Liberty

So many people are drinking bleach and eating their fish-grade chloroquine these days... A good reminder that half the population has an IQ under 100.

You do know that this is just the beginning of the pandemic, its been hitting most western countries for 1-2 months, and it's a bit early to calculate IFR and CFR, right? Also, to compare Japan with the US is funny. Here's a very collectivist country where people follow rules to a fault, don't shake hands, wear masks, where everything is constantly cleaned and social distance is the normal state of things... Does that sound like the US? Liberty, that is not the problem. The problem in US is our "experts" got everything wrong. If you take anything our "experts" told us and do opposite, we would be better. 1) They started saying no human-human transmission. 2) Then they started saying no asymptomatic transmission. 3) Then they started saying not many asymptomatic people. 4) Then they told us Dont wear masks. 5) Then Dr. Fauci said we will eventually do antibody tests but that is not the need of the hour. 6) Then they were telling us summer (heat, humidity & sunlight) has not much effect on Covid. While Japanese started with masks right away in January. While in late February Pelosi is going running around China town how it is good to go to shopping and walking tours and Blasio is recommending in early March what movies to go to, Japanese were wearing masks, disinfecting hands, subways, etc. It is not just a fluke that Japan had 3 deaths/million and US has 152/million. Our "experts" have been so good. Getting 0 out of 6 right. You're just giving talking points, not discussing actual science. The experts reported a preliminary report from China super early, and they didn't say there was no human to human transmission, they said there was no evidence of it yet. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absense, and early on, it's normal not to know what is going on. You need the evidence, you can't just make stuff up. This was reversed very quickly as more evidence came in and China stopped hiding/denying the situation (like Trump did). It still took weeks for Trump to stop saying it was a hoax, that it was totally contained and airtight and would disappear soon. I won't go through your whole list, but except for the masks, it's also just a bunch of talking points, not actual arguments. The mask thing was likely a lie, but they probably felt they had to do it because the PPE situation was such a clusterfuck that they couldn't have a run on it leaving frontline people exposed. The solution there was to actually have been prepared for this and for the federal government to not wait weeks to use the stockpile and defense production act, and coordinate the states to bring supply where it was most needed rather than force states to hoard and compete against each other, and to have a clear message to the population encouraging them to make/get cloth masks like in the Czec republic, rather than have Trump say that he won't wear masks and that they're totally optional.

Nice attempt at defending him. He doesn't know anything, and that's the problem, he's in charge, he's supposed to have been getting daily briefings on this from experts for months, and he's still an imbecile who confuses the population instead of informing them, and creates disorder in the public health response rather than lead it and create coordination and cooperation, and is surrounded by idiots because only idiots pass the loyalty test and all the real experts have to do everything they can not to be driven away. He knows less about the situation than some random person on the street who's been watching he news for a month, and that's a big problem.

You do know that this is just the beginning of the pandemic, its been hitting most western countries for 1-2 months, and it's a bit early to calculate IFR and CFR, right? Also, to compare Japan with the US is funny. Here's a very collectivist country where people follow rules to a fault, don't shake hands, wear masks, where everything is constantly cleaned and social distance is the normal state of things... Does that sound like the US?

Podcast episode on who's organizing the lockdown protests.. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus-lockdown-protests.html Of course a bunch of wealthy people and political operatives and law firms directly tied to the white house: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/podcasts/the-daily/coronavirus-lockdown-protests.html

The stupid sh.. we have to waste time on: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/04/24/coronavirus-latest-news/ Birx reaction: https://v.redd.it/048ery4q0ou41

LOL, is this your way of easing into saying you're wrong? People who constantly talk about what we don't know usually do it when what we do know goes against what they'd like to believe. If the data supported them, they'd talk about "let's look at the facts, gents". But when it doesn't, they talk about what we don't know. It's a fairly effective technique if you don't know about it.

who needs to extrapolate to the rest of the country, for goodness sakes!!! apples to apples. NYC is the epicenter of the crisis, and because major media is NYC-centric, the mass hysteria was exported. why does the governor of michigan go stalinesque? because she wants to look like she is on top of things like cuomo. so of course this doesnt have to be extrapolated nationwide, because NYC's experience isn't the nation's experience. this 20% antibody positive rate makes covid less deadly than the flu. and if this result doesnt comport with how you want to think, then just call it a bad test. an inhale some more sand As we've seen at the country level, the hardest hit places are just showing other places what their futures will look like if they don't take measures to prevent it. Thankfully, most places took measures and we're starting to see them work. As for your hand waving of the error rate on these tests (which may be lower than 99% accurate, with a disease that is present in low-single digits of the sample, which means that actual false positives may be 50% or more), I think it says more about how you have a conclusion and try to back-fill the details rather than look at the data.

Remember, the sensitivity and specificity of these antibody tests matters a lot, and NYC is very different from the rest of the country, as the epicenter of the epidemic. There's got to be a lot of false positives in those tests even if 99%, and you can't extrapolate it to the rest of the country.

"If every infection goes from causing 2.0 cases to only causing 0.7 infections, then after 40 days you have one-sixth as many infections instead of 32 times as many. That’s 192 times fewer cases." "Entire sectors of the economy are shut down. It is important to realize that this is not just the result of government policies restricting activities. When people hear that an infectious disease is spreading widely, they change their behavior. There was never a choice to have the strong economy of 2019 in 2020."

On the NY serology tests..

Thanks for the link. I read the Quillette article and the journal article from which the diagram was pulled. I understand the theory about how the AC could have pushed droplets from Table A to Table B. But I don't understand how Table C was infected by Table A, given that Table C was upstream from Table A with respect to the airflow from the AC unit. The other diagram in the journal article shows an exhaust fan adjacent to Table B and a dashed line running in the opposite direction of the airflow from the air conditioner. Are they saying that the exhaust fan recirculated contaminated droplets back into the AC system, rather than ventilating them to the outside? Fluid dynamics is complex, air doesn't move in straight lines or predictable patterns, would be my guess.

https://www.ft.com/content/0a4872d1-4cac-4040-846f-ce32daa09d99

"BREAKING: Gilead's drug Remdesivir has "flopped" in its first trial, according to the Financial Times"

https://luttig.substack.com/p/when-tailwinds-vanish Thought-provoking piece.

Bill Gates memo: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/it-is-impossible-to-overstate-the-pain-fight-against-coronavirus-will-define-our-era-bill-gates-says/

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/not-like-the-flu-not-like-car-crashes-not-like

https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/

Great show so far. I'd also recommend ZeroZeroZero (Prime)... similar feel to the movie Sicario. Also, recently added to Netflix: WACO and The Last Dance. I recommend 'Waco'. Good mini-series. Saw it a few years ago and thought it deserved wider viewership, glad it's on Netflix now. ZeroZeroZero seems intriguing. Adding it to the list, though no idea when I'll be able to watch (having young kids in this quarantine leaves you with less free time, not more..)

His point is that for these things to even be investable, there has to be a widespread desire to make them happen. Pointless to invest in things that governments (local, state and federal) will block forever and that NIMBYS have control to block. He's trying to help change the conversation and mindset at a time when people may be more receptive to the idea, and that's very powerful. It's not lack of money that keeps all these things from happening -- there's clearly plenty of money when needed -- what's lacking is the actual will to make it happen and a vision of a better future. To say that because this VC firm isn't investing in infrastructure that they don't really want to see it happen doesn't make sense. Everybody has a circle of competence, and they are experts at software and online stuff, and they helped build the internet. That's like saying that I can't be in favor of building more solar farms and nuclear plants because I haven't invested in solar power and nuclear. Ben Thompson wrote this on the essay:

"There are more important things than living"! I'll believe him right after he offers his own life for the economy.

Agreed:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/493879-texas-lt-governor-on-reopening-state-there-are-more-important-things https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/21/georgia-leads-race-become-americas-no-1-death-destination/

Mass confusion, zero coordination! https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/21/839919655/maryland-gets-500-000-test-kits-from-south-korea-drawing-criticism-from-trump