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Cell-tower attacks by idiots who claim 5G spreads COVID-19 reportedly hit US:
US warns carriers to boost security, citing reports of attacks in several states.
The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly issuing alerts to wireless telecom providers and law enforcement agencies about potential attacks on cell towers and telecommunications workers by 5G/coronavirus conspiracy theorists. The DHS warned that there have already been "arson and physical attacks against cell towers in several US states."
The preposterous claim that 5G can spread the coronavirus, either by suppressing the immune system or by directly transmitting the virus over radio waves, led to dozens of tower burnings in the UK and mainland Europe. Now, the DHS "is preparing to advise the US telecom industry on steps it can take to prevent attacks on 5G cell towers following a rash of incidents in Western Europe fueled by the false claim that the technology spreads the pathogen causing COVID-19," The Washington Post reported last week.
<no-sarcasm>
FACT: 5G mobile networks DO NOT spread COVID-19!
</no-sarcasm>
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:05AM (31 children)
I am pretty well connected with alternative information channels (all you need is to follow the right twitter bubble btw). I have only seen "5g spreads covid" in straw man arguments.
The actual argument is: is there a correlation between 5g exposure and depleted defenses against covid? I dunno, all I know is that the argument has been put forward for Wuhan, for Bergamo (there we have a correlation with high vaccination rates, so I'd first consider that one, it's a pretty solid argument), for the zone in my city where supposedly covid cases are higher.
My position is: irrelevant. 5g is as useful, and as potentially dangerous as police checkpoints at every corner of the street. Do not want except in corner cases.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:11AM (12 children)
My position is: irrelevant. 5g is as useful, and as potentially dangerous as police checkpoints at every corner of the street. Do not want except in corner cases.
I figure that is what may be behind these strawman arguments. Nutjobs get wound up via Facebook and Twitter by those paid to wind them up and by extension discredit any and all critique of 5G. Protocol-wise, I have heard that it is more or less the same as 4G. Frequency-wise, the signals don't reach very far and you'd need towers every few meters for coverage. Take the case of the demo where the tower could not provide coverage for even a single American Football stadium. With that density of towers, it is great for surveillance but prohibitive to deploy and maintain.
Another factor is that one 5G frequency range does a number on weather radar. That brings climate change into the fight and there are some major interests that want to ignore that until it is too late.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:54PM (4 children)
5G mMIMO means directional, means basically rays of uncheckable intensity and a far wider frequency range than the nominal one. So it's not like previous Gs which haven't been much tested either before deployment. My personal impression is that with the advent of cellphones the IQ went down >10 points. Can't say if because of emissions or because the brain is occupied sorting inputs instead of reasoning.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:15PM (3 children)
I was thinking about this the other day. I'm old enough to have gone from party line to smartphone, so I do remember how things used to be. Anyway, what got me on the topic was that I was sitting around on my patio after a day working and as I went to grab my phone to look at a news aggregator site, it struck me that the evening was beautiful, I could think about anything I wanted to whether fun or utilitarian, and that by grabbing my phone and scrolling through news headlines which have no real bearing on my life, I'd be wasting this time by missing the beauty around me and the opportunity to think. So I grabbed my phone and looked at headlines.
These things are fucking heroin -- I've never done heroin but I expect at first it is fun and then over time, it evolves into a maintenance thing and all the luster wears off. I think that's where I am with my phone. A fucking addict and the device is ruining me.
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:59PM (1 child)
It'll probably wear out and break in a year or two. That might give you a chance to kick the habit. Not all phones are smart, yet.
*Grabs laptop and scrolls through SoylentNews comments*
A fucking addict. Yes, I know what you mean.
*Back to more scrolling*
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:24AM
I replaced the camera when the old one went bad but did it a little wrong and so the screen doesn't stick down to the backlight in one corner perfectly -- a good way for water to egress. The on/off button is going too -- I have to really jam it hard to get it to turn on. It's been this way for more than a year now (screen and button) but my disgust with these devices has meant I haven't had any motivation to replace it. From to time I muse on fixing the on/off button sort of half hoping if I did, I'd screw it up. Then I'd be faced with the choice.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:56PM
I'm only in my mid-thirties, and still old enough to have gone from party line to smart phone.
- D
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 20 2020, @04:35PM (6 children)
The wound up people actually exist, though, so it's no longer a strawman. Regardless of whether it's based on an astroturf campaign...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by canopic jug on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:20PM (5 children)
Close. It's not a mutually exclusive situation. So now there are two problems. The one is that which the strawman arguments are distracting from and the other is the wound up nutjobs.
You could say there are more problems since, as mentioned, some group is winding them up and, presumably, they are doing it on behalf of some more remote interests. Another is the control that Facebook weilds over mass public opinion.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:08PM (3 children)
But again, it is NOT a strawman argument because people actually are saying that 5G causes coronavirus.
A strawman is when you rebut an argument nobody made. People ARE making that argument and we have the burning cellphone towers to prove it. [go.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:23PM (2 children)
Nitpick not pertaining to this discussion but "strawman is when you rebut an argument nobody made" is not quite correct, in a debate it means an argument that you did not make. Not that the argument has never existed anywhere ever.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfil34ayaEU [youtube.com]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @08:26PM
Why did you share that video, it says the same thing as the other AC?
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:28PM
My money is on the russians. Anything to sow discord in the West.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:28AM (3 children)
how about TB? [bloomberg.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:42AM (2 children)
A correlation of Covid19 fatalities with the BCG vaccine is infinitely more plausible than 5G.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:58AM (1 child)
but the apparent link is the other way [irishtimes.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday May 20 2020, @11:58AM
Yes, of course I meant 'inverse correlation'. Blame it on English not being my native language.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Username on Wednesday May 20 2020, @12:20PM (13 children)
Yeah, I haven't seen any actual conspiracy theories about it, and I watch Alex Jones and frequent 4chan. All those were debunked back when 4g came out. I think people burning them down is the conspiracy theory. I think most are transformers going up or bad installs, with arson as the scapegoat. Who is going to climb up a tower, open the box, put a flare in there or something, light it up, close the box, climb down. That seems like a lot of work. I can see throwing stuff at it, but how does it burn the insides? It would just burn the outsides of the box. Plus, it will take multiple tries, more likely to light up the buildings or trees next to it throwing stuff at it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:23PM (8 children)
Quite so, but I did see people with anti-5G posters when I was protesting the house arrest order in my city. It is the MO for the powers that keep us imprisoned globally: Find people or a situation far off the deep end, give it great coverage and suggest that they are related to "Covid-19 deniers". Could have the secondary effect of inhibiting rationally concerned people to show up, because they are afraid of being ridiculed for the unrelated opinions of people standing next to them.
German MSM is doing the same, only there it is insinuating that demonstrators are actually AFDs, Pegidas, Populists, Anti-democrats -- whatever propaganda terms they have worked diligently the last 10 years to negatively tinge.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 20 2020, @04:37PM (7 children)
Being at the covid-denial protest kinda leads one to that conclusion...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:08PM (6 children)
It fills me with joy to thwart your dream of a life of leisure on the government teat.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:41PM (5 children)
I'm in an essential industry, moron.
I'm one of the people keeping the lights on in your house right now.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:05PM (3 children)
Morons are an essential industry?
(Score: 5, Funny) by krishnoid on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:17PM (2 children)
No dummy, it's monkeys. You know, the ones on the bicycles attached to the generators. Come on, it's right in his name! Of course, 'Death' probably means he's in project management.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:03AM (1 child)
Worse, I'm in the Health & Safety Department!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:58AM
Does it come with a sonic screwdriver?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @07:08PM
Wait, you're the one turning lights on and leaving the room?! All this time I blamed the kids ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:48PM
I believe this bullshit is primarily spreading among lacertilian, "anti-zionist" types. David Icke is an idiot.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:59PM (1 child)
Perfect example of a "strawman" fallacy. If you'd actually bothered to RTFA, you'd see a picture of a burned electrical box quite clearly near the ground.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday May 21 2020, @12:13AM
Which TFA are you talking about? The BBC had a video of a fire on a pole. Looked to me like a transformer burning, but it was dark out and heavy contrast between the flames and surroundings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @04:38PM
The antenna is "up the tower".
The equipment is on the ground.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:14AM (14 children)
We don't got no 5G cell towers.
BTW, the West has been utterly exposed as the emperor with no clothes. Even in Europe, former Soviet-block Eastern Europeans managed this pandemic way better than the "superior" West. Germany being a notable exception. Maybe because of Merkel, an Eastern German.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:00AM (3 children)
Another conspiracy theory is that there is a correlation (which is not causation) between 5G and increased cases due to immune system suppression, or there may not. Probably far too early to say for sure in the case of Covid-19, but that also seems likely to be false. RF spectra are incredibly congested, especially in the bands good for things like cellular comms, and the frequencies currently being used for 5G deployments would have been used for something else previously - exactly what depending on local telecoms regulators. If these frequencies were causing immune system issues, then you'd think we'd have some documented proof by now, right? Or is it more likely that this is just the latest version of the "Wi-Fi is causing cancer!" FUD that has been repeatedly tested and disproved in double-blind tests?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:51PM (2 children)
Which would be worse? For this to truly be idiots which are a challenge to if not a sign of the fall of civilization, or that this is some sort of operation to test methods of Spetsnaz-style infrastructure destruction testing with the COVID stories as the cover? (Or both - professional insurgency testing with that as the cover story and then other idiots who get caught doing it but are idiots? Or some variation thereof, like such agency egging the idiots along and then standing back and watching what they are doing... Still and all, it would probably be less risky for any such groups to do it on their own soil and not need to test such a thing overseas.)
At any rate, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Claiming that low power RF signals (as in not enough energy to cause burn damage) would interfere with bodily processes, when nothing in known science supports that, is an extraordinary claim.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:41PM (1 child)
What's really concerning though are those who are doing it professionally. This group are most definitely NOT idiots - quite the opposite - you've got to be quite intelligent and have an excellent grasp of psychological maniupulative techniques to be able to mix just enough truth and plausible but misleading statements into outright BS to convince people that really ought to know better to believe in the BS. Seriously, you need to check some of this stuff out, it's twisted but quite brilliant in its way; they've basically taken the kind of manipulation used in Nigerian 419 scams, perfected it through more elaborate phishing schemes, then ratchetted it to the next level for stuff like this. You make an excellent point about the Spetsnaz-style techniques too as something this would make a superb training exercise or dry run for a more up-to-date version of their tactics - why use smartbombs if you can use a combination of cyber attacks and your foe's own population to do some of the hard work for you? Get it right, and a war might even be won without the aggressor having to fire any ordnance at all.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday May 21 2020, @11:22PM
Or else a self-own by our own intelligence communities. Huawei won the race to 5G, and telcos are deploying Chinese technology despite diplomacy. The best CPU manufacturer now speaks Mandarin, but at least they're OUR Chinese (TSMC of Taiwan) so at least we can pressure them into not supplying Huawei anymore... so if we can organise the busting of some of that equipment we can get back to managing our own societal decline for the benefit of the 0.001% instead of... I dunno... empowering the bulk of our own societies instead.
Not saying this is what's happening, but the sad thing is it's plausible.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:02PM (7 children)
There actually doesn't seem to be a terribly strong correlation between per-capita Covid mortality and the quality of government. If there were, you'd be forced to draw some strange conclusions. In particular, that Africa is governed better than Europe, or that Little Rock, Arkansas is particularly well governed vs. New York City, or that some countries in Europe would be doing just as well or better if Trump were in charge!
IMHO, the strongest driver of Covid mortality is travel and association. The US has that in spades on the coasts, and so does Europe with its essentially open borders between EU nations. Hard data is hard to come by anyway. The former East Bloc nations might look like they're doing better; but any honest source will tell you that the data are subject to variations in the way they test. Even if they are doing better, it might simply be because people there don't travel as much. That's our whole strategy to combat it without a vaccine: live like peasants who never leave our villages. If your country already has a lot of people living like that, it's going to have less cases, but that doesn't mean it's a superior country.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:20PM (4 children)
Not just countries, there's interesting counting being done in the backward states, e.g. Georgia [ajc.com].
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:26PM (1 child)
She was so respected in her field that she became a democrat state representative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:58PM
Great research well done. Have another one [theguardian.com].
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:11AM (1 child)
And that's just the latest Republican attempt to ratfuck the data.
Florida scientist says she was fired for refusing to change Covid-19 data 'to support reopen plan' [theguardian.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:15AM
Ratfuck?
When did their personal standards rise?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:43PM (1 child)
I actually wouldn't be surprised if African governments were in fact better prepared than European ones in responding to pandemics. And the reason is that many African governments have had a lot of practice, between HIV, malaria, Ebola, TB, and cholera. And that experience means that African governments and citizens alike are much more likely to take the threat seriously and accept the kinds of restrictions that are needed to reduce its spread, plus it's given them longstanding relationships with the WHO, MSF, and other international health care NGOs.
And more importantly, what they definitely don't have is the same level of arrogance and denial that characterized the responses in Spain Italy, the USA, and Sweden which most definitely made things much worse than they had to be. For example, South Africa had domestic travel restrictions in place a few days after their patient 0 was detected, and has been in complete lockdown for a couple of months now, whereas much of the USA and Europe dragged their feet on both of those measures.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:54PM
Back in the 90s when AIDS was ripping the country apart, South Africa bought a couple dozen fighter jets to protect themselves against, uh, Namibia? I guess?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:05PM
> BTW, the West has been utterly exposed as the emperor with no clothes.
> Even in Europe, former Soviet-block Eastern Europeans managed this pandemic way better than the "superior" West.
> Germany being a notable exception. Maybe because of Merkel, an Eastern German.
North Korea has not even a single case of Covid - which makes them not just the best Korea but the best country period.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday May 20 2020, @03:24PM
Unlike the China eh? Half as many dead as little Belgium, though it has about 100 times the size.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:24AM (1 child)
When I see "alternative" media criticizing 5G, the only arguments I read are like these. Any reasonable are drowned under hundreds of these "5G-causes-disease", but usually they are just not there. So the mainstream media found a nice way to shut mouth of any critics of 5G with help of manipulated people.
You will then not hear that it eats a lot of electricity, and modern cities try to be as energy-savy as possible, even turning the street lights off at night.
You will not read that in IoT 5G devices you cannot control the link - you cannot put the unsupported device behind VPN or just in your LAN, everything is open to the world, so using devices with freshly updated firmware will become a must-go. Read: Devices will have a "best before" date and we will end throwing millions of perfectly working, but with unsupported software devices to trash*.
And nobody mentions that it will ruin the radio compatibility of older technologies, some used in other countries military applications.
For me, these opinions about 5G and diseases are just made by an army of hired trolls to put all criticism in one bag. It is not possible to argue with hired trolls.
* This may end even worse - because some trojans may communicate by e.g. P2P or SSH, operators may try to block these services explaining that it is "for security". I had such case when my national Internet provider blocked nearly all IRC servers around 2003-2006 because some malware used it to control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:25PM
It's a proven formula.
Right wing politicians + right wing media noise = all politicians are as bad as eachother.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:07AM (3 children)
We import loony conspiracy theories by the buttload from the US, about time we got our own back and our cell-tower burning loonies influenced the US for a change.
And this is just the start. America, stop sending us your conspiracy theories or our next step is to send you Pauline Hanson!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:29PM
By all means, send her no matter what America does. Even more, send here anywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:49PM (1 child)
The thing is, you Brits have spent the last few years doing far worse to yourselves than us Yanks could ever pull off. For example, choosing a PM with a striking resemblance to the village idiot featured on Monty Python's Flying Circus [blogspot.com].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday May 20 2020, @11:29PM
Pauline Hanson [wikipedia.org]
Missed by only half a world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:31AM
Fun-fact or what? Here is your prove: These gens saboteur of yours go out and sneeze against and touch those towers. Others of the same sort come to check or do the same. Result: 5G mobile network spreads COVID-19.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:32AM (2 children)
it's obvious that the internet and cable tv cause stupidity - destroying 5G towers isn't enough! It is barely a start.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @11:31AM (1 child)
5G towers spreading viruses is just plain wrong, everybody know Windows is what is spreading viruses.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @12:09PM
Actually 5G networks will cause viruses to spread. But not the type that infects humans. Rather the type that infects computers. The reason being that 5G is there to enable more IoT, and more IoT inevitably means more malware.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Touché) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday May 20 2020, @11:32AM (1 child)
boolean haveCovid() {
return antenna.is5G();
}
that says it all, right there.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:55PM
Almost but given the communities spreading these stupid conspiracies you need to include anti-zionism.h
(Score: 2, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:32PM (2 children)
Lets use empathy to look at this from the perspective of someone who wants to cause trouble for 5G operators.
Maybe to make money shorting sell stock, maybe a foreign agent just trying to start trouble, union organizer with an axe to grind, plain old crazy anarchist, maybe to make money selling "protection", it doesn't matter exactly which reason.
If they go public with something like "well, we figured we'd follow antifa's lead and use violence to promote our union views" or "China hired us to attack USA infrastructure" people are gonna freak out.
But if they go to 4chan and shitpost a couple dozen threads about "5G causes cancer so burning down towers" then the lamestream legacy media will whip itself into a boomer frenzy "oh heckin not my precious cellphone-erinos" and they get pretty much free reign to accomplish their stock market short sell scam or their protection racket or whatever, while the internet spergs out about how everyone knows "electromagnetic radiation cannot cause bat aids".
Its a pretty good disinfo campaign.
Here's a really diabolical proposal. There were problems some years ago (like a decade) with a certain provider's fiber to the home neighborhood level equipment vaults catching fire. Something to do with faulty UPSes or bad ventilation old SLC-96 huts were never designed to dump that kind of heat... anyway my diabolical conspiracy theory is its the PR department of the 5G companies themselves knowing they have a problem with gear catching fire and there's gonna be another "CA wildfire" type event sooner or later caused by their poorly cooled fire starting equipment, so to head it off "the fires are actually caused by people dumb enough to think towers cause chinese flu aka bat aids aka the beer virus".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:33PM
Said better, earlier and without the political snark about 5 posts up. /redundant
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @03:29PM
Diabolical? Not really. Bullshit? Yes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:33PM
Arrest these terrorists trying to disrupt the American communication systems, and ship them off to Guantanamo Bay. After a few of these loons disappear the rest may smarten up.
(Score: 5, Funny) by EvilSS on Wednesday May 20 2020, @03:40PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:41PM
But maybe it does cause (or enable) stupidity?
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:33PM (4 children)
Just saying https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/covid-19-brain-symptoms.html [aarp.org]
On a separate note, liberal part of the population is affected by covid disproportionately - 20% antibody positives in NY against less than 5% country average.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:53PM (3 children)
Which has nothing to do with liberalism versus conservatism, and everything to do with another variable, namely population density. As soon as conservatives get together in a large building on a Sunday morning, they spread it just as quickly as liberals do on an underground train.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @08:56PM (1 child)
Not *just* population density. Also the prevalence (at least until the lockdown) of public transportation usage.
NYC subway ridership: ~5.6 million/day [wikipedia.org] (2017 numbers)
NYC bus ridership: ~1.9 million/day [mta.info] (2017 numbers)
Regional commuter rail line ridership: ~900,000/day [wikipedia.org] (4Q 2019 numbers)
Note that social distancing is essentially impossible on trains and buses in the NY Metro area with normal ridership numbers.
During commuting times, a subway car can be considered not too crowded if you can *shove* your way onto the car -- that means there's likely an inch or two between passengers -- well, until more people shove their way in.
Morons have tried to portray the high infection rates in NYC as some sort of failed policy issue, rather than issues with density and high rates of use for public transportation.
The population of Manhattan (which is ~29 miles2) goes from ~1,600,000 [wikipedia.org] to over 3,000,000 on a normal workday. Should all of those ~1,500,000 commuters drive cars into Manhattan, those 1.5 million people would require more than 25,000 miles2 for parking*. On an island that's just 30 miles2, that would be quite a trick.
As such, there is really no way around using public transportation in NYC on a large scale. As such, the high (which have dropped by an order of magnitude over the past six weeks [nyc.gov]) number of COVID-19 cases can be directly related to use of public transportation (subway ridership is down 92% [brooklyneagle.com]).
And that's why it's going to take a while longer for NYC to get back to normal. Assuming large scale testing/contact tracing gets done and social distancing continues, things could *start* getting back to normal in a couple months -- unless we see spikes in cases again, at which point we're back to square one.
tl;dr: Population density and use of public transportation correlated strongly with the number of COVID-19 infections, at least until shelter-in-place policies were implemented. Compare the number of cases in various places with public transport (especially subways) use:
Public transportation usage by city (US only): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_transit_ridership [wikipedia.org]
Number of COVID-19 cases by county (US only): https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map [jhu.edu]
*Average car size: ~15x6 feet or 90 feet2 [reference.com]
Number of people who commute to Manhattan: ~1.5 million [citylab.com]
Calculation:
(90 feet2 x 1.5 million = 135,000,000 feet2
That's 135,000,000 feet2/5280 = 25,568 miles2
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 22 2020, @01:54PM
Of course, one could reasonably argue that public transit use is also a function of population density: Dense cities are much more likely to have public transit networks compared with rural areas and suburbs, for the simple reason of more potential passengers within easy distance of a station.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday May 21 2020, @01:05AM
I agree with you. However, liberal science currently suggests that liberal's covid brain damage is four times conservative's.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:25PM
First of all, I don't think 5G causes corona. But maybe think about this...
Where do 5G towers come from?
China
Maybe the 5G are carriers, either accidentally or else?
Easy enough to cross-reference deployment of 5G towers with infection spread.
Sorry China, don't kill me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @06:53PM
fuck these propagandist whores.