mitigation measures here and there, now and then, natural herd immunity can be relatively safely achieved in several months
If you are confident that these five points are valid, you probably should do what Sweden did.
I'm 120% sure that those who were in charge of the initial UK response had exactly the same set of assumptions, and the same conclusion. That's why Anders Tegnell praised the UK back then.
The problem, of course, is that ALL of those assumptions have turned out wrong.
Tegnell was "surprised" by the high death count at nursing homes because he believed 2.
And was again "surprised" at the low antibody rates in Stockholm - nowhere near the level required for "herd immunity" - because he believed 2 & 3. Since a few thousands people had already died in Stockholm by that time, he did some back-calculation and concluded that at least 40% of people in Stockholm must have been infected already.
Nope.
And that kills 5.
4 has been disproven by multiple countries, including their neighbors.
And 1. The vaccines. The final nail in the coffin. Need I say more.
And the rest is just the issue of people unable to climb down the tree. Just never forget they were completely wrong from the beginning.
* As for the issue of masks - their steadfast refusal to embrace masks as a tool to fight Covid-19 with, I don't know. You should ask them. I have no idea. Tegnell seems to think masks are even harmful. He can't honestly say that in public as that would be like calling the WHO, CDC, ECDC, etc. a bunch of cranks who are killing people. Maybe we are all cranks and he's the chosen one, for all I care.
I learned a couple or days ago that Tegnell did deny airborne transmissions when he argued against masks. You can draw your own conclusion from that, I think.
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 3, 2020 15:36:28 GMT 1
"You can't aim for herd immunity. Herd immunity happens when it does, but we can't engineer it. How can we aim for it when we don't even know how it really works? We know very little about this virus!" - a Japanese epidemiologist back in March
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 3, 2020 16:09:09 GMT 1
It's always the nurses that we are short of. Nurses do most of the work.
We should just say nurses instead of "health workers in high demand." It's always the nurses!
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Post by miscmisc on Dec 3, 2020 16:15:41 GMT 1
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