michigan has a population of roughly 10 million, and 110 deaths last i checked.

canada has a population approaching 40 million, more comparable to california (although less.), and roughly 60 deaths.

in fact, the number of cases in california and canada are roughly the same, but the death rate in california, which is much warmer than canada this time of year, is almost twice as high.

california has been under a state of emergency with strict lockdown rules for weeks. canada only recently introduced basic travel restrictions, in a fit of stupidity, to appease the scientifically ignorant, the evan solomons. no, he's the perfect example of somebody to not listen to. 

how long will this go on for?

i have a feeling it's going to be a long time.

is social distancing working in bc?

well, i don't see anything flattening.

but, all the reports i've seen out of bc are about how everybody's ignoring it.

this seems to be some kind of "alternative fact", perhaps intended to increase confidence in the system. but, this isn't a market; the virus won't react to confidence.

the most pessimistic analysis is that they're trying to distract because they know this is going to get bad.

but, i actually think the issue in bc seems to mostly be about retirement homes. as elsewhere, lax restrictions on entering these facilities is likely to have created some serious issues, and the government should be held responsible for this. but, that doesn't translate into an issue with the general population.

but, is this working? is it proof that the sacrifices people are making are demonstrating results?

i'd challenge the premise....

what do i do?

everything's closed.

and, if i march down the street, they're just going to put me in jail.

this is the best i can do, for now: i can raise awareness and wait for critical mass.

they could theoretically overrule section 2.

but, i've been clear to point out that i oppose these policies because they aren't evidence-based. and, i consequently would argue that these restrictions would fail the oakes test.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_2_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms

they can't even override this with the notwithstanding clause.

it's a complete affront against the rule of law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_6_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms

rights to assembly are under attack.

so, what do we do?

stand up, fight back.

rights to free movement are under attack.

so, what do we do?

stand up! fight back!

i was hoping that i could get out around the side of the house to find the splitter or transformer this morning, but then i noticed it was raining - in fact thunderstorming - out. the forecast suggested it would break up around 15:00. so, i took a nap, and planned to get out in the afternoon.

while it's broken a little, everything is no doubt very wet, and it's going to start back up again in a few hours. i'll need to wait until tomorrow, i guess.

there's a high tomorrow of 17 degrees, but there's nowhere to go, and nothing to do. 

so, let me get back to cleaning before i get to work, like i keep planning i will.

i have a lot of posts to clean up, now. 

for those of you that cannot project images from data on your own, and i know it's most of you, and i'm not trying to be smug, this is the graph you need to see for south korea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_South_Korea#/media/File:2020_coronavirus_cases_in_South_Korea.svg

does that make what i've been saying more clear?

"we need strict rules to keep us safe from the virus"

yeah, that's what hitler and every other fascist, ever, said - just replace virus with whatever other excuse. jews. communism. etc.

don't fall for it. 

fight for your freedom. fight for your rights.

and, who enforces it?

a team of brownshirts?

do you get the conductor or driver to beat the passenger up if they argue?

it's the worst kind of panic-driven policy that you could imagine, the most blatant abrogation of a dedication to evidence, to reason and to science.

we can't be letting the government pass laws supporting this kind of mindless vigilantism without pushing back against it.

i sneeze a lot; i tell people i'm allergic to nitrogen, and nobody ever gets the joke. although, somebody once asked me before i took a hit of nitrous - hey, aren't you allergic to nitrogen.

it was a good joke before the hit.

are you going to leave it up to the bus driver to figure out if i'm suffering from allergies, have the common cold or have covid-19, based on nothing but his or her own intuition?

i couldn't imagine a policy that is less rooted in evidence or science.

what absurdity.

what nonsense.

these 1000 year floods are becoming yearly events up the st lawerence, and the ottawa, as well.

floods. diseases. authoritarian governments. it's almost like we're a third world country, or something.

https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news-story/9795555-high-water-levels-on-lake-ontario-expected-to-continue-into-2020/

well, it's at least consistent. 

the science has never upheld banning international travel, and i've demonstrated this point repeatedly - people just avoid the checkpoints on their journey from a to b. this is well researched and well understood. but, the logic only ever applied at the very beginning, before the onset of community spread, which was weeks ago. if you know the virus is circulating, banning international travel is just erecting a scapegoat, as you're just as likely to spread it via domestic travel.

so, it is at least consistent.

but, it's a consistency of failure - if you do something wrong in a way that affects a small number of people, expanding it to a greater number of people is just being more wrong.

why is our government looking towards fascist states to model a solution to this? does it not expose an alarming tendency to embrace authoritarian models? is this the worst kind of pragmatism, or is it just an excuse to carry through with long held aspirations towards fascism?

if you tell me i can't take a train or a plane, then i'll take the bus instead. this is a slower means of travel and will consequently infect more people. and, if you tell me i can't take a bus, i'll hitchhike at the truck stop. are you going to put me in jail? i'll sue you for infringing on my constitutional rights, as soon as you reopen the courthouses. 

again: we need to stop trying to control the spread of this. this is basically the common cold on steroids. have we ever been able to contain the common cold? would we ever be so arrogant as to try?

this virus is a new fact of life, and something we're going to have to learn to adapt to. we need rules restricting access to the vulnerable, not rules restricting the flow of people.

and, those that refuse to adapt, including those named trudeau, will die off in time.

he was doing well at first, really. but, he caved to public opinion, to appease the scientifically illiterate, the evan solomons of the world, rather than follow the science, as harsh as it sometimes is. and, i hope that the thuggish, hamfisted approach he's adopted is his undoing, in the end. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/coronavirus-covid19-canada-world-march28-1.5513542

i am shutting down though now...

yeah.

i'm convinced of the nature of the problem, and i'm convinced that the isp isn't taking it seriously, so i'm going to have to dismantle the lines myself.

when the sun comes up.

and before i take that overdue shower.

the isp has me logged at 14gb total usage yesterday, including 1.61 down/.19 up when i had the modem disconnected overnight.

my exact total usage according to my router was 2.35 gb downloaded & 1.06 gb uploaded, between 13:00 and 23:59.

i can't jump to the spoofed address yet, but we're another day from disproving the ddos attack as the cause of this. see, i don't know when that 14 gb is being logged. 

....although, i suppose it's hard to cram 12 gb into the 6 or 7 hours that happened before i renewed, given that bandwidth from 2:00-8:00 is counted separately.

it's pretty clear that i got cloned. but, i need to be rigorous.

you're going to see a lot of dying elderly people in michigan in the next few weeks, and they're going to blame it on everything and everybody they can find - kids at parties, restaurant goers, drug users, sinners, whatever the reverend says...

the actual reason that these people are going to die is that the governor refused to order the care facilities closed to the public. 

she's responsible. don't let her blame it on trump.

but, the president needs to be sending supplies, anyways. if he can...

stop.

were gretchen whitmer's policies effective in slowing the spread of the virus?

no, they weren't, were they.

did i tell you that they would be ineffective?

yes, i did.

so, clearly i was correct to criticize her policies as being driven by politics, rather than science, and being doomed to failure - because that's what was true, and that's what actually happened.

over here on the left, we've been pointing out for decades that, as bad as the republicans are, the democrats are often even worse. and, what's been happening over the last few years is that the democrats are getting worse and worse with each passing year, while the republicans are - very - slowly getting better.

right now, they're both terrible. 

send her the supplies - her policies have created a mess, and she needs them. then, make a big deal out of how incompetent her handling of the situation was, and how she needed to come begging to washington for help, because she couldn't figure it out on her own. i'd support that; that's reflective of reality.

but, don't make old people suffer for the mistake of the governor. that's not fair...it's not their fault....

and, there's no such thing as "central europe".

are the czechs eastern or western?

well, it's the sudetenland. obviously.

sarcasm aside, hitler was actually making sort of a valid point - while the area may have been cut out of the austro-hungarian empire, it really was a historically german region called bohemia within the second reich, named after a celtic tribe called the boii, like bavaria. while it was just over the danube, and technically outside of the general boundaries of the first empire, it was also a border region that was deeply dependent on roman hegemony, like the regions around the black sea, or the regions up and down the red sea; these people were barbarians, but only just barely, and they formed a core of the people that crossed the river, at the last end of history.

one could make the same argument about germany, of course - it was technically outside of the empire. but, it was the centre of charlemagne's reich, and the new focal point of western culture in the middle ages. the right argument is that germany became roman, and what i want to do is absorb bohemia along with them (this isn't necessary for the austrians, who were south of the danube, and in the empire the whole time), which is easy to do because they are in the second reich.

in fact, the same argument applies to the slovenians, who i maybe should have included, but didn't because i didn't want to open a can of worms. but, slovenia has a small enough population that you can throw it in there without messing around with it very much - it's 2 million people, and you're looking at another 632 cases and another 9 deaths.

the reason the czechs are considered eastern europe is that they were behind the iron curtain in czechoslavakia, but so were the east germans and nobody considers brandenburg or saxony to be part of a panslavic state. nowadays, the area is primarily slavic speaking, but it's also dominantly r1b, which throws kind of a wrench into it. but, if your argument is that it must be eastern because of the cold war, that's not taking a long enough view of history.

but, i'll acknowledge some ambiguity.

you might disagree. and that's ok.

i'm just closing down tabs.

in all fairness, the united states is not the size of any country in europe. italy, the uk and france each have around 60 million people, which is about the size of the great lakes megaregion, at it's broadest extent (including the gta). spain has about 50 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the bos-wash corridor, and germany has about 80 million which is more than any megaregion in the country, except for the entire eastern seaboard.

