Pretty accurate prediction

Remember how I wrote a month ago that the RMIT economists' urgent book on how to "unfreeze" the economy would say this:

It will be 200 pages devoted to the urgent need for the Australian governments to:

a.  deregulate everything, as fast as possible;
b.  start using blockchain technologies, they're terrific;
c.  urgently reduce all government spending on things other than the temporary workforce support, with public broadcasting getting special mention;
d.  reduce taxes.

Done and dusted.

Sinclair Davidson posts today the book cover, with this:

My point a is their point 1.

Their point 2 and 4 is part of my point 1.

I would bet that blockchain turns up in their points 3 and 4.

My point d is bound to be part of their 3.

The only thing I missed is perhaps the point 5 - but it's an old small government trope that decentralising power our of federal government hands always works best.   Just like Kansas showed with their failed experiment with Laffernomics, hey?

I think I was close enough to claim vindication.  And I did save everyone the time.

PS:   I am also reminded of that bit in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy wherein Zapod proposes replacing Arthur's brain with a microchip that just says "What?" "I don't understand" and "Where's the tea?"  and no one would know the difference.  The three catchphrases for Sinclair would be "Lower Taxes!" "Blockchain!"  "Deregulate!" (and an occasional "Free Speech!")

Counting the flu

I found a useful discussion of the complexity of assigning cause of death to things like the flu or COVID-19 at an Allahpundit post at Hot Air.  Interestingly, he pointed to a post by an American doctor at Scientific American, who pointed out that the number of cases the CDC assigns to the fly is a very rubbery figure itself:

When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case.

Based on the CDC numbers though, I should have seen many, many more. In 2018, over 46,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Over 36,500 died in traffic accidents. Nearly 40,000 died from gun violence. I see those deaths all the time. Was I alone in noticing this discrepancy?

I decided to call colleagues around the country who work in other emergency departments and in intensive care units to ask a simple question: how many patients could they remember dying from the flu? Most of the physicians I surveyed couldn’t remember a single one over their careers. Some said they recalled a few. All of them seemed to be having the same light bulb moment I had already experienced: For too long, we have blindly accepted a statistic that does not match our clinical experience.

The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts. 

That really blows up the comparisons made by those on the Right who try to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 by comparing it to (say) 60,000 a year allegedly dying of the flu ("and we don't close down the economy", yells Creighton.)

I think it should be clear that the true way of assessing the seriousness of a pandemic has to be looking at "excess deaths" compared to same period, and those figures are not looking good.  The Financial Times has been doing good work in that regard.

Adam has a fixation

As someone in the thread notes:

More rigourously:

 And:

I have my doubts

Just saw this on Twitter:

and while there are not many comments following it yet, I really have my doubts about the accuracy of that figure for renting in Tokyo.

Why?  Because I like to watch the ever cheerful Paolo from Tokyo on Youtube (and his other channel Tokyo Zebra) , and he talked a lot about renting (or buying) an apartment in Tokyo recently, and I am pretty sure it was no where near as cheap as this guy claims.   (There are a lot of extra costs that you don't get in Australia, as well.) 

I don't have time to watch and check now, but I'm pretty I am right about this...

Update:  yeah, I just checked on this video, where he and his wife are looking for a new 2 bedroom rental, and the cost seems to be around $2700 - $2900USD a month.  This site indicates you can do much cheaper, but I still suspect that as an average, $1000 a month is just not right, at all.

Speaking of Right wing cranks...

...don't you love the way they like to proclaim they live in a bubble world of narrow Right Wing information as if that's a good thing.

Steve Kates notes:

His final line is “Television, like most things, seems to be more fun when it’s Australian”. Since the only television I watch is Bolt and The Outsiders, from that perhaps small sample I could not agree more.

And, as I have said a million times before - you basically can blame Rupert Murdoch for this, because he found creating a bubble world of "only trust us" was a good way to make money.   

Right wing hyperbolic whiner of the day award...

...goes to Andrew Bolt, who wins it probably every second day:

And amongst other Right wing twittery, James Morrow is just so dumb, stupid and transparent here.   After obviously advocating for this drug only because he has to defend Trump at every opportunity, he tries to pretend that he wasn't the one politically motivated to talk up an unverified treatment: 

Yeah, sure.

That's a lot of oil floating on the oceans

Apparently, this is the complete picture (generated from where, I don't know):

Putin has problems

According to this Vox article, the COVID-19 outbreak is getting worse in Russia and Putin acknowledges it.

And in other "so you thought you could do better than America in sorting this out?" news:

President Vladimir Putin is letting his impatience show with Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad, who isn’t proving as grateful for being kept in power by Russian intervention in his country’s brutal civil war as the Kremlin leader needs him to be.

Consumed at home by the twin shocks of collapsing oil prices and the coronavirus epidemic, and eager to wrap up his Syrian military adventure by declaring victory, Putin is insisting that Assad show more flexibility in talks with the Syrian opposition on a political settlement to end the nearly decade-long conflict, said four people familiar with Kremlin deliberations on the matter.

Assad’s refusal to concede any power in return for greater international recognition and potentially billions of dollars in reconstruction aid prompted rare public outbursts against the Syrian president this month in Russian publications with links to Putin.

“The Kremlin needs to get rid of the Syrian headache,” said Alexander Shumilin, a former Russian diplomat who runs the state-financed Europe-Middle East Center in Moscow. “The problem is with one person -- Assad -- and his entourage.”

The things you learn

Well, as readers would know, I have been looking at various Buddhist related stuff recently, which is how I found the (not actually Buddhist, but Indian) Spiritual Science Research Foundation.

Some of things I have learnt there are pretty remarkable:

That's handy to know.   Next:

Huh.

And as for the spiritual realm and its effect on us all, the pie graphs makes it all very scientific and convincing:

There you go.

Explains a lot

Just putting it out there

In my experience, the most arrogant, reluctant to help anyone with a genuine enquiry about something they know about, businesses in Australia are body corporate management companies.  

They seem to rely on having fixed, multi-year contracts to the body corporate as meaning they don't have to take calls or provide a skerrick of information to anyone (including the residents of the building) other than the current Chairman of the body corporate.  

They are terrible.

COVID-19 depressing news

Noted this morning:

Singapore reported 528 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Tuesday (Apr 28), bringing the national total to 14,951.

The vast majority of the new cases are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its preliminary update.

In a later update, MOH said there were 10 cases in the community, of which seven were Singapore citizens or permanent residents; there were also two work pass holders and one visit pass holder who were infected.

And also on the CNA website:

Rome:  Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 382 on Tuesday (Apr 28), against 333 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the total of people infected since the start of the outbreak topped 200,000.

The daily tally of new infections stood at 2,091, higher than the 1,739 recorded on Monday.

Over in Indonesia, no one really knows what is going on, it seems:

The actual number of COVID-19 deaths in Indonesia may be substantially higher than officially reported as several regions have recorded hundreds of fatalities among patients under surveillance (PDPs), who are suspected of having contracted the highly contagious coronavirus.

Patients under surveillance refer to people with COVID-19 symptoms who have not been confirmed as having the disease, meaning that they are waiting either to be tested or for their test results to come back.

The central government's daily count of fatalities, at 773 as of Tuesday, does not include all PDPs who have died.

No one seems to understand why the UK has done so badly, too.  Now they are worried about kids getting a dangerous condition possibly related to the virus:

More than a dozen children have fallen ill with a new and potentially fatal combination of symptoms apparently linked to Covid-19, including a sore stomach and heart problems.

The children affected appear to have been struck by a form of toxic shock syndrome. All have been left so seriously unwell that they have had to be treated in intensive care.

At least one has received extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment, which is used when someone’s life is at risk because they can no longer breathe for themselves.

NHS bosses are so concerned that they have written to doctors alerting them to the emergence of these cases and asked them to urgently refer any children with similar symptoms to hospital.

On the upside:  it's good to live in Australia, which does not seem to be getting the international attention it deserves for having apparently taken effective action that looks likely to all but eliminate it.

Update:   why are Iranians so prone to the spread of crank rumours?:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The false belief that toxic methanol cures the coronavirus has seen over 700 people killed in Iran, an official said Monday.

That represents a higher death toll than so far released by the Iranian Health Ministry.

An adviser to the ministry, Hossein Hassanian, said that the difference in death tallies is because some alcohol poisoning victims died outside of hospital.

“Some 200 people died outside of hospitals”, Hassanian told The Associated Press.

Alcohol poisoning has skyrocketed by ten times over in Iran in the past year, according to a government report released earlier in April, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As Hillary said "what difference does it make?"

I don't quite understand the Australian bipartisan take on an independent inquiry into the origin of the current pandemic, with its big question mark over the role of China.

Doesn't everyone just take it as a given that the Chinese government is not to be entirely trusted in such matters? It's a fantasy to think they would pay reparations for not disclosing details sooner, or trying to cover it up, or whatever they did.   And even if there was something really big to be found  (escape of a bioweapon, for example, which no one serious seems to believe), the rest of the world is more likely to discover that via espionage or secret sources that would never expose themselves in an independent inquiry.

It just seems pretty pointless to me...

The tortilla project

Huh.  I was "cooking" (toasting in a dry frying pan) some pre-made corn totillas the other night  from a Mexican meal kit, and thinking how much I liked them.  I didn't realise that making your own just involves a special cornmeal flour, and water:

Homemade Tortillas Only Take Two Ingredients

Tortillas start with a dough made from regular old tap water and masa harina, a corn flour made from kernels that have been nixtamalized—soaked in an alkaline solution that softens them and makes them easier to digest. Then, those softened kernels are ground into a paste which is dried and sold as masa harina. All you have to do is add hot water to the dried corn to rehydrate—the resulting dough is similar to clay, and it’s quite easy to work with.

