i support this individual's rights to wear what they want, when they want, regardless of whether it upsets people or not.

i hope they look the cops in the eye, point blank, and tell them to fuck off.

and, i would suggest to the police in the area that they surely have better things to do than this.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/30/cops-hunt-person-wearing-creepy-17th-century-plague-doctor-costume/

there's some more information on this study here, which i can't find.

https://www.firstpost.com/health/study-claims-there-are-11-strains-of-sars-cov-2-heres-how-viruses-mutate-8309091.html

punks have been arguing for decades that these dumb hippies will be the fucking death of us all.

here we are....

if there's 11 different strains, do you need 11 different vaccines?

not necessarily. but, the vaccine would need to account for all 11 strains to actually be halfways effective - as well as continually evolving strains.

it would, however, mean that you could potentially catch it 11 different times - and that antibody tests likely only test for one or maybe a few strains.

do you see the futility of what we're doing, yet?

as stated previously, the more that trump argues that the virus was created by the chinese military, the more likely it is that it was created by the pentagon.

we've seen this repeatedly, now - the more vicious their projections are, the more guilty they are.

i again need to ask - what kind of effect has imperfect distancing (inevitable in a free society) had on the virus' evolution?

consider three scenarios. this is what einstein would call a 'thought experiment', meaning it's valid in abstraction, but you need to collect data to see if it's real or not.

1) scenario a is where you have no social distancing at all. in such a scenario, you would have no selective pressure on the virus to jump over large physical distances (via aerosols, or over surfaces). so, it is less likely that the virus would evolve to be more easily transmissible over wider physical distances, and the most widespread strains of the virus would be the least virulent ones.

2) scenario b is imperfect social distancing, where you might have people standing just close enough that transmission is barely possible, and you might have places (like debit machines) that almost everybody in a specific region touches with their hands, after or before touching their faces, without even being cognizant of it. this would create very strong selective pressures for the virus to mutate to become more transmissible. in scenario b, the most widespread strains of the virus would also be the most virulent.

3) scenario c is perfect social distancing, where a complete lack of transmission actually kills the virus off.

it doesn't take a dialectic to realize that scenario b is the most likely one when distancing rules are implemented in a free society. in the long run, that might be worse than scenario a. scenario c would be considered to be utopian and unrealistic.

if i understand correctly, this study is suggesting that the strain out of china was many times less transmissible than the strain that is dominant, now, and developed outside of the country - perhaps as a result of selective pressures created by distancing.

this should be a stark warning for future tactics.

viruses evolve.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/virus-has-mutated-into-10-types-one-now-dominant-across-regions-study/articleshow/75417399.cms

right when i was about to get started early this morning, i ended up with a migraine. i may have triggered it by not eating...and then eating...

i tried to shake it off a few times, but it doesn't work like that - you have to sleep. so, i slept for essentially the entire calendar date.

the type of migraines i've been getting since i moved here come with auras, meaning you can't do anything when they click in, too. you can't even read because you can't see. you're just stuck.

i don't know if i'm up yet.

i'd rather make an uncoerced choice that is wrong than be a slave and do what i'm told and be right.

and, then, in the end, i'm not going to fault myself for not listening to bad logic based on authority - i'm going to call for your head for lying to me and everybody else.

"you just need to put your faith in experts and do what you're told!"

no. that's called fascism...

in a democracy, we consult experts for their views but we ultimately analyze data independently and then make decisions together.

if you withhold information, or give me bad data, and then tell me to do things that don't make sense because you didn't give me information, then i'm going to ignore you and make the wrong choice based on the deficit of information - and i'll keep doing it, too.

the right answer is not to tell me to listen, it's to give me useful data.

so, they couldn't get them from china and made them themselves.

based on what strain, though?

https://abcnews.go.com/International/crucial-coronavirus-antibody-tests-destined-york-city-caught/story?id=70199489

so, yes - if there are multiple strains of this virus going around, as appears to be the case, then an antibody test would only be useful in testing for one strain, and would not provide immunity for the rest of them.

that was the situation we wanted to avoid, but may have been the truth from the start.

if governments want citizens to trust them, they need to stop lying to them as a starting point.

it would be very useful if the various authorities would be more transparent so that people can make more informed decisions based on more reliable data.

i don't want to be talked down to to prevent me from panicking.

i'm not going to mindlessly do what i'm told.

if you present me with nonsense (like the idea that antibodies don't provide immunity), i'm going to criticize it; if it turns out that you told me that because you were trying to obfuscate the truth because you didn't want me to overreact, then that was exceedingly bad governance, because i didn't take you on authority, i ignored you for being absurd.

you should have been honest in the first place.

if there's multiple viruses, antibody testing would also indeed be unreliable - in the sense that you're only testing for one virus. and, you could look at that either way...

are these antibody tests being based on chinese data or european data? i know that a lot of the kits came from china.

if we're testing for the chinese virus in new york, and find that 30% of the people tested have antibodies, that is an intriguing result, but may ultimately have little to do with the outbreak that occurred, which was in the european virus. i've been scratching my head wondering why the numbers are so low. it could be that they're testing for the wrong virus, and that an antibody test for the european strain would produce even higher antibody prevalence.

i know this is a flurry of information. for me, it's confirming a lot of things i already realized. for you, it could be alarming and concerning.

the more information i see, the more unlikely it seems to me that any sort of lockdown is ever going to be remotely effective.

we're going to have to learn to live with this.

the new normal cannot be fascism.

the new normal is co-existence with the virus.

if we have different strains in circulation already, that answers the question as to how some people could get "reinfected" - they've come into contact with multiple strains.

there were only ever two answers to this question - either the testing was in error, or the virus has mutated. it could be a little of both.

but, if there are actually two or more viruses out there and not just one, that's also a big concern for vaccine testing...

if we're basing our vaccines on chinese data, it might not work on the european strain, which appears to be far worse.

this preprint article is arguing that the strains are showing the potential for dramatic differences in mortality rates - indicating that the virus that showed up in italy and traveled to new york may be much deadlier than the one that came to the west coast from china.

and, that may be a kind of epiphany in analyzing the data.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20060160v1.full.pdf

it's an open - but important - question as to whether there are differences in mortality associated with these different strains, which are already building up quickly.

giving people drugs that you know are going to increase the mutation rate even further is playing russian roulette - it's true the most mutations are not beneficial, but this is a numbers game, in the end. the more mutations you create, the more likely it is that you get one that works.

the threat of prescribing this drug and accidentally creating a superstrain out of it should not be underestimated.

https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02344-6

re: remdesivir.

this is the drug that was widely touted as a way to fight ebola and ultimately didn't work. thankfully, we have an ebola vaccine, now. so, my best guess is that they're essentially trying to find a way to profit off of a waste product; the idea of the fda approving this for covid-19 appears to be driven by capitalism, rather than science.

but, i remember there being concerns about this drug not only not working in disrupting rna replication, but it actually leading to mutations in translation. if you think about it, that actually makes sense - if you're trying to interfere with replication, and you don't actually succeed in stopping it, you're probably going to at least succeed in messing with it. this is very bad, in context.

the claim with ebola was that the mutations were not beneficial, so it didn't matter anyways. but, that sounds more like good luck than predictive science.

the primary thing we should be concerned about right now is preventing mutations - that's why there needs to be so much testing. approving a drug that doesn't actually work and may instead increase the mutation rate is the absolute worst thing that could be done.

now, as was the case with the hydrocholoroquine, maybe there's some other reasoning behind this that will clarify itself in time.

but, given that this drug has not worked well in the past, my primary concern would be about it's effect on the mutation rate - that is a potential disaster in the making.

again: i don't know exactly what the chiefs want.

but, if it's something like the nisga'a agreement, which is what it sounds like, then that's a major step forwards.

they needed a treaty first, then they can talk about signing contracts with oil companies - which i will oppose, regardless.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/wetsuweten-pact-hereditary-chiefs-onboard-but-elected-chiefs-now-rescind-approval

"that's socialism!"

touche.

further, people that repeatedly try to get into the hospital via the back door are going to inevitably end up getting banned from the hospital altogether, due to their antisocial behaviour - and that's the right thing to do, in context.

no, the hospital analogy is almost perfect.

suppose somebody found a way in through the back door of a hospital and snuck into an empty room. when discovered, what would happen?

the doctor would no doubt make a snap triage decision; if they had a knife in their neck or something, then, yeah, they'd need to be dealt with first. otherwise, they're going to receive a warning not to do that again, and be escorted back to the waiting room - meaning they're going to have to wait even longer than they would have if they just did it right in the first place.

all i'm really saying is that we should be properly triaging refugees, which means bringing them back to the waiting room when they sneak into the country via the back door.

.....and, that is a fundamentally egalitarian and inherently left-wing position.

to somebody like chrystia freeland, an independent analysis is merely second-guessing and distorting the narrative.

the state defines what is real, and what isn't - and anybody challenging it is a terrorist.

they don't want independent analysis.

they want you to obsequiously shut up and do what you're told.

so, i do suspect that the death rate is climbing at a much higher rate than is being reported.

and, i do know that they're undertesting, by all appearances on purpose.

but, i can't make up numbers. they'll have to come out in the wash...

all i can do is point to the delays, and explain that they're making the officially reported numbers entirely useless to analyze - and that it seems to be intentional.

say what you want about new york, but they were honest and transparent in their briefings. they stood up and reported awful numbers with no apparent attempt to sugar coat or distort them, and they deserve respect for that.

we're just not getting that kind of honesty from our politicians, here.

it seems like the government doesn't want the kind of curve we saw come out of new york to be broadcast - they'd rather that our numbers look like an authoritarian state, because they are, at heart, a bunch of fascists.

so, they're delaying reporting the deaths in order to manipulate the curve.

there's apparently over 20,000 tests in the backlog in ontario, alone.

karl rove told us that it doesn't matter what is true, it matters what people think is true.

chrystia freeland seems to have updated this: reality isn't what is important, it's the projection of "reality" over twitter that is.

this government seems to be more concerned about it's international reputation than it is in the lives of it's own citizens.

so, it's manipulating it's presentation to conform to expectations erected via social media; they want to broadcast the message that we're succeeding in "flattening the curve", because that's the metric that twitter users are using, however daft it is. and, while they may not be good at understanding reality, they seem to at least be good at understanding twitterspeak.

the convictions of hyper-honest mathematicians aside, in the end, the numbers are going to need to add up. so, this seems foolish - but that's normal, from this government. and, all we can do is sit and wait.

i need to reiterate that the number of cases being reported by the authorities in canada is entirely worthless information, as it's being intentionally skewed to try to fabricate a "flattening" of the curve. doug ford and chrystia freeland appear to be colluding to essentially falsify the data, via delays and undertesting.

to our governments in canada at both levels, this appears to be more of a public relations issue than a public health issue.

as a consequence, i've been relying more on the mortality statistics, but there are reports coming out that this information is also being distorted via intentional delaying.

if my role is to try to provide an independent analysis in order to keep the government honest, i need reliable statistics to begin with. if i cannot get them, my only meaningful analysis is to point the issue out.

so, all i can do is point out that the mortality rates in ontario are currently unreliable, and that it's consequently not entirely clear how things are progressing. 

cuomo's daily briefings were refreshing in their clarity and transparency, and it maybe set a high bar and put down unrealistic expectations that are not being met in canada. 

it seems like the issue is getting worse, but we're being lied to, up here, to obfuscate it, for political reasons - and that's all i can really tell you.

so, i think that a record and a few weeks or months in jail is actually really a pretty light sentence for what is truly exceedingly poor behaviour, that lacks solidarity with the rest of the working class.

most historical leftists would tell me i'm being pretty soft on this.

hey, listen.

back in the soviet union, they'd have just shot you on the spot for not standing in line.

while i may have the same basic leftist set of morals around being steadfast in the total rejection of any concept of preferential treatment, i'm just suggesting a criminal record for stepping out of line.

historically communist states have generally been far less lenient than that.

who is the victim in this crime of pushing to the front of the queue?

the other refugees, and everybody else requiring access to state resources - like the disabled, and the homeless, who end up thrown under the bus in an act of selfish randianism.

you need to view refugee status like being in an emergency room full of sick patients. everybody's there to see a doctor; everybody's sick. of course, you want to see the doctor first - everybody does.

the hospital has staff there to triage you, which has access to the information required to do so.

when patients start trying to push their way ahead of the others, how do we treat those patients? depending on how disruptive they are, we're going to criminalize that behaviour - and we should.

likewise, we should not give in to people that try to ram their way through the system - that behaviour is criminal, and it should be criminalized.

you are morally wrong in your position.

i will not concede - i will convince you to see your folly, your ignorance.

imagine a scenario where you're on a boat, lost at sea, and there's only a small amount of food to go around. you've got flares and stuff - you think you'll be rescued. but, you need to ration resources correctly until you're found.

everybody would universally condemn the person that hoards resources, or tries to push everybody else out of the way to ensure they're prioritized. that person's demand for special treatment would be rejected across the board, and they would be first on the list to be cannibalized.

but, our morals get blurry when we're dealing with a system of capitalism that thrives on cheap labour - we pull out the ones most useful to us, and encourage them to stamp on everybody else to get to the front of the line.

it's not crossing the border the bugs me, exactly - it's the hoarding of resources, the elevation of the self.

no, i'm going to dig in on this point - because it's the proper leftist position.

to decide that your emergency is more valid than everybody else's, and push everybody else out of the way so that you're dealt with first, should be a crime - and you should get a criminal record for it. it's a criminal act.

a good global citizen, the kind a sovereign country should want, realizes that they are not more important than everybody else, and allows the system to queue the resources properly.

i have a hard time with the medium of film, in general.

tv. movies. i just don't.....

tell him to write me a book, instead.

i've actually never seen a michael moore film.

if you were curious.

i'm aware that this is a shit-disturbing article.

regardless, when was the last time that a rematch election didn't uphold the status quo?

nixon won on his second try, but it was years later and against a different opponent. stevenson lost against eisenhower twice.

i don't think this election will be close. but, i don't expect that clinton would win back the states she lost last time, either.

this is of course ignoring legitimacy problems; she didn't even run.

there's some problems with handing it to bernie, too.

rather, if biden resigns or otherwise has to step down, how feasible is it to redo the primary on short notice? this is a crazy year, all around....

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/495371-as-biden-struggles-hillary-waits-for-the-call