Coronavirus outbreak - From China to the World.

[conon394]

Under Trump agreement US was to withdraw in May, Taliban would be only in control of part of the country and proxy Afghan government would be still standing. Then Biden admin did its partisan schizo thing, broke the agreement and US military and intelligence got hilariously humiliated by Taliban.

What part of trump's agreement says that or has any means to enforce that fantasy.

[Heathen Hammer]

The part where US not breaking its side of the agreement binds Taliban to do the same. But Typhoid Joe picked the partisan option and America got hilariously humiliated by a ragtag militia of villagers.

[Ludicus]

I can just imagine what future history books will say:

..and although a free, safe, and remarkably effective vaccine was widely available, the cult members refused to get it because...

There are several levels of deniers. At the top of the scale are the delusional deniers.
They are the ones who see in everything hidden forces for world domination, like in bad action or science fiction movies. Those who say that all this is very "suspicious" and imagine that the pandemic was the work of China - a virus created in a laboratory to wipe out and then control mankind. Or those who think that the vaccines being studied will bring a tracking chip to keep an eye on us. Or that Covid just wants to confine populations so that 5G antennas can be installed all over the world, towers which in turn weaken the individual's immune system.

Libertarian deniers are late anarchists, who reject the obligation to wear the mask like someone who never got over the trauma of being forced to eat soup as a little boy. For whom life in society has only rights and no duties, and thinking about the welfare and protection of others is as distant as Venus from Mars. What matters is their belly button and whatever their master wants to do with it, and to hell with the others.These libertarians usually go hand in hand with the ignorant denialists.

Ignorant deniars are those who systematically reject the conclusions of science when the scientific evidence is not entirely in line with their comfort or with maintaining their archaic or obtuse way of doing things. This group includes those who also reject climate change, as if science were a matter of belief or faith. When it comes to Covid, these deniers reject the danger of the virus, aligning themselves with Bolsonaro and Trump in the "little flu" song. They stress that mortality is not very high - which is a fact -without realizing that the danger lies in the failure of health systems that would generate a potentially huge mortality.

[Gigantus]

Here in Canada its from taxes. In US people pay from insurance. In both cases the more people spend the better it is for the healthcare. Its just basic economics 101, my dude.

Then we are in agreement that your initial argument of "If you shut down the economy even for short period of time, recovery may take quite longer, hence why its effects are going to be "felt" financially for quite some time." has got nothing to do with your present observation? You are loosing the plot you have created.

Pretending that Chinese communist government is a credible source is scraping the barrel indeed.

Then it's just as well I didn't reference it's government (or any data in general), rather the fairly established fact that China is a totalitarian government and is bound to use it. In the meantime reality is keeping pace with that assumption of mine: Unvaccinated people in parts of China to be denied access to hospitals, parks and schools.

Actually it's more like my ruminating from three days ago is getting a start.

[Coughdrop addict]

There are several levels of deniers. At the top of the scale are the delusional deniers.
They are the ones who see in everything hidden forces for world domination, like in bad action or science fiction movies. Those who say that all this is very "suspicious" and imagine that the pandemic was the work of China - a virus created in a laboratory to wipe out and then control mankind. Or those who think that the vaccines being studied will bring a tracking chip to keep an eye on us. Or that Covid just wants to confine populations so that 5G antennas can be installed all over the world, towers which in turn weaken the individual's immune system.

Libertarian deniers are late anarchists, who reject the obligation to wear the mask like someone who never got over the trauma of being forced to eat soup as a little boy. For whom life in society has only rights and no duties, and thinking about the welfare and protection of others is as distant as Venus from Mars. What matters is their belly button and whatever their master wants to do with it, and to hell with the others.These libertarians usually go hand in hand with the ignorant denialists.

Ignorant deniars are those who systematically reject the conclusions of science when the scientific evidence is not entirely in line with their comfort or with maintaining their archaic or obtuse way of doing things. This group includes those who also reject climate change, as if science were a matter of belief or faith. When it comes to Covid, these deniers reject the danger of the virus, aligning themselves with Bolsonaro and Trump in the "little flu" song. They stress that mortality is not very high - which is a fact -without realizing that the danger lies in the failure of health systems that would generate a potentially huge mortality.

Agreed. I also think that covid/vaccine-denial has gotten as bad as it is because with the internet it's become easy to find large, vocal groups of people who all reinforce each others' delusions.

Before the internet if I said vaccines have nanomachines in them to beam my thought energy to Hillary Clinton so she can retain her human form and it was being covered up by every doctor in the world, my audience would be limited to largely people physically close to me, who would likely try to have me institutionalized.

