The Covid scare continues as governments seek to terrify the public by reporting ever increasing numbers of "cases," aka the deadly Covid19 "Second Wave."
But what is a "case"?
Is it an illness with symptoms characteristic of a Covid19 infection or just a positive reaction on the generally unreliable (with many false positives) Covid RT_PCR test, or something else?
Rarely if ever is this rather important detail divulged.
But whatever may be a "case," UK Covid deaths peaked at 1152 on April 9 and "cases" hit a peak of 6201 on May 1. "cases" then dropped by 94% to 352 on July 3, by which time the daily death toll had also fallen 94% from the April peak.
Then as the supposedly deadly "Second Wave" hit, "cases" rose to 6873 by last Friday, an 11% increase over May's peak.
This recrudescence in "cases" seems to have turned Boris Johnson into the Great Dictator intent on locking everyone up. Funny thing, though, UK Covid deaths are down to 34, or only 3% of April's peak rate and only half of the rate at the time of the July minimum in "cases."
The same pattern is evident in Canada and other North temperate zone countries. The US pattern is somewhat different, as the epidemic started later and is peaking later in Southern than in Northern states, a difference in pattern also seen with the seasonal flu. Nevertheless, it is now clear that the "Second Wave" is by no means comparable in lethality with the first and is not generating a significant excess death rate.
So the epidemic of Covid-induced death in Northern countries is largely over -- for this year, anyhow.
The only plague that remains is the pack of liars and swindlers in government intent on shrinking the economy and driving unemployment to Great Depression era levels by imposing unnecessary lockdowns, wildly spending money that central banks obediently print to the detriment of the value of your savings, disrupting education and driving a significant section of the population to a condition of clinical depression.
Related:
Former Chief Science Officer for Pfizer Says "Second Wave" Faked on False-Positive COVID Tests, "Pandemic is Over"
There's an excellent post over at Ron Unz:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.unz.com/mwhitney/gates-kissinger-and-our-dystopian-future/
The comments are also excellent.
I very much appreciate Whitney's comments on Bill Gates and the matter of climate change.
We're all going to have to do some hard thinking about how ineffective the worldwide lock downs have been in curbing warming trends. Things I have taken as self evident (and it goes without saying taking things as self evident is self evidently a sign of weakness) such as drastically reducing commuter travel and automobile exhaust would be very helpful-- aren't that helpful.
The scientists I admire and listen to have been very circumspect in their predictions of where the climate is heading towards. (They've also been very circumspect in their criticisms of scientists who are not so circumspect, and I have admired this also.)
I think the take home lesson is science is not a suitable tool for crisis management. Science may produce results quickly, but it also may produce results only very slowly. It can't be coaxed either way. We may wish otherwise, but wishes and science do not mix...AT ALL.
Yes, Whitney does a good job, exposing the globalist position. I hope, now, someone will spell out the alternatives as clearly.
ReplyDeleteI happen to agree with the idea that human activity is changing the climate in ways that are bad for humans, but I think the driver is population growth. So I wind up being at odds with most solutions that get publicity, which seem to be to keep population growing but reduce per capita income.
ReplyDeleteThroughout most of the world, population is now stable or declining. But the World has a huge potential problem with Africa where, in most countries, fertility rates are more than twice the replacement rate. What's more a recent survey indicated that a large proportion of Africans intend migrating to Europe or elsewhere within the next five years. So the Europeans and North Americans are dying off while replacing themselves with people from elsewhere: in effect, this a process of Western self-genocide.
DeleteI have no problem with Africans reproducing as rapidly as they like (it's estimated that by the end of this century Nigeria, which is one tenth the size of the United States, will have almost twice as many people as the US) except that they evidently expect to colonize the rest of the world. The outcome can only be big trouble.
I think there has to be a specifiable link between human population growth rates and what's happening to the climate. For example, CO2 or something else this 8 billion or so people in the world are producing. It seems to me they have to be doing something or producing something which in turn is responsible for the change. If you see it differently and have the time to explain that, I would be appreciative.
DeleteWhat I now find perplexing is CO2 can't be the link. I think we're getting a confirmation it isn't the link in the climate's response to a sudden reduction of CO2 production via the burning of fossil fuel. (But maybe not-- there are a lot of other human sources of CO2 than car or jet exhaust, etc.)
I had not believed CO2 to be the culprit mainly for the simple reason a geophysical scientist at the University of Alaska, Syun-Ichi-Akasofu, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syun-Ichi_Akasofu, had concluded it was not. I trusted him to know better than me, even if I spent the considerable time it would take to fully inform myself on the issue.
What's bothering me now is the use of models to make these predictions. We 've seen in a very dramatic way how devastatingly wrong they can be if the data in is not solid or is incomplete. The world's climate is an incredibly complicated thing to consider and we simply do not know enough, in my opinion, to make predictions on what's going to happen which are going to have significant effects on the way people will be able to live their lives. I am, however, very supportive of the science, the scientists, and the modelers who continue to diligently chip away at the problems, including the collection of data. If it's a matter of funding this much more fully, I am completely in favor.
The changes are frightening. When I was camping a few weeks ago, I could see very major changes in the vegetation in some of the muskeg I've observed over decades without any such change at all. (I've also heard reports methane from the warming arctic and subarctic are becoming the most important contribution, and I can believe it.) But we really need, in my opinion, to nail down what is causing the changes, whether they will continue in this trend, and so on. If we don't, how do we know we will not do something which will exasperate the problem rather than solving it.
I believe Svante Arrhenius was correct in asserting that carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal would have a climate warming effect. That is when all other things are equal. But of course not all other things have been equal or ever could be. Among other things, there has been the impact of a ten-fold increase in human population since Arrhenius raised the issue of human activity and climate change, plus there has been a something like ten-fold increase in the environmental impact of each single human being. In addition there have been changes in many factors beyond human influence that impact the climate, including solar output, the solar magnetic field, the tilt of the earth's axis of rotation, etc. So I doubt if it will ever be known with certainty what is driving climate change, but since human activity clearly has many effects that impact climate, it would seem wise to me if those impacts were reduced: something that could be done relatively easily. Killing the automobile culture would be a start: a hideous way to live in any case. Managing forests for maximum sustainable yield, rather than the existing policy of rape and pillage as in Canada, Russia, Brazil, etc., would be a good idea too.
DeleteThanks for the reference to Syun-Ichi Akasofu. He seems to be a sound fellow, which is not so common among scientists in many fields today.
"So I doubt if it will ever be known with certainty what is driving climate change, but since human activity clearly has many effects that impact climate, it would seem wise to me if those impacts were reduced: something that could be done relatively easily. Killing the automobile culture would be a start: a hideous way to live in any case."
ReplyDeleteWe now know the dinosaurs became extinct due to a meteor strike which suddenly and dramatically cooled the planet. A meteor strike! How unpredictable is our world and life. (We might be on the lookout to prevent another meteor strike and that might be within our power to avert, but what about the things as unprecedented and inconceivable and incomprehensible to us as a meteor strike to a Tyrannosaurus Rex? These things are out there and we have no guarantee they won't befall us.
I think you're talking about a new kind of politics which will not be found through politics understood as political science and in which the relationship between politics and science will be radically altered.
There is something strange to me pretending politics and science have a meaningful or productive relationship now or ever before, but it this pretending done trying to feverishly believe there was science behind the politics of the pandemic this year. In the most absurd contemporary cases some of us have even believed the politicians follow facts, or try.
If we had brains, scientific or not, we would see how precious and fragile are our lives. As you are saying, we don't appear to have brains.
Thanks in turn for the Syun-Ichi Akasofu forum link. There's something heart-warming and humane about the guy which earns him my trust and respect. It goes beyond his skill as scientist and administrator. This quality he has is probably precisely what we would find in a radically altered relationship between science and politics.
ReplyDelete