TORONTO -- After an analysis of mobile phone data revealed more than a million Canadians – the majority of whom were white and wealthy – traveled overnight during the holiday season, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said anyone with a trip still planned should “cancel it.”

Taken from today's news headlines. So, loosely translated, the Canadian government is tracking our cell phones....awesome. I feel so safe, with my government tracking my movements.

On a different note, the next headline will read "travelers leave cell phones at home while on vacation".

try living in china under the CCP

I don't live in china. I live in Canada, the country that fought in WWI and WWII to avoid this kind of crap. I expect this if I am in China, or North Korea, or any other state controlled country. I guess we qualify here now for state monitoring. Civil liberties can eat it I guess. Burn the charter of rights because of Covid and the greater good. No point having a charter if we can just ignore it whenever things get rough eh.

What's the process to immigrate to the US? anyone....?

What's the process to immigrate to the US? anyone....? — Book273

I wouldn't recommend it at the moment.

I like Alaska. Probably be comfortable in Montana too.

Why not recommend it? The civil unrest or the virus?

Taken from today's news headlines. So, loosely translated, the Canadian government is tracking our cell phones....awesome. I feel so safe, with my government tracking my movements. — Book273

That's nothing new, they've always tracked phone records. Wait until they suspect you of committing a crime, they'll be all over your phone records. The public airwaves are not private, it's much wider transmission than going outside and shouting at the top of your lungs. If you can't handle it don't use a phone. And I don't think the US will give you anything better.

Well, both. But the last four years have severely tested a lot of the things that used to draw people to this country. At the moment I don't think our grass is any greener than yours.

It's now confirmed (look it up in Nature) that the B117 COV-2 variant is behind the giant covid-19 wave experienced by Europe.

So, yea.

An excellent illustration of folks' mistaken understanding of what is private information and what is public.

Well I am not concerned about the virus, so that's one down. I admit the civil unrest isn't appealing, although it is bubbling here too. Your income tax levels are certainly more appealing!

Yep. I am fairly sure I don't want to know everything the government is keeping tabs on.

Anatomy of our battle against COVID-19
This is a graphical representation of the progress of the disease in Australia. FOlk may find it interesting.

Lock down hard and early.

Knowledge is power. You can be as easy or as difficult to monitor as you choose to be.

Lock down hard and early. — Banno

Exactly. This is what I hate about our current government because they appear incapable of doing that. Our current lock down started with 10k positive tests per day. We are now at 5k, which isn't good enough because we remain in lock down. Then why the fuck didn't we go in lock down at 5k in the first place? We would've been back to loosening of restrictions already instead of a curfew causing riots throughout the country, which are super spreader events themselves. :rage:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/fauci-says-he-was-the-skunk-at-the-picnic-in-trumps-covid-team

Smart man. Especially avoiding damning Trump. He needs to be seen at independent if he wants to have maximum appeal to convince people to follow his advice and get vaccines, instead of appearing as another partisan player.

"Lock down hard and early" is a future principle that I don't think anyone sensible could now deny. But it unfortunately doesn't help us decide the best course of action now, when those lock-downs haven't happened or have been insufficient. As Banno's data shows, once the virus is endemic in the community lock-downs have a significantly smaller impact on the progression of the virus, partly because the baseline numbers are bigger, but mostly because, as the scientist quoted says, the centres of spread are often "the very places that you can’t shut down, even in the strictest of lockdowns"

Lock-downs are still an important part of the solution, but to treat them (as our government here in the UK are doing) as it's only weapon is beyond reckless. We need massive investment in healthcare and community services and we need it yesterday, yet it is almost completely absent in the Hollywood version of events being portrayed by the majority of the media.

On a related note. There's finally some kickback from the medical community over this childish narrative of the big evil virus and a disobedient public being responsible for all the worlds ills...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/23/covid-dont-blame-public-overloaded-hospitals-icu-medics-tell-nhs-staff

Capitalism creates a situation where every single service is cut to very bone, without a shred of (inefficient) capacity built in. Creates a population strung out on junk food and TV. Puts minority groups into poverty that the Eastern block would have been ashamed of. Packs children into classes with barely enough teachers to stop a riot, let alone manage a pandemic. Packs the elderly into homes with the bare minimum of services to keep them alive. Packs the workforce into jobs which extract every ounce of effort out of them for as little return as possible... And then when a virus comes along and knocks the whole precarious structure over we blame the fucking virus. and who do we laud as the saviours of this debacle. The very capitalist industries who created the whole fucking thing in the first place.

That's what happened. Ideology is the greatest danger; in this case individualism preventing folk taking personal care and faith in the free market preventing preparation and adequate responses.

We are fortunate that we have a gormless conservative Prime Minister who has been sidelined by State Premiers.

Brisbane locked down hard for three days after one case. Long enough for tracing to be done, End of outbreak.

Ideology is the greatest danger; in this case individualism preventing folk taking personal care and faith in the free market preventing preparation and adequate responses. — Banno

Indeed. It's only that I see a lot of talk about the former and very little about the latter.

Brisbane locked down hard for three days after one case. Long enough for tracing to be done, End of outbreak. — Banno

Brilliantly done. Fast, hard and accompanied by tracing. A good example of a working tool being used properly.

Brisbane locked down hard for three days after one case. Long enough for tracing to be done, End of outbreak. — Banno

I'm sure Australia doesn't do that with every new organism that passes through. They did it because they had the benefit of knowledge gained from countries that learned it the hard way, the first one being Italy.

So the story is: conquer the pandemic by being in the middle of nowhere with your radio on.

They did it because they had the benefit of knowledge gained from countries that learned it the hard way, the first one being Italy. — frank

Nonsense.

Here's an article from 1988 warning of the risk of pandemic diseases.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/373248

The world was famously pre-warned of this one

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/11/3/210

And yet why were emerging virus programmes like the USAID programne, or the global virome work cut back to the point of barely functioning...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/health/predict-usaid-viruses.html

...money.

The glint of a few pence off the tax bill. It's really not that hard to explain why Italy was so unprepared. It costs money to be prepared and people were not willing to pay it.

But hey you can stick to your narrative of the big bad virus coming out of nowhere with no-one to blame for its spread but the tinfoil-hat wearing anti-vaxxers. I'm sure the pharmaceutical industry will be along soon on their white chargers to save us all, and then we can get back to business as usual... killing 22,000 children a day from poverty and no-one giving a shit because they're not white middle class taxpayers.

killing 22,000 children a day from poverty and no-one giving a shit — Isaac

Why don't you do something to help? I've been working on ways to get inhaled medications to poor kids with asthma. I've learned a lot, especially about how my half-assed efforts to network with local charities would become superfluous if my state would make one little change in how medicaid funds are routed. Right now, the funds go to the federal government, but there's a way to get my state's funds to come back to my state. And that would help. There's also an Obamacare angle.

Knowing these things helps me become one of those people who tells others which officials they should vote for and why.

Are you doing stuff like that?

Both my youngest indian and I want the vaccine.
Having said that I am overcoming a lot of resentment when my youngest tests Positive for COVID when he has followed every rule of the virus mitigation a available. NicK was out with two friends, having a beer to ward off his depression who both tested positive for Covid-19. My immediate feeling is why? Why the fuck would you put yourself at risk having almost died in May from an Aortic dissection? You KNOW what the fuck happens to you on a ventilator!
Nothing just a fuck off attitude and I am left to come to terms with one person's choice of action and ALL of us facing the consequences.
Correlation? Causation? Fuck, I don't know, no one knows.
I'm testing negative even though I have been the one exclusively caring for my Indian. He is recovered.... recovering.... he is very afraid of the long term damage to his organs. He didn't want me to get it because he said he would know if I got it from him.
I apologised for getting upset about NicK increasing the risk and we don't know our indian contracted Covid-19.
Just curious:
How would you handle the virus mitigation going forward in a house with differing opinions about COVID?

How would you handle the virus mitigation going forward in a house with differing opinions about COVID? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I think that's the question for Nick and the Indians: How do they see it going forward when you want to social distance etc.?

Edit: and I get it the other side in this. I'm fucking done with the lock downs myself. I have a depressed family member that I see deteriorating every week. I've got a kid who is not playing enough with kids her age because her school is closed. I used to be out and about every day and I look like a ghost. I have met 5 of my new colleagues in person in the last year when I started a new job in May. I miss office banter, talking at the coffee corner, seeing my friends to play a board game etc. It's totally worthless living like this and I have fun kids and a wife for company. And I'm pretty stoic about this sort of stuff. So for a lot of people it's basically hell.

Yeah, being an island helps. But it's not the sole explanation. Melbourne had amongst the hardest, longest lockdowns; 110 days. That was its second lockdown; the first started in march. Travel restrictions prevented spread. But most of the credit should go to the excellent tracing of contacts.

And yes, Australia locked down because it understood the science; is that a problem for you? It was more from having worked with Singapore and South Korea on SARS than from watching Italy; that was too late.

Don't be taken in by Trump's "Who knew?" That bloody fool knew; he did exactly what @Isaac describes.

Why don't you do something to help? — frank

Why do you assume Isaac isn't?

But most of the credit should go to the excellent tracing of contacts. — Banno

And Australia should be really proud of those who took the initiative to do that. They saved a lot of lives and a lot of heartache.

Still, they were lucky. While Europeans were still working off of false information coming out of the WHO, the virus was spreading and mutating into a more transmissible form.

NYC did lockdown and try to trace, but by the time they did, it was already out of control.

It could of been Australia that gave the rest of the world a heads up. It just wasn't.

Why do you assume Isaac isn't? — Banno

I asked him if he was.

Lockdown has hardly changed my life at all. Am I lucky, or to be pitied?

I am overcoming a lot of resentment — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Resentment is highly contagious, but fortunately, dogs are immune. Knitting is also said to be therapeutic. Don't panic, Mum. I know its your job, but you can't expect perfection from a man.

One result the Pandemic will have: no more huge passenger aircraft. Both the Boeing 747 and the Airbus 380 will cease or has ceased production. Just like with the Concorde, bye bye, Jumbo jet!

It may be that people will later look at awe at the luxury of the pre-Pandemic airline business.

I've been working on ways to get inhaled medications to poor kids with asthma. — frank

Good for you, well done. I'm not sure what that has to do with what I was arguing about though. Maybe I've not been clear. What I'm talking about is the narrative we allow to develop. Everyone interprets the world through a narrative (by 'interpret' here, I mean to make rough and ready decisions about appropriate responses) and that narrative is largely socially constructed. As you said yourself, our individual actions are just a drop in the ocean (no less worthy for it, though), but one of those individual actions is to be part of forming the social narratives that are available. That people can read about 22,000 children a day dying and yet think an appropriate response is to carry on as normal is allowed them by one of the available narratives - "it's too complicated", "I'm doing my bit in giving x to y", "there's more important issues right now", "it's naive to think we can do anything"...etc.

The point I'm making here is about the methods being employed to silence the dissenting voices regarding the pandemic response. Don't get me wrong, I'm no free-speech fundamentalist, nor am I an anti-masker or anti-lockdowner, so I have absolutely no concerns about the fact that these people need to be silenced. But the method matters, a lot. Because once this crisis is over 22,000 children a day are still going to be dying from poverty. We don't, ethically, get to absolve ourselves of responsibility for those people just because there's another crisis around which is also killing 10,000 or so a day.

The narrative being used is dangerous.

The few nutjob anti-maskers are not to blame for the overburdening of hospital services (all societies have nutjobs and failing to plan for them is our fault - as non-nutjobs, not theirs) - decades of chronic underfunding is to blame.

The Disney-esque nastiness of the virus is not to blame for the number of deaths - chronic failures in community healthcare, poor working conditions, junk food manufacturers, urban slums, poor geriatric care, racist housing policies and, again, chronic underfunding of hospital services are.

It is not an unfortunate shock that this virus emerged and took us by surprise - it is the direct consequence of stripping global monitoring services to the bone in order to present tax cuts as an electoral bribe to greedy voters.

The pharmaceutical industries are not saviours, in it with the rest of us - they spent billions lobbying to get this exact result with immunity from any responsibility despite not even testing the vaccine properly and stand to make billions out of the roll-out of a product which has not even been proven to help reduce the transmission, or hospitalisation, delivering protection overwhelmingly to wealthy countries while the poorer ones can go hang because there's no profit in helping them.

And after all this is done, after the vaccine has finally had an effect (presuming it can keep up with mutations and can eventually get to the poorer countries - two big presumptions)...what are we left with as a narrative for the population to reach for when reading about the 22,000 children a day dying of poverty. The 22,000 that have been dying still every day throughout this crisis and will continue to do so afterwards?

We have a narrative which says that global catastrophes just come out of the blue, there's nothing we can really do about them, the few dissenting individuals who don't comply are largely the ones responsible if government plans don't work out and our best course of action is to wait for one of the giant multinational industries to find a solution.

So now - really - how do you think people's response to hearing 22,00 children a day die from poverty is going to have changed?

These children largely die from some disease or other - well diseass just spring out of nowhere don't they, and there's nothing we could have done about that, was there?

These children largely die as a result of failures in government policy - well, governments make good plans, but it's mostly a few nutjobs not complying that spoils them isn't it?

The diseases they die from are largely a result of the poor living conditions they are forced into - but no, living conditions don't affect your vulnerability to disease anymore , diseases are caused by the lack of a profitable pharmaceutical remedy, aren't they?

Their poverty is often the direct result of multinational companies resource-stripping - but hey the big multinationals saved us from coronavirus didn't they, their involvement here can only be a good thing, let's see if they can come up with a solution to this one.

It matters how we talk about things.

The few nutjob anti-maskers are not to blame for the overburdening of hospital services (all societies have nutjobs and failing to plan for them is our fault - as non-nutjobs, not theirs) - decades of chronic underfunding is to blame. — Isaac

I guess pandemics produce a healthcare immune response. Everyone learns where the weaknesses were and what we should have done.

The pharmaceutical industries are not saviours, in it with the rest of us - they spent billions lobbying to get this exact result with immunity from any responsibility despite not even testing the vaccine properly and stand to make billions out of the roll-out of a — Isaac

Your attitude toward the vaccine perplexes me. It's multi-pronged. If I address one of your concerns, you bring up another. If I address that one, another pops up. Eventually, we get back around to your original concern like a game of wackamole.

So now - really - how do you think people's response to hearing 22,00 children a day die from poverty is going to have changed? — Isaac

Who cares? Do something about it. You might be interested in this.

Everyone learns where the weaknesses were and what we should have done. — frank

Really. You work in healthcare, right? Are you seriously suggesting that neither you no any of your colleagues had the faintest idea the ICUs were working at near capacity before the pandemic? Did you all look at your stock of ventilators and think "plenty there to handle a pandemic"? Did anyone working in emergency care feel they spent a good deal of their time twidling their thumbs because their units were ever so slightly overstaffed?

I know you have it slightly different over there, but honestly, I've not heard a single story from any health professional across the world who says their healthcare services are fine as they are. We all knew.

Your attitude toward the vaccine perplexes me. — frank

Yeah I know. A multinational conglomerate that has a documented history of lying about its products, plans to make billions out of injecting half the world with a chemical that's had one tenth of the testing and one fiftieth of the approval checks given to medicines normally administered to less than one thousandth of the target population, to alleviate the spread and hospitalisation rate of a virus despite no evidence whatsoever that it will do either, and despite knowledge of proven alternative approaches which are cheaper and will definitely do both. And I'm bothered about it. I guess I'm just funny like that. We all have our quirks I suppose.

how do you think people's response to hearing 22,00 children a day die from poverty is going to have changed? — Isaac


Who cares? — frank

Well, I do. Obviously. The possibility that people might be made less likely to help prevent the deaths of thousands of children is another one of those little things that just bothers me.