Now I can just join any number of weird internet forums where other people will be like "Yeah, right on, bro, fight the space lizard Illuminati!" and shut out any sort of reasonable voices that might make me realize that I'm deluded.

[B. W.]

Agreed. I also think that covid/vaccine-denial has gotten as bad as it is because with the internet it's become easy to find large, vocal groups of people who all reinforce each others' delusions.

Before the internet if I said vaccines have nanomachines in them to beam my thought energy to Hillary Clinton so she can retain her human form and it was being covered up by every doctor in the world, my audience would be limited to largely people physically close to me, who would likely try to have me institutionalized.

Now I can just join any number of weird internet forums where other people will be like "Yeah, right on, bro, fight the space lizard Illuminati!" and shut out any sort of reasonable voices that might make me realize that I'm deluded.

It's amusing to see leftists exchanging all these profundities as if they have some intellectual insight into the minds of their political opponents when in reality all they are doing is parroting the talking points of leftist propaganda.

[Heathen Hammer]

Then we are in agreement that your initial argument of "If you shut down the economy even for short period of time, recovery may take quite longer, hence why its effects are going to be "felt" financially for quite some time." has got nothing to do with your present observation? You are loosing the plot you have created.

Uhhh, it should be pretty straightforward - quality of healthcare (both private and public) is largely dependent on state of the economy. If you mess up economy, you typically mess up the healthcare.

Then it's just as well I didn't reference it's government (or any data in general), rather the fairly established fact that China is a totalitarian government and is bound to use it. In the meantime reality is keeping pace with that assumption of mine: Unvaccinated people in parts of China to be denied access to hospitals, parks and schools.

Actually it's more like my ruminating from three days ago is getting a start.

So I guess we can both agree that there is no way to independently verify whether Chinese government's um, "method" even worked, hence why trying to implement this in the West is idiotic and dangerous.

[Ludicus]

It's amusing to see leftists exchanging all these profundities...

I did not mention in my previous post the right or the left. But it is true that the extreme right exploits the pandemic for political reasons, and conspiracy theories proliferate:the allegedly orchestrated by "big pharma" companies in conjunction with Bill Gates, this scheme would supposedly kill millions in the name of generating profit, the COVID death tolls were being exaggerated to pave the way for a large-scale vaccination programme, and many of similar conspiracies are prevalent within far-right media, many of them degenerate into over antisemitism - Online Antisemitism in Times of COVID-19
----
Whoever believes to live in a democracy founded on reason cannot tolerate vaccine denialism which is a public danger, cannot tolerate the apology of darkness, misinformation, or the oratory rage of the denialists.

[Heathen Hammer]

"Whoever believes to live in a democracy founded on reason cannot tolerate lobotomy denialism which is a public danger, cannot tolerate the apology of darkness, misinformation, or the oratory rage of the denialists." ~Someone in 1940s, probably.

[Ludicus]

" lobotomy denialism

I've never heard that term.What does it mean? are you referring to this? Denial of lobotomy as a continuation of the defense ... - PubMed
Obviously, I do not propose the antidemocratic lobotomy of the denialists. Besides that maybe it doesn't work

[Heathen Hammer]

I've never heard that term.What does it mean?

Its from the times when procedure of poking person's brain with a metal rod, usually without anesthesia, was considered to be a proper medical procedure as per healthcare experts and peer-reviewed medical journals of its time.

[Heathen Hammer]

It seems like public had enough with Australian government blatantly violating rights and freedoms of their citizens and there are now anti-lockdown protests in almost every major city. If COVID was a governance test, Commonwealth governments have certainly failed it.

[Ludicus]

Its from the times when procedure of poking person's brain with a metal rod, usually without anesthesia, was considered to be a proper medical procedure as per healthcare experts and peer-reviewed medical journals of its time.

Read the edit to my post, made at exactly the same time as your post.
Just out curiosity, I must say that I had classes in my hospital with Almeida Lima, already in his old age, a neurologist who worked with Egaz Moniz in another technique that he invented, the cerebral angiography. For almost 50 years the main diagnostic tool for detecting intracranial pathology until the introduction of CT in 1975. In my opinion, Egaz should have won the Nobel Prize for this invention.He was proposed three times for the Nobel for that, and never won. Ironically, awarded as a psychiatriast, he won the prize for leucotomy. I must say that all inventions sometimes had a huge price, especially at that time. The contrast initially used in the first cerebral angiographies was thorotrast, which was not known to be carcinogenic, especially for the liver. But this is no excuse for not vaccinating ourselves. With more than 70% of the population fully vaccinated, we expect to reach the goal of 85% by the end of September.

