Random Rant Thread

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FYI, Belgium's Covid deaths per capita now is at 1,650/M = one out of 600 people has died of Covid-19. 1/600 of the entire population.

That number roughly matches the excess mortality, so even if they have over-counted them, not by much.

They count Covid deaths the way they do because that's the rule set by the national health institute. A lot of people in the government complained and demanded that they change them (e.g. bad numbers = bad for tourism, and international reputation), but the institute refused as they insisted that it was the right way to capture the reality of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, many countries haven't even counted the deaths at nursing homes yet.

So, again, chances are that their number is more trustworthy than your country's.

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Dream:


Reality:

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Holy crap, Trumpians watch a LOT of TV every day. They are certifiably crazy.

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Finished reading Obama's memoir, and it did nothing other than cementing my impression that he is a very smart person who is also an utter, utter intellectual midget. Basically just a regular cocktail party guest.

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Rebasing the ratio in this manner while talking about "potential GDP" - that's Larry Summers for you, a guy whom Obama defends in his memoir.

In case you don't get it, this graph means nothing at all.

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And this nugget of wisdom is based on the checking account data at Chase Bank - when one quarter of Americans are either underbanked or completely unbanked.

Much of neoliberalism is straight-up sophism.

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God these two rants reminded myself of the old days of this thread.

Soon enough we'll be back in the world where people argue over the fiscal multipliers and all the crap forever. How wonderful. I won't be around here for that though, so feel relieved.

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This man has always been an idiot, as you can tell. But we live in the world ripe for idiots to take over.

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This dude really isn't normal.

And when he finally misses, he knows almost immediately after the ball left his fingertips.

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As a basically East Coast person who doesn't know much about or care for the West Coast, I must admit this is absolutely true. It's absurd.

Back in the spring the tone was totally apocalyptic, with 100 times the coverage, and it was impossible to avoid seeing Andrew Cuomo. Because it was New York.

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The common (typically American) response to this Canadian "protest" is "Hey, it's kind of cute actually and a lot better than the Joe Freedomfighter in Kentucky trying to break into a public building with AR-15 because masks destroy his freedom," but I personally find it highly irritating and embarrassing. Now, I would NOT take the Joe Freedomfighter over this, but only for the safety reason. Are these boring jerk-offs even living. But apparently some people find this kind of crap "cute," so to each his own.

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The US really has been total "omnishambles" in the Covid response in general as Ed Yong put it in a very highly-educated-British manner, and very very predictably the vaccine distribution/vaccination is the latest shamble.

I expected it to be as slow as a snail, but come on. This is ridiculous. It would take literally years at this pace.

And not just the slowness of it, but also the gaming of the priority "algorithm" too. Ugly shit.

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The vaccine distribution is so slow in the US because there's no fucking money at the local health departments, because the federal government left everything to the states and local administrations without giving them the necessary resources.

That's why it's omnishambles. It's always been the same fucking shit, but you voted for that demented motherfucker.

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Third-world stuff.

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There are people who gave me a lot of shit for saying in the summer that there was going to be a second wave (broadly speaking, as it would be a third wave in countries like Japan and the US) in the fall/winter. And after getting forced to admit that they were wrong, they again gave me a lot of shit for saying in the beginning of the second wave that it will be substantially bigger than the first wave, with the death tolls easily dwarfing those of the first wave.

"No way! The countries that were hit hard in the spring already have partial immunity!"

I told them that was exactly what I thought back in the summer, and that yet the new data didn't support that. But they kept saying that I misinterpreted the data, and that I was "seeing things in the noise."

Most of them work in finance as traders and analysts.

I'm just saying that that's about the level of their basic analytical skills. They used to be smarter than me. Finance is the place where you lose all the wisdom and insight that you used to have.