I flipped yesterday from being a bit alarmist about the coronavirus epidemic to being a sceptic or maybe even a denialist. I think the coronavirus epidemic is just another nasty ‘flu epidemic. Yes, it’ll probably kill a few million people. But that’s pretty much what ‘flu epidemics usually do. It’s just that this one is getting a lot of publicity, and most of them don’t.
There are simply too many health scares these days for me to take any of them at all seriously. It’s health scare overload. And I’ve had enough. We’re living in a time of stupid exaggerated fears about almost everything.
Smoking bans are the prime example. Suddenly people have become terrified of tobacco smoke. They’ve suddenly become terrified of something they’d been living with for centuries.
Carbon craziness is another example. Suddenly people have become terrified about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They’ve become terrified about something they’ve always been living with. There’s always been carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is perhaps another example. Some people genuinely seem to think he’s a new Hitler or something. They’re terrified of him. And now they’re trying to impeach him. What’s the charge? That he maybe once thought about denying aid to Ukraine.
I think the Democrats in the US House of Representatives are deranged – completely deranged – to have brought articles of impeachment to the US Senate. The way I see ii, they just spent last week telling the American people just how completely batshit crazy they all are. If I was an American Democrat voter, I would have been been thinking: “And I’ve been voting for crazy people like this?” The way I see it, it’s not Donald Trump that’s on trial: it’s the once-great Democratic Party.
And that’s why having a trial is probably a good thing, because it provides a wonderful opportunity for people like Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi to demonstrate to the world just how deranged and delusional they all really are. All you have to do is let them talk for long enough, and they’ll show just how irrational and stupid and mendacious and devious and spiteful they really are. Give them enough rope, and they’ll hang themselves. And last week they got all the rope they could possibly ask for. Is it at all surprising that Trump’s approval ratings have been soaring since this impeachment fiasco started?
There are occasions – moments of truth – when people suddenly find out what the people they’ve been voting for are actually like. I used to vote Liberal Democrat until pretty much every Lib Dem MP in The UK parliament voted for a draconian smoking ban. And then I realised that they weren’t in the least bit liberal or democratic. They weren’t at all what I thought they were. And I never voted for them again. And so I can well imagine that there are a lot of Democratic voters who kind of think of the Democratic party as the party of illustrious figures like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. And now, to their dismay, they’ve just found out that it’s become the party of Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and they’re never going to vote Democrat again.
But behind the mad Democrats there’s this Trump Derangement Syndrome which seems to be a genuine psychological disorder. But it’s just one disorder among many, including Carbon Craziness and Smoking Stupidity and Obesity Outrage.
One day the bubble in which they live is going to burst, and they’ll all come crashing down to earth.
Frank Davis 
This medical sociologist makes some pertinent points, especially on the advantages of F Bacon (no mobile phone, Fecesbòok, Twitter etc).
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/202001/the-chinese-coronavirus-is-not-the-zombie-apocalypse
With the utter nonsense of this of his, (he’s evidently drunk the pharma $ kool-aid)
” The internet is rife with misinformation and falsehoods, especially about health. Some of these claims, like “Vaccines are bad for you,” have led to the re-emergence of preventable diseases like measles and polio.”
I’m tempted to dismiss his, no, am saddened by his partial blindness… despite other points
So, a Brexout celebration in the SDB at 11pm?
As a radio commentator here pointed out, that’s 12 midnight in Brussels.
They kept control until the last minute, or second.
It’ll be noon in NZ, another cloudless sunny day perhaps … 29C mostly today.
Yay for Warble Gloaming! ;=})
In line with your political comment:
https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/26/target-trump-forever/
Amen, Frank. I’ve also had it with health scares.
Regarding 2019-nCoV: The virus seems to have exploded in the Wuhan area of China and has appears to have wreaked havoc there. However, it does not seem to be as virulent or contagious elsewhere in the world that it has since traveled. This makes me wonder if the 2019-nCoV strain was a weaponized chimera that was developed in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (the only BSL-4 biohazard lab in China), which wound up leaking out but was not very stable in its weaponized form, so it rapidly mutated into a more run-of-the-mill coronavirus which is now simply causing flu-like symptoms in those who happen to contract it. We may never know for certain, but if there are no major outbreaks in other areas of the world, one has to wonder.
I have come across quite a few of there “escaped-laboratory-virus” theories and cannot state often enough that this is nonsense and – more worryingly – peddled by political alarmists.
Yes, all over the world there are laboratories that have the most dangerous micro-organisms, not only viruses. Contrary to what these alarmists peddle, the micro-organisms are – generally speaking – NOT cultured but frozen and access to these areas is more than severely restricted.
The Chinese have released the DNA Sequence and if there were points of human “tampering” these would be easily recognized.
Perhaps this will reassure you.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext
Correction: RNA sequence.
Brigitte, I’m sure there are politically-charged conspiracy theories floating around, but what I stated above is simply something that has been on my mind. I didn’t come across it on the internet, and by no means am I trying to spread a conspiracy theory for political reasons. It’s just that the official narrative here doesn’t explain why the virus spread so rapidly though the Hubei Province and was so potent there, yet as it has spread around the rest of China and the world, it seems to have become far less virulent. And we know for a fact the only BSL-4 biohazard lab in China is less than 10 miles from the fish market which the Chinese government claims was ground-zero for 2019-nCoV.
I don’t trust my own government to tell me the truth, let alone the Chinese government. It’s hard to believe 2019-nCoV just naturally manifested in a snake in a fish market which contracted it from a bat just a stone’s throw from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It’s also hard to trust the numbers coming out of China regarding infections and deaths. How do we know the RNA sequence provided by the Chinese “experts” is actually the sequence of this virus? And if 2019-nCoV did rapidly mutate, as I posited above, they could be providing the rest of the world with the mutated sequence, and not the original sequence (if, in fact it was biologically engineered). There are simply too many layers of trust here, and as a smoker, I’ve learned that well-paid (or in the case of China, well-threatened) “experts” should never be trusted.
JoeL, I do know quite a few people who are convinced that it is a laboratory created virus and even can understand them.
More and more people are losing their trust and confidence in the powers that be.
It’s hard to believe 2019-nCoV just naturally manifested in a snake in a fish market which contracted it from a bat just a stone’s throw from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fact is often stranger than fiction. CoV is an animal virus and if you look at the number and variety of live animals caged in close proximity in a Chinese wet market, one animal species being pigs (genetically speaking close to humans), mutation and transmission of a novel virus was (and will be in future) bound to happen.
And if 2019-nCoV did rapidly mutate, as I posited above, they could be providing the rest of the world with the mutated sequence,
We need the mutated DNA sequence, not the original one.
and not the original sequence (if, in fact it was biologically engineered).
This would be recognized as we have the original sequence and can compare. Naturally occurring mutations tend to be stable, it takes a lot of work to modify and create a stable virus and the changes required for this can be detected.
People think it is easy (at least it sounds so) to create a monster virus. It is not.
I’m waiting for the CDC to announce that smoking increases your chance of contracting the coranavirus.
Ten years ago I would have laughed at this. But after all the ludicrous propaganda the CDC and WHO have spread about smoking (plus the fact that 2019-nCoV is a respiratory virus), I believe there is actually a possibility of this happening.
Already exists.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11481-019-09845-2
Well, studies concentrating on anti-viral properties of nicotine/smoking cigarettes (after all, smoking is “deadly” and therefore will have an effect on a micro-organism that depends on our gene replication machinery) are hard to find.
I flipped yesterday from being a bit alarmist about the coronavirus epidemic to being a sceptic or maybe even a denialist. I think the coronavirus epidemic is just another nasty ‘flu epidemic. Yes, it’ll probably kill a few million people. But that’s pretty much what ‘flu epidemics usually do. It’s just that this one is getting a lot of publicity, and most of them don’t.
I just observe. After all, it is a novel virus that is well documented! Yes, unfortunately it will cost lives, quite a lot of lives if the spread of the virus continues as it still does. I take the stand that panic (we can see this just by what happens when our governments peddle lobby-driven health-scares) will just instantly kill – much needed – common sense.
2019-nCoV. Although the infection/death numbers are still on the rise so is the recovery number, which indicates (note my careful wording) that symptomatic treatment has an effect. Whichever way, we just have to ride this one out. The actual death rate will be determined when this epidemic is over, and – in any case – the preliminary (not taking the incubation stage as this is not exactly defined into account) death rate should be close to this number.
As yesterday my last glimmer of hope of my British friends (and I!!!) through Brexit regaining our rightful place in society was dashed, I shall avoid all news and celebrations today but respect my Brexiteer friends if they do.
I don’t think that not implementing the highly controversial Article 13 is a first Brexit achievement. It means nothing.
I was under the impression article 13 was scrapped, anyway. From what I learn, it was not.
So, what will happen if every other European country does implement this article? Britain will be equally as affected as everyone else.
Pointing out the anti-smoking laws destroying the most endearing, well known British Culture (traditional pubs) and therefore the uncertainty of will they be amended? resulted in being called myopic (shortsighted or intellectually incapable of insight) and indicates that the EU implemented smoking laws will persist.
As there is NOT a No-deal Brexit, this
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/labelling-tobacco-products-and-e-cigarettes-if-theres-no-brexit-deal/labelling-tobacco-products-and-e-cigarettes-if-theres-no-brexit-deal#the-uk-is-leaving-the-eu
needs to be updated asap.
In the meantime:
The transition period
After 31 January 2020 there will be a transition period until the end of 2020, while the UK and EU negotiate additional arrangements.
The current rules on trade, travel, and business for the UK and EU will continue to apply during the transition period.
You, your family or your business can take some actions now to prepare for 2021.
I am not sure if this applies for the deal-Brexit or just no-deal-Brexit. Has anyone got an idea?
In Quebec, Vidéotron is the second largest all-encompassing media outlet. They are now plastering bus shelter electronic billboards with a ‘Urgence Climatique’ message (Climate Emergency). It returns every thirty seconds or so. Big Brother.
I typed ‘urgence climatique’ with DuckDuckGo a few minutes ago and found this announcement of a new book on the first page. If I had typed it with Google I might have found it on the 20th. The book, written by a French professor, Francois Gervais, says that this climate change scare is just baiting the public:
Il explique d’autre part pourquoi l’accroissement de 0,03 à 0,04 % du CO2 dans l’air depuis le début de l’ère industrielle profite grandement à la biomasse et aux récoltes. A ce titre, le bénéfice pour l’humanité est d’ores et déjà énorme. Par ailleurs, François Gervais utilise les mesures récentes pour montrer que la fraction de réchauffement liée aux activités humaines est noyée dans la variabilité naturelle. Un phénomène attesté par l’évolution imperceptible de sa signature dans l’infrarouge
According to Professor Gervais the increase of CO2 in the air since the beginning of the industrial revolution has been of great benefit to the earth’s biomass, its harvests and humankind. He has recently used up to date methods that show that the fraction of warming linked to human activities doesn’t compare to the power of nature’s propensity for variability. The last sentence stumped me. It has something to do with our faintly perceptible infrared signatures. What I just wrote reminds me of the scene in Dr Strangelove when the mad Colonel laments that the fluoride in the drinking water was sapping his/our precious bodily fluids. slugbop007