[Heathen Hammer]

Read the edit to my post, made at exactly the same time as your post.
Just out curiosity, I must say that I had classes in my hospital with Almeida Lima, already in his old age, a neurologist who worked with Egaz Moniz in another technique that he invented, the cerebral angiography. For almost 50 years the main diagnostic tool for detecting intracranial pathology until the introduction of CT in 1975. In my opinion, Egaz should have won the Nobel Prize for this invention.He was proposed three times for the Nobel for that, and never won. Ironically, awarded as a psychiatriast, he won the prize for leucotomy. I must say that all inventions sometimes had a huge price, especially at that time. The contrast initially used in the first cerebral angiographies was thorotrast, which was not known to be carcinogenic, especially for the liver. But this is no excuse for not vaccinating ourselves. With more than 70% of the population fully vaccinated, we expect to reach the goal of 85% by the end of September.

You missed the point in its entirety. Whole rant about "denialism" is basically implying that people opposed to things like radithor treatments and lobotomies should not be tolerated in democracy or something.

[Ludicus]

You missed the point in its entirety. Whole rant about "denialism" is basically implying that people opposed to things like..

When I say that democracy should not tolerate denialists, it is not in a punitive way. But its our duty to identify conspiracy theories, and unmask the dangers of false covid-19 rethoric.
It is also true that I have a huge intolerance for denialists. Everyone is free to have their own opinion, but our rights should not override the right to life of our fellow citizens.But if we look closely, the violence comes from them. They are the ones who vandalize vaccination posts in many countries, intimidate those who want to be vaccinated, even here they did it two days ago, although fortunately they are few in this country.
If I am not mistaken, Australia has only 23 or 24 percent of its population fully vaccinated. Until Australia has a higher percentage of its population vaccinated, lockdowns are necessary to avoid unnecessary deaths.With about 19% or so of the population vaccinated, New Zealand also had a three-day lockdown for this reason.

[Heathen Hammer]

Vaccination is just private doctor-patient relationship and is not government's business. Also whole " democracy should not tolerate denialists" is literally same as approving lobotomies and radithor treatments back in 40s. Government shouldn't be in position to dictate against basic rights and freedoms of citizens, it seems Australians are doing the right thing by protesting and prompting regime change there. It seems Commonwealth countries have a huge problem with government forgetting its place.

[Ludicus]

Also whole " democracy should not tolerate denialists" is literally same as approving lobotomies

Not at all...this is what I'm talking about,

Antivaccine Movement and COVID-19 Negationism: A Content Analysis of Spanish-Written Messages on Twitter
Read the full paper.

Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, different conspiracies have risen, with the most dangerous being those focusing on vaccines. Today, there exists a social media movement focused on destroying the credibility of vaccines and trying to convince people to ignore the advice of governments and health organizations on vaccination. Our aim was to analyze a COVID-19 antivaccination message campaign on Twitter that uses Spanish as the main language, to find the key elements in their communication strategy. Twitter data were retrieved from 14 to 28 December using NodeXL software. We analyzed tweets in Spanish, focusing on influential users, most influential tweets, and content analysis of tweets. The results revealed ordinary citizens who ‘offer the truth’ as the most important profile in this network. The content analysis showed antivaccine tweets (31.05%) as the most frequent. The analysis of anti-COVID19 tweets showed that attacks against vaccine safety were the most important (79.87%) but we detected a new kind of message presenting the vaccine as a means of manipulating the human genetic code (8.1%). We concluded that the antivaccine movement and its tenets have great influence in the COVID-19 negationist movement. We observed a new topic in COVID-19 vaccine hoaxes that must be considered in our fight against misinformation.

prompting regime change there.

How exactly? by force? in the US, DOD makes masks mandatory on All US military installations, since a long time ago.Canada will soon require all federal public servants and many other workers to be vaccinate.Germany has imposed mandatory COVID-19 testing requirement for unvaccinated people.Are you ready to propose revolutionary changes all over the world?

[B. W.]

I did not mention in my previous post the right or the left. But it is true that the extreme right exploits the pandemic for political reasons, and conspiracy theories proliferate:the allegedly orchestrated by "big pharma" companies in conjunction with Bill Gates, this scheme would supposedly kill millions in the name of generating profit, the COVID death tolls were being exaggerated to pave the way for a large-scale vaccination programme, and many of similar conspiracies are prevalent within far-right media, many of them degenerate into over antisemitism - Online Antisemitism in Times of COVID-19
----
Whoever believes to live in a democracy founded on reason cannot tolerate vaccine denialism which is a public danger, cannot tolerate the apology of darkness, misinformation, or the oratory rage of the denialists.

Again...OMG! It is the extreme left that has exploited the pandemic as was evidenced in the last election when all sorts of unconstitutional schemes were devised to facilitate vote cheating.

The one who is practicing "denialism" is you. The fact that an ABC news reporter was disgusted by her company's refusal to post stories about alternative options to the vaccines should be evidence enough. She claimed that she wasn't allowed to report on vaccine problems because the drug companies (big pharma) was paying for advertising on her channel and prevented the station from airing those stories. That is not a conspiracy. That is a fact.

Going further, we were told that these were vaccines and that they would prevent covid. Now it turns out that they are merely therapeutics that require booster shots and even with the boosters you can still get covid.

I could go on and on but you are totally in the bubble of left-wing propaganda.

[Heathen Hammer]

Not at all...this is what I'm talking about

Uh, that's literally irrelevant to what you were talking about earlier.

How exactly? by force? in the US, DOD makes masks mandatory on All US military installations, since a long time ago.Canada will soon require all federal public servants and many other workers to be vaccinate.Germany has imposed mandatory COVID-19 testing requirement for unvaccinated people.Are you ready to propose revolutionary changes all over the world?

It seems a lot of governments are forgetting that they are servants of citizens, not some kind of untouchable royalty. Time will tell if they learn their place and back off or would have to learn historical lessons the hard way.

[Cyclops]

When I say that democracy should not tolerate denialists, it is not in a punitive way. But its our duty to identify conspiracy theories, and unmask the dangers of false covid-19 rethoric.
It is also true that I have a huge intolerance for denialists. Everyone is free to have their own opinion, but our rights should not override the right to life of our fellow citizens.But if we look closely, the violence comes from them. They are the ones who vandalize vaccination posts in many countries, intimidate those who want to be vaccinated, even here they did it two days ago, although fortunately they are few in this country.

Shameful that some kooky denialists would do that, sadly even the ones who protest (we've had a couple of protests in Australia this week) hurt the community.

Our medical system is experiencing pressure now from the incredibly virulent delta strain. I hope we don't get to the stage where we have to triage use of ventilators and other treatments because sadly the unvaccinated get a lower priority: by refusing the vaccine they decrease their chance of survival, and pragmatically they get pushed down the queue. Some idiots have claimed is some sort of punishment, but then again, if someone is stupid enough to refuse a life saving vaccine because of 5G conspiracies then they are too stupid to understand how triage works.

If I am not mistaken, Australia has only 23 or 24 percent of its population fully vaccinated. Until Australia has a higher percentage of its population vaccinated, lockdowns are necessary to avoid unnecessary deaths.With about 19% or so of the population vaccinated, New Zealand also had a three-day lockdown for this reason.

Yes our idiot Prime Minister famously stated in March "its not a race" (seemingly playing down COVID to placate vaccine deniers in his own party). He also slowed down the vaccine rate with a bunch of mixed messages about AstraZenica, possibly for the same reason. Last year his government was extremely slow off the mark to even secure vaccine supplies, led into complacency by Australia's naturally isolated position that gave us some defence against spread.

The federal Coalition has a one seat majority in lower house of Parliament, and so is at the mercy of loose cannons. One in particular, a Hutt lord call George Christiansen, has been modelling himself on Trump combining sex tourism in the Philippines and Thailand with protestations of devout Christianity and brainlet conspiracy theories about QANON climate denialism and vaccines.

He's not the only stumbling block. Petty politics meant the vaccine rollout was directed through GP's, that is local private medical practices often with small staff and offices. Its extremely hard for a little practice with say 5-20 staff members and a handful of rooms to suddenly ramp up to deliver a program directed at 95-99% of the population.

This has finally been addressed, and the very successful testing program was rolled out through pop up clinics (run by community health agencies and hospitals) processing hundreds daily, and the same infrastructure has finally been adapted to vaccine delivery allowing for mass delivery. Pharmacies (mostly chains of medium sized businesses) have been added in too and are very quickly ramping up (as you'd expect, franchises with central coordination are able to respond with economies of scale much better than a mosaic of small practices). The problem here is the private/public health partnership model in Australia which works adequately for "everyday" health delivery but is dominated by doctors: its very hard to attract public health finding to a program unless there's a doctor in the chain, and the AMA (Australian Medical Association, but more properly the doctor's club) has way more political clout than Pharmacists and nurses.

Denialism is low in Australia, but enough to threaten the lives of vulnerable communities like indigenous groups, the aged etc. We got complacent about vaccines for other reasons and we are paying the price now.