Covid-19 global lock-down is a mishmash of fear and precaution

March 12, 2020

Being over 70, I am apparently in the high-risk group if I get infected.

I am sure that all those who are currently battling with containing the outbreak are well-qualified and and are doing their best. But being well-qualified and knowledgeable are not always an indicator of wisdom.  Even given the same level of knowledge, there is a difference between a measured response and an alarmist response. The current panic response to the outbreak seems to me to be more alarmist than measured.

The Twitter and Facebook worlds are ideally suited to spreading alarm. Fact and fiction are blended with the ridiculous and the malicious to give a “tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing”.

  • Don’t touch your own face unless you have washed your hands.
  • Stock-up on toilet paper.
  • Stock-up with food for 14 days. Replenish every day.
  • Wash your hands every 20 minutes.
  • Don’t go to sports events. Complain if the match is cancelled.
  • Stay 1 m away from fellow passengers on public transport.
  • Viruses are necessary for biodiversity.
  • Ban the virus (except in cases of asylum).
  • Ban foreigners who may carry the virus from entering your country.
  • Your own citizens who carry the virus may enter freely.
  • Banning a foreigner carrying the virus is racist.
  • Children are the lowest risk group. Close the schools.
  • The old are at greatest risk. Don’t visit them / lock them up.
  • If you think you have a cold, self-isolate.
  • If you are tested positive, wait it out, don’t self-immolate.
  • If you think a household member is infected, self-isolate.
  • The old who are infected take up the most health resources. Let nature cull those over 65.
  • It is divine punishment for ……
  • Coronavirus transmission is ‘highly sensitive’ to high temperatures. Covid-19 pathogen appears to spread fastest at 8.72° Celsius.
  • Close the world until summer.

The fear-driven response is going to continue for a few months yet. There will be fatalities. But the deaths resulting from the Covid-19 outbreak are still well below the “normal” 1000+ deaths per day due to influenza. At the time of the peak in China in February, deaths reached about 150 in a day (mainly in Wuhan). Yesterday, March 11th, the peaks in Iran and Italy have given a world total of 331 deaths. Some say it is going to get worse.

 

 

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Are rights real in this age of entitlement?

March 11, 2020
  1. A right is an entitlement to a privilege.
  2. A privilege is an actual advantage available (whether granted by anybody or not) to a particular person or group. (By analogy, your right is your ownership of another’s debt, an entitlement is that the credit is in your account and a privilege results when it is encashed).
  3. Having an entitlement is no guarantee that the privilege will result.
  4. A grant of an impossible entitlement or an entitlement granted by an incompetent authority cannot be realized as a privilege.
  5. The universe is not in debt to any living creature.
  6. There are no entitlements which flow from the laws of nature as rights of any kind except the obligation to comply with the natural laws.
  7. No living thing is born with any entitlements.
  8. There is no entitlement even to life. Survival is a result, not an entitlement.
  9. The primal drivers for all living things are survival and self-interest.
  10. Humans are not born equal. Each human is born with a unique set of genes and has the potential and the constraints given by that set of genes (nature). All humans are born naked, with no resources, no debts, no liabilities and with only those privileges as may be granted, or liabilities that may be imposed, by the local, surrounding human society.
  11. Humans are not brought up equally. Every individual receives varying amounts and quality of support from the surrounding community (nurture).
  12. Human lives are not equal in value. The value of a human life to its surrounding society is neither static nor a constant. It varies across individuals, across societies and across the lifetime of the individual.
  13. An individual’s capability for behaviour lies within the envelope of what is allowed by an individual’s genes (nature), as enabled or constrained by upbringing (nurture).
  14. An individual’s actual actions are limited first by capability (nature and nurture) and then as motivated or constrained by individual cognition.
  15. Every individual is free to act within his capabilities and his desires but within the physical constraints that the surroundings (environment or society) may have applied.
  16. Human brains give us the ability to reason which, in turn, gives our assessments of self-interest. All human behaviour is governed first by perceived self-interest.
  17. Even apparently altruistic actions are only as a subset of perceived self-interest.
  18. An individual’s immediate, perceived self-interest can override any consideration of causing harm to others.
  19. Coercion, physically or by the application of threats (including by legislation), can change the perception of self-interest.
  20. All societies – from family groups and up to nations – grant their members various privileges conditional always upon their behaviour.
  21. “Acceptable behaviour” is a dynamic, local, value-judgement. It varies across individuals, families, societies and over time.
  22. All societies create legislation to try and coerce “acceptable” behaviour from their members by rewarding “good” behaviour and penalizing “bad” behaviour.
  23. In practice, protecting or rewarding the perpetrators of “bad” behaviour shields and perpetuates that behaviour.
  24. “Improvement” of individual behaviour means eliciting a greater compliance with a society’s standards of behaviour.
  25. Global declarations of entitlements can only be effected (encashed) locally.
  26. There is no global, timeless definition of what constitutes “acceptable” or “barbarous” behaviour which is shared by all 7 billion humans.
  27. No society attempts to, or has the competence to, guarantee that any of its members will not be victims of “unacceptable behaviour” received from others.
  28. Human rights are an imaginary social construct.
  29. All declared human rights are of universally applicable, irrevocable, unconditional entitlements to some privilege of received behaviour.
  30. Declared human rights are free of cost and require no reciprocal duties.
  31. A declaration of human rights in itself creates no social contract.
  32. All claims of human rights are claims against the behaviour received or not received from others.
  33. Human rights entitlements are theorized to apply only after birth and cease with death. (A living murderer retains rights but not so the victim).

 

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Common influenza has killed 20 times more people than coronavirus in the last 2 months

March 8, 2020

The global mortality due to all strains of conventional influenza is greater than 1000 deaths per day (between 400,000 and 600,000 deaths per year). The flu season in northern climes runs from about September to March and most fatalities occur at this time.

The current Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has resulted in 3,600 deaths, globally, in the last 50 days with over 2,000 just in China.

During the same period influenza has killed at least 50,000 (and more likely around 80,000) around the world.

The number of influenza deaths occur in spite of there being vaccines for some strains of the virus. There is no vaccine yet for Covid-19. There is no “cure” for influenza and neither is there a “cure” for Covid-19. However treatment of influenza is much better established than for the new virus.

Common influenza – even with vaccines available and with better established treatment –  has killed at least 20 times more people than Covid-19 in the last 2 months. So why the unnecessary and ridiculous panic?

I suspect it is because we have now been conditioned by Alarmism and are governed by fear. I note that cowardice is when actions are subordinated to fear (and bravery is when fears are subordinated to actions). The alarmist world has become a more cowardly place.

#coronavirus

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MH370: 6 years on

March 8, 2020

8th March 2014.

 

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Corona Safety

March 3, 2020

I like this presentation from Siemens.

Corona safety.pdf

 

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Covid-19 and the culling of humans

March 3, 2020

It’s early days yet to have a clear picture of the effects of the Covid-19 coronovirus outbreak.

In all but being formally declared it is pretty close to being a pandemic.

But what is already pretty clear is that it targets and culls humans by age.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

data from worldometers.info

 

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All the doomsday predictions throughout history that have come true

February 7, 2020

list:

 

 

end:

 

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Woke by the Iowa Caucus shambles

February 4, 2020

I have been dragged out of my self-imposed hibernation by the shambles surrounding the Iowa Caucus. It ranks quite high on the entertainment scale (and certainly higher than the Eurovision song contest trials which are beginning).

The “partial” results are still awaited but the following thoughts occurred:

  1. Nothing wrong with Iowa or its caucus, only with the idiots counting and reporting the Democratic caucus.
  2. Trump won the Republican caucus, and also, it seems, the Democratic one.
  3. The “partial” results that will be first reported are those showing Sanders in the worst possible light.
  4. The cancelled results of the Des Moines Register poll and the delay in the results both – coincidentally of course – deny Sanders momentum and hide the disaster for Biden (who also coincidentally is the darling of the Democratic establishment).
  5. Voter suppression, candidate suppression, result suppression or – for the DNC – all of the above.
  6. Blaming age of voters and unfamiliarity with technology is just to hide an app not fit for purpose and incompetent developers and administrators.

Guaranteed entertainment till November.

Let the games commence.

 

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Writing versus blogging

January 10, 2020

The empirical evidence is in.

It has been 6 months since I suspended my blog posts in favour of trying to move forward with some of my many stalled “writing” projects. Though the last 6 months have been a little rough on the personal front, I take it as proven that refraining from writing blog posts has increased my productivity in other areas, since 3 of 9 stalled projects are now reaching completion.

  1. A biographical article which I started over 5 years ago is now complete and I am finalising the citations and illustrations,
  2. A book which I started in 2010 is now a complete draft where only a final revision is needed, and
  3. An attempt at fiction has achieved a complete – if incoherent – plot. The only problem is that some of the best bits I have written don’t quite fit the plot. The dilemma is whether to massage the plot or to rewrite whole sections.

In any case the progress made means that my blog posts will now slowly restart, though probably very intermittently. Hopefully these 3 texts can be finished/published by this summer.

 

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Still gone writing

October 22, 2019

It has been about 3 months since I decided to stay off this blog and try and bring some other writing projects to conclusions (finish or abandon).

I think it’s working but I have neither finished nor abandoned any of the 7 “projects” I had ongoing.

Another 3 months should begin to generate some clarity.

 

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