what's happening in japan seems to be about the same thing that's happening in the united states - they're not testing people, making it seem like the infection rate is lower than it is.

stop presenting japan as an ideal scenario. they're probably worse off than most places, and it's going to start adding up, soon.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Coronavirus-Why-Japan-chose-to-test-fewer-people

they're not flattening it, they're shifting it.

people are delusional. you're going to get this. deal with it.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200315_06/

you can't.

https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/this-coronavirus-chart-shows-canada-is-not-flattening-the-curve-at-least-not-yet/

ok, let me get my laptop back up.

i'll be fine. i'm strong. the virus stands no chance against me. i have confidence in my phagocytes to win this battle and annihilate the invading proteins. 

vitamin c and water. and rest, if you feel the urge.

i'm not advocating denying service or anything. i'm an advocate of universality. the system should do everything it can.

i'm just pointing out that my empathy is somewhat reduced, and i'm perfectly content to shift responsibility to them to alter their behaviour, rather than place the onus on myself to alter mine.

it's really kind of not my problem. it's really kind of their problem...

who voted for trump?

so, they kind of made their own bed.

or, as it would be, reduced the number of them.

who voted to cut the health care system in countries like italy and canada?

the boomers did.

it's harsh. sure. but, if i woke up tomorrow and there were 15% less people over the age of 65, i would see the net social benefit in that pretty quickly. i'm not going to list the ways, but there's a lot of them.

we could, honestly, solve a multitude of social problems by thinning their ranks a little. we're sitting on a demographic bulge that's kind of a problem, and is kind of largely their fault.

i don't see any use in pretending otherwise.

but, honestly?

do i really care about old people?

i don't generally get the impression that they care much about me. this is the "me generation", we're talking about - the generation that shuffled their own parents into homes, and refused to share their wealth with their kids. in a way, they kind of deserve it. 

that's not fair. i'm not saying it is. not all old people are entitled, bourgeois pieces of shit.

but, enough of them are that i don't feel any particular impetus to protect them.

if you're old, adjust your lifestyle. i don't feel the urge to adjust mine...

ok, yeah - i've picked up a dry cough. good. let's hope it's covid-19 and i get the thing beat nice and quickly over what was a down period in the scheduling so i'm immune for the rest of the summer.

i'm going to need to go to the store this week, but i tend to spend these periods between shows inside anyways, and i actually wanted to get some work done. i can promise to avoid old folks, at least.

to be clear: i don't know whether it's coronavirus or not. but i'm not worried about it enough to get treatment. i'm hoping i just beat it easily and move on.

https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/cs-true-cost-austerity-inequality-italy-120913-en_0.pdf

https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Country-Note-ITALY-OECD-Health-Statistics-2015.pdf

there's all kinds of ominous articles like this that have been published over the last ten years.

The country's largest doctors' union in September said it was again considering a countrywide strike against the spending cuts, demanding a renewal of their contracts and the end of an eight-year hiring freeze in hospitals.

"I am extremely concerned by the extent of the crisis of our NHS," said Costantino Troise, the secretary-general of Italy's largest doctors' union ANAAO.

He blamed funding cuts and what he called a lack of respect for health professionals as major drivers of the current stand-off.

"Italy's health system will resemble ones like Poland and Slovenia rather than France and Germany" if the situation doesn't improve, he said.  The latter Western countries tend to be known for higher quality health care than their Eastern brethren.

https://www.politico.eu/article/troubled-italian-health-system-frustrates-doctors-drugmakers-2/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-health-awakenings-insight/indiscriminate-cuts-threaten-italys-healthcare-successes-idUSKBN0LZ0G320150303

it's a more cost-effective way to deliver health care, in aggregate.

but, it's an easy target for fiscal conservatives, and there's a perpetual struggle to keep the thing funded.

there have been major budget cuts in italy under the direction of right-wing governments in the neo-liberal period. 

https://www.cesr.org/death-million-cuts-what-future-right-health-italy

"it is better to burn out than to fade away"

this, i would propose, is a better way to understand the debate between herd immunity and "flattening the curve".

i hope that ends up big enough.

this isn't a prediction, it's a model. please realize that.

but, the argument is supposed to be that the same number of people will get the virus anyways, so you'd might as well slow it down. one of the key points i'm trying to get across here is that if you slow the virus down then you reduce the speed of immunity, thereby increasing transmission - and you actually get twice as many cases because it takes twice as long to get to herd immunity. that sounds like it doesn't make sense, but there's a difference between developing antibodies and getting sick.

you can tweak this. maybe it takes 1.5x as long. it's a model, it's not a prediction.

the other thing i'm doing here is arguing that you can't really flatten the curve, exactly, but can rather shift it. and, maybe that shift is valuable if it buys time for a vaccine. but, it's going to come with a slow increase in cases over time until immunity is reached.

don't get lost in this in nitpicking the numbers - it's a model, it's a conceptual thing, it's an idea. and, it's a valid critique.

i think boris johnson was (accidentally.) correct. you want to protect the old and weak, yes. but you want to let this thing run it's course quickly and burn out, rather than draw it out and pick people off over months.

so, i made a choice to wait until i got back from the concert on thursday night before i reimaged the machine, because i figured i'd have to do it again anyways.

i have eaten well since i got back, in case i picked anything up. i'm mildly hungover, and have produced some watery bowel movements, but i'm willing to blame it on the alcohol; i don't feel sick.

i did communicate with the divisional court, and they've informed me that the motion has moved to an administrative judge due to my complaint. they didn't send me anything regarding this. but i was instructed to call back on monday.

i don't expect to leave the house at all for the next 6 or 7 days, so let's hope i can get some work done this week.

and, let's get started on the reimage.

my bios looks clean, at least.

i've said this before: if there's anything in this universe worth worshiping, if there's any approximation to a deity, it's the fucking sun.

i don't expect it to react to any sympathetic magic, mind you.

but, the ancients were right on that point, at least.

one of the previous links points out that one of the things that "st patrick" is known for, apocryphally or not, is putting the sun in the celtic cross.

if st patrick's day is essentially a glossed over spring equinox festival, it makes sense that they would have retained the symbolism of the sun.

what they would have been celebrating is the return of the sun for another year - the moment the days get longer again. 

we might not have the narrative, it may have been burned - unless it's hiding deep in one of those hibernian monasteries, waiting to be refound. or maybe buried somewhere deep in an icelandic glacier, waiting to be uncovered as the climate changes. it may even be in some underground tunnel under the vatican, hidden underground to be never found again.

but, i think we can figure this out, can't we?

it's the sun. it's back! hooray!

and, don't tell me that christianity is my history or i should embrace the identity of an irish catholic. that's a bunch of colonial bullshit.

it's not my history, and i will do no such thing.

and, you're an ignorant, colonized fool if you insist upon it - you don't know your own history, it's been stolen from you.

our history has been erased.

i was hoping to find some documentation of the obvious solstice festival that st. patrick's replaced. i'm not going to do the math or look up how close march 17th would have been to the solstice, through whatever gregorian/julian conversions, in the third or fourth century of the common era. it hardly seems worth the effort; the deduction is obvious.

the closest thing i could find was an association with a kind of fertility cult that comes off as something out of a gimbutas text. that kind of makes sense, at least, but if it's true then we've lost the narrative - all we have is some sculptures.

so, it appears that we don't even know what festival st. patrick's day replaced. that's how brutally colonized we are.

so, what's more offensive?

st patrick's day or thanksgiving?

and, do you see the parallel i'm trying to draw, why there's a natural historical alliance between northern europeans and indigenous americans?

https://www.learnreligions.com/st-patrick-and-the-snakes-2562487

https://metro.co.uk/2017/03/17/how-a-pagan-celebrates-st-patricks-day-6513439/

i'm going to start a petition to cancel 3/17 in favour of 3/14.

i suspect that most pi day events will attract at least 3 people.

but, due to the coronavirus, i'd expect there to be much less than 4, on average.

meaning you're looking at roughly 3.1415 people per event.

no, i'm not sorry. but, you're welcome.

and, i don't care about st. patrick's day. at all.

i'd still rather produce my own antibodies.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/biotech-quebec-city-coronavirus-1.5497043

this is a chart for the 1917 and 1918 (there were two viruses, not one) pandemics:

so, there's a lot of differences.

but, these pandemics are thought to have had a total mortality rate of ~0.6%, which is a strong flu.

the total mortality rate in south korea right now is 0.8%.

i think that, in the end, the numbers will prove the claim that it's on par with a strong flu correct. that's what i've said from the start.

and, it is very clear that you want to keep old people locked up right now, even if it's just as clear that it's more or less harmless for people under 50 - in contrast to the 1918 flu, which killed a lot of young people in the midst of world war one.

the numbers coming out of south korea are the ones you want to take more seriously, as they are an oecd country that has tested sufficiently well and has already been through the bulk of this.

this is probably mostly over in south korea. and, what are the mortality rates?

it's interesting to see these numbers pull themselves out, as 7% and 4.5% and 1.5% are numbers that i'm frequently pulling out of calculations - which, i'll be quick to catch myself, doesn't actually mean anything, but just is kind of consistent...

so, the reported death rate in italy right now is around 7%, and almost all of the cases are very old people.

the mortality rate in the united states was initially around 7%, and is still about that in washington state, where the deaths are largely linked to nursing homes.

and, the (published.) mortality rate in iran has fallen from 7% to 4.5% as the number of cases has increased, perhaps reflecting the fact that the average lifespan in iran is almost ten years less than that in italy - which makes sense.

on the other hand, the death rates in france and spain have hovered closer to 1.5%, making me wonder how old the people that are dying are.

you need more subtle ways to analyze this than just dividing the deaths by the number of cases. and, for now, south korea is the best place to get the data. in a month or two, you'll probably want to be looking at data for northern europe, but they're that much behind, for now.

7% is 1/15. roughly. are you going to give your grandparents such low odds?