This sounds like a cooking experiment worth trying.

Here's a short video by a woman originally from Mexico.  They are simple - although it seems salt should be added too:



Of course, I don't have a tortilla press lying around at home.  Maybe my next birthday present?

I will report in due course.

An odd Buddhist thing

Here's something that I did not know about Buddhism.  (Or some Buddhists.)

I just had someone explaining to me that they would want their death (assuming it is from a terminal  illness) to be according to Buddhist principles, which are that a dying person does not have their close family around the death bed, for concern that it makes them more reluctant to give up their spirit (or consciousness, or whatever.)  Apparently, the Buddhist way is that it is OK to have a couple of Buddhist people who aren't close to you in the room saying prayers, but the family (spouse included) stays outside.   I asked about pain relief, and he said no, Buddhists are supposed to work through the pain as part of the natural order of things.  (!)  Having a clear  mind at the point of death is important as it can affect the metaphysical outcome.  So, no morphine for dying Buddhist cancer sufferers, apparently.

I have no time to check today how widespread within Buddhism this view is.  I do not know well the person who was telling me this, but he seemed to be well into Buddhist belief.   It's certainly pretty unappealing to our Western ideas of the value of close relatives being with their loved one as they die.

I wonder:  I am aware that the Japanese medical system, in certain respects, is much less into pain relief than we are in Australia.   (Endoscopy into the stomach with no twilight sedation;  have to go to a special birth clinic if you expect gas or epidural to give pain relief.)   Is this partly because of Buddhist pain stoicism?

Update:  on the matter of pain relief, here is an extract from a nursing website discussing it in 2003.   The attitude of the person I was speaking to today is very consistent with this:

QUESTION: My patient is a Buddhist with end-stage colon cancer who keeps refusing pain medication. How can I help him manage his pain without infringing on his religious beliefs?

ANSWER: Buddhism is an Eastern religion that's taken root in the United States. Its followers have a unique perspective on pain. Buddhists believe that suffering is part of life, to be expected, and that if a person experiences pain calmly, without becoming emotionally distressed, he can attain greater states of being.

Preparation for death is an important part of Buddhism. Many religious practices focus on the moment of death and the immediate transition to the next life. Because Buddhists believe the mind must be as alert as possible at the time of death, many may decline pain medication or limit its use.

Pain assessment for a Buddhist patient is the same as for any other patient. And, as with any patient, you should understand his pain control goals. A Buddhist patient may wish to withhold or limit the use of drugs that can cause drowsiness, such as opioids, so educate him about pain control choices that won't interfere with his goals. (Explain that drowsiness, for example, subsides after the first few days of opioid use.)

Use the World Health Organization pain ladder to step up analgesic therapy for pain control. Using adjuvant medications, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, lets you give lower doses of opioids and so limit adverse opioid reactions, such as drowsiness. Obtain orders for additional pain relief, even if the patient initially declines it. You'll be ready to provide immediate relief if his pain suddenly intensifies and he changes his mind. Be sure to document his statements about pain control interventions and goals and monitor the effectiveness of any alternative interventions used.

From a Buddhist perspective, pain can be offered as a sacrifice to benefit all beings and has long-term benefits in reaching a higher state of consciousness. Your patient may wish to perform religious rituals such as quiet reflection, chanting, meditation, and prayer. Allow him periods of time alone for these rituals.

Quiet reflection is one of the most important practices for Buddhists. Help the patient create a small space in his room for pictures of religious leaders or ancestors, prayer beads, and flowers. This area helps him focus his energy and can help him manage pain.

Chanting involves quietly repeating specific prayers or mantras many times. Other members of the religious community may participate in this practice with the patient. If he can't chant himself, the family may bring in tapes from services, which you can play for him during the day. An alternative intervention is to encourage him to slowly breathe deeply and focus on inhalation and exhalation.

Meditation can provide the most satisfying and effective religious expression for Buddhists. Allow the patient quiet time to empty his mind of thoughts, or to visualize specific images, depending on his tradition. If possible, put him in a room away from noisy areas, such as the nurses' station. Document your interventions to show that you're individualizing the patient's care plan. Contact religious representatives as requested by the patient.

Gee.  If I was a Western nurse/doctor, I would probably be a tad annoyed that I had to go to a lot more trouble with a Buddhist patient than just dosing them up with enough pain relief that they stop feeling pain.

Movie reviews you didn't need

From my Netflix viewing:

*  tried to watch 1922, based on a Stephen King short story.  It got mostly good reviews, it seems, but I couldn't stick with it.   My biggest issue was with the lead actor:  his Southern drawl was actually hard to understand at many points, and his acting generally seemed to be just "too much".   I didn't like the narration, either.    As I have explained before, I am, generally speaking, a Stephen King sceptic - it is pretty rare that I find any project sourced in his stories to be anything more than just passable.   (The one exception - Kubrick's version of The Shining - King hated.)   This movie did nothing to swing my judgement about his oeuvre.

*  Johnny English Strikes Again:  the first two Rowan Atkinson vehicles were much better than I had expected.  The third outing, form 2018, shows that they have run out of ideas, and Atkinson's acting seemed more desperate and Mr Bean than in the previous ones.   (I am not so keen on the Mr Bean character, incidentally.)  Not offensively bad;  just a case of a franchise out of steam.

*  Veronica:  a Spanish 2017 supernatural thriller, this story of a teenage girl who seemingly has invited a haunting into her apartment by virtue of use of a ouija board with friends is actually pretty good, despite that set up sounding like it owes too much to The Exorcist or various other films whereby teenagers invite supernatural trouble into their lives that way.   It's well directed, and well acted by its mainly young cast.   (The movie made me realise -I think that Spanish movies often do very well with their child actors.   Now that I think about it, it also confirmed another thing about Spanish language films - they have probably the least reluctance of any culture to showing full frontal - adult - male nudity.)   The only slight downside is that it was said to be "based on a true story" which was well known in Spain (because of police involvement), but checking later revealed that the movie had exceptionally few actual similarities to the real story.   Oh well.   

Rare sights in Japan

Just stumbled across a site with links to live Youtube feeds in Japan.

This one which I find the most remarkable:  a near deserted looking entry to Sensoji Temple in Asakusa.   Just the occasional person walking through what is probably the busiest tourist temple in Tokyo:



There is another live feed, with a nice view of the actual temple area, but I can't embed it.  The link is here though.

The relative lack of pedestrians, and depleted vehicle traffic, at the famous Shibuya crossing is also worth a look:

Consequences

A headline at Vox:

Governors say Trump’s disinfectant comments prompted hundreds of poison center calls

Governors from both parties warn that people take what the president says seriously, even if he doesn’t.

He's got an excuse and he's sticking to it

Seems pretty clear that someone around Trump has said "It's easy - whenever you make a silly mistake or want to walk back from something you said, just say you were being 'sarcastic'", and he is sticking to that for all it's worth.   (Which is, nothing.)

 

Excess deaths noted

This is important:

And here is the link to the story:  

According to the FT analysis, overall deaths rose 60 per cent in Belgium, 51 per cent in Spain, 42 per cent in the Netherlands and 34 per cent in France during the pandemic compared with the same period in previous years. Some of these deaths may be the result of causes other than Covid-19, as people avoid hospitals for other ailments. But excess mortality has risen most steeply in places suffering the worst Covid-19 outbreaks, suggesting most of these deaths are directly related to the virus rather than simply side-effects of lockdowns.

Track me

I have downloaded the government's COVID 19 tracking app, with my only concern being how much battery use it takes when you leave Bluetooth on all day every day.   

However, given that I am itching for a new phone amyway, this may be the perfect excuse.  JB Hi Fi should be running some ads along those lines...

A perfect cartoon

I see that in lieu of Trump getting his face on TV at his useless briefings, he has been rage tweeting about the media overnight.  Which led to someone re-tweeting this cartoon.  It is a near perfect summation of why Covid-19 is politically hurting him:

And what about this:

Confirmation of another thing we already knew

It appears from this article that John Roskam, long standing IPA head who can't get a Lib nomination to Parliament when younger twerps in his organisation have, has long been personally invested in attacking the COVID-19 semi lockdown.

He is a wanker, and a dangerous one at that.

I would still like to know, though, whether he is being prodded by a wealthy donor into aggressively campaigning on this.   Or is it just his own very bad idea?

COVID and graphs

If the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated anything convincingly, it's that analysing information, in particular with graphs, is rife with potential to mislead.  I guess we all knew that, but still.

I thought this thread on the issue was pretty interesting.  (Link is to a threadreader compilation.)

A brief interlude from other topics...

I have an urge to write about Android and mobile phones.

Every 6 to 12 months I post about how astounded I am about the improvements in mobile phones, especially in low to mid level range where my buying choices have always been.   (Carry an easily breakable $1300 computer in my pocket every day?   No thanks.)

I remain pretty happy with my Moto G5 Plus, but I am a bit puzzled about Android and the way apps seem to rapidly accumulate memory.   My phone has 16GB internal memory, and after my last phone had, what, 4 or 8GB?, this sounded like a luxurious amount which would take a long time to use up. 

However Android apps seem to take up quite ridiculous amounts of memory for what they do.  Photos and video go to the sd card, so they can't be blamed, but my internal memory is now always hovering at about 15 to 15.5GB, meaning I am forever being urged by my phone to delete files and apps I haven't used for a while.

When I check on my phone as to the size of certain apps, I just don't understand why they can take up so much space.   A couple of hundred MB used to be considered an enormous size for a program of any description.  Now, to take an example, the Flipboard app, which I quite like as a sort of news and magazine aggregator, takes up 42 MB plus 179 MB of user data, and 51MB of cache.   I can delete the cache, but I presume I lose my topic preferences if I delete the user data. 

Line, a chat and call app that I sometimes use, but not that often, takes up 220 MB in the app itself, plus has 342MB in user data!  That's huge.   But even the internet browser I like to use now - Brave - takes up 112MB and shows 70MB of user data.   Why so much?

Anyway, this has made me consider a new phone, just for the internal memory increase.   I see that I can now get $399 phones with 128MB of internal memory - again, a huge leap forward in the space of a couple of years. 

I do love Android, and would never consider going to Apple.

But as I say, I still would like to know how Android Apps have become the incredible memory bloat software that they are.

One other thing:   it's really weird what sensors various phone companies choose to put in their phones, and how they can be completely inconsistent across their range.    There are two Moto phones I was considering buying, which until one went on sale recently, were both $399 and both in the same series.  Yet one has NFC capability, and one doesn't.  My current Moto, which is getting up to 2 years old now, had one and I don't think it cost more than $400.

OPPO phones, which are very popular in Asia and my son loves his, at the cheaper end at least, do not seem generally to have NFC (needed to use your phone in lieu of your credit card), and a lot of other cheaper Chinese phones don't have it either.  Yet when I checked the specs on a cheaper OPPO model currently on sale at JB Hi Fi, it does have it. 

Then the other day I wanted to put a compass app on my phone, only to discover it doesn't have the magnetic sensor to allow that.  Websites written years ago say that nearly all phones have it, but not Moto in their midrange.   It seems all OPPO phones in the mid range have it, but even the new Moto with 128GB I am considering buying - a 2019 model - does not.

It is really odd the way companies seem to play around with what they can provide.   All part of the fun of buying Android, though, I guess.  


   

We live in extraordinary times

He also went on about sunlight and heat killing the virus quickly, which led to this (via Hotair):

The really funny part was when he circled back to it later and put Birx on the spot. What do you think, doctor? Think we can scrap the vaccine and hit this virus with a little internal heat and light instead?

I am half expecting Trump to endorse nudism, at least for women, as a protective measure.

Update:  there are going to be many funny tweets about this.  Here's one:

As noted before...

Update:   David Serwer has this right:

A genuine QAnon nutcase on the Gold Coast

I was looking at a Twitter thread about Tom Hanks giving a typewriter to a boy when I saw this:

Unusually, for a nutter, he appears to put his face to his account, which is good in that it gives all of us who live close enough to the Gold Coast to step to the other side of the street if we think we spot him.

Here's his twitter account.  He appears to be as big an un-ironic believer in the most lurid, religiously tinged, American based conspiracy theories as it is possible to be.   I wonder if he is American? 

Jerks worried about bias against uber jerk

Honestly, the cesspit for obnoxious commentators, ageing crank climate change denialists and Trump cult membership has become the most risible joke on the Australian internet.   I offer as proof a post by uber Catholic CL in which he expresses concern about bias in The Australian for the biggest and most obnoxious jerk to come to the nation's attention in at least a decade.  And nearly every comment following agrees with him.   Many are willing to suggest blame on the police, even though the full details of how the deaths happened are not yet 100% clear.  (As far as I can tell, though, the police and stopped vehicle were in the emergency lane, and the truck that killed then did veer from a normal lane into the emergency lane, suggesting the "medical episode" of the driver may well be behind his actions.)

The Daily Mail, from which CL routinely gets his news, gives a lengthy history of Richard Pusey's history of awful, sometimes criminal, behaviour; yet this is the guy they decide to go all "hey, let's be fair" about?

I think there are two threads of motivation here:   first, lots of people at that place, from Sinclair Davidson down, hate the Victorian Police in particular with a passion, so of course they are inclined to look for a way to blame the police themselves.     Second, just as it has long been clear that a lot of wingnut enthusiasm for Trump is because he gives jerks a thrill when they hear someone at the top of political power talk openly like they wish they could, jerks just feel drawn to defend other jerks.

Update:  there's a comment in the thread by a guy who's avatar is a MAGA cap, who claims to be ex police, which includes this line:

At best, they had a guy in a Porsche turbo doing 140 which isn’t that fast on a quiet freeway

The accident happened late afternoon, not at freaking 3 am.  There's more from MAGA man:

Sure: morally he’s bereft. But legally, and barrister worth his salt will have this guy walking and he will get bail. What threat to the community does he represent?

I note on the ABC, after Pusey's court appearance this morning:

Mr Pusey has been remanded in custody and is expected to reappear in July.

The cap is the label of an idiot.

Tweets worth noting

Making an exception

I'm not generally one to suggest that an opinion writer warrants being dragged out of his office and beaten up on the street by a mob of Leftists, but a tweet like this motivates me strongly to make an exception:

The argument put by this IPA wanker is not new - it's the routine, conspiracy heavy, argument that has been deployed against climate change action and environment protecting regulation generally.  Namely, that you can't believe warnings of danger and harm to human life and nature - because it's really just all a front for enforcing socialism.   

And I am also curious about this paragraph from the article:

It is not surprising then that, far from recommending revolution, the pandemic has reinforced the value of traditional goods. Stay-at-home orders, for example, might not be quite so harsh were more people homeowners than renters of small apartments. The alienation of social distancing might not be so severe were more adults married with children. Expert rule might be more effective had the academy and media class not been engaged in generations-long ideological mission creep. Perhaps borders and self-sufficiency might also have renewed credibility now that globalism has gone viral.

This seems quaintly dogmatically conservative for someone from the IPA:  he seems to be against relaxing planning laws to build whatever developers want;  thinks more people should be married with children; and is dubious about globalism?    Has he run this past Gina Rinehart, given that she doesn't have much of a business left if she can't ship away gigantic chunks of Australian dirt to other parts of the globe.

John Oliver is right

Lots of sites are noting John Oliver's critique of the appalling Fox News/conservative media - Trump feedback loop.   It's particularly sickening to see the patent money-hungry hypocrisy of running one line on the screen and a completely different one within the corporation:

Fox News underestimated the danger of the coronavirus early on but as the death toll mounted, they were behind the scenes suspending non-essential business travel and had their employees cancel in-person meetings and summits. They also encouraged them to conduct business via Skype. According to Oliver, they did this because “they only tend to believe these things on television for money.”

This is what happens under cult authoritarian leadership

And this:

Update:  more Fox News back-pedalling,before the law suits come in, I presume:

Parisian poo points the way forward

I refer to this, from Science:

By sampling sewage across greater Paris for more than 1 month, researchers have detected a rise and fall in novel coronavirus concentrations that correspond to the shape of the COVID-19 outbreak in the region, where a lockdown is now suppressing spread of the disease. Although several research groups have reported detecting coronavirus in wastewater, the researchers say the new study is the first to show that the technique can pick up a sharp rise in viral concentrations in sewage before cases explode in the clinic. That points to its potential as a cheap, noninvasive tool to warn against outbreaks, they say.

I wonder if it is sensitive enough a test if there is a flu catching on as well?  This method of testing for community spread of illness is better established than I knew, however:

 Another advantage of wastewater sampling is that it picks up virus associated with the vast number of people who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 but do not present symptoms for the disease, says Paul Bertsch, science director of land and water at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia. Although viral shedding varies among individuals and over the course of their infection, he says, a sewage system blends these variations into an average that represents the wider community. And depending on the sewage system, the warnings can come quickly. He points out that wastewater monitoring in Israel, for example, picked up a polio outbreak before any clinical cases appeared at all, according to a 2018 study.

Brisbane gets a mention in the next paragraph:

Building on similar studies in the Netherlands and the United States, Bertsch’s group last week reported the first detection of coronavirus in Australian sewage. He and his colleagues sampled wastewater in Brisbane representing 600,000 people, in March and April. In contrast to the study in Paris, they found a peak of viral shedding that corresponded to the peak detected through direct human testing. The difference might be explained by more prevalent human testing in Australia, he says.

Bertsch says he hopes to “tap into” Australia’s existing systems for monitoring wastewater for illegal drugs to develop a national COVID-19 monitoring system that could be in place within 1 month. Later, it might even be feasible to “go up-pipe” with specialized sampling portals allowing finer-scale community sampling. “We could test by postal code, for example,” he says.

Fascinating...

Things that are attracting little attention due to COVID-19

*  that Canadian mass shooting, which sounds to have some pretty unusual details:

Police say the hunt for the gunman was hampered by the fact he was driving a vehicle that looked like a police cruiser and was wearing a police uniform. How he procured both is part of the investigation.

The search ended around midday on Sunday when the suspected shooter was located by police at a service station in Enfield, north of the provincial capital of Halifax. He was shot and later died.

Police have faced criticism for failing to issue a province-wide emergency alert to warn residents of the danger during the rampage.

*  the US Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bi-partisan report, acknowledges that Trump won with the help of Russia's "unprecedented interference", which was approved by Putin.   Trump wingnut denialism will continue, regardless.  The Axios summary:

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the fourth volume of its report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, which focused on a December 2016 intelligence community assessment provided to President Obama.

Why it matters: The bipartisan report affirms the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the election to help President Trump defeat Hillary Clinton, noting that the assessment "reflects proper analytic tradecraft despite being tasked and completed within a compressed timeframe."

The big picture: The highly redacted report breaks with an investigation by the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee in 2018, which disagreed with the intelligence agencies' assessment and concluded that the Russian government did not explicitly intend to help Trump win the election.

• The Senate committee found "specific intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government demonstrated a preference for candidate Trump," and that Putin "approved and directed" aspects of the interference.
• The Senate committee also disagreed with the House's claim that the intelligence agencies did not comply with analytical standards, noting: "The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election."
• "The Committee did not discover any significant analytic tradecraft issues in the preparation or final presentation of the ICA."

Worth noting: The report finds that U.S. intelligence agencies did not use information from the infamous Steele dossier to support its findings. The dossier was included in a highly classified annex to the assessment, which was in line with President Obama's directive.