but, the european union as a whole has twice the population of the united states, almost. so, getting a good comparison means cutting a piece out of it.

adding up continental western europe is:

portugal -  10
spain - 47
france - 67
italy - 60
germany - 83
switzerland- 9
belgium- 11
netherlands- 17
luxembourg- 1
austria- 9
czechia- 11
==========
325

this is essentially the western empire, and excludes the british isles & scandinavia, which kind of make up their own region, as distinct from the area governed by western emperors, popes, carolingians and napoleonic pretenders. together, the brits & swedes have historically represented the opposition to roman hegemony in the west, wherever it's been localized (more frequently in paris than rome, over the last several millennia).

the population of the british isles & scandinavia, together, make up about 93 million people. there are parts of eastern europe that could historically be considered a part of scandinavia, but are better understood as satellite states of russia, in a pan-slavic kind of union, as a successor to the eastern empire. the baltic states are the ones in between.

but, what are the stats in this block of continental western europe that really is it's own thing?

(numbers from the wiki page, as of the date of this post - this is never up to date, take it as a snapshot, i'm trying to make a point)

portugal - 4268 cases / 76 deaths
spain - 56,197 / 4,145
france - 29,155 / 1,696
italy - 80,589 / 8,215
germany - 47,373 /285
switzerland- 12,311 / 207
belgium-  7,284 / 289
netherlands- 8,603 / 546
luxembourg- 1,453/ 9
austria- 6,001 / 58
czechia- 2062 / 9
=============
255296 cases & 15535 deaths.

& this is a little behind.

so, the united states has a ways to go before it catches up, still.

the 90s laptop is functioning. it's slow, and i might uninstall some plugins, but it works.

there is no wireless in this device, so i should be able to catch them, at least. there's no backdoor. and, the image is exceedingly minimal; i winlited it years ago to essentially only be able to stream. most cli tools are missing, outright. and, i can reinstall it quickly when i have to.

the windows 7 machine was not winlited; that might be a required step, moving forward.

after scripts, which includes dropping sysinternals exes in, the system32 directory is only 300+ items and 150 mb. the entire iso is 200 mb. it loads with about 40 mb of ram in system processes (and then has to load firefox...). so, this is a winlited xp that has the same resource footprint as a minimal linux distro, which is what i was going for when i built it - and what i'm going to default to if i can't get it to stay stable.

the internet is full of resource-greedy ad servers, but if i just stick to my blogspot site, i should be able to avoid them bogging the machine down. 

installing this image on my other laptop is going to be a problem because it needs sata drivers, and i can't see the install screen. i'd need to find a way to send the setup disc out through the projector out. i'm going to have to try, soon. i'm going to need to flash the bios, though, too. i want to get what i'm doing done, first.

so, i'm going to do some dishes, take a long overdue shower and then sit down and hopefully get some work done this weekend. maybe i can get out for some groceries some time mid week.

i just downloaded my router's log of my usage today, which is since 13:00 and is 1.5 gb lan traffic (downloaded) and 2.4 gb wan traffic, also downloaded. 

is it accurate? it seems like a lot of extra traffic on the wan, but 1.5 gb isn't that outrageous for me (2.4 would be a heavier day than today, i would think). that extra gb from the wan is probably all dropped packets. let's see how close it is to what they tell me.

i'm more concerned about the supposed 800 mb of upload traffic. i don't understand that. that doesn't seem right.

so, i'm going to powerwash this again and i'll be back in a few hours...

my off the cuff calculation suggests there's probably closer to 100,000 cases in michigan right now.

again: this is what you have to do, however slowly it's actually getting across.

1. suppression. 
2. mitigation.

3. adaptation.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-trump-generalmotor/trump-says-gm-efforts-never-seem-to-work-out-idUSKBN21E2J6

the president should allow the declaration, send the money and point fingers afterwards - being incompetent in her response to the crisis is not a reason for michiganders to die due to a lack of resources.

but, i've been starkly critical of what i've seen, and have to point to the facts of the matter, which are that the governor's reaction was not science-based.

the first thing she did was close bars & restaurants, while allowing hair salons, markets, places of worship, factories and, most crucially, retirement homes to stay open, as though this was being spread through extra-marital sex, or something. it was a bizarrely political reaction, designed to scapegoat a category of people; worse, it left open the most vulnerable groups to transmit the disease over the most obvious vectors of transmission - work, church and contact with seniors.

so, yes - whitmer botched this terribly, and she should be held accountable for it. but, that's not a reason to withhold supplies when she asks for them. it's not the sick peoples' fault that the governor is an idiot....

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/clinical-trials-begin-week-york-coronavirus-treatments-health/story?id=69817703