Corporates do not like competition. The USA (sort of a corporate muscle) wants to keep its monopoly on spying on the world's telecommunication, and the competition (e.g. the Chinese) want a piece of the pie too
I am old enough to remember when google was still the company that "does no evil". How I yearn for those golden days long gone by...
The US is ranked last among developed nations in terms of health care rankings, including health outcome: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fedition.cnn.com%2F2021%2F0...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commonwealthfund.o...
If you measure innovation as number of patents granted, then the US patent and economic system will almost invariably produce the highest number. If you measure it in terms of groundbreaking innovations (including those with no immediate commercial application or gain), the USA don't fare that well. Furthermore, do not forget that a substantial part of innovation including Nobel prices by USA citizens/residents were obtained by recent immigrants that had their schooling (often publicly funded) in other countries.
If you measure groundbreaking innovation / capita, countries such as Norway (which incidentally ranks #1 in health care) still beat the USA.
Fact is, excess mortality mass not increased anywhere yet with omicron - and especially in South Africa, there has already been enough time for it to rise: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.samrc.ac.za%2Freport...
Time will show, but so far no cause for alarm.
Why do they use the term "libertarian" for a dystopian feudalistic system?
This is obviously a system of corporate totalitarianism with a token citizen representation - the defining majority of 6 are the 4 corporate appointees plus the two biggest land owners
Indeed. T-cell mediated immunity might not only be more important than circulating antibody mediated immunity, it also seems that it is much longer lasting AND much more prevalent: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020... (Sekine et al: Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19)
I wish this fear mongering sensationalism would stop and people would start a fact based discussion of covid-19.
References?
Some medication trials and ventilation protocols suggest small benefits over others, but so far no breakthrough. None of those have been properly peer reviewed and verified in larger settings. If a family member was unlucky enough to get severe symptoms now as comopared to lets say February, I would not have any higher or lower hopes re outcome.
Bear in mind that the majority of Swedish cases that died where already close to the natural end of their life span - nothing will make much of a difference in those.
I am rostered periodically in the covid section in my ED as senior medical officer. I try and keep up to date with developments - what do you know that I don't? Please share.
Wrong on many accounts.
1) the dynamics of covid are now better understood. It quickly "reaps" the most vulnerable, that is the elderly with few months to a couple of years projected residual life span. In Sweden, the median of the deceased had a residual projected life span of less than. year, the majority of the deceased being nursing home residents.
It means, that at the beginning of the infection you will always observe a very high death toll that seems scary, and then it drops off quickly because the number of vulnerable people has been reaped already.
Have a look at Sweden's covid deaths - even accounting for the delay between infection and death, there is an initial correlation between number of infections and deaths, and then the number of deaths plummets even if the number of infections might continue peaking: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexperience.arcgis.com%2F...
You cannot reduce the absolute number of deaths by much, you can only delay the deaths, in order to prevent a health system from becoming overwhelmed and thus causing preventable loss of life. At no time had Sweden's health care system been overwhelmed.
I believe Sweden had it mostly right. They could and should have isolated their nursing homes better, which would have more than halved their reported deaths. They openly admit that. But they are unlikely to be worse off in terms of loss of years of life, especially quality years of life, since their policy causes a lot less "collateral damage" - my educated guess is hat in 5 years time there will be consensus that they actually are better off by then unless they get bullied into joining the lemming stampede.
2) Belgium does NOT have a radical honesty policy for covid cases. They simply presume / report any death that could possibly have been associated with covid as covid casualty, even without testing, even without any reported symptoms (eg all nursing home deaths during covid). Their numbers represent a likely "ceiling" of covid casualties, and probably an overestimate - nobody knows so far by how much.
Sweden has one of the most honest approaches, since they automatically match their deaths registry with covid testing registry. They too might overestimate their covid deaths, because they report as covid death anybody who died and had a positive covid test, regardless of symptoms/likely causality - and they test very aggressively.
What users like me really want, is
- user changeable battery
- dual SIM
- memory card slot
- plenty of internal storage
- waterproofing
Google pixel never offered any of that, hence never of interest
You make many assumptions, most of which seem untrue.
