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May 1, 2020
Foil Hatters
I get really tired of debunking this shit.
Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release
It goes on to tell of certain activities concerning genetic modifications of some viruses in order to make them easier to study - which involved making the viruses more capable of infecting hosts, including humans.
Since the novel coronavirus pandemic began, misinformation has proliferated on the Internet — par for the course during a crisis. People took to social media in droves to share false claims that covering your body in chlorine or eating garlic were effective methods of fighting the virus, both of which were disproved by the World Health Organization.
The pandemic has also sparked a wave of more insidious conspiracy theories, such as the false claim that 5G mobile networks spread and worsen the coronavirus, which has led to dozens of instances of arsonists setting fire to cell towers across Europe.
Misinformation spreads online much like a virus itself. Though various types spread slightly differently, the transmission of the 5G conspiracy theory offers some insight into how false claims grow online.
A “calamitous event” like the pandemic creates a “very fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories,” said John Cook, an expert on misinformation with George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.
The onslaught of information and misinformation on social media, on cable news and in general conversation may create confusion, but it’s made even worse by human discomfort with ambiguity, especially when our lives are at stake.
Kate Pine, an assistant professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, is currently interviewing people around the United States on how they’re navigating covid-19. She said people “feel like they’re inundated with information, but they don’t have the information they want,” and as a result, they might be more willing to believe outlandish claims.
“When people feel threatened or out of control or they’re trying to explain a big significant event, they’re more vulnerable or prone to turning to conspiracy theories to explain them,” Cook said. “Somewhat counterintuitively, it gives people more sense of control to imagine that, rather than random things happening, there are these shadowy groups and agencies that are controlling it. Randomness is very discomforting to people.”
Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release
WaPo:
On Thursday, the U.S. intelligence community released an assessment formally concluding that the virus behind the coronavirus pandemic originated in China. While asserting that the pathogen was not man-made or genetically altered, the statement pointedly declined to rule out the possibility that the virus had escaped from the complex of laboratories in Wuhan that has been at the forefront of global research into bat-borne viruses linked to multiple epidemics over the past decade.
“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, using a common initialism for the U.S. intelligence community.
On Thursday, the U.S. intelligence community released an assessment formally concluding that the virus behind the coronavirus pandemic originated in China. While asserting that the pathogen was not man-made or genetically altered, the statement pointedly declined to rule out the possibility that the virus had escaped from the complex of laboratories in Wuhan that has been at the forefront of global research into bat-borne viruses linked to multiple epidemics over the past decade.
“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said, using a common initialism for the U.S. intelligence community.
Most of us find this pretty alarming because it sounds like it came straight out of a Michael Crichton novel. But the real point is that because you have to acknowledge the "possibility" of something going horribly wrong - and things do go wrong with near-shocking regularity - you end up giving just enough daylight for the Foil Hat Brigade to run amok.
You can't say absolutely that there's no chance of something happening, so the nutballs seize on that and lickety-split, the villagers are destroying everything they associate with the monster, including all the information they need to make sure they can fight it and beat it.
They just burn everything and hope for the best.
"It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
But wait - there's more.
Since the novel coronavirus pandemic began, misinformation has proliferated on the Internet — par for the course during a crisis. People took to social media in droves to share false claims that covering your body in chlorine or eating garlic were effective methods of fighting the virus, both of which were disproved by the World Health Organization.
The pandemic has also sparked a wave of more insidious conspiracy theories, such as the false claim that 5G mobile networks spread and worsen the coronavirus, which has led to dozens of instances of arsonists setting fire to cell towers across Europe.
Misinformation spreads online much like a virus itself. Though various types spread slightly differently, the transmission of the 5G conspiracy theory offers some insight into how false claims grow online.
A “calamitous event” like the pandemic creates a “very fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories,” said John Cook, an expert on misinformation with George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication.
The onslaught of information and misinformation on social media, on cable news and in general conversation may create confusion, but it’s made even worse by human discomfort with ambiguity, especially when our lives are at stake.
Kate Pine, an assistant professor in the College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, is currently interviewing people around the United States on how they’re navigating covid-19. She said people “feel like they’re inundated with information, but they don’t have the information they want,” and as a result, they might be more willing to believe outlandish claims.
- and -
In the mean time - don't forget that 45* needs to make us look the other way. He's desperate to get the economy back up and running. And while he can easily blame COVID-19 for the economy going in the shitter, he has to get us thinking away from his total fuckup-itude, so he's desperately spinning the yarn about how COVID-19 is all China's fault.
He invites the inference that China "attacked" us with the virus and so none of the bad shit that happens as a result is his fault - everything he does is justified because he's just being a strong powerful leader - a wartime POTUS.
Today's Tweet
"Blursday"
>Another day, another #TrumpMeltdown.— Social✽Fly (Gov Cuomo's #StayAtHome Girlfriend) (@socflyny) April 30, 2020
NYC is still locked down.
US death toll surpasses 62,000.
30 million are unemployed.
No state has had 14 consecutive days of #COVID decline.
Biden has an 8% lead over Trump.
Everyday is now Blursday. pic.twitter.com/eFz3xApRyV
COVID-19 Update
Notice how the Rent Collectors are clamoring for us to get back to work?
I'm wondering if we actually learn something - like how a general strike scares the fuck outa the plutocrats.
I'm wondering if we actually learn something - like how a general strike scares the fuck outa the plutocrats.
Who's essential now, bitch?
(6AM EDT)
Apr 30, 2020
COVID-19 Update
President Stoopid gave us another thrilling episode of Gaslight Theater, telling us he didn't say what he said when he said we'd be at 5 million tests per day very soon.
WaPo Fact Checker, on all the nonsense 45* spouts every day when asked about the testing.
And if you wanna have some fun - in a way that's no fucking fun at all - you can always play a little Google Roulette:
Then, Supervising Meathead-in-Chief, Jared Kushner, told us that Cult45's handling of COVID-19 has been a big win - a stunning success - and we should all be proud and go back to work, and we'll have this economy humming again by mid-Summer.
Meanwhile - not to be outdone, and certainly never to miss an opportunity to fuck us over, Republicans in Congress are pimping the idea that employers need to be shielded from law suits resulting from the death of employees who are ordered back on the job.
They've been eroding the right to seek redress through the courts for decades - the most effective tool has been the inclusion of an Arbitration Clause in practically every contract we have to sign for anything from a service warranty on that new toaster to cable service to brain surgery.
Anyway, we continue apace.
WaPo Fact Checker, on all the nonsense 45* spouts every day when asked about the testing.
And if you wanna have some fun - in a way that's no fucking fun at all - you can always play a little Google Roulette:
Then, Supervising Meathead-in-Chief, Jared Kushner, told us that Cult45's handling of COVID-19 has been a big win - a stunning success - and we should all be proud and go back to work, and we'll have this economy humming again by mid-Summer.
Meanwhile - not to be outdone, and certainly never to miss an opportunity to fuck us over, Republicans in Congress are pimping the idea that employers need to be shielded from law suits resulting from the death of employees who are ordered back on the job.
They've been eroding the right to seek redress through the courts for decades - the most effective tool has been the inclusion of an Arbitration Clause in practically every contract we have to sign for anything from a service warranty on that new toaster to cable service to brain surgery.
Anyway, we continue apace.
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| 8AM EDT |
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| 8AM EDT |
And here we are again, expecting to top 100,000 dead Americans by mid-May.
Apr 29, 2020
Long Term Shit
Making the COVID-19 tests free didn't make them any more accessible.
I'm still not able to get tested if I'm not symptomatic.
Turns out that for a whole bunch of my fellow humans here in USAmerica Inc, another effect of this whole thing is that we've been forced to see that too many folks won't go in for the test even if they are symptomatic for fear of finding out they're in need of hospitalization - which makes them even more fearful that they can't afford to be cared for.
(yeah, it's The Independent, but still) Independent:
Around one in seven Americans would not seek medical if they developed a fever or dry cough because of concerns over costs, a new poll has found.
It suggests that almost 35 million people might avoid seeing a doctor for the symptoms, which are known manifestations of Covid-19.
The new poll was conducted by Gallup and non-profit organisation West Health and published on Tuesday. It further found that 9 per cent of people would avoid healthcare even when the question was “framed explicitly as believing [they] have been infected by the novel coronavirus“.
I'm still not able to get tested if I'm not symptomatic.
