The Lockdown Diaries (7)
An open thread, in which to share links and bicker.
As a sweetener, I’ll include a free blessing: Should you hear the news of a second lockdown, may your hairdresser send you a late-night text asking if you’d like an unscheduled cut the very next day, before said lockdown kicks in and she has to shut up shop.
Oh, and as some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.
It helps to keep this place here.
For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at.
First. I did it! I did it!
First. I did it! I did it!
[ Rummages in pocket, rolls two complimentary peanuts along bar. ]
the news of a second lockdown,
Keep hearing ‘we’re all in this together’. How about the entire cabinet forgo their salaries for the duration of the lockdown?
please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.
Well, now you mention it, I do need a few non-food items the the local grocery (the only store I’ve been going to of late) doesn’t carry.
I know I shouldn’t have been, but I was a bit amazed at quite how…large…a bag of 480 Yorkshire Tea bags actually was. But along with the electric kettle, this Yankee lab rat will not be lacking in hot caffeinated British goodness! (even if the idiot Powers that Be have covered every drinking fountain in the building save for the bottle-filler down on the first floor. It’s worth the schlep though.
*panics. texts hairdresser*
The article about the lockdown says a lot about new cases, but little about death rates. There is a chart at the bottom that lets you compare Italy’s number of cases vs. deaths. It’s hard to read, but it appears on the last day it shows 23,000 cases, less than 200 known deaths. A fatality rate of .008%. (Math is not my sharp point; corrections welcome).
For that they want to destroy the economy another month.
These people are insane.
[ Returns from hairdresser, more glorious than before. ]
Uma Thurmond’s Feet- That’s 0.8%. You want to multiply your raw number by 100 to get the percentage.
(brandishes clippers) What’s a “hairdresser”?
200 divided by 23,000 equals 0.0087. In order to convert to a percentage, multiply by 100. 0.0087 times 100 equals 0.86 percent. Sorry about bringing math into it. To your point, during that same interval how many people died from the seasonal flu?
(brandishes clippers) What’s a “hairdresser”?
[ Faints. ]
In order to convert to a percentage, multiply by 100. 0.0087 times 100 equals 0.86 percent.
Sorry to be a pedant about this, but how did you lose 0.01 when you multiplied by 100? Shouldn’t it be 0.87?
It does seem like governments and the press like to throw out the largest numbers they can find regardless of what they might refer to. You make a good point about a lack of reference for understanding the scale of these numbers.
I remember reading an article where the author made the point that everybody dies regardless. You could find a cure for lung cancer and those people who would have died of lung cancer would just die of something else at another time. A little fatalistic perhaps, but apropos for the most at-risk age group dying of Covid.
[faints]
Is there a personal grooming crisis?
Business Owners Boarding Up In Case Party Of Love And Tolerance Loses
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/410875/
Is there a personal grooming crisis?
Not anymore.
[ Strokes hair. ]
Keep hearing ‘we’re all in this together’. How about the entire cabinet forgo their salaries for the duration of the lockdown?
A lot of councillors and the blessed mayor of London have overstayed their mandates and I don’t see why they should be paid, if they don’t like it then they can p*ss off, is consider the council will run just as well (if not better) without them.
How about the entire cabinet forgo their salaries for the duration of the lockdown?
I’ve noticed an often quite marked difference in sentiment, and in willingness to comply, depending on whether or not the people in question can work from home with minimal inconvenience – the Zoomers, as it were. Those whose unZoomable livelihoods have been either wrecked or again placed in doubt, or whose moderately serious health condition is becoming more serious and still untreated, are, understandably, much less likely to be moved by appeals to “save the NHS.”
I suspect this is not going to go well. Even by the low standards currently in play.
How about a shave?
How about the entire cabinet forgo their salaries for the duration of the lockdown?
I knew I was working for a decent company when, back in March, my CEO and the executive suite all announced they were cutting their salaries by 75% for the duration of the crisis until they could resume normal operations. The only people who have been laid off are those who asked for an early retirement or similar buyout.
The article about the lockdown says a lot about new cases, but little about death rates.
In at least one region they’ve breathlessly said there have been absolutely no cases (not deaths, cases) of flu this year and speculated that Wuhan Batsoup Virus may have killed off influenza in the wild. Because that’s totally how that works.
The data at this point has been hopelessly corrupted, and with random deaths being coded as WBV regardless even death rates are suspect. The other problem is that WBV isn’t very dangerous on its own; between 6-20% of all WBV deaths are directly and solely attributable to it (depending on how you read the aggregate data).
The fact that WBV deaths tend to be among the population that is fragile and has multiple comorbidities anyway means that the only way to know how deadly WBV really is is to look at excess mortality rates averaged over a year or so, to capture the number of people who died as a result of WBV vs. the number of people that were likely to die anyway within the next twelve months due to comorbidities. Fortunately, we’ve now had a year of data collected, and it’s hard to fake actual bodies. It would interesting to see what that data says (my gut reaction is “definitely worse than even a severe influenza season, nowhere near as bad as smallpox, polio or German measles”)
Steve E — From one of the Henry plays: (from memory, so accurate reproduction not guaranteed) “As for me, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death, and he that dies in one year is quits in the next.”
The data at this point has been hopelessly corrupted
This. Most information about this crisis is like comparing apples and orangutans. It’s so bloody absurd from any sort of scientific perspective. Yet these health care professionals and such express extreme confidence in unknowable knowledge. It’s like living in a zombie movie.
I’ve been reading reports that the UK is using 45 PCR amplification cycles in its testing, and that WHO is recommending 50 amplification cycles for their “real-time” testing program. If true the case counts being used to justify the UK lockdowns are hopelessly corrupt. That many amplification cycles would give a coconut a positive test result, no wonder they’re getting ridiculously huge “case” counts. Healthy people frightened into taking a test even though they have no symptoms would test false positive almost 100% of the time at that amplification level.
That’s quite aside from the fact that the inventor of PCR said unequivocally that PCR should not be used to diagnose disease.
That many amplification cycles would give a coconut a positive test result
It’s a simple matter of weight ratios.
(I’m still in a bit of a daze from getting a hat tip from our host in his last post. This post may be less coherent than usual, which some may claim would require me to write modem line noise rather than my normal drivel to achieve.)
My assumptions are:
1) The CCP has a stranglehold upon its citizens and does not need a contrived scenario to further solidify its control upon them.
2) Given point (1), the CCP would not take drastic actions upon its citizens in a given province up to and including drastic quarantine measures upon those citizens unless the CCP knew of what the lab in Wuhan was researching.
3) Independent upon points (1) and (2) above, the CCP would not invite any country that had had anything to do with showing how weak the Chinese Empire was in the years prior to the CCP gaining power to show how the CCP mishandled anything at all.
Given the above, my conclusion is that the Wuhan lab is researching some very horrible things. Things that are so horrible, that the mainland Chinese government was willing and able to isolate an entire province from the rest of mainland China due to the belief that something had escaped from said lab.
Please note that the CCP didn’t give a rat’s ass about the rest of the world; their lockdown was internal.