DtP @ 1397 Irrelevant to "her" - it all about herself - just like a certain US "president" - it's pure attention-seeking, no matter what the consequences to others.
icehawk @ 1407 It's DT - it's all about HIM - nothing else matters, as long as he gets re-elected. Utterly delusional & the "R's" are now trapped - even those who are marginally sane have very few escape routes ...
PrivateIron What Joe Biden is is a blank check for picking the VP the Democratic Party's leaders expect to actually run the country. They may simply ask Obama to choose or tie-break OR there may be a small knife fight over minutiae. Better than Trump-Yes, but an empty chair is better than Trump. Do NOT expect good things from this year's results. Unfortunately, you are probably correct.
stimer I did Henry IV pt I for English "O" level - the Beeb are braodcasting it again soon .... Also available on their "Hollow Crown" series watching again ... [ Sun 26 April 19.30 hrs ]
SFR DT is openly advocting poisoning his own populace?
A POLITE REQUEST Please, none of you leave or go away, because of the Seagull. You are all interesting & amusing & annoying & lots of fun. Let us do our best to try to ignore it into non-existence?
]]>As you say, it's unclear if that is the case. The simple analogy there is with axiomatic mathematics - do the universe's laws include properties that are not provable from the basic rules? Aside: and are there universes with a different choice of such properties?
I have convinced myself that, unless there is a Penrose-like exemption of human minds from the limits of axiomatic mathematics and/or Turing machines, there will be truths about the universe that the human race is incapable of proving (or realising). But, obviously, we shall never know what they are :-)
]]>Since certain people don't get moderated (and yes, that sometimes includes me), the posts generally get fairly toxic into the 1000s, unless there's a good tech debate going on about trains, starships, or stuff like that.
It looks like this post is getting rancid, so Charlie, if you have the energy, feel free to start another one.
]]>If you cannot see that we did that exchange because of the impact the actual news cycle that was engaging (rather than us warbling) would have on the LGBT+ community & how it would impact a large number of people then, I despair. Including DavetheProc, ironically enough.
it's pure attention-seeking
It's the absolute opposite. Are we deluded enough to think it actually changed things? No.
Did a lot of people start discussing the topic with maturity and with foresight that this would be an avenue used to divide people and so on? Who knows, hopefully.
The cruelty is the point
These people 100% use trauma to mold society.
~
And yes, we get it's not a game. We don't have the narcissistic pleasure feedback loop going on, tell you that for free.
]]>Well, there are a few links you might want to read. Or not.
Ed Yong writing in The Atlantic: Our Pandemic Summer
From the In the Pipeline Blog:
Updates on small molecule trials (tl;dr: hoarding hydroxychloroquine was probably a waste of time unless you're worried about malaria, lupus, or arthritis. And others aren't looking very good either.)
Coronavirus vaccine prospects. This one was kind of cool, because I didn't realize that the world record for vaccine development speed is currently held by the new Ebola vaccine, which took five years to develop. Normally it takes a decade to develop a new vaccine. There are 78 known efforts underway to create a SARS-CoV2 vaccine. Derek breaks down the different strategies for making making vaccines, explains why it will take at least two years to get a Covid-19 vaccine that is useful, and why said vaccine may be about as much fun as getting the Shingrix shot and may need to be boosted every year or two.
tl;dr? Keep on saying that the lockdown will be over by summer, or sound negative and depressing like me. Nasty choice, that.
]]>Have been wondering whether internal consistency would be sufficient if direct proof doesn't exist (yet). Alternatively: if 'all roads lead to Rome'.
Mostly this is because I think that math is the science/art of 'rules*' therefore whether the resulting axioms/proofs are applicable to the universe is - meh.
Trump campaigned on this, and yet did nothing for 3 1/3 years in office.
It's no surprise in a way that he is doing it now - he wants the money to flow in to his campaign from big coal, and the votes from the (few) delusional coal miners who still think coal is going to return to its heyday.
But otherwise the electrical utilities are against it because they have already installed the equipment at the coal plants they intend to keep, and for the rest coal is no longer cost competitive against natural gas - and it is the cost savings of natural gas that are killing coal, not regulations (even without the regulations coal is still more expensive than natural gas).
]]>NYTimes link. The move appears to be mostly about not counting the health benefits of reducing coal (and oil) power plant particulate emmissions, and of course undercounting by at least several orders of magnitude the economic costs of mercury pollution, and has been in the works for a few years. (Lifelong brain damage, even very low level, caused by fetal exposure. Damage to other organs.) Quoted for those who don't have a way to access: E.P.A., Tweaking Its Math, to Weaken Controls on Mercury (Lisa Friedman, Coral Davenport, April 16, 2020) Driving down mercury emissions alone, the studies at the time found, would yield a $6 million annual benefit, a fraction of the cost of controls. But with the rest of the co-benefits and the projected gains in avoided heart disease, asthma attacks and other health problems, the benefits reached $80 billion over five years. Overall, the Obama administration estimated that the rule would prevent 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks and 11,000 premature deaths each year. Under the Trump administration’s new rule, such co-benefits will no longer be calculated with cost, only direct benefits.