Turns out that for a whole bunch of my fellow humans here in USAmerica Inc, another effect of this whole thing is that we've been forced to see that too many folks won't go in for the test even if they are symptomatic for fear of finding out they're in need of hospitalization - which makes them even more fearful that they can't afford to be cared for.
(yeah, it's The Independent, but still) Independent:
Around one in seven Americans would not seek medical if they developed a fever or dry cough because of concerns over costs, a new poll has found.
It suggests that almost 35 million people might avoid seeing a doctor for the symptoms, which are known manifestations of Covid-19.
The new poll was conducted by Gallup and non-profit organisation West Health and published on Tuesday. It further found that 9 per cent of people would avoid healthcare even when the question was “framed explicitly as believing [they] have been infected by the novel coronavirus“.
Today's Tweet
Do we even deserve dogs?
He bought some McDonald’s for this stray good boy. Humanity.— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) April 29, 2020
Wait for it.
Dogs, bruh...💪🐶😍😇❤️😏pic.twitter.com/sXwJt0joxS
The Slump Has Begun
We're entering into an era of what promises to be a shit storm of really bad news - one that dwarfs the daily shit storm generated by Cult45 these last few years.
NYT: (pay wall)
America’s growth streak is over: The economy shrank 4.8 percent, and the worst is yet to come.
The coronavirus pandemic has officially snapped the United States’ economic growth streak.
The questions now are how extensive the damage will be — and how long the country will take to recover.
U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the economy, fell at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is the first decline since 2014, and the worst quarterly contraction since 2008, when the country was in a deep recession.
Things will get much worse. Widespread layoffs and business closings didn’t happen until late March, or the very end of the last quarter, in most of the country. Economists expect figures from the current quarter, which will capture the shutdown’s impact more fully, to show that G.D.P. contracted at an annual rate of 30 percent or more.
Coupla things:
NYT: (pay wall)
America’s growth streak is over: The economy shrank 4.8 percent, and the worst is yet to come.
The coronavirus pandemic has officially snapped the United States’ economic growth streak.
The questions now are how extensive the damage will be — and how long the country will take to recover.
U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the economy, fell at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That is the first decline since 2014, and the worst quarterly contraction since 2008, when the country was in a deep recession.
Things will get much worse. Widespread layoffs and business closings didn’t happen until late March, or the very end of the last quarter, in most of the country. Economists expect figures from the current quarter, which will capture the shutdown’s impact more fully, to show that G.D.P. contracted at an annual rate of 30 percent or more.
Coupla things:
We're already hearing the externalizing excuses, ie: "COVID-19 caused all the problems, and China caused COVID-19".
I think the real story has everything to do with the bubble effect caused by the GOP's TaxScam17® - which drove hyper-inflation of Wall Street stock values because the companies spent their tax cut windfall on buybacks in order to boost their portfolios and capture more of the growth at the top of the earnings pyramid.
There was in fact some trickle-down (always is - that's what keeps that particularly monstrous "theory" alive), but for the most part, the bubble effect caused more immiseration of everybody earning below about $75K, and we're seeing what happens when the Consumer Demand which is the engine of the world economy, dries up.
I think the real story has everything to do with the bubble effect caused by the GOP's TaxScam17® - which drove hyper-inflation of Wall Street stock values because the companies spent their tax cut windfall on buybacks in order to boost their portfolios and capture more of the growth at the top of the earnings pyramid.
There was in fact some trickle-down (always is - that's what keeps that particularly monstrous "theory" alive), but for the most part, the bubble effect caused more immiseration of everybody earning below about $75K, and we're seeing what happens when the Consumer Demand which is the engine of the world economy, dries up.
COVID-19 has contributed to the downturn, and it's very likely to make things worse. But let's be clear - 45*'s failure to act quickly and decisively is what put us so deep in this fucking hole.
Irony is what happens when you make a desperate play to keep the economy propped up because that's the only thing that saves your re-election chances, but that play is precisely why you're about to get stomped on a scale of monumental proportions - even tho the GOP is working very very very hard to make sure it looks like a close one.
Don't get fooled - polling may show there's still some pretty strong support for 45*, but it's smoke and mirrors.
There's just no way it's real. You can't get a 45% overall approval rate for the guy when his numbers on handling of COVID-19 are in the shitter.
