maybe they shouldn't have been allowing people into nursing homes, and letting old people interact with the general population?

https://globalnews.ca/news/6713217/coronavirus-bc-doctors-letter/

is there a possibility for critical mass to develop as a response to the government's overreaction? is this something for the left to potentially take advantage of?

the early numbers i've seen are pretty disappointing; if anything, unrest seems to be more likely to align on the right, as fake leftists basically shut-up and fall in line and do what they're told.

but, i'll be keeping an eye on how the opposition develops. that which is unsustainable will not be sustained. it's more a question of how this explodes than if it will, and we'll have to see if any opportunities arise out of the inevitable backlash.

ok.

let's try again to refocus, and let's hope the machine stays stable while i do.

governments right now are being forced to make a choice, and they are irrationally choosing the few over the many.

but, it's not sustainable.

people will revolt.

a more exact hospital comparison would be if you suppose that the power's out and you're on battery power and you have to make a choice between using the battery to power five low-power respirators or one high power life support system. that forces you to have to make a choice, and you should of course choose the five over the one.

it's not that i don't get it, it's that i think it's designed to confuse the issue, and that should be pushed back against. bringing the hospital problem in as equivalent to the trolley problem is reducing the trolley problem to a question of if you should play god or not, and that's disingenuous - especially if you don't believe in god. but, even if you did, do you think god is responsible for the situation? that would be a pretty shitty god, wouldn't it? if a god were to act like that, it would abdicate it's privileges immediately. so, i don't even want to consider that premise, i want to look at the issue as being driven by randomness, by probability, by statistics; i want to pull the rug out from under the religious debate. i just don't want to have it at all.

in the trolley problem, you're forced to make a choice and need to make it responsibly; in the hospital problem, you are not, and should not interfere.

the ideal would be to not have to decide, and if you don't have to decide you should not.

but, if you must decide, if you have no choice, if there is no way out, you should choose the path of least disruption, always.

"you could walk away from the switch."

well, then you're deciding to let it hit the five instead of the one.

"that's the same as doing nothing in the hospital problem."

no, because your actions aren't explicitly responsible for the death of the five patients, who are dying of unrelated disease, like they are for the death of the five walkers. if you walk away from the switch, it's your fault when it hits the five walkers; if you walk away from the hospital, it isn't your fault that those five people die from those five unrelated diseases.

i guess maybe that's something else i'm doing here - i'm converting the problem into an issue of individual responsibility. i guess that philosophers want to talk about broad moral issues, but who cares about that? what's real is what choices a person has in front of them, and what follows as a consequence of their actions.

"but, the lone trolley walker was healthy, too. there's no reason to think that person would have died if you didn't pull that switch. so, it's just like killing the healthy organ donor."

maybe i didn't articulated that as well as i'd like. 

so, with the trolley problem, there's a train coming and the train is going to kill five people or one person. you really have a choice between whether the train is going to kill one or five, and you have to make that choice. 

with the hospital problem, you have five sick people dying of presumably different ailments, and one healthy person that has nothing to do with any of this. you don't have to make a choice between one outcome or the other.

so, am i reducing it to the cause? well, i'm pointing out that it's not equivalent. you may try to force me into seeing the lone trolley walker as being sacrificed, like the organ donor would be, but i'm going to push back against that. 

so, let's flip the question over - which scenario is more active and which is more passive? in the trolley problem, you're explicitly deciding who dies and who doesn't, and i'm saying you should decide on the option of least disruption. in the hospital problem, you don't have to explicitly decide, and i'm claiming you consequently shouldn't, you should take a more passive approach.

but, i'm also pointing out that you can alter the scenario so it's more equivalent.

"but, nobody is going to disagree that you should take somebody off life support to donate their organs, except maybe certain religious groups. it's not much of a dilemma."

well, nobody really disagrees that you should flip the switch so the trolley hits the loner, either, except perhaps extreme calvinists that are going to argue those five weren't in the elect, or something - that's really not much of a dilemma, either.

i suspect that the hospital problem was probably introduced as equivalent to the trolley problem by some christian that wanted to confuse people, and has succeeded in doing so. but, these things should be decoupled; conflating them just confuses the logic.

i know that religious people are going to tell me i'm terrible.

but, i think they're stupid.

so, we can agree to be mutually baffled by each other.

if you knew the fat man had cancer, then you would be obligated to push him in front of the train, for sure.

i want to work through the conversation article a little bit.

i mentioned that i don't like how the thing is framed, and i think that forms the basis between the difference in the formulations of the problems. these are being presented as equivalent issues, and they aren't.

when you kill somebody to take their organs, you have the opportunity to talk to them, you're not in a split-second choice like you are with the trolley. the article wants to make it seem like actively killing is less permissible than passively killing, but that's misinterpreting the context - if you can talk to the potential organ donor, then you should be able to yell at the loner to get off the fucking tracks. so, in the trolley problem somebody is going to die regardless, and you're supposed to be forced to choose a lesser evil. in the hospital problem, the potential organ donor is healthy, and you're not forced to choose one or the other.

so, diverting the train is permissible (i would argue that not diverting the train should even be treated as criminal negligence) because you can't stop the loss of life, and killing the potential organ donor is not because they only have a broken leg and are not in a situation of certain death.

now, what if the potential organ donor was on life support, perhaps brain dead? that's a more comparable scenario, and i would argue you should kill the organ donor, because the loss of life is unavoidable.

how about pushing the fat guy into the way of the train? that's like the organ donor problem - he's not near death. well, unless you want to argue that obesity statistically reduces life expectancy, and he's probably not going to live much longer, anyways.

what have our governments done here, though?

they've actually diverted the trolley from the path with one person to the path with five! 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/study-of-the-day-almost-everyone-would-kill-1-person-to-save-5/250066/

i would like to see the system take aggressive steps to protect the vulnerable. i'm not advocating cutting them loose.

but, do i think these lockdowns are morally justified?

i don't. 

i think this situation is retarded...

"but, all life is sacred."

eh.

i'm not following you on that one.

there's a lot of scenarios where i'm perfectly content to let people die, or even actively kill them. 

i guess this life-is-sacred thing is a religious position, and that, if you don't have a religion, you're not likely to see the logic in it.

if anything, we're perhaps failing the trolley dilemma.

i've never liked the way this is framed, and have tended to push back on it. and, i insist i'm not missing the point.

but to extrapolate the point - when you have to choose, you should choose the past of least disruption.

http://theconversation.com/the-trolley-dilemma-would-you-kill-one-person-to-save-five-57111

it's the old cliche.

if you could kill one person in order to save 999 would you do it?

we are forcing 99.9% of the population to sacrifice and suffer for the benefit of 0.1%, under the threat of violence if they don't comply.

that's not a prisoner's dilemma. i don't know what that is.

the best comparison i can think of is to casino capitalism, where 99.9% suffer for the benefit of 0.1%, due to the violence of property rights.

there is no rational analysis here, and there's nothing to win. it's just a dumb approach, policy-wise.

is there a prisoner's dilemma around covid-19?

no.

i gain nothing by co-operating - i have to sacrifice, entirely. and, i don't see any value in doing so. i'm being forced to sacrifice at gunpoint whether i like it or not.

that's not the right model for this situation.

this is more of a scenario where a dictatorship of the elderly is dictating policy to everybody else, at their benefit and the expense of everybody else. and it won't last two years.

it won't last two months.

governments need to adjust their strategies, because this isn't sustainable.

i'm skeptical that they actually slowed it down much at all.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237544-who-expert-we-need-more-testing-to-beat-coronavirus/

so, you idiots shut the world down because you didn't want to discriminate against the elderly.