1) A health system "built to just below peak capacity" would require a definition of peak capacity. If you would take the "average peak", the first bad influenza woudl cause the system to fall over (see Italy, Spain, and the UK), and one the uses worst case scenarios as "peak" would probably waste resources most years (see Germany). Luckily, Australia has good reserve capacity though and does not sit "close to peak capacity" at present. We suck however at logistics, which is why we ran out so quick on PPE - for weeks I had to work in ED without a face mask, and do covid swabbing of suspect with just a surgical mask. That has improved since last week and keeps improving though.
2) The pandemic does NOT necessarily sit on top of all cases. In fact, covid competes with seasonal RTIs and influenza for the same pool of vulnerable people at the older end of the spectrum. Which explains - to a degree - why in countries where the flu had already reaped the elderly (despite being a very mild flu season), like in Northern Europe, you might see less apparent covid-19 mortality compared to the south. It also means we don't have to fear much from the "double whammy" of influenza and covid-19 in Australia, except for added young patients requiring more intense care from influenza which rarely happens with covid-19.
3) Higgie and Kahn's model was based on the same incorrect input as the Imperial College's (which proved to be two orders of magnitude off in it's predictions) - it simply did not take into account the vast majority of covid-19 infected being asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic only. If a country only tests people with more severe symptoms and you base all your calculations on the assumption that these tested represent the pool of infected, you are always going to end up with vastly exaggerated numbers. The math behind the modelling is trivial, it all depends on the data fed into the model. This was predictable and had been predicted by many, eg the German virologist Streeck.
Herd immunity is based on the basic reproductive rate - which changes over time. The 60% is once again based on a naive assumption of the whole population having equal chance of bumping into each other at the same rate at any time pf the day, and the reproductive rate being a constant. In reality, almost all young population will display minimal if any symptoms. Among them it it is likely to spread much quicker, since the infected will keep mingling instead of staying at home in bed or in hospital. The elderly (vulnerable) tend to mingle less and are less likely to infect non-medical people once they are symptomatic.
With regards to debt - 1 billion/year would pay for interests alone, no repayment at all with that figure, and that only assuming the interest rates will remain at a historic low. History shows that each recession is followed by inflation and rising interests. With no interests, and paying back 1 billion a year, we would be paying back 237 years - but with compound interests and expected rise in interests, an order of magnitude longer. So we have to pay back a hell of alot more than a billion a year, every year - in an economical climate where our main revenue (the Chinese buying our resources and agricultural products) have just been angered by our incompetent politicians needlessly. Since we are producing very little other than food, we depend on imports - that are going to be a lot more expensive in the future. Debt rises, income likely to drop, so where does this lead to?
Have you read 2028 by Ken Saunders? Hilarious political novel. I liked the part where Chinese counter-intelligence could quickly pick ASIO plants by their inability to do maths. So true.
Learn searching properly. Health engine is a marketing/advertising device, using information without solicitation by doctors, and not updating their information even when advised.
Dorrigo Medical Centre was closed 2016. I closed it but still own it, and still own the associated domain.
Since then I have been working in Emergency Departments, just finished my shift for today.
You can check my medical (general and specialist) registrations on the AHPRA website - it is on public record.
I have a Masters in Public Health and Tropical Medicine from James Cook University. No idea whether this can be checked online.
Re "red flag 1" - I cannot even visit my granddaughter nor children. While I can travel from hospital to hospital where I work, I cannot go where I want to go. This is not much different from people in jail, only they got a trial first and presumably committed a crime first. What is worst - I cannot even LEAVE the country - ScMo simply has declared it illegal unless exceptional circumstances. I am not aware of any other "democratic" country that forbids it's citizens to LEAVE. I always thought this only happens in places like North Korea, but now I stand corrected: "INDEFINITE AUSSIE TRAVEL BAN: Australians banned from leaving the country in coronavirus crackdown" (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.news.com.au%2Ftravel%2Ftravel-updates%2Fwarnings%2Fcoronavirus-australia-travel-ban-announced-by-scott-morrison%2Fnews-story%2F15f70c6c9ecb1c0337b69ec9a1946f86) or "Australians will be banned from leaving the country under new coronavirus measures" (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbs.com.au%2Fnews%2Faustralians-will-be-banned-from-leaving-the-country-under-new-coronavirus-measures)
This is the ultimate incarceration!
You also might have seen pictures on the news where a man in swimmers gets beaten up and handcuffed by police for the "crime" of having left his house and going for a swim at the beach. every day we can read in the newspaper how people get fined - and heavily! - just for going to the beach or similar "crimes" that are made up on the spot and no part of any law that passed parliament.
re 2:
Australia has long degenerated into a ping-pong party duopoly. There are no plebiscites, at least none the government actually has to adhere to. The majority of Australians was against invading Iraq, and yet we were forced to by the government - a modern democracy would have the decency of asking their people first whether they want to go to war. Yes, you can (no - you actually HAVE to, else you get fined) tick a box on a ballot paper every 3-4 years, but you don't get to participate in any decision process as you do eg in the Scandinavian countries or Iceland or Switzerland. Our preferential and mandatory election system ensures the continuity of the duopoly. Some call it ensuring stability, others might call it ensuring no change can happen. Thus, change through elections is theoretically is possible, but far, far harder to achieve than in most other Western democracies.
re 3: Australia is currently under investigation internationally for a range of abuse of power by governments and courts - eg when we robbed East Timor, or when violate essential rights of our indigenous people. No, the courts are NOT re-known for fairness. Corporates generally always win, indigenous people rarely do, and battlers need not bother fighting unjust fines. Did you realise what happened with Adani and indigenous land titles?
re 4: we had a pseudo-surplus from privatising the public wealth accumulated by past generations, and cheaply flogging off natural resources. We wasted it. We re now paying through the nose for utilities, airports, etc since the privatisation. We were in deep debt (though not anywhere near as deep as most Europeans let alone the USA admittedly) even before Covid-19 came along, but now we are really blowing it.
Put away your pink tinted glasses and look at reality as it is.
In Australia, we now live in a brutal police state (actually a number of police states), the majority of the population in involuntary incarceration. Did we ever give our government a mandate to institute such a totalitarian regime without any accountability nor legal recurse for oppressed citizens? I think not. And yet, they do. For what purpose may I ask? The moment we lift the restrictions, and we will have to at some stage, it will hit us just the same.
Sweden has showed the way - at no stage was their health system overwhelmed, and their current death toll per capita is comparable with an influenza season. Their excess death this year is not much higher than during most influenza seasons, and the mean age of those who died is over 80 years of age. Given an expected life span in the low 80s, very few years of life lost - actually less than with annual influenza. Per capita, Sweden has lost far fewer lives to covid-19 than for example the UK despite one of the most meticulous death reporting systems (and they report "died with covid-19", not "died of covid-19"!)
In Australia, we wrecked our economy. We spent money that will keep future generations - not just one - in debt. We spent money that will no t be available in the future for our health system, for education, for welfare, for research. We have caused a so far uncounted death toll in suicides (mostly young people!), domestic violence, depression. We know that a rise of 1% of unemployment generally equates to a rise of 1% in suicides, and we have caused unemployment unseen since the last world war!
The cure in Australia has been far, far worse than the disease could ever have been. I speak as a doctor working in an Emergency department in Australia, with a Masters degree in Public Health - so my views are not entirely unqualified I think. every day I see chronic disease patients that have been neglected because of the covid-19 hysteria, and I anticipate a related wave of neglected chronic disease hitting our health system in the intermediate future, a wave that will dwarf the human suffering caused by covid-19 here.
Trumps embargo must be the greatest gift ever made to China - it speeds up their own development and technological independence dramatically.
How would that be a good deal? Only a US American might think such absurdity. What parent would sell out the future of their children?
Compared to the USA, Denmark is a paradise. Far more freedom and security for all, and full access to Europe. EU citizenship is worth more than US citizenship - just check which countries EU citizens can access visa free, and which US citizens can (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlasandboots.com%2Fbest-passport-to-have%2F).
Also check what rights and entitlements EU citizens have, and how few US citizens have in comparison.
Not everybody is willing to sell their future and freedom for a little short term luxury.
Could be a simple case of designing a test to reflect the local curriculum in the USA, or a case of problematic translation.
The test would have a lot more validity if it would have been designed by a joint committee of the universities involved, and then written in their respective native languages (not translated)
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol
