[ExI] Some virus statistics

Wed Jul 15 15:29:00 UTC 2020

> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Some virus statistics

On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 9:29 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

>>…Do you really believe every epidemiologist in the world is lying and every country except the USA is a dictatorship just like North Korea?

> We don’t know what the covid rate is in any communist country. 

>> That doesn't answer my question. Do you claim we don't know the Covid-19 rate in ANY country…

> That’s right.  In any country which controls information, their rate is whatever it says it is.  

>…You STILL haven't answered my question! Do you think ANY country does NOT have control over scientific data, or do you only believe in things that do not require even the slightest change to your worldview?

In China and North Korea, the government controls the narrative.  They threaten or eliminate dissenters.  There is a Chinese doctor hiding in America right now who has a story to tell: Li-Meng Yan.  Listen to what she said about how the pandemic started.

> China started right out with a world-killing lie. 

>…Yes China did tell a lie at the start of the pandemic, but that lie didn't kill any Americans…

On the contrary.  The blame is on China for taking inadequate precautions to contain the virus.  Because of their early coverup, we still don’t know for sure if it started in the wet market or the lab, but plenty of us think it was in the lab.

The USA was one of the first countries to react, by restricting travel from China, but by then it was already too late: it had spread into Italy and UK, and from there it could not be stopped.

>…Doctors and nurses reported that there was a shortage of cheap virus protection masks in the US way back in February, and they're STILL reporting a shortage of them to this very day. If The president can't even solve that simple problem after 5 months do you really think an extra three weeks of warning time would have made the slightest difference?...

Presidents don’t control that process.  Hospital supply departments do.  When you hand all this responsibility to a president when he doesn’t have the authority, you are merely campaigning.  The next POTUS and the ones after that will not have the authority over hospital supply either, because the Fed doesn’t own hospitals.

>…And you're the only one able to figure out that all the scientific data about the virus is completely phoney, not one of the world's epidemiologists is smart enough to do what you did…

I am not claiming the data is phony.  I only claim we don’t know how accurate it is, which is freely admitted by epidemiologists.  We know that different countries count them differently, which is something we hear a lot from Belgium, which is the hardest-hit country in the world in fatalities per capita (second hardest if we count San Marino with its small population.)  Belgium has suffered twice as many deaths per capita as the USA, but they point out that they count them differently from other neighboring countries: they include unproven cases, as the USA does.  

There are differences in the way these are counted, we get that.  We know that covid deaths are more common with people who have other things wrong with them, such as… a massive stroke or heart attack.  If we incentivize hospitals to report those as covid deaths, they will.  We do.

> government will need to be cut deeply at every level. 

>…Great idea…

It isn’t an idea John.  We are forced to it because of revenue shortfall.  There really are no magic solutions to sudden unexpected revenue shortfall other than to keep asking for more loans.

State governments have more options: they can raise property taxes.  Good chance many of them will.  They can raise sales taxes and fuel taxes.  They will.

>… because no society can long remain free if people are dying in the streets from hunger or disease, and if we followed your advice both things would happen…

A revenue shortfall isn’t my advice John.  It is reality.  There are no magic solutions to that.

> There is no magic act to make up the deficit.

>…As people were saying in 1835, and in 1935, and they continue to say it today.

John K Clark

It is still true.  There is no magic act to make up the deficit.  They can continue to borrow only as long as lenders keep lining up.  

spike

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