*  There has been news about ocean temperatures being high around the globe, with the Gulf of Mexico causing Florida to have a very warm spring.   Indicates some big, wet hurricanes to come, which is just what the US needs after an economic slow down.   And the whole planet is still hot:

This year is on track to be Earth’s warmest on record, beating 2016, NOAA says

 

On Malcolm (and Peta and Tony)

I don't have much sympathy for Malcolm Turnbull, but this quote about Abbott and Credlin is pretty amusing:

“Peta has always strongly denied that she and Tony were lovers. But if they were, that would have been the most unremarkable aspect of their friendship.”

For a couple not having an affair, it is pretty hilarious that so many people - on their own side of politics - found it hard to believe that they were not lovers.  Remember this?:

According to an extract published in The Australian, Senator Fierravanti-Wells went to Mr Abbott the night before the failed first attempt to unseat him last February.

She told the then-prime minister he had to remove Ms Credlin, arguing colleagues considered her responsible for many of the government's problems, and they were prepared to take out their frustrations on him.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells is quoted in the book as telling Mr Abbott "politics is about perceptions".

"Rightly or wrongly, the perception is that you are sleeping with your chief of staff. That's the perception, and you need to deal with it.

"I am here because I care about you, and I care about your family, and I feel I need to tell you the truth, the brutal truth. This is what your colleagues really think."

According to the book, Mr Abbott responded calmly and said the rumours were not true.

This must make Credlin's list of Liberal politicians she dislikes pretty long.

Even other people within the party hated her style:

Tony Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, has been described as a “horsewoman of the apocalypse” as further leaks emerge from within the Liberal party executive.

ABC’s Four Corners program has obtained a text message sent from federal Liberal party treasurer Philip Higginson to a senior party figure, in which he describes Credlin as the “horsewoman of the apocalypse” with “black robes flowing”.

The text message continues: “I do hope you can negotiate the removal of Credlin. That would be a huge win in itself,” the ABC reports.

Everyone can see that there have been, shall we say, less than laudatory aspects of Turnbull's personality over the years; but the condemnation of Peta's has many more vouching for it.   And poor old Tony ended up its political victim.   Funny old world...

Pretty sure this is a lesson called " How to 'shade' "

Didn't see this coming

So, it appears that a liberal trying to stop Right wing astroturfing was mistaken for a Right wing astroturfer?   And he was an old guy prepared to spend $4,000 doing that?   What a strange story.

It should be said that people, Left or Right, who do social media doxing and pile ons really need to stop.  

Surely there are people in the White House trying to tell him these are hurting him now?

The very nasty cornavirus

This article at Science should make anyone really, really want to avoid catching this coronavirus:

How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes

As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surges past 2.2 million globally and deaths surpass 150,000, clinicians and pathologists are struggling to understand the damage wrought by the coronavirus as it tears through the body. They are realizing that although the lungs are ground zero, its reach can extend to many organs including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain.

“[The disease] can attack almost anything in the body with devastating consequences,” says cardiologist Harlan Krumholz of Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, who is leading multiple efforts to gather clinical data on COVID-19. “Its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling.”

Understanding the rampage could help the doctors on the front lines treat the fraction of infected people who become desperately and sometimes mysteriously ill. Does a dangerous, newly observed tendency to blood clotting transform some mild cases into life-threatening emergencies? Is an overzealous immune response behind the worst cases, suggesting treatment with immune-suppressing drugs could help? What explains the startlingly low blood oxygen that some physicians are reporting in patients who nonetheless are not gasping for breath? “Taking a systems approach may be beneficial as we start thinking about therapies,” says Nilam Mangalmurti, a pulmonary intensivist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP).
 

Been said before, but worth repeating

As seen on Twitter:

and some answers that follow:

Revenge of the chickens

I think Tim T might like this story.

I was looking around for stories of Buddhist near death experiences (as you do) and found this one on a website, as extracted from a book by a Thai (I think) monk.  I thought it most remarkable for the role chickens play in it.  [My bold if you want to get straight to the chicken parts]:

I, Phra Tanasiri Sirisumphan, a Buddhist Monk, was accompanying my cousin as he traveled to another province. I was thirteen years old at the time. While we were traveling, I came down with a toothache. I went to a dentist, who took the offending tooth out. I felt much better, but I still had some pain. I went to a hotel to sleep. But instead of falling asleep, I lost consciousness. When I came to, I found two Yamatoots. One of them was standing at the head of my bed, and the other at the foot. Both of them were holding torches. They looked about thirty years old, and had very dark skin. They said only “let’s go”. I asked them “where are you taking me?” They answered: “don’t ask”. I stood up and followed them. One of them said to the other: ” He is too young, so I’m not going to help you. You do it alone, I have another job to attend to”. Eventually, the remaining Yamatoot forced me to go with him. I followed him until we came to a crossroad. I became afraid at that point because I had lost my bearings, and would not be able to find my way back. Finally I came to a temple wall. The Yamatoot took me to a large gate Where I saw a monk giving a sermon to a group of elderly men and women. I made the formal gesture of respect to the Monk, and as I did so, I realized that the truth and highest form of help was to be found in The Lord Buddha, His Teachings, and those who ordain to follow his way (The Buddha, The Dharma, and the Sangha – also known as the “triple gem’).

I walked to a classical style pavilion (Sala). The Yamatoot told me to wait for someone who was coming to meet us. A very large Yamatoot arrived who was wearing ancient armor, and carrying a spear. He was accompanied by a group of normal-sized Yamatoots, all of whom were carrying weapons. I felt that the situation was becoming very bad.

They took me to the house of Yama, the Lord of the Dead. Yama told me that I had committed many sins, especially in having butchered a number of chickens. I denied it, I said that I had not done that, not even once. Yama was surprised, and asked his records keeper.”How old is he?” “Thirteen years, Lord”, came the answer. “What’s his name?” My name was read out. Yama said: “You’ve taken the wrong man. Take him back. Quickly. You’ve made a mistake”. I said that, before I returned, I wanted to see hell. Yama answered: “No. The last thing I have to say to you is that you will die when you are 27 years old. Be ready”

Yama assigned a Yamatoot to accompany me back. He took me back to the crossroad where he said that I must go on from there alone. I was afraid, and asked him to take me all the way back. He said that I must go on alone. I walked on alone, and tripped on a tree root. I then revived.

When I was 27, I was ill with a stomach ache that lingered on for a year. My doctor advised surgery. I went in to the hospital, and the procedure began with anesthesia. As soon as I was under anesthesia, I saw the same Yamatoot. I remembered from the last time I had died and been revived. As he led me to hell’s gate, I walked past a torture chamber. The first thing I saw was a big copper pot full of boiling water. It was full of people who cried out from fear. A Yamatoot stood by guarding the people who were being tortured in this way. I walked away from this scene and came to a stand of barren tamarind trees. Their normal bark was replaced by thousands of sharp spikes. Yamatoots at the foot of the tree forced people to climb these trees by prodding them with spears. I didn’t ask why these people were being tortured in this way. I already knew. They were being punished (for sexual wrongdoing). I continued down the same road and cams to some stairs. At the top of the stairs was a flock of birds. I climbed these stairs and found myself in the judgment hall of Yama’s palace. I knew that they were ready to judge me for my sins. A giant rooster appeared who told Yama that I had killed him. He emphasized that I had tried to kill him again and again. The rooster said that he remembered me exactly. An entire flock of roosters also appeared and testified that I had killed them, as well. I remembered my actions, and I had to admit that the roosters had told the truth. Yama said that I had committed many sins, and sentenced me to many rebirths both as a chicken, and many other kinds of birds. After these births, I would then be reborn as an angelic being (Thevada) due to my having performed meritorious actions many times. After Yama was finished reading my sentence, he commanded a Yamatoot to take me to the place were I was to receive additional punishments. But, quite suddenly, an enormous turtle appeared. It screamed at Yama, saying “don’t take him; he Is a good human, and he should be allowed to live.” Yama asked the turtle ” what did he do to help you?” The turtle answered. “Long ago, I almost died because another of these humans wanted to eat me. This man prevented him, and so, I was able to live out my life.” Yama asked the turtle if he had any evidence. The turtle asked to be turned upside down, and told Yama to look at his underside where he would see where the man had carved his name so many years ago.

Yama saw the man’s name was there, just as the turtle had said, and believed the turtle’s story. Yama announced that he was canceling the sentence, and told me that when I revived, I was to take a vow not to kill any living thing. He said that it was especially bad to kill animals because they had to live through so many lives in order to be reborn as humans. “Love the animals”, he said, “as you love yourself”.

A COVID-19 victim with a Spielberg connection

One of the best features of Spielberg's early 1980's movies ET, Empire of the Sun and The Color Purple was the pleasing cinematography.   I've noted before that movies at that time often had a warm, glowing look in the cinematography which I think is quite distinctive in retrospect, and still a pleasure to behold.  Cinematography, perhaps because it is mostly digital now*, has a colder, cooler look about it, usually. 

The cinematographer of those 3 films, Alan Daviau, has died aged 77 from COVID complications.

Sad.

* just found this graph from January 2016 that illustrates the change:

Boris not beloved by all

Isn't it a little odd that, at a time when his catching the virus and apparently coming close to death could be enhancing his popularity as (at least in one respect) a "man of the people" who shares their suffering, it is the Sunday Times that gave voice to internal critics of his early low interest in the looming problem of COVID-19?  

Well, I think it odd.  Doesn't bode all that well for his future, too...

Astroturfing for Covid-19

People noticed how protest groups around the country all used printed out signs with the same fonts.  It is an astroturfed movement.

Explanation of astroturfing:

And of course the poisonous, dangerous Fox News would be part of it: