World-wide data as of: 20200615_140637 UTC:
| total_count | 8,028,325 |
| closed_count | 4,584,407 |
| closed_deaths_count | 436,277 |
| closed_deaths_percent | (10%) |
| closed_recovered_count | 4,148,130 |
| closed_recovered_percent | (90%) |
| active_count | 3,443,918 |
| active_mild_count | 3,389,380 |
| active_mild_percent | (98%) |
| active_serious_count | 54,538 |
| active_serious_percent | (2%) |
| total_deaths | 436,277 |
Self-Swabbing Tests for COVID-19 Accurate and Safe, Study Reports
Self-swabbing tests for COVID-19 accurate and safe, study reports:
The 30 study participants, who previously had tested positive for COVID-19, collected their own samples at a drive-through testing site after watching a short video animation and reading a one-page document instructing them how to perform the swab. The nasal swab for the study is more comfortable to use than the long nasopharyngeal swab currently used to collect samples from the back of the nasal cavity.
Allowing people who suspect they may have COVID-19 to collect their own sample has many advantages. Sample-collection kits could be widely distributed, allowing more people to be tested. Those using the kit wouldn't have to travel to a testing site, negating the risk of transmission to health care workers and others with whom they interact in transit. Self-collection would also conserve supplies of personal protective equipment used by health care workers.
[...] The study participants had tested positive in March at Stanford Health Care for the virus that causes COVID-19. Maldonado and her team contacted each of them by phone at home and provided them with written instructions and a short video about how to collect a nasal swab.
They were asked to return to Stanford Health Care for drive-through testing. At that visit, they collected their own specimen by applying a nasal swab to both nostrils. Then, a physician collected two additional samples using a nasal swab and a swab applied to the back of the throat and the tonsils. All three samples were tested for the presence of the virus at the Stanford Clinical Virology Laboratory.
Of the 30 participants, 29 received identical results -- either positive or negative for the presence of the virus -- for the three samples. Eleven of the participants were positive, and 18 were negative. One person's self-collected swab at the drive-through site revealed the presence of the virus, whereas the two swabs collected by the physician tested negative.
Journal Reference:
Jonathan Altamirano, Prasanthi Govindarajan, Andra L. Blomkalns, et al. Sensitivity and Specificity of Patient-Collected Lower Nasal Specimens for SARS-CoV-2 Testing [open], JAMA Network Open (DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.12005)
Researchers Create New Type of COVID-19 Antibody Test
Researchers create new type of COVID-19 antibody test:
The researchers, who published their work in Science Immunology, created a blood test to pinpoint SARS-CoV-2 antibodies that target one unique piece of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. That piece is called a receptor binding domain, or RBD. Their RBD-based antibody test can measure the levels of that domain, which they found correlate to the levels of the all-important neutralizing antibodies that provide immunity.
The RBD of the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is not shared among other known human or animal coronaviruses. Therefore, antibodies against this domain are likely to be highly specific to SARS-CoV-2, and so these antibodies reveal if an individual has been exposed to the virus that can cause COVID-19. Indeed, when the researchers tested blood collected from people exposed to other coronaviruses, none had antibodies to the RBD of SARS-CoV-2.
"Our assay is extremely specific for antibodies to the virus that causes COVID-19, which is not the case for some currently available antibody tests," said co-senior author Aravinda de Silva, professor of microbiology and immunology and member of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. "Our results strongly support the use of RBD-based antibody assays for population-level surveillance and as a correlate of the neutralizing antibody levels in people who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infections."
First and co-senior author Prem Lakshmanane, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at UNC, said, "We are now further streamlining our test into an inexpensive assay, so that instead of the test taking four to five hours to complete, our assay could be completed in about 70 minutes without compromising quality."
Journal Reference:
Lakshmanane Premkumar, Bruno Segovia-Chumbez, Ramesh Jadi, et al. The receptor binding domain of the viral spike protein is an immunodominant and highly specific target of antibodies in SARS-CoV-2 patients [open], Science Immunology (DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.abc8413)
Personality Traits Linked to Toilet Paper Stockpiling: High Levels of Emotionality and Conscientious
In the new study, researchers surveyed 1,029 adults from 35 countries who were recruited through social media. Between 23 and 29 March 2020, participants completed the Brief HEXACO Inventory -- which ranks six broad personality domains -- and shared information on their demographics, perceived threat level of COVID-19, quarantine behaviors, and toilet paper consumption in recent weeks.
The most robust predictor of toilet paper stockpiling was the perceived threat posed by the pandemic; people who felt more threatened tended to stockpile more toilet paper. Around 20 percent of this effect was also based on the personality factor of emotionality -- people who generally tend to worry a lot and feel anxious are most likely to feel threatened and stockpile toilet paper. The personality domain of conscientiousness -- which includes traits of organization, diligence, perfectionism and prudence -- was also a predictor of stockpiling.
Journal Reference:
Lisa Garbe, Richard Rau, Theo Toppe. Influence of perceived threat of Covid-19 and HEXACO personality traits on toilet paper stockpiling, PLOS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234232)
COVID-19: Tradeoffs Between Economics and Public Health
COVID-19: Tradeoffs between economics and public health:
A new study by MIT researchers uses a variety of data on consumer and business activity to tackle that question, measuring 26 types of businesses by both their usefulness and risk. Vital forms of commerce that are relatively uncrowded fare the best in the study; less significant types of businesses that generate crowds perform worse. The results can help inform the policy decisions of government officials during the ongoing pandemic.
As it happens, banks perform the best in the study, being economically significant and relatively uncrowded.
[...] By contrast, other business types create much more crowding while having far less economic importance. These include liquor and tobacco stores; sporting goods stores; cafes, juice bars, and dessert parlors; and gyms. All of those are in the bottom half of the study's rankings of economic importance. At the same time, cafes, juice bars, and dessert parlors, taken together, rank third-highest out of the 26 business types in risk, while gyms are the fifth-riskiest according to the study's metrics -- which include cellphone location data revealing how crowded U.S. businesses get.
"Policymakers have not been making clear explanations about how they are coming to their decisions," says Avinash Collis PhD '20, an MIT-trained economist and co-author of the new paper. "That's why we wanted to provide a more data-driven policy guide."
And if the Covid-19 pandemic worsens again, the research can apply to shuttering businesses again.
"This is not only about which locations should reopen first," says Christos Nicolaides PhD '14, a digital fellow at IDE and study co-author. "You can also look at it from the perspective of which locations should close first, in another future wave of Covid-19."
[...] A key to the researchers' approach is recognizing that during the pandemic, many consumers are trying to limit trips that generate interaction with strangers, while still needing to get essential and useful transactions done.
[...] "The idea was, how can we think about rationing social contacts in a way that gives us the most bang for our buck, in terms of meetings, while keeping the risk of Covid transmission as low as possible?"
The study also rates risk on the basis of aggregate public exposure, per business type. On an individual basis, spending a couple of hours in a movie theater with strangers might seem quite risky. But in February 2020, movie theaters had about 17.6 million consumer visits in the U.S., whereas sit-down restaurants had almost 900 million visits in the same month. As a business category, sit-down restaurants would likely generate much more total transmission of Covid-19.
"It's not danger per visit, but it's a cumulative danger," Nicolaides explains. "If you look at movie theaters, they seem dangerous, but not that many people go to the movies every day ... and restaurants are a good counter-example."
Journal Reference:
Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, Christos Nicolaides. Rationing social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic: Transmission risk and social benefits of US locations [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2008025117)
2 Million Cases and Counting: US COVID-19 Outbreak Charges on Amid Reopening
2 million cases and counting: US COVID-19 outbreak charges on amid reopening:
Cases of COVID-19 in the US have now exceeded 2 million, according to multipletrackingefforts. Deaths from the new coronavirus pandemic stand at 112,000 nationwide.
Both figures are expected to be underestimates, given difficulties and inconsistencies in identifying and logging all the infections and deaths. Still, with the official figures, the US now claims more than 25 percent of all COVID-19 cases globally despite having less than 5 percent of the global population.
Some states are seeing sustained declines of new cases, but others are seeing increases—leading to a high plateau for the US overall. "We're identifying between 20,000 and 25,000 new cases a day, and about 800 to 1,000 people a day are dying of this virus" nationwide, Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR.
Though increases in testing can explain some of the increases, experts say that there are real upticks in transmission in many places.
COVID-19 Threatens the Entire Nervous System: Neurological Symptoms May Appear Before Fever or Cough
COVID-19 threatens the entire nervous system: Neurological symptoms may appear before fever or cough:
About half of hospitalized patients have neurological manifestations of COVID-19, which include headache, dizziness, decreased alertness, difficulty concentrating, disorders of smell and taste, seizures, strokes, weakness and muscle pain.
"It's important for the general public and physicians to be aware of this, because a SARS-COV-2 infection may present with neurologic symptoms initially, before any fever, cough or respiratory problems occur," said lead author of the review, Dr. Igor Koralnik, Northwestern Medicine chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology and a professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The review describes the different neurological conditions that may occur in COVID-19 patients and how to diagnose them, as well as likely pathogenic mechanisms.
[...] Since knowledge about the long term outcome of neurologic manifestations of COVID-19 is limited, Koralnik also will follow some of those patients prospectively in his new outpatient Neuro-COVID clinic to determine if neurological problems are temporary or permanent. These studies will provide the foundation on how to diagnose, manage and treat the many neurologic manifestations of COVID-19, he said.
Journal Reference:
Igor. J Koralnik, Kenneth L. Tyler. COVID‐19: a global threat to the nervous system, Annals of Neurology (DOI: 10.1002/ana.25807)
New Identification of Genetic Basis of COVID-19 Susceptibility Will Aid Treatment
New identification of genetic basis of COVID-19 susceptibility will aid treatment:
Professor Alessandra Renieri, Director of the Medical Genetics Unit at the University Hospital of Siena, Italy, will describe her team's GEN-COVID project to collect genomic samples from Covid patients across the whole of Italy in order to try to identify the genetic bases of the high level of clinical variability they showed. Using whole exome sequencing (WES) to study the first data from 130 Covid patients from Siena and other Tuscan institutions, they were able to uncover a number of common susceptibility genes that were linked to a favourable or unfavourable outcome of infection. "We believe that variations in these genes may determine disease progression," says Prof Renieri. "To our knowledge, this is the first report on the results of WES in Covid-19."
Searching for common genes in affected patients against a control group did not give statistically significant results with the exception of a few genes. So the researchers decided to treat each patient as an independent case, following the example of autism spectrum disorder. "In this way we were able to identify for each patient an average of three pathogenic (disease-causing) mutations involved in susceptibility to Covid infection," says Prof Renieri. "This result was not unexpected, since we already knew from studies of twins that Covid-19 has a strong genetic basis."
Although presentation of Covid is different in each individual, this does not rule out the possibility of the same treatment being effective in many cases. "The model we are proposing includes common genes and our results point to some of them. For example, ACE2 remains one of the major targets. All our Covid patients have an intact ACE2 protein, and the biological pathway involving this gene remains a major focus for drug development," says Prof Renieri. ACE2 is an enzyme attached to the outer surface of several organs, including the lungs, that lowers blood pressure. It serves as an entry point for some coronaviruses, including Covid-19.
State Investigating Hospital With Coronavirus Policy That Profiled Pregnant Native American Mothers
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced on Twitter Saturday that state officials would investigate allegations of racial profiling of pregnant Native American women at a top hospital in Albuquerque.
Lujan Grisham was reacting to a story published Saturday by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica revealing that Lovelace Women's Hospital had a secret policy for screening Native American women for coronavirus based on their appearance and home ZIP code, according to several clinicians who work there.
Described as racial profiling by medical ethicists, the policy resulted in some Native American women being separated from their newborns at birth as hospital staff waited for test results, according to the clinicians.
"These are significant, awful allegations and, if true, a disgusting and unforgivable violation of patient rights," Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, wrote. "The state of New Mexico is investigating whether this constitutes a CMS violation and will unequivocally hold this hospital accountable."
CMS, or the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, regulates hospitals to ensure that all patients have access to medical care.
[...] The CDC doesn't mention geography in its COVID-19 guidelines for pregnant women. It specifies that pregnant patients should be treated as people under investigation for COVID-19 only if they exhibit symptoms or have had recent high-risk contact with COVID-19 patients.
According to several Lovelace clinicians, when pregnant women showed up at the hospital who appeared to be Native American, staff members were instructed to compare the expectant mother's home ZIP code against a list of Indian reservation ZIP codes maintained by the hospital, known informally as the "Pueblos List," a reference to New Mexico's Pueblo Indian tribes. If the pregnant woman's ZIP code matched one on the list, she was designated as a "person under investigation" for COVID-19 and tested even if she did not have symptoms, the clinicians said.
Several Native American tribes in New Mexico have been hit hard by the coronavirus, recording some of the highest per capita rates of infection in the nation. But not all of the ZIP codes on the list are home to tribes with high prevalence of the disease.
Elastomeric Masks Provide a More Durable, Less Costly Option for Health Care Workers
Elastomeric masks provide a more durable, less costly option for health care workers:
The study is one of the first to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of using elastomeric masks in a health care setting during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Sricharan Chalikonda, MD, MHA, FACS, lead study author and chief medical operations officer for Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network (AHN), where the study took place.
Disposable N95 masks are the standard face covering when health care providers require high-level respiratory protection, but during the pandemic, providers experienced widespread supply chain shortages and price increases, Dr. Chalikonda said. He said hospitals need a long-term solution.
"We don't know if there will be a shortage of N95s again. We don't know how long the pandemic will last and how often there will be virus surges," he said. "We believe now is the time to invest in an elastomeric mask program."
Dr. Chalikonda said an immediate supply of elastomeric masks in a health care system's stockpile of personal protective equipment is "game changing" given the advantages.
Benefits of elastomeric masks
Elastomeric masks are made of a tight-fitting, flexible, rubber-like material that can adjust to nearly all individuals' faces and can withstand multiple cleanings, Dr. Chalikonda said. These devices, which resemble gas masks, use a replaceable filter. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), elastomeric masks offer health care workers equal or better protection from airborne infectious substances compared with N95 masks.
[...] After a month of use, no one wearing an elastomeric mask chose to return to an N95 mask, according to the authors. Regarding the elastomeric masks, Dr. Chalikonda said, "Our clinicians were very comfortable with the fit, knowing it was an equivalent if not superior amount of protection, and that these masks were intended to be reused."
Furthermore, patients were receptive to their care providers wearing this type of respirator, he noted.
To determine if the elastomeric masks were cost-effective, the researchers performed a cost-benefit analysis over one month of mask disinfection and reuse comparing the new masks, with the filter replaced monthly, versus N95 masks at one hospital's 18-bed intensive care unit (ICU). Although the elastomeric mask costs about $20 and the filter costs $10 compared with only $3 at that time for an N95 mask, the research team found the elastomeric masks were "conservatively" 10 times less expensive.
Journal Reference:
Sricharan Chalikonda, Hope Waltenbaugh, Sara Angelilli, Tiffany Dumont, Curt Kvasager, Timothy Sauber, Nino Servello, Anil Singh, Rafael Diaz-Garcia. Implementation of an Elastomeric Mask Program as a Strategy to Eliminate Disposable N95 Mask Use and Resterilization: Results from a Large Academic Medical Center. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2020.05.022
Doubt Looms Over Hydroxychloroquine Study That Halted Global Trials
Doubt looms over hydroxychloroquine study that halted global trials:
The Lancet medical journal on Tuesday issued an "expression of concern" over the validity of a recent study suggesting that the anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine raise the risk of death and heart complications in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
More than a hundred outside experts have raised questions and skepticism about the data and analysis, even as researchers halted clinical trials in light of the study's findings.
The two drugs at the center of the controversy have had a high profile during the pandemic, with many prominent figures—most notably President Donald Trump—promoting them as effective against COVID-19. On May 18, Trump even told reporters that he was taking the drugs himself to prevent infection from the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
Despite the publicity, there's little evidence to support the efficacy of chloroquine or its analogue, hydroxychloroquine, to prevent or treat COVID-19. Small studies done so far have only provided mixed and inconclusive results in COVID-19 patients. The two drugs are only approved for use against malaria and autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. They have also long been linked to risks of heart complications.
The limited evidence for use against COVID-19 and the known risks led the Food and Drug Administration to issue a safety warning that the drugs "should be limited to clinical trial settings or for treating certain hospitalized patients."
In the Lancet study—which was published May 22 and reported by Ars—researchers aimed to provide some clarity of the drugs' effects in COVID-19 patients. The researchers claimed to do so using the largest set of data to date, involving more than 96,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients from six continents. According to the authors, a thorough hashing of the data indicated that those taking either hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine had significantly higher risks of death and heart complications compared with COVID-19 patients who did not take either of the drugs.
The safety issues were concerning enough that on May 26, the World Health Organization announced that it was suspending the use of hydroxychloroquine in its global Solidarity Trial, which is evaluating several potential COVID-19 therapies. Regulators in the UK and France also changed their recommendations surrounding the drugs.
Spain to Open Borders to Some Visitors: Coronavirus Live Updates
Spain to open borders to some visitors: Coronavirus live updates:
- US President Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a rally on June 20, which experts warn could prove to be "extraordinarily dangerous" amid the coronavirus pandemic.
- China reported 57 new confirmed - and nine asymptomatic - COVID-19 cases for June 13, the highest since April 13, according to data released by the national health authority on Sunday.
- African leaders say China will supply the continent with 30 million testing kits and 10,000 ventilators each month as the coronavirus pandemic accelerates there.
- More than 7.8 million people in total have been infected with the coronavirus, about 3.7 million have recovered, and at least 430,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
[...] After two weeks of political infighting, Chile Finance Minister Ignacio Briones announced a $12 billion citizen support and economic stimulus package to deal with the effects of the coronavirus.
The announcement came as the government was able to reach a cross-party agreement as working together was the only way to offer citizens "a sign of hope" in a "unique moment" of the country's history, said Briones.
[...] "Expert estimates the number of confirmed cases [in Pakistan] could go up to 300,000 by the end of June if we keep on flouting SOPs (standard operating procedures) and taking the problem lightly," said Umar, who is helping coordinate the government's coronavirus response.
"We fear the number of confirmed cases could go up further to 1.2 million by the end of next month," he added speaking to reporters in Islamabad.
[...] Saudi Arabia urged its citizens to comply with health measures as the country reported 4,233 new cases, its highest-ever daily increase since the start of the outbreak.
With more than 127,500 infections and about 970 deaths, the country records the highest number of cases among the six Gulf Arab states.
[...] The Kingdom started easing its restrictions last month by allowing its employees to return to offices, commercial centres to reopen and prayers at mosques to resume in a three phase plan.
A curfew is due to end by June 21.
Antibody Testing Suggests Immune Response post-COVID is Very Variable
Antibody testing suggests immune response post-COVID is very variable:
How much of an immune response does a SARS-CoV-2 infection produce? It's a critical question for all sorts of reasons. To begin with, long-lasting immunity, either through an infection or a vaccine, is critical for any hope of returning the world to something that resembles its pre-pandemic state. It's also essential to understanding how safe people who have recovered from infections are and how they can behave in the face of continued outbreaks and spread.
But there are also more subtle public policy issues. Since testing wasn't generally available at the time of many outbreaks, we'll need antibody tests to figure out who was actually exposed. And the accuracy of those tests—which has been called into question—can have a big influence on studies of the pandemic's progression.
A bunch of recent draft papers have looked at the sort of immune response we're seeing in patients who have cleared the virus after testing positive for it. And the results suggest that it's very variable—as is the quality of the tests that detect it. (We'll remind you that pre-publication documents carry some quality risks.)
Face Masks Critical in Preventing Spread of COVID-19: Study Finds
Renyi Zhang, Texas A&M Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and the Harold J. Haynes Chair in the College of Geosciences, and colleagues from the University of Texas, the University of California-San Diego and the California Institute of Technology have had their work published in the current issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
The team examined the chances of COVID-19 infection and how the virus is easily passed from person to person. From trends and mitigation procedures in China, Italy and New York City, the researchers found that using a face mask reduced the number of infections by more than 78,000 in Italy from April 6-May 9 and by over 66,000 in New York City from April 17-May 9.
"Our results clearly show that airborne transmission via respiratory aerosols represents the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19," Zhang said. "By analyzing the pandemic trends without face-covering using the statistical method and by projecting the trend, we calculated that over 66,000 infections were prevented by using a face mask in little over a month in New York City. We conclude that wearing a face mask in public corresponds to the most effective means to prevent inter-human transmission.
"This inexpensive practice, in conjunction with social distancing and other procedures, is the most likely opportunity to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. Our work also highlights that sound science is essential in decision-making for the current and future public health pandemics."
[...] "Our work suggests that the failure in containing the propagation of COVID-19 pandemic worldwide is largely attributed to the unrecognized importance of airborne virus transmission," he said. "Social-distancing and washing our hands must continue, but that's not sufficient enough protection. Wearing a face mask as well as practicing good hand hygiene and social distancing will greatly reduce the chances of anyone contracting the COVID-19 virus."
Journal Reference:
Renyi Zhang, Yixin Li, Annie L. Zhang, et al. Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19 [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2009637117)Coronavirus Vaccine Update, June 11
Coronavirus Vaccine Update, June 11:
Clinical Trials
Since I did a monoclonal antibody update in the last post, here's one on the vaccine front, where there is a lot of news – and where there are a lot of issues coming up similar to the ones with the antibodies as well. The last vaccine update post was here.
What we're seeing now is the plan for entering large-scale human trials. The Wall Street Journal's Peter Loftus broke the news of the overall plan in the US: Moderna's candidate was said to be going into Phase III in July, followed by the Oxford/AstraZeneca effort in September, with Johnson & Johnson's vaccine to follow. But J&J now says that they're moving up the timetable and negotiating with the NIAID for Phase III trials before then. Moderna has selected 100 micrograms as the Phase III dose, which is what was expected based on their earlier results. Meanwhile, AZ says that they will be scaling up the manufacturing of the Oxford vaccine during the trials themselves, on a risk basis, and it would not surprise me at all to see other companies doing something similar. They'll basically have to – if one or more of these vaccines reads out well in Phase III, you'd want to get to dosing people as quickly as possible.
Note that Pfizer (and their partner BioNTech) are not part of this government-funded initiative – they're going it alone, and (as mentioned before) seem to be taking the largest number of potential vaccine candidates into human trials. It's definitely an effort to be taken seriously. And then you have the Sanofi/GSK work, which has been less in the news, but involves two of the most experienced vaccine companies in the world. So don't ignore them, either. Merck is in the same category. Another company to keep in mind is Novavax, last mentioned here. They have now announced (no formal report yet) what appear to be very high antibody titers in primate dosing with their vaccine candidate, which they attribute to their proprietary adjuvant. As noted in that article, it's impossible to directly compare these numbers with those reported in the other primate studies, but these results are certainly of interest. They're expanding their manufacturing capacity as well.
[...] The next few months, then, are not going to be dull. Politics aside, the organization and execution of all these trials will be a huge and complex effort, as mentioned, and when the numbers start coming out of them we're going to surely be taken by surprise. That's what clinical trials do; this won't be different. I'm expecting sudden reversals, and sudden bursts of hope, despair, and confusion. None of us have ever seen anything like what's coming, and I hope we never have another opportunity to see anything like it again!
COVID-19 May Trigger New Diabetes, Experts Warn
COVID-19 may trigger new diabetes, experts warn:
A letter published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and signed by an international group of 17 leading diabetes experts involved in the CoviDiab Registry project, a collaborative international research initiative, announces the establishment of a Global Registry of new cases of diabetes in patients with COVID-19.
The Registry aims to understand the extent and the characteristics of the manifestations of diabetes in patients with COVID-19, and the best strategies for the treatment and monitoring of affected patients, during and after the pandemic.