COVID-19 Update
There's some reporting that tells us the steep upward curve has been easing for several days, but we're still on track for 100,000 dead Americans by mid-May.
And the kind of shit Mike Pence pulled yesterday at the Mayo Clinic is not helpful.
First - optics, you stoopid fuck.
There are various probabilities here:
- "I'm just too strong for that silly old virus"
- "Wearing a mask would tell the world 45* is wrong about all of this"
- "I'm important - I get tested a lot - you don't because nobody gives a fuck about you"
None of this was good. Any benefit he might've gotten out of it was lost because the world only saw what a tone deaf dickhead he is.
Lastly - what was the subliminal message being transmitted by the hospital officials?
"C'mon in, Mr Veep. And no sir, you needn't bother protecting yourself by wearing a mask in a place where you're ten thousand times more likely to get infected. If you take this shit back to the White House with you, maybe somebody in President FUBAR's administration will start doing what we need 'em to do."
Apr 28, 2020
What They Don't Tell Us
No matter what happens, and no matter what the Press Poodles manage to dig up while it's happening, we never get to know everything we should know about any big event.
There's always a few details - usually a whole metric fuck ton of details - that we never get to see.
Once in a while, somebody cracks a little and we get The Pentagon Papers, but that's the exception instead of the rule. And given our commitment to "peaceful transition of power", we've evolved part of the system into a game of Stall 'Em.
Somebody shits the bed, and there's a bad reaction, and the people in power (some of them) get thrown out and new people come in, but the PR guys get to work and before ya know it, a few years have passed, and power has transitioned again, and deals are made and those details are lost until historians suss it out (sorta) and then we learn about some pretty fucking important stuff 30 years after it woulda made a real difference for us.
And here we are again.
WaPo:
In the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to covid-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.
The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.
The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.
There's always a few details - usually a whole metric fuck ton of details - that we never get to see.
Once in a while, somebody cracks a little and we get The Pentagon Papers, but that's the exception instead of the rule. And given our commitment to "peaceful transition of power", we've evolved part of the system into a game of Stall 'Em.
Somebody shits the bed, and there's a bad reaction, and the people in power (some of them) get thrown out and new people come in, but the PR guys get to work and before ya know it, a few years have passed, and power has transitioned again, and deals are made and those details are lost until historians suss it out (sorta) and then we learn about some pretty fucking important stuff 30 years after it woulda made a real difference for us.
And here we are again.
WaPo:
U.S. deaths soared in early weeks of pandemic, far exceeding number attributed to covid-19
An analysis of federal data for the first time estimates excess deaths - the number beyond what would normally be expected - during that period
The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.
The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.
Is there terminology that's any creepier than "Excess Deaths"?
Anyway - yes, dammit, we have a right to know stuff. Most stuff. Certain stuff. Stuff that wouldn't get the good guys killed if it we knew about it - assuming of course the good guys are who we're told they are, and we're not just being sold another Vaporware upgrade, and only because I believe the guys in charge as long as they're my brand of guys and as long as I'm relatively sure they aren't just fuckin' with me, pretending to be my guys when they really aren't.
So that's clear, right?
Anyway also too, one of the really big things about our slide into this Daddy State authoritarian ocean of shit is the degradation of our official-government-supposed-to-be nonpartisan data gathering and reporting.
The Daddy State must control the flow of information if it's to have any chance of dictating reality to us.
That's why they insist on not properly funding the research at various entities to keep us informed on the public health aspects of guns and pollution and the other profit-over-people activities of this bullshit version of Capitalism that they're always pimping.
COVID-19 Update
A little delayed today.
And I've switched from the Johns Hopkins site to Worldometer, so there's a higher probability for discrepancies.
And I've switched from the Johns Hopkins site to Worldometer, so there's a higher probability for discrepancies.
Remember: since I don't go to these sites at exactly the same time every day, and since they each gather and report their data differently, there will be some fluctuations in my Calculator.
Today, it shows us hitting 100K dead Americans about mid-May. While this has been fairly consistent, over the last few weeks, that date has been slowly receding.
Apr 27, 2020
Today's Tweet
The best 55 seconds I've spent all day.
Indeed. Fuck Trump!pic.twitter.com/O5hEj5Vw4l— Private Joker, USMC (@Infantry0300) April 26, 2020
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