what do you do when it doesn't work?

those numbers in south korea are climbing back up....

i had to take a detour there to write some documents.

the court is insisting that i file motions via consent, but i can't because i'm disabled; i'd have to sign a waiver that says nobody affected is disabled, which is impossible. so, i filed a motion asking the judge to acknowledge my disability, and his duty of care in the matter.

my laptop went screwy on me when i plugged a usb key in, so i'm formatting it and am going to have to reimage again. they might have dropped something in there. whatever it is, i have to start over.

and, i've got time. clearly.

i'll actually probably end up eating a lot less and lose a lot of weight.

and, i'm going to officially declare myself straight-edge until this is done. no cigarettes. no pot. no alcohol.

lots of coffee, though.

stop.

this disease is never going to go away.

deal with it.

ok, i need to focus.

i'm going to be stuck inside all summer and there's nothing i can do about it. i don't want to go outside and exercise, that's boring as fuck.

i might as well just forget about it and focus on getting some work done.

so, let's get this blog cleaned up, first.

when i first moved down here, before i got my nexus card, i had nothing to do but work, and i was more productive. that's fine. i'm due...

it's looking increasingly likely that if we let the politicians direct events then this is going to end in about two years with a mandatory vaccination order.

because we won't take common sense steps - we insist on being stupid.

what i'm waiting for is data out of south korea, today.

so, what the chinese appear to be doing is flipping the situation over.

they are currently blaming all new cases on foreigners, just like western governments have tried to do.

give it a few days, and they'll start reporting community transmission (no doubt never fully stopped), as a result of foreigners bringing it in.

it's as bad when they do it as when we do it. but, i'm more concerned about what's happening on the ground than about how the government wants to frame it; i'd take their data with a grain of salt, but ultimately with the expectation that they're creating a delay in the data. they'll publish, once they can frame it as something they can blamed on the outside world.

wait for it.

see, how do you react to this kind of stupidity?

she's not ignorant - she knows you're immune once you beat it. why would she say something that ignorant, then?

https://foxrochester.com/news/nation-world/white-house-task-force-no-one-is-immune-to-coronavirus

it's ostrich logic - stick your head in the sand, until it goes away.

if you think we can just shut everything down for a few weeks and the virus will go away somehow then you're just demonstrating your ignorance even further.

building immunity is how this gets better.

it's not going to just disappear, somehow.

listen, i'm not disputing that this is going to be hard.  the system is going to deal with a lot of people that are older and a lot of people with existing conditions, as well as a small number of otherwise healthy people that managed to get extremely unlucky, in being that one in 100,000.

but, this isn't a choice. we can't simply decide to suppress a virus, as though we're some omnipotent, dominating force. we can't pass a law that the virus will be suppressed. we can't rule in a court that the virus must be suppressed. we can pray, but there's no god to hear us; and, it's pretty circular logic, anyways, because how'd it get into circulation in the first place, then? so, sympathetic magic will not work, either.

suppression isn't a decision, it's a delusion.

what these reports actually say - and which the media is misrepresenting - is that suppression is as unlikely as mitigation is.

so, what have our politicians done? they've ignored the science, and insisted that if they lock the population down hard enough, if they man up, if they act tough, then the suppression will work - that it's a function of labour, that it depends on working hard enough, that we can work this out if we pull together, that we just have to try and we'll succeed.

but, that's not what the science says - it says we will be overwhelmed, regardless.

i think the uk government was right - extremely aggressive steps to protect the vulnerable, coupled with incentives for healthy people to interact with each other, would get us to substantial levels of immunity faster, which is what we want. trying to slow the process down just draws it out.

unfortunately, the british people reacted with hysteria and ignorance, due to however many years of slashes to public education in the thatcher era. they lacked the tools to understand what should be done, and resorted to posts on social media to "flatten the curve" to guide their behaviour, instead. the government had to react to public pressure, rather than follow the science.

are you ready to live like this for the next two years? the virus won't disappear via social distancing, it will always be there. if we don't have some algorithm to build immunity, we have no path back to normality.

we've acted irrationally in shutting everything down, and now we have no exit strategy except to wait two years for a vaccine and mass immunize.

these are our choices: allow the virus to circulate in the healthy population, or wait for a vaccine. if we choose the latter, we'll be locked down for two years.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/uk-backed-off-on-herd-immunity-to-beat-coronavirus-we-need-it/

i get a check for $1169 from odsp deposited into my account on or around the last day of every month. so, i will get $1169 deposited on march 31st, which is a tuesday. it comes in a little earlier if the last day of the month falls on a weekend.

i will get around $95 deposited on april 5th, which is a sunday, so it should come in on the 3rd or the 4th. this comes from a quarterly gst rebate; it's every three months. as this is the last one of the year, it may be a little more than that.

i'll also get about $65 deposited on the 10th, from the trillium rebate. this is a friday.

i am not eligible for the carbon tax credit because i have a student loan in default. yeah. well, those are the rules.

my rent is $750. i will also need to pay a $30 internet bill. i don't have phone or cable access - i do everything over the internet, allowing me to keep my finances dramatically down. i watch youtube; i use google voice for outgoing calls, and i pay $0.99/month and $0.01/minute for access to a mailbox at a voip account for incoming calls, who i then call back.

i am eligible for a hydro rebate of $45, which was enough to cover the cost of my bill, until the ford government changed the rates and altered the formula; after an apparent backlash, they appear to have fixed this, so i expect the rebate to cover my hydro bill again, moving forward.

i do not have a driver's license and spend $0 on gas. i have a bicycle, but i often prefer to walk.

so, my only other expense is groceries, which is about $200/month, at most, and usually less.

so, i believe i'm actually in an enviable position at this point.

if the economic consequences of this are long term, and it decreases the cost of rent, my stable disability check may be seen as an asset to landlords, which was initially the case when i moved down here. the job market was so bad here that being on disability was seen as less risky than being employed. that has changed, to my disadvantage.

so, it's in my benefit to have things get a lot worse.

but, i do hope they open the bars back up soon, or any gains will be pyrrhic.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/epg87m/coronavirus-canada-needs-a-national-rent-freeze

it really is a dramatic party reversal.

20 years ago, you would have expected republicans to think this was the beginning of an end times prophesy and jesus was coming back any day, now. democrats would have laughed at them and told them the data doesn't justify much of any response at all, and been right.

nowadays, democrats seem to be the more pliable, more controllable population - the group that does what the media tells them, and perhaps even lacks the ability to think critically for themselves. we've apparently replaced evangelical christianity with alarmism from msnbc. and, while republicans as a whole may not be following the science very well, either, they are at least demonstrating a tendency towards skepticism, which is a prerequisite towards the embrace of rationalism and the acceptance of the primacy of empiricalism.

i would have never identified as a democrat in the first place, but, like most people several rungs to the left of the political spectrum, i've long seen the democrats as a kind of lesser evil - sometimes. ok, not really; when challenged, i've generally had difficulty making the point. were the democrats actually better than the republicans in the 1990-2020 period? we all say "yes", right away. it's a lot more difficult to make the argument using actual evidence.

and, i'm hardly about to endorse donald trump.

so, i'm not "switching parties". i was always a left-leaning independent that tended to pick between the democrats and greens, and i'm still going to lean towards preferring a third party option.

but, the democrats are increasingly becoming the stupid party, culturally - they're the party of pliable idiots that just repeat what the media tells them. they're the sheeple. they're the herd....

and, the republicans have a long way to go before they're an acceptable option. but they're at least moving in the right direction.

for now, biden v trump is like obama v romney - they're both so unacceptable, and in a lot of ways so similar, that who cares who wins, really?

