Random Rant Thread

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Not that this adds anything to what I've been saying, but I can't find any reason to disagree with Scott Gottlieb here. This fall-winter surge has been hitting everyone in the Northern Hemisphere hard, and will continue to do so, but t's going to be hard especially in the US, on top of the current situation that is already exceptionally hard. If you are in the US, buckle up your seatbelt, and please, protect yourself and your loved ones.

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This is a chart based on the latest, most reliable data.

Everyone talks about how it's "just the flu" or "much worse than the flu," but you need to understand the correct scale of it.

For very young people, below 20, it is indeed "just the flu," but above that it gets "much worse than the flu" pretty quickly. Above the age of 60 it's consistently about 15 times worse than the flu.



And on top of the high IFR there's the issue of the prognostic symptoms of Covid-19 (e.g. the long-haulers), which are significantly worse than those of the flu and can happen to teens too.

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You shouldn't give a shit about whether Giuliani will drop dead or not (he probably won't thanks to the first-class "presidential" treatment he's receiving), but you damn sure should about all the gazillion close contacts who will have to be quarantined for the next 10-14 days because of that piece of shit. The Arizona legislature, for example, will be closed all week because of that motherfucker.

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One of the things that this pandemic revealed is that Eastern Europe really, really doesn't matter to the global media. You just never hear a beep about it unless you check the regional/local media outlets. We only (barely) hear about Czech Republic, merely as a cautionary tale.

The region has been hit hard by Covid-19 for weeks, even months. And the situation is still awful. In Romania, more than 100 people having been dying every day for more than a month now, and the figure has been nearly 200 lately. It's similar in Hungary, which means it's twice as bad there given the population of Hungary is less than half of Romania's.

And in Poland, it's been 400, 500, even 600 deaths per day. Those are huge numbers given that the population of Poland is about 38M. Easily worse than in Spain, Italy, the UK etc. on the per capita basis. The country's fatality rates are still relative low only because they lost very few in the spring.

And the former Yugoslav states look even worse. Both Macedonia's and BiH's population fatality rates are about to reach 0.1%, despite the fact that they only had a minuscule first wave. It's been getting worse at a horrible pace in Croatia too, with nearly 70 deaths per day now in the country of 4M people. Slovenia is losing more than 50+ people a day, and its population is only 2M. That would be equivalent to roughly 8,250+ deaths per day in the US.

You rarely hear of these countries.

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When I see crap like this, all I can see is this toxic aura of pathological narcissism.

And the narcissism that isn't accompanied by any matching intellect/talent/skills/knowledge is about the grossest, most embarrassing thing in humanity.

This moron genuinely thinks he's smart, or worse, "different."

Everyone is so goddamn much in love with their ugly fucking selves. It's horrendous.

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In the Brexit negotiations, there's this appearance of Macron = France playing the traditional role of low-kicking Britain, even going solo, but his voice is basically the EU's too. The role he's been playing is actually that of the unofficial continental European spokesman, representing the countries who suspect that Brussels might concede too much.

It's just that France never minds hitting Britain with a stick in public when most others would hesitate.

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Now, a lot of media outlets from around the world started kicking Sweden now that the situation has very clearly gone bad over there.

I hate that.

Most of those articles/segments awfully simplify the nature of Covid-19. "Hey, you didn't do a lockdown and look where you are!" and "You didn't mandate mask-wearing, and look where you are!" aren't a good way to understand and criticize the so-called "Swedish approach." That's not really what it should be about.

You might think I'm just being contrarian here as I did talk absolute shit about the FHM (Swedish public health agency) and Tegnell here last week, but I do hope that you understand there's some significant difference between my objections/criticism and those media outlets', although it's probably subtle.

I just have no patience for anti-Bayesian "scientists." They breed cranks.

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Occasional reminder:

If you are young, like in your 20's, you aren't likely to die of Covid-19, but it's still three times as lethal as the flu even for your age bracket, and you can get so unbelievably sick that you'd hope that someone could unplug it and end it all for you.

A friend of mine, at 21, still hasn't gotten his sense of taste and smell back, and it's been eight months since he's gotten Covid.

Try not to get it.

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Karaoke was known to be a disease factory even before this pandemic because it's 3C's plus eating/drinking plus singing while sharing microphones (which most professional musicians never do precisely because of infectious disease concerns). It's really about the worst that you could think of in the middle of a pandemic.

Yet German officials tell us that there are still tons of people who get sick and test positive after a karaoke house party, in the middle of a lockdown. Great.

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What would it take to stop Britons from calling vaccine injection a "jab"? Sounds very unpleasant.

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I don't know why a remarkably high percentage of conspiracy thorists and science cranks say, "I did my own research"/"You need to do your own research." It's creepily consistent. Is there a textbook or something with this template shared by all of them?

And the "research" consists of reading dubious articles on websites with sans serif font menus that basically refer to each other as sources, typically written by non-experts, and watching a few youtube clips where some dude rants and makes a bunch of assertions for 30 minutes.

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CDC has just updated its guidance on ventilation, and it's pretty good.

www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/ventilation.html

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So true.

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If you actually read about all the court cases filed by Team Trump/Rudy Giuliani/Jenna Elis(who has just tested positive BTW)/Sidney Powell, and chew on their arguments, you would definitely reach the conclusion that the US is just a third-world country.

It just is.

Those "arguments" are the biggest pile of bullshit that you've ever heard in your life. The fact that you can't make shit up in the courts somehow makes them even worse than the lies/stupid conspiracies that they spew on the media and elsewhere. They are doing all of this while being perfectly aware that they are just wasting the courts' and judges' time.

It's astonishing that a major - even dominant - political party in a modern nation state tacitly backs such vomit-inducing stupid-ass shit shows.

How the fuck can America ever recover from this? Can something that has stooped this low ever rise up again? In what other country could this horrendous joke happen? I can't think of any.

There are things in this world that are so childish as to be actually dangerous. Biden's strategy has been "Let's not pay attention to the crazies." I'm not sure that's a right strategy with those dangerous degenerates.

No matter how nonsensical and childish it is, it is a fucking coup attempt.

I know Americans have grown numb. But this shit is so bad that I can't even come up with a good analogy now. If you are American and feel embarrassed, you are probably not embarrassed enough because the shit is even worse than you think. 

Please, God save us.

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Such an extremely service-sector-oriented economy leaving a trade/economic union in this manner, whether they'll get a "deal" or not, is just... it's such a breathtaking act of self-harm.

I can't fathom how much wealth they will lose because of this.