]]>I agree with your statement about the universe. Even assuming it exists (not as trivial an issue as might appear), we have no reason to believe or disbelieve that it follows a set of 'laws' that we can even understand.
]]>I like dpb's comment :-)
]]>Anyway, keep eyes watching for arguments about negative health effects of economic crashes being used to justify mass human sacrifice; keep 'em honest.
]]>Let me make some predictions (this'll probably turn into a new post, tomorrow): starting with:
No it won't.
Vaccine development will take a flat minimum of 12 months. Then another 1-3 months to ramp up (on a Manhattan Project management basis) and a to-some-extent-overlapping 1-3 months to roll out around the various nations that are involved. (I predict the USA will merrily go its own way and faceplant, unless y'all elect a competent next POTUS. Or VPOTUS, insofar as Biden appears to be past it and Pence is incompetent at anything but arse-licking.)
Meanwhile.
Lockdown can't be sustained more than 1-2 weeks after peak ICU occupancy passes, so it will be lifted in mid-May in the UK and possibly as early as May 1st in the USA.
Trump is shooting for May 1st because he's been told the economy will take 6 months to recover, minimum, and he's shooting for the November election deadline. This is laughably optimistic, even if the pandemic had burned out by May 1st: we're in Greatest Depression territory already, the hospitality sector has crashed 75%, airlines have crashed 90%, etcetera. It's not going to be back to normal by November, even if the Fairy Godmother shows up and banishes the horrid virus with a wave of her want. Period.
So. The immediate peak hospital occupancy will pass, lockdown will be lifted sector by sector (or all at once) and region by region ... and the 50% of COVID19 cases who are asymptomatic will go back to work, mingling with the uninfected.
1-4 weeks later there will be a secondary surge in infections and it'll follow the same exponential growth as the first spike in Feb/March. And lockdown will resume, probably in mid-June. (It may be mitigated by summer heat, in which case things will look good for a month or two longer, but I'm not holding my breath: even if heat prevents spread, the prevalence of air conditioning in public spaces in the US provides a transmission-friendly environment.)
If the howls of rage at the first lockdown are deafening, the second lockdown will be worse: think of toddlers having their toys removed. Expect civil disobedience and possibly summer riots unless central banks throw money at the grassroots -- and not $1200 for 10 weeks: more like $1200 per week.
Oh, and then there are the hospitals. Hospital staff will begin to catch their breath in mid-May after two months of running at maximum speed ... then it'll all crash again within another 4 weeks. They're getting no respite. About 25% of medical staff are off sick with COVID19 themselves at present, far as I can tell: this cohort will be coming back to work by the second lockdown, but a bunch more will be down and sick.
You can't run doctors and nurses at full pandemic intensity for all that long without them burning out, as well as getting sick. There will be horrifying staff attrition, and although this year's graduate cohort got pushed into service early, next year's cohort will be suspended because teaching ain't happening.
So we're going to see repeated 4-6 week lockdown periods alternating with 2-4 week "business as usual" patches. Somewhere during the second or third lockdown most of the pubs/bars/hotels/restaurants that hibernated during the first lockdown and came back from the dead will give up the ghost: by September-November the damage to about 10-30% of the economy, disproportionately the service sector, will be permanent (FSVO "permanent" that means not coming back until after the pandemic, growing afresh from zero rather than reviving from hibernation).
I do not know what the hell Trump will do when his "get America open again" initiative hits pandemic spike #2 around the beginning of June. Expect denial and heel-dragging and a much worse death toll, this time reaching the rural heartland (where hospitals may not have any ICU beds at all: there's going to be carnage). By August he may well be in full-on meltdown. I wouldn't even be surprised to see a second round of impeachment hearings(!) as the Senate Republican Party tries to throw him under the bus so they can pivot to President Pence.
By September there's going to be social unrest just about everywhere that hasn't nailed down a massive social spending/social security project on a scale that makes the New Deal look restrained and conservative.
And that's going to be the picture until June or July 2022.
Wildcards: we find a simple and effective medical treatment. Or vaccine development is ridiculously easy. Or the 50% of asymptomatic carriers are a sign that the pandemic is more advanced than we realize, that immunity is long-lasting, and that we're much closer to achieving "herd immunity" than anyone in the epidemiology community currently realizes. These are all straw-clutching exercises.
Extra lulz in the UK: the Prime Minister is out of hospital but hasn't been seen since Monday -- my guess is he's hors de combat for at least another two weeks. A quarter of the senior ministers of state are rabid objectivists and a majority of the cabinet are still going full steam ahead for a no-deal Brexit transition on January 31st, at which point the UK economy shrinks another 8% overnight. Boris, in principle, has the credibility to pull them back from the brink (and is a perfectly ideology-free vacuum of naked ambition, so he's personally capable of pivoting) but if they try for a maximalist brexit in the middle of a pandemic there will be pandemonium.
Have I missed anything out?
]]>Have at it: the comments on this one are now closed.
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