but, i'm increasingly of the view that the republican candidate in 2024 is going to be well to the left of the democratic candidate, and we're going to see big shifts in voter preference.

it's just the trendlines - the republicans are still way too right-wing to even consider as an option, but they are trending hard to the left as they increasingly become the party of workers; the democrats have been hugging the centre for decades, and are now beginning to move decisively to the right, as they are increasingly defined as the party of evangelical blacks.

if those trajectories hold, it won't be long before the republicans really are the lesser evil.

right now, they're both unacceptable.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816501871/poll-as-coronavirus-spreads-fewer-americans-see-pandemic-as-a-real-threat

let's imagine this, actually. let's get cybernetic.

if you have a patient that is fucked by this and is having a hard time producing their own antibodies, could you hook them up to a machine that produces antibodies and injects it into their blood?

i'm not imaging a factory, i'm imagining something biological - an antibody-producing culture in a box, and one that ideally generates energy using photosynthesis. so, you'd just hook yourself up to the lamp, or sit by the window and let the beneficial bacteria filter your blood for you - like a symbiotic, external kidney. make it a kidney shaped box...

wait for it.

that's a treatment that we might see in not too long for this, for those most fucked by it - a blood infusion.

"blood letting? leeches?"

no, raoul. blood transfusions.

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-drugs-can-antibodies-from-survivors-help/a-52806428

they never followed through with it...

there isn't one.

oops?

https://fortune.com/2020/02/18/coronavirus-sars-vaccine-development/

are they even trying to administer the sars vaccine?

well?

so,

1) while existing immunity from the 2003 sars can potentially defeat weak cases of covid-19,

2) the new virus is different enough that the immunity is very partial and really reliant on good luck. it would have to be very marginal transmission. but, that's the bulk of it, right?

3) however, it remains to be seen if existing immunity may lead to quick synergy with newly produced antibodies; that is, while existing immunity to the old sars won't beat the new virus, it very well might help dramatically. and that might explain what we're seeing in these small, isolated southeast asian countries.

ok. no.

the new virus seems to have changed it's geometry just enough that the old antibodies are going to have a hard time with it.

this is indeed very flu-like - it's the reason you need the new vaccine every year, the virus keeps shuffling it's geometry around just enough to evade the antibodies.

i repeat: this study indicates that antibodies present in the survivors of the 2003 sars outbreak should defeat the new virus, in sufficiently low concentrations.

if it's enough to stop mild cases, it's enough to stop transmission from mild cases.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.991570v1.full

so, what this is saying is that the antibody can neutralize the virus, but only at low concentrations.

when you have partial immunity like this, your body tends to overreact. what happens when you increase the concentration of the antibody?

let's hope more research is done into this.

again: it might be the actual reason there's almost no cases in hong kong, taiwan or singapore. those thug tactics shouldn't actually work....

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.991570v1.full

so, somewhat hilariously, the article being run in parallel by a few right-wing british papers seems to have picked out the wrong post in the following twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/proteinimaging

if you scroll down to mar 17th, you see the following post, which links to a spectroscopy lab:

https://twitter.com/proteinimaging/status/1239849535188488192

that lab is doing interesting work on trying to understand the geometry of the virus, which will be useful to the chemists that will need to find the right geometry to bind the virus with, if they want to create anti-viral drugs for people that can't develop their own antibodies, with or without the aid of vaccines.

but, the study that the article is about is the next twitter post down, which is a retweet and links to the following study:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.991570v1

as i said: i know the daily mail isn't a very good source. but, it did get me to where i want to get to. let me look at that more closely...

i wish the daily mail would have sourced this better; the link to the telegraph article isn't any better. i know these are sketchy sources.

but, i might have been on to something, eh?

it would explain the lack of transmission in a few of these south asian countries, if the 2003 sars outbreak was far more widespread there than previously realized.

and, as mentioned, it could be useful in skipping a few steps on developing a vaccine.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8133255/British-scientists-discover-antibody-blood-patient-fought-SARS.html

i wonder if the situation in south korea, who wasn't affected by the 2003 outbreak (unlike singapore or taiwan) is being misunderstood.

it seems like the initial spike in cases was extremely localized, as it was the result of a foolish religious ritual. but, the authorities caught it immediately and stopped it - and perhaps it was very easy to do that because it was so obvious what actually happened..

over the last week, they seem to be experiencing a second wave that actually looks quite a bit like the same kind of onset we've seen in other oecd countries, and is probably not sourced from the initial fiasco. there have been issues in nursing homes, as a consequence of people being foolish, and they seem to be acting as radiators, as they are elsewhere.

i've struggled to kind of put this in perspective as, while south korea does have a history of authoritarian government, in fact us-backed authoritarian government, it's been a democratic state since around the time that the berlin wall fell and there isn't any particular reason to be overly suspicious about the stats. yet, it is known that these kinds of measures don't work. i have a hypothesis about immunity in taiwan and singapore. but, south korea seems like this strange success case, after pushing down policies that shouldn't work.

it could be that, like japan, that initial spike and fall was misleading as it didn't actually represent the onset of community spread, and they're actually just getting started.

so, that was my laptop test post.

let me brush my teeth and hunker down on this.

i've got the battery back in the laptop to protect from random electrical losses, but it seems to be ok so long as i keep a max of 2 gb of ram in. let's hope that holds....

i want to weigh in a little on the question of targeting benefits v universality, because it's just another example of the skewed spectrum.

if you read marx, he had this idea: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. and, he actually used that to argue for something roughly equivalent to what we might call equity rather than equality, nowadays.

i believe that the exact example he used was housing, as it flips the paradigm over. in capitalism, you get whatever house that you can afford, which may mean that large families at the bottom of the income scale may live in poverty and squalor. the argument marx was making was that housing should be determined by need, rather than status. so, a single doctor may end up living in a room, while a janitor with six kids lives in a mansion - because that would reflect their needs.

and, generally, since then, leftists have argued that we should come together to ensure that we all have access to what we need, not that we should have an equality of outcome so that we can all access what we want through universal benefits. that universality would generally be more readily associated with liberalism, rather than socialism.

so, what would marx and his contemporaries (like bakunin.) think regarding how resources should be distributed on issues like tuition and health care? well, they would abolish the financial component of it in the first place, granted. but, insofar as they accepted the validity of the state at all, they would have seen it as an equalizer, to ensure that those who have less are granted access to what they need. they would not for a second accept the idea that everybody should get the same subsidy, whether they need it or not.

i'm not telling you what you should think.

but, historically speaking, means-testing is actually the more readily socialist and more explicitly left-wing policy, whereas universality is kind of more of a bourgeois liberal kind of thing.

i found the hearing request form, on the other side of the room, behind something.

there's no way i put it there.

but, thanks for bringing it back, pig.

so, i am for real mere moments from getting back to focusing on this.

the divisional court is closed for at least two more weeks, so i have no choice but to wait. if they stay closed past the third, i'm going to file a motion to have the case labeled as urgent because it could be closed for a while.

in the mean time, nobody's answering the phone.

i need to clean up the posts over the last two weeks before i get to writing those reviews. 

like most people, my weight fluctuates mildly. 

over the last ten years or so, my bmi has fallen in the 18-22 range when it's been tested. i have gained a little bit of weight since going on hormones, but it's never been over 22.

"We're seeing younger patients, one a 29-year-old, some in their 40s, 50s. " Dr. Adam Jarrett, the center's chief medical officer, told NBC News on Monday, adding he was surprised patients' ages skewed younger than he'd expected.

All but one had underlying health conditions, such as heart or lung disease, diabetes and obesity.

"I am concerned about people who are obese," Jarrett said. "I wonder about lung capacity." 

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/not-just-older-people-younger-adults-are-also-getting-coronavirus-n1160416

so, perhaps we can add obese people to the list that currently includes the elderly and those with preexisting conditions.

do i care more about fat people than i do about the elderly? hardly.

we can create a total ordering here:

beer >> the elderly > obese people

i still want to go out and play. ugh.

33% of americans aged 45-64 and 29% of americans aged 30-45 are considered obese.

again: these numbers are different from everywhere else in the world.

if you want a reason? it's no doubt that.

https://www.livescience.com/49587-obesity-rates-older-adults.html

so, there are claims that upwards of half of the patients being treated for covid-19 in the united states are under the age of 60. this is drastically different than data coming out of everywhere else in the world. how to make sense of that?

well, perhaps the first thing to point out is how unhealthy americans are - and this isn't simply another anti-yanqui screed, although it will no doubt become one if i end up ranting for long enough. you know this is mostly stream of consciousness, right? unless i pull out the math. there's really only any effort to order this if you see equations, that's the giveaway. 

but, it's true. americans have ridiculous levels of obesity, terrible blood pressure, off the chart rates of obesity, terrible heart health and even continue to smoke at high rates in some places.

the only data we have is their age. but, how many were obese? how many had heart disease? etc?

the second thing to point out is that if a lot of american cases are younger, that means they're at least doing a good job of staying away from the elderly. but, this is america. most people just stick their elderly relatives in a home and never call them ever again. whatever the reasoning, this is some cause for applause - they seem to be doing this right.

the third thing to point out is that it likely indicates a very, very high level of incidence in the general population. i don't have enough data to give you a rough calculation, but you're likely looking at hundreds of thousands or even millions of cases in the united states, alone. 

does it suggest that the virus is more deadly for young people than previously thought, or that young people should take extra precautions? well, we already knew it would be harmful for people suffering from obesity. so, i would not jump to that conclusion, no.

given the science here, and the mathematical likelihood of most people getting substantively sick, this stupid fiasco is already exceedingly difficult to justify - the vast majority of people are no doubt in a state of shock, and aren't thinking clearly. when they wake up...

if you can present an easy antibody test to demonstrate immunity and prove you're of no threat to the general public, it makes it that much harder to justify these draconian measures.

and, people pushing back against it should be denounced as anti-science luddites.

the readable version.

great.

so, test me. and, let me live again.

"but, i didn't get sick. that means i have to stay in? that's not fair, mom."

life's not fair, kid.

but, once these hit production, then you need to get the various local governments to fucking listen to the science, which has proven difficult up to this point. i may be given some bullshit collectivist line about doing my part and sacrificing for the team.

but, this is the problem with contract theory - i didn't sign up for this. i'm stuck in it. i don't want to do my part to help the community; i want out of the community. but, there's no escape - capitalism is ubiquitous. we're all stuck.

the ideal would be to get the government to produce immunity cards that you show at the border and at bars and venues. they already check ids, and they already kick out kids. so, it's not that onerous.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/new-blood-tests-antibodies-could-show-true-scale-coronavirus-pandemic

so this is what i wanted to see.

boris johnson - who i will repeat is surprisingly and refreshingly ahead of the curve on this - has labeled it a 'game changer'. and he's right.

i'd like to see some random sampling done.

but, i'd like to get tested for antibodies, myself - and i'd like to see the local authorities embrace this, and accept it as a get out of jail card. 

for example, i'd like to see them let me across the border if i test positive for antibodies.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615379/antibody-test-how-widespread-coronavirus-covid-19-really-is/

if bernie's like your unstable uncle, biden's like your senile grandfather.

hey, kids, it's...

guantanamo joe!

"uhh. congress made me do it. and that one time back in 1873, i remember that..anyways."

(pause)

that's right, kids - guantanamo joe!

here's your answer, i guess.

https://71republic.com/index.html@p=28588.html

you know, i wasn't taking tulsi gabbard very seriously, but she was supposed to be the anti-war candidate, right?

it's a little odd to see her endorse guantanamo joe.

this is really the truth.

we're all modeling. we're all guessing.

and, these lawyers (at best.) in charge of the political system don't know how to do anything except what they're told. most of them couldn't even follow the calculation i just produced - which is roughly at a grade 12 level.

it's why it's so important to have the right people in the ministries; the executive power is clueless, across the board.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

well...

how many people have the flu at any given time?

google's not helping.

2% of the people in the detro metro area would be 85,000 people infected.

there's roughly 100 known cases in all of michigan.

if 85% of the number of actual cases are unknown, a number used in models by epidemiologists, then the number of actual cases in all of michigan is pushing 700. 

(2^n)*700 = 85000 <---> 2^n = 121.43 <---->nln2 = ln(121.43) <--->
n = 6.92398108175

so, if the number of active cases doubles every week, you've got 7 weeks before you get to 2% - which doesn't include dead or recovered cases.

and, you should be able to crunch 5% or 10% or whatever else you want - but understand that this is concurrent and if you get to a number like 20% concurrent then you must be peaking. that number might actually be impossible.

but, is 5% possible? you figure that out.

lol.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51956510

it's not a question of "staring down death", it's a question of understanding the probability.

what is the probability of dying of coronavirus if you're under 50?

well, first you'd have to get it. what is the probability of that? the city that i live in has zero cases. there's some cases in michigan. if we assume there's even 1000 cases in detroit itself, and that it's evenly distributed amongst the population (a generous assumption), then there would be a 1/4200 (0.02%) chance of catching it, for every person you interact with. 

now, let's say you interact closely enough that transmission is possible with 5 people when you go out. then the probably of getting sick is equal to:

P(x1 or x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) = 

P(x1) + p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) - p(x1)*p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
.0002 + 0.9998[p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5)] =
.0002 + 0.9998[0.0002 + 0.9998(p(x3 + x4 + x5)] =
.0002 + .000199996 + .9998^2[0.0002 + .9998[p(x4 + x5)]] =
.0002 + .000199996 + 0.00019992 + .998^3[0.0002 + .0002 - .0002^2] =
.0002 + .000199996 + 0.00019992 + 0.00039972007 =
0.00099960007 =
0.09996007%

that's not 1%. that's 0.01%. so, that's your chance of getting sick right now, in michigan, in the worst case.

now, if you're under 50, you have about a 0.1% chance of dying given that you have the disease, and you pretty much must already be sick.

so, if A is the probability of getting the disease,
and B is the probability of dying from the disease,
we have

P(B|A) = 0.001, P(A) = 0.00099960007.

as P(B|A) = P(B & A)/P(A),
P(B & A) = P(B|A)P(A) = P(A & B) = P(A|B)*P(B)

so, P(B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(A|B) 

but, (A|B) = 1.

so, P(B) = P(B|A)*P(A)  = 0.00000099960007 =  0.000099960007%.

those are pretty good odds - if you're young, and the virus is not running rampant. 

what if you were over 70 today, in michigan?

then you're looking at adjusting P(B|A) to around 10%. and, then P(B) = 0.0099960007%. those are still pretty good odds, then, even if you're older.

now, what if 2% of the population were infected, instead of 0.02%?

P(x1 or x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
P(x1) + p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) - p(x1)*p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
.02 + 0.98[p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5)] =
.02 + 0.98[0.02 + 0.98(p(x3 + x4 + x5)] =
.02 + .0196 + .98^2[0.02 + .98[p(x4 + x5)]] =
.02 + .0196 + 0.019208 + .98^3[0.02 + .02 - .02^2] =
.02 + .0196 + 0.019208 + 0.0372712032 =
0.0960792032 =
9.60792032%

now, that's actually 10%. or 1000x the previous amount, roughly.

now, if you're under 50,

P(B|A) = 0.001, P(A) = 0.0960792032
so, P(B) = P(B|A)*P(A) = 0.0000960792 = 0.00960792%

those are still pretty good odds - if you're young.

but, what if you were over 70 today, in michigan?

then you're looking at adjusting P(B|A) to around 10%. and, then P(B) = 0.00960792032 = 0.9%. and, we have our scary stat - that's almost 1%.

now, what about 20% of the people being actively infected, something that's only ever going to happen just right now?

P(x1 or x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
P(x1) + p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) - p(x1)*p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5) =
.2 + 0.8[p(x2 or x3 or x4 or x5)] =
.2 + 0.8[0.2 + 0.8(p(x3 + x4 + x5)] =
.2 + .16 + .8^2[0.2 + .8[p(x4 + x5)]] =
.2 + .16 + 0.128 + .8^3[0.2 + .2 - .2^2] =
.2 + .16 + 0.128 +  0.18432=
0.67232

for healthy people, .001*.67232 = .00067232 = .067232%. but, this is an overestimate, because you probably don't have a preexisting condition. that is, you don't really have a .1% chance of dying if you're healthy...

but, the numbers for the elderly are actually pretty realistic.

.67232*.1 = .067232 = 6.7%. and, that's a very scary number.

so, let me tell you - you want the elderly to stay inside, pretty soon. as soon as immunity starts building, their chances of getting sick starts to skyrocket.

so, are you going to tell me i'm a daredevil for taking a chance that low? ok.

but, note that those are better odds than you get from most actual daredevil acts.

so, i don't really think i'm invincible. really. i'm just not as bad at math as the media is

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/psychological-reason-why-gen-x-is-taking-covid-19-pandemic-seriously.html

"So again, I'm going to call on that generation ... not only calling on you to heed what's in the guidance, but to really ensure that each and every one of you are protecting each other," she said. "We cannot have these large gatherings that continue to occur throughout the country for people who are off work to then be socializing in large groups and spreading the virus.

no, deborah.

the best way we protect each other is by building immunity. that's how this works; it's how it's worked for millions of years.

protecting the weak means getting them out of the way.

there isn't a choice. and you're just wasting time denying it.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/health/us-coronavirus-case-updates-thursday/index.html

is it just me, or does that fauci guy sound like a pack a day smoker?

there are 0 confirmed cases in the windsor-essex region.

https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/windsor-braces-for-heavy-hit-from-unprecedented-border-closure/wcm/e0884845-04de-4797-abf3-b8e6c42a98db/

well.

there's an incentive to get tested.

hey dougy, how's about sweetening the deal a little? 

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/ndp-calls-on-alberta-government-to-protect-renters-match-federal-stimulus-to-fight-covid-19/

some more actual science. and, this is a prominent publisher.

this one basically says that suppression is futile, because there's millions of undocumented cases and there's nothing you can do about it. 

listen - i'm not a doctor. but i get the math intuitively. and this was immediately obvious....

these hamfisted lockdowns are just needlessly harming people's livelihoods. 

you need to lock the old people up. anything else is just sacrificing them to baal.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221

i'm also going to ask another question.

hong kong is being presented as a model of success as a result of it's draconian response. "look", the fascists say, "hong kong is a totalitarian state, and they're not sick. they're keeping the trains running on time!".

well, there's some leaps of logic there. we don't know that this is the reason. because....

we just went over that one.

i have another suggestion. hong kong was also ground zero for the last sars outbreak, you'll recall. 

is there some immunity there from that? is that it?

who else got hit with sars in 2003?

taiwan & singapore, mostly.

hrmmn. they've been basically spared by this, haven't they? could it be that there's some immunity there, too?

you could test this - you'd have to do a random sample of people in hong king and test them for antibodies.

if that's the case, it's some good news for the future, because it means the next time this happens it won't be so bad.

i would predict that it is highly likely that you'll see some further hotspots develop in china fairly soon, perhaps on the other side of the country.

the reality is that there are likely millions of people already infected in europe. with 3,000 deaths in italy, and a fatality rate of 0.6%, a simple calculation suggests over 500,000 actual cases in italy alone.

there may be substantial levels of immunity building in northern italy right now, as well.

so, if they lock the country down right now and the numbers start coming down two weeks from now, do you jump to the conclusion that it was a lock down?

and, i'm going to leave you hanging with this for a few more sentences, because you had to know this was coming. i've been criticizing the scientific response by governments for a while now - basically calling them all a bunch of stupid thugs acting like goons in trying to strong-arm their way through this - and there's a few phrases that are inevitably going to end up in any such critique. really, it's sort of amazing that we haven't gotten here yet, although i foreshadowed it a little bit with the pissing in the flower bed analogy, and the suggestion that the efficacy of an overly broad measure doesn't justify the overly broad actions.

so, where are we going? say it out loud, kids. you know this one...

correlation does not imply causality!

you have to work that out. i'd be just as wrong to deduce it must be immunity. but, i have my views. and, what i've seen suggests that the studies being done right now are really leaning in my direction.

so, this might burn out in europe relatively soon.

but, don't deduce it's because of the nazi lockdown. it could very well be that the thing is actually out of control, and cases end up coming down due to immunity reaching an inflection point.

99%, huh?

i can't hit that link, so take this for what it's worth.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says

this is some actual science.

it suggests that the mortality rate in china is probably about the same as the published rate in south korea - somewhere around .08%.

it also suggests that roughly 20% of the population in the affected province may have contracted this disease by the end of january. 

the truth may be that china may be approaching herd immunity.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.12.20022434v2

do i believe that china just stopped transmission?

not really.

they more likely stopped publishing data.

when iran was suspected of fudging the numbers, we were able to pick it out through statistical analysis. i would be highly skeptical of claims coming from the politburo until they can be verified independently.

but, i would suspect that so many people in china may have come in contact with this at this point that they may have substantial immunity building up in the population. 

if the lockdown helped at all, it would have been in keeping vulnerable groups inside - but they could have done that with less severe restrictions on the general population. if you piss all over the wall in a drunken fit and you manage to moisten the flower bed, that's not any particular measure of success in the task of watering the flowers; citing overly broad measures to contain a small group doesn't justify them, that's just poor logic.

"you think having a beer is more important than saving old people?"

well, beer's done me more good in my life. i might say that, if pushed on it.

but, that's not what i'm actually saying.

what i'm saying is that the science doesn't uphold these policies and in some ways even argues against them - what's driving this is puritanism, not science.

if it was actually going to work, then maybe we could have this debate, and i might actually pick beer over the elderly, if it came down to it. but, we're not actually there - it won't work.

if i were to file for a judicial review against these laws, that would be the basis - there is no logical connection between the policy of banning concerts and the desired outcome of reducing transmission. and, that is my position: this will not work.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-220.html

the managers at that retirement home in bc should be charged with criminal negligence (leading to murder) for not taking the clear and obviously required step of banning all visitors.

and, they should shut the place down immediately.

this is not a country-wide emergency that affects everybody.

this is a crisis in a small group of vulnerable people that require targeted attention and aren't even getting it, from what i can tell.

and, our governments at every level and on both sides of the border have failed horribly in their botched response to something that should have been very simple to deal with.

it's the only place in the country that should clearly, unquestionably be locked down, and they're letting people in.

but, you're banned from buying a beer in toronto.

stupid.

i saw a report on cbc the other day that actually suggested they were letting people into this retirement facility in bc, where 6 of the 9 country wide deaths have occurred.

well? this outcome is predictable, when you don't follow the science.

there has been one death in ontario so far, a 70+ year-old who died before he even got his test results back, because he waited too long to get treatment.

there is one death in a retirement home in quebec, and a few in retirement homes in bc.

i'm not saying that isn't unfortunate and whatever.

but it's hardly indicative of an emergency in the province, or suggestive of the need for the kinds of draconian measures that have been pushed down.

really, it demonstrates the point - the only people dying are in care facilities. so, lock the doors to the care facilities and let everybody else carry on.

and, now they're resorting to fox news style disinformation to justify their unscientific, puritanical, fascistic dictates.

it's sad. really.

when's the fucking election, again?

https://globalnews.ca/news/6697273/ontario-coronavirus-30s-ventilators/

ok.

i'm getting the laptop back up, now.

and, i've got a month worth of posts to clean yup, again. lol.

this feels like a fascist coup, in slow motion.

is this the stand?

or is it more like the handmaid's tale?

well? they canceled drinking. what's next?

hail whitmer!

hail!

all hail rev whitmer!

this is not science.

this is puritanism.

more idiocy.

These restrictions do not apply to the following locations: office buildings, grocery stores, markets, food pantries, pharmacies, tribal casinos, drug stores, and providers of medical equipment and supplies, health care facilities, residential care facilities, congregate care facilities, and juvenile justice facilities, warehouse and distribution centers, and industrial and manufacturing facilities.

so, going to a bar and having a beer or seeing a concert is not allowed because of concerns of transmission to the elderly.

but, going to the grocery store and standing in line at the pharmacy after a long day at work, and then visiting your 90 year-old grandmother in the residential care facility is absolutely permitted, and perhaps even encouraged if i get the messaging right - you don't want her to get lonely, do you?

you think that's following scientific recommendations? you think that's based on science?

no. it's based on stupid.

https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/content/news/Report-Al-Michigan-bars-restaurants-ordered-to-close-Monday-568826061.html

so, the latest stupid thing is moving students out of their dorms and sending them home.

where are these 20-somethings most likely to interact with people they might infect? at school, where they can communicate with each other, and build up immunity? or at home, in their communities, where they're likely to interact with their parents and other older members of the community?

these are universities, too.

this is really, truly a clear demonstration of ubiquitous mass stupidity. everywhere you look, all you can see is stupid, for miles around.

of course it's not working.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/europe/italy-coronavirus-lockdown-intl/index.html

one wonders what the outcome would have been if the constitution hadn't failed.

would there be a more integrated social payer system? would italy have had better access to medical supplies when it needed them?

but, i hope that this is the narrative that takes hold - that border closures are making the problem worse, not better. 

https://time.com/5805783/coronavirus-european-union/

does cold weather kill viruses?

yes. sort of.

first, viruses tend to react badly to water. when you hear about water-borne viruses, they tend to either come from a host like a mosquito (who like standing water) or they end up embedded in a medium like animal feces. viruses are just protein - they will dissolve in running water. you should still use soap, as the ph reaction helps increase the efficacy, but water alone will kill the bulk of it.

second, while viruses may freeze in cold weather, the thaw process kills the bulk of them. and, this is where some shift in mindset is necessary.

anything that kills a virus will kill a percentage of the amount of it. so, if you wash your hands in lukewarm water, you'll kill most of it, but you'd have to do it for a really long time to kill all of it. and, if you increase the temperature, you'll kill more of it. and, if you add soap you'll kill even more of it. but, even washing your hands vigorously with soap in hot water for a long time is still probably only going to get 95% of the shit off of them - because your hands are filthy, no matter how hard you try.

you hear about viruses being thawed out in the ice, but it's the epsilon that's left. like washing your hands, the freeze-thaw process will only kill about 95% of the virus, leaving that little bit for scientists to go looking for.

so, is cold weather effective at killing viruses? yes - if cold means below freezing, and you're talking about surface contact or airborne particles. obviously, that doesn't hold once you get inside. but, the effectiveness of freezing weather is basic chemistry. and, don't listen to the people suggesting otherwise.

this is a catastrophe.

and, you shouldn't blame foreigners - you should blame your own government.

i need to create and send out some more documents tonight before i hunker down and get to work.

and, what's worse?

the government is no doubt going to blame it's botched strong-arm, authoritarian policies on a public that wouldn't comply.

no.

this is a failure in public policy, a failure at the level of government, which chased unicorns and insisted on absurd levels of complexity in it's response, instead of being rational and doing the simplest, most effective thing.

we could have just quarantined the elderly.

but, no.

we decided on Strong Leadership instead.

and, this is what we get for it.

and, let's be clear for context - what's happening in the market is not similar to 2008 or 1987. not any more.

the infamous 1929 crash wiped out 25% of the value of the market.

we've lost around 35% so far.

this is the worst crash, ever.

but, the money's still there, and then some. so, if you can get confidence up, it should come back - creating fools out of a lot of people who are going to end up selling low and buying high.

if you were to transfer me $5000 tomorrow, i'd say "thanks" and then wait for the bars to reopen to spend it.

what else am i going to do with it?

i don't oppose this, don't misunderstand me.

but, instead of quarantining the people that are at risk and allowing immunity to build, which would require minimal disruption and be highly effective, even if it might be seen as distasteful to family-first type conservatives, we are going to:

(1) shut down the entire economy for months, thereby

(2) creating massive levels of unemployment and then

(3) borrow billions of dollars from central banks at high interest rates to

(4) essentially put everybody on welfare.

we're actually doing this.

it's insane.

my gst rebates come in for april and july, so i'm not sure if he misspoke and i should expect the increase in april (or july) or if i should expect a separate check in may.

i'll take it. but, i'm going to have to wait for the economy to open back up before i have anywhere to spend it.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-unveils-82-billion-in-aid-tax-deferrals-for-coronavirus/

i really think that the boomers need to shut up and listen to young people, on this: our patience is not infinite, and we won't abide by these rules for very long.

maybe this is the event where the boomers lose control...maybe it's a turning point. it's happened before. look up the peasants' revolt, which happened as a consequence of the plague.

well? if you're going to lock us down indefinitely, you should expect a revolt. duh?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/politics/young-people-coronavirus-caution-white-house/index.html

the divisional court appears to be completely closed.

alright.

i'm not happy about any of this, and i hope that the government falls over it.

and, i just checked the exchange rate. yikes.

if it wasn't clear 20 years ago, it should be now: there should be a concerted effort by the feds to diversify revenues.

we could end up with a credit rating hit, which is what actually matters on the issue of deficits. the instinct will no doubt be to scale back on transition funding. but, dammit, look at the data...

if we had transitioned 20 years ago, right? 

right?

alas...

we might have to take the credit rating hit. if the saudis keep producing at these rates, the oil sands aren't going to get us anywhere any time soon.

a lot of the kids that carry this have no symptoms.

you have no idea if they have it or not.

and, what is that going to do to some of these people?

imagine this.

first, the government cancels the schools and daycares, leaving you to scramble to do something with your kids. so, you call your retired mom. of course she says yes.

three weeks later, you're grappling with the fact that your kids killed your parents by giving them the disease - and you organized it. how do you process that?

and, who is responsible for it?

the kids are only dangerous when they're around seniors. why not address the actual problem, instead of just banning everything like an idiot nazi?

so, they have closed both daycares and schools in ontario...

expect this to happen soon: a sharp rise in cases where grandparents contract the disease from their grandchildren, after needing to step in as emergency babysitters.

if you work in a bar, though, maybe now's a good time to put up a babysitting ad?

and, if you leave people in a situation where they have to go to work and can't find child care, what are they going to do with the kids?

they're going to drop them at their parents - which is probably the absolute worst possible outcome, and the thing that should be most strenuously avoided.

something else they're doing in the uk is allowing exclusive access to grocery stores for seniors during specific hours. this is a smart compromise - so long as you don't then shuffle them on to the bus.

i'm sorry to say it, but this is the government that appears to be developing smart, novel ideas and showing real "leadership" in implementing them, no doubt in spite of the prime minister.

there's different arguments about the schools.

one is that you don't want the kids spreading it. but, i'm not sure that keeping them out of school is really going to help. are you going to cancel daycares, too? rather, this would strike me as something you can't really stop.

the argument i initially presented was that you want to keep the teachers, many of whom are older. away from the kids. but, maybe you can deal with that with substitute teachers. or, maybe a few can get the hint and fucking retire already.

a third argument is that it might actually backfire, as if you do cancel daycares and schools then you're all of a sudden stuck with a high percentage of nurses that have kids that need to stay home to deal with. this is a good point that i hadn't thought of, but it could be dealt with by opening daycares that have youngish workers. or, you could just send the older teachers home...

my understanding is that the uk is kind of dealing with a mess with this right now, as they don't want to close the schools due to the third argument, but are finding that staff levels are too low to keep a lot of them open.

and, this is maybe the only country that is doing the right thing in forcibly quarantining the elderly.

new york is also facing a lot of pushback in keeping the schools open, i would suspect under argument three, because they no doubt realize the child care mayhem it would create, which could potentially exacerbate a looming crisis.

i just don't understand why so many people think it's necessary to take these ridiculous steps, when it's so easy to just quarantine the old.

stop.

the idiots shut the economy down over something that could have been dealt with by volunteer staff at nursing homes.

they need to be held accountable for this...

i want to see an opposition party somewhere stand up and be honest about this and start nailing their government for mismanaging the situation and creating this ridiculous mess.

so, i know the divisional court is adjourned until the first week of april.

i don't know exactly what that means. they're slow to answer the phone this morning...

does it mean that the date i have scheduled for june 23rd needs to be rescheduled? or only that issues between now and april are affected?

again: if the purpose of this is to stop me from posting on the internet, it's not working is it?

it's kind of making things worse, don't you think?

if you had left my laptop alone, i'd probably be done january, 2014 by now and on to period 3...

The federal government is working on a $1 trillion coronavirus stimulus package to try and rescue the U.S. economy from the abyss opened by the coronavirus pandemic. 

no.

the problem was not created by the virus - the problem was created by the ridiculous overreactions of state governments.

let's be clear what the crisis is here - it's a crisis of authoritarianism, a pandemic of statist tyranny.

as it is, i can't go out for five minutes without having to reimage the machine.

it's really killing my workflow.

so, it seems like i'll be inside until at least the end of the month.

after the entry in the apartment yesterday afternoon, i feel the need to reimage the laptop. i wanted to do that last night, but i nodded off when i got out of the shower.

if i can stay inside for a lengthy period, perhaps i can get things back to normal for a bit.

i might have to wait for the carnage to run it's course a little to see if i can take advantage of any decrease in rental prices.

if the school year is canceled early, and there are restrictions on reentry for international students in the long run, that should drive down the cost of rent quite a bit.

i wonder what the rental market looks like right now.

hrmmn.

in canada, we have something called the oakes test that asks whether restrictions on constitutional rights are justified in a free and democratic society.

while the science does not uphold the efficacy of closing mass events, and i would rule that such restrictions are not justified under the oakes test, the science is absolutely clear that discrimination on the basis of age would be.

i have no interest in strong leaders. but, if you want to talk about what leadership would look like, it would look something like that - it would be unpopular, and it might lead to a collapse in the government in the long run, but it's the only way to save their lives.

pretending you can stop the spread of it is just signing their death warrant, and destroying the lives of everybody else in the process.

what we are doing is the worst, and the dumbest, approach - it will not save anybody's life, and it will have catastrophic economic effects in the form of a wave of negative externalities.

in the process, ~.6-.8% of us, almost entirely over the age of 70, are going to die, if we don't take drastic steps to prevent them from interacting with the general population, which we seem to be unwilling to do.

it's not natural selection when you're talking about old people dying. natural selection has to do with reproduction, which they've already passed their ability to do. but, the development of new viruses is a very natural and normal response in organisms that are experiencing overpopulation. 

you're not helping anybody by denying the facts, which are uncomfortable, but need to be confronted and reacted to.

i don't have any family in the city i live in.

my father died of cancer in 2013. his father died in the late 80s or early 90s (i remember it, but i can't place it in time). his mother moved to british columbia a few years later in an attempt to start a new life and asked her children not to contact her, although some contact was reestablished many years later; i have no relationship with her, by her choice. i'd guess most of my father's siblings are probably dead by now, as they were all in very poor health, but i've maintained no contact with any of them at all.

my mother is in her 60s and has smoked since she was 12. she's a sitting duck. i don't want anything to do with her, generally, but i wouldn't go anywhere near her right now - she should lock herself inside of the house until christmas. she can order groceries online. i don't have a relationship with her father. her mother is now 80, and has apparently been moved into a care facility due to a struggle with dementia. i would avoid her like i have the plague....

so, i don't have to deal with this.

but, i would not be stupid about it. i would be very clear: i would tell them i am a clear and present danger to their health, and i can't go near them for their own safety. and, if they don't understand then that's too fucking bad.

i'm not going to coddle them with lies and delusions to stop them from crying, and kill them in the process.

because i know better: attempts to prevent this from spreading are futile. we're going to have to build immunity, and we will.

as hitchens would say, we're all a bunch of dumb primates.

and, we seem insistent on dying with our families, at the behest of all logic. we will ignore, pervert or dismantle the evidence to uphold the primacy of family.

and, we're going to suffer for our stupidity.

and, then we'll blame it on sin. because we're really that dumb. wait for it...

we have a simple, effective, achievable strategy in front of us.

but, we won't do it. 

we insist on demonstrations of mass stupidity, instead.

viruses don't care about equality. they don't kill people equally, in equal proportions or as a response to affirmative action programs. 

they're very mean, and they're not fair.

smallpox was totally racist.

so, the absolute dumbest way to approach a virus is by resorting to these liberal appeals to universalism, because the virus is a predator - it will pick off the weak. 

we are going to have to discriminate against people on the basis of age and other things to save their lives and, increasingly, it would appear, to stop the society from collapsing.

we could simply put a ban on communicating with old people, but, instead we're canceling everything and shutting down the border, so that we don't inconvenience them, or something. it's retarded...

we're retarded. collectively. there's your statement of solidarity - we're all a bunch of fucking idiots.

she's right.

and, the world's full of idiots that want to prioritize emotions and positive thinking over science and facts.

if you care about your immunosuppressed 23 year-old gay eskimo friend that much, then tell them to stay inside and avoid crowds of healthy young people that are building immunity to a new virus, as has happened throughout our biological history. don't tell me i have to suffer to save the lives of people i don't care about.

i mean, this is literally trying to stop natural selection from running it's course. if you die from this before you can breed, then you lost the game of biological roulette - you were too weak to beat it, and you died. that's how evolution works, and sitting around and crying in your church or mosque about it isn't going to change reality. 

https://globalnews.ca/news/6691201/coronavirus-vanessa-hudgens-under-fire/

i repeat: you will not get sick because of foreigners.

it is your friends & family that will make you sick.

ugh.

no.

you don't want to close the american border. you want to undo the previous restrictions. 

the virus is everywhere. it's not coming from out of the country. it's not coming from foreign lands. it's right here. 

your neighbours and friends and family members are far more likely to get you sick than random people from out of the country. you have to mentally undo this media framing and figure out how to deal with reality....

https://globalnews.ca/news/6693593/coronavirus-canada-united-states-travel-ban/

so, they foolishly shut down the economy, with no evidence that it would make any difference, then they get shocked at the market crashing after they scared everybody into being stupid, and have to scramble to bail everybody and everything out.

and, people just swallow it. eager to help. clueless. but affable.

idiots.

so, i actually sent something to my landlord.

it turns out he has footage; i'm on camera when i come in and out. fancy that. i didn't know that...

i'm not particularly upset about it.

but, he checked it and said nobody came up to the door when i was gone. and, yet - clearly, somebody was in here.

i haven't seen the footage, myself.

so, what we learn from this is:

(1) there's footage. supposedly.

(2) the landlord is probably a cop. which i already knew.

i think he was legit gone. it was the stinky female upstairs that must have snuck down and swigged on my vodka.

as was the case with the smoking (which he also denied), let's hope that saying something is enough to change things. let's hope that's all i had to do...

if not, the next step is setting up a webcam in here.

i've been saying for years that i'd rather see bernie quarterbacking the senate, anyways.

so, i had to get some things today and while my bed at least isn't gross today, i have noticed a number of weird things.

- it seems like somebody was rifling through my cupboards

- my 26er has decreased in volume

- the power bar for the modem, which i turned off before i left, has twisted sideways

- somebody turned my fridge off, oddly

- somebody was sorting through some items

- i think somebody took some of my coffee, too.

again - they're clearly looking for something, and i don't know what it is.

are they looking for drugs? i don't do drugs...

i'm going to send my landlord an email.

in the meantime, stopping events that are populated by young people is just reducing immunity. what we need to do is:

1) keep the old folks locked up.

2) let the young 'uns fuck each other on the street like it's saturnalia.

i know this contradicts your instincts towards the need to control.

but, you're wrong...

this study is backing up my point about the futility of mitigation. but, if mitigation is futile, surely suppression is even less likely.

i keep saying this, but you know what i actually get out of reading this? it's that capacity is way, way, way too low. 

these studies are all about how to reduce the case load to align with existing resources. they started with "flattening the curve", which was obviously naive, and which this study debunks. but, then they go back to suppression - having apparently forgotten that the whole reasoning behind mitigation was that suppression was seen as unrealistic.

i guess you need to let them work it out, because the bean counters are vicious, they really are. but, i'm telling you right now that the only way to deal with this is to get that red line up by increasing the system's capacity, and they're just wasting time trying to fuck with the curve.

you know what i'm reminded of? chamberlin trying to argue with hitler. you know what flattening the curve is? it's giving hitler austria, hoping that's enough. but, this virus won't stop at the sudentenland, and it won't stop in poland - it wants lebensraum, and it will keep coming.

we need to ramp up spending. and we need to stop wasting time arguing about it.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

like i say: if i owned a bar or restaurant, i would keep it open and take the government to trial over it.

if you want to stay home, that's your choice. you do't have to come in.

and, if you're in a vulnerable group, you probably should.

but, the majority shouldn't have to put their lives on hold to protect a minority of seniors and smokers.

all hail reverend ford!

hallelujah!

banning bars and leaving grocery stores open?

not coherent. not evidence-based.

you're far more likely to bump into a vulnerable person in line at costco than you are at an edm show.

rather, that's a right-wing government targeting scapegoats and blaming sinners for the spread of disease in old testament fire and brimstone fashion, whether it's conscious or not.

so, an old person catches the virus in a hospital as a consequence of a sick person coming into contact with them - a situation we know is a problem.

and, instead of announcing measures to segregate and isolate old people, we announced a ban on the sinful behaviour that occurs in bars and restaurants.

because we're stupid.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/coronavirus-covid-19-ontario-tuesday-1.5500006

i got a lot of sleep this morning. maybe i did catch this thing, after all.

i don't feel sick enough to call anybody...

i want to be clear about what i'm saying about these border closures and bans on events.

these actions are not driven by the science. the science suggests that this disease is harmless for the vast majority of people, and any authoritarian action should be restricted to very specific groups. history also tells us that when you try to take broad actions like this to protect special interest groups like seniors and smokers, it always backfires.

so, we're not closing borders on the advice of science; the scientists would tell us to avoid doing that.

what the border closures are is a statement of nationalism, under the direction of donald trump, who sees the world with an us vs them mentality. we close the border to the asians and the europeans, because they're not like us; we keep them open to the americans and british because we're allies. this allows the president to blame the problem on foreigners, rather than on the inefficiencies of capitalism. our government is unfortunately towing the line on this, and what we've learned over the last few years is that this is what we should expect from the liberals, moving forward - they'll do everything right, until dipshit donald calls and ruins everything, at which point they will immediately fall in line and do what they're told. sadly, demands from the white house, no matter how stupid, seem to trump virtually everything.

likewise, the focus on bars is the kind of thing you'd expect from a fundamentalist government. it's the kind of logic you'd expect from somebody like mike pence. we're sick because of the sinners, and god is punishing us for it, so let's shut down all of this debauchery and go to church, instead. but, there's no actual evidence that bars or restaurants are spreading this at all - and quite a bit of reason to think that organized religion has already been a major problem, and will become an even bigger problem moving forward, due to it's tendency to coerce vulnerable populations in to give away their money. 

the science says we should be doing very specific, targeted things; we're not basing our reaction on the science, we're taking broad and often irrational steps, because we're basing it on concepts of ethnic nationalism and self-righteous religious retribution. 

and, most of us seem to be too stupid to realize it.

if we continue to ignore the science and give in to kneejerk authoritarianism that deludes us into feeling safe, or makes us feel like we made correct "moral" decisions, this is going to run out of control very quickly.

and, we will have the hamfisted authoritarians, who tried to take control of the situation and merely made it worse by doing so, to blame.

no, really.

i had a hearing request form down here for the court date on june 23rd. i don't need it for anything any longer because it's run it's purpose - the date is scheduled. but, i had some phone numbers on it for people in the divisional court office, so i left it beside my bed for easy reference.

why would they take that?

people are going to die because of this.

this isn't trivial. it's not patting dipshit donald on the head. it's not smiling and nodding. this is bad fucking policy, and it's going to have some bad fucking consequences.

you know what probably happened?

you've probably got dipshit donald calling trudeau up in a dejected rage, unable to even get boris johnson on the phone, and falling back on the only country that cannot and will not reject him, looking for some kind of ally in his attempt to blame the problem on foreigners.

and, we caved.

because we had to.

because nafta.

i can imagine it. trump looking for some kind of reassurance, somebody, anybody that will align in policy - trying to create a fortress north america, to wall itself off.

and, it no doubt came with a threat. because that's how you treat your friends, when you're america - you threaten them. canada can find itself in or out. 

so, we end up locked in the room with this contagious, dying patient that's running his mouth off and won't stop, because we know our finances depend on it....

how did we get ourselves into this?

and, canada?

how do we get ourselves out of it?

for canada to ban everybody except americans is basically equivalent to a healthy person locking themselves in a room full of sick people.

and, we no doubt had to do it to save the economy from a narcissistic idiot that destroys everything he goes near.

can we get a quadrupling of that spending on ventilators? if we're stuck with this...

i'm not calling for a ban on travel from the united states. i've been clear: i oppose travel restrictions as a means to slow the spread of viruses, because it's anti-science and it makes things worse. if you ban travel from america, they'll start sneaking in through the forests, instead. they'll drive to mexico and fly in. you laugh. but, if they need to get in, they will.

but, i'm fully cognizant of where the problem is right now, and it's inside of the united states, not outside of it.

you couldn't write a worse policy if you tried.