Clinical observations so far show a bi-directional relationship between COVID-19 and diabetes. On the one hand, diabetes is associated with increased risk of COVID-19 severity and mortality. Between 20 and 30% of patients who died with COVID-19 have been reported to have diabetes. On the other hand, new-onset diabetes and atypical metabolic complications of pre-existing diabetes, including life-threatening ones, have been observed in people with COVID-19.
Journal Reference:
New-Onset Diabetes in Covid-19 [open], New England Journal of Medicine (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2018688)Up to 45 Percent of SARS-CoV-2 Infections May be Asymptomatic
Up to 45 percent of SARS-CoV-2 infections may be asymptomatic:
"The silent spread of the virus makes it all the more challenging to control," says Eric Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and professor of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research. "Our review really highlights the importance of testing. It's clear that with such a high asymptomatic rate, we need to cast a very wide net, otherwise the virus will continue to evade us."
Together with behavioral scientist Daniel Oran, Topol collected information from testing studies on 16 diverse cohorts from around the world. These datasets -- gathered via keyword searches of PubMed, bioRxiv and medRxiv, as well as Google searches of relevant news reports -- included data on nursing home residents, cruise ship passengers, prison inmates and various other groups.
"What virtually all of them had in common was that a very large proportion of infected individuals had no symptoms," says Oran. "Among more than 3,000 prison inmates in four states who tested positive for the coronavirus, the figure was astronomical: 96 percent asymptomatic."
The review further suggests that asymptomatic individuals are able to transmit the virus for an extended period of time, perhaps longer than 14 days. The viral loads are very similar in people with or without symptoms, but it remains unclear whether their infectiousness is of the same magnitude. To resolve that issue, we'll need large-scale studies that include sufficient numbers of asymptomatic people.
[...] "Our estimate of 40 to 45 percent asymptomatic means that, if you're unlucky enough to get infected, the probability is almost a flip of a coin on whether you're going to have symptoms. So to protect others, we think that wearing a mask makes a lot of sense," Oran concludes.
Journal Reference:
Prevalence of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection [open], Annals of Internal Medicine (DOI: 10.7326/M20-3012)States are Reopening: See How Coronavirus Cases Rise or Fall
States Are Reopening: See How Coronavirus Cases Rise or Fall:
SourcesThe COVID Tracking Project, National Governors Association, CDC COVID-19 Module, CDC FluView
Notes Exact restrictions and rules for each state vary considerably, and counties or even cities may have their own rules in place. It has recently become clear that some states are combining different types of tests, which may make their positive test numbers appear better than they would otherwise. Here are more details on the five metrics we chose:
- Positive tests per 100K people: A seven-day moving average of the number of positive tests, adjusted for population. We show an arrow representing the trend over the last two weeks. This metric comes from White House guidelines, and the data is updated daily.
- Percentage of tests that are positive: A seven-day moving average of the percentage of total tests that are positive. We show an arrow representing the trend over the last two weeks. This metric comes from White House guidelines, and the data is updated daily.
- Tests per 100K people per day: A seven-day moving average of the number of total tests, adjusted for population. We show a goal of 100 tests per 100,000 people per day. That number is taken from statements by the White House suggesting 30 tests per 1,000 people per month as a target. While there have been several targets put forward by both the White House and public health experts for what would make a sufficient number of tests, our metric takes the White House's 30 tests per 1,000 people per month target and uses it to derive a minimum daily goal. This data is updated daily.
- ICU bed availability: The percentage of intensive care beds in the state's hospitals that are available. The White House's guidelines say that states should be able to "treat patients without crisis care." We've chosen to use ICU bed availability to track this criteria. We show a goal of 30% availability, which is taken from the target set by New York state. This data comes from a subset of facilities in each state that report this information to the CDC, and it is updated daily.
- Hospital visits for flu-like illness: The percentage of patient visits to health care providers for influenza-like illness. We show an arrow representing the trend over the last two weeks. This metric comes from White House guidelines. The data comes from a subset of facilities in each state that report this information to the CDC and is updated weekly.
The linked page provides a graphic of the United States along with a slider control where one can see the progress of the disease over time: independently for each state as well as the entire US.
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Previously:
(2020-05-03) 2020-05-03 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories
(2020-04-10) 2020-04-11 Coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) Story Roundup
(2020-04-04) 2020-04-04 Coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) Story Roundup
(2020-03-30) 2020-03-30 Coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) Story Roundup
(2020-03-25) 2020-03-25 Coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) Story Roundup
(2020-03-22) Coronavirus Roundup 03/22/2020
(2020-03-17) SoylentNews Community -- How has SAR-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) / COVID-19 Affected You?
(2020-03-12) CoronaVirus (SARS-CoV-2) Roundup 2020-03-12
(2020-02-29) COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 - CoronaVirus) Roundup
(2020-02-26) Roundup of Stories about the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus and COVID-19 Disease
(2020-02-17) Coronavirus Roundup (Feb. 17)
(2020-02-11) Coronavirus Roundup
(2020-02-07) Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Roundup
(2020-02-01) 2019-nCoV Coronavirus Story Roundup
Related Stories
Multiple Soylentils have submitted stories regarding the 2019-nCoV coronavirus which is believed to have originated in the city of Wuhan, China in December 2019. Rather than have a smattering of stories appear on the site, they have been gathered here in one story. Read on if you are interested; otherwise another story will be along presently.
Editor's Comment: The figures and statistics regarding the novel coronavirus outbreak are changing daily and there are differences between reports from different sources. The latest figures, which we believe to be from a reputable source and which are being regularly updated, can be found at the worldometers. If you have a favourite site for updated information please leave a link in the comments.
Chinese Whistleblower Doctor Dies Due to Coronavirus
Li Wenliang: Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctor
A Chinese doctor who tried to issue the first warning about the deadly coronavirus outbreak has died, the hospital treating him has said. Li Wenliang contracted the virus while working at Wuhan Central Hospital. He had sent out a warning to fellow medics on 30 December but police told him to stop "making false comments".
There had been contradictory reports about his death, but the People's Daily now says he died at 02:58 on Friday (18:58 GMT Thursday).
The virus has killed 636 people and infected 31,161 in mainland China, the National Health Commission's latest figures show. The death toll includes 73 new deaths reported on Thursday.
An AC writes:
Wuhan hospital announces death of whistleblower doctor after confusion in state media
This story has been updated to reflect the latest statement from Wuhan Central Hospital, after confusion in state media reports.
Li died of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan in the early hours of Friday morning (local time).
"Our hospital's ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected with coronavirus during his work in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic," the latest hospital statement read.
"He died at 2:58 am on Feb 7 after attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful."
Earlier on Thursday night, several state media outlets had reported Li's death, following which Chinese social media erupted in profound grief and anger.
Coronavirus Roundup
Both c0lo and takyon write in with today's coronavirus collection of stories:
Why are children 'missing' from coronavirus outbreak cases?
So far, it seems that youth protects against the worst effects of 2019-nCoV.
The outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has killed more than 900 people, but one group has escaped with minimal damage: children.
Youth can certainly contract the virus. Among the infected are at least two newborns, according to Chinese health officials. But few children are among those sick enough to be diagnosed with the coronavirus, according to an article published Feb. 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the data analyzed in that article — and numbers are changing quickly as the outbreak evolves — the median age of patients skews older, between 49 and 56 years old.
It's not entirely clear why children seem to be escaping the worst effects of the virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV. But a similar pattern holds for many infectious diseases, from the familiar, such as chickenpox and measles, to the newly emerged, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), doctors say.
This story is a roundup of several virus stories that were submitted over the past few days. This is a changing story, so some of what is posted below may have changed since the time of their originally being published.
What's in a name? One significant change is what the names are for everything. There is the question of what to call the actual virus and then what to call it when someone is infected.
Virus: The virus by itself is now officially referred to as SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). It was formerly known as 2019-nCoV (2019 novel coronavirus).
Disease: Those who have been infected by this virus are said to have a disease. The name of the disease is coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which is also known as 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease.
More details are available on Wikipedia.
The six submitted stories are presented below.
NIH Official Says Coronavirus 'on the Verge' of Becoming Global Pandemic Unless Containment Improves
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS's "Face The Nation" that multiple person-to-person transmissions need to occur in multiple countries in order to reach the pandemic threshold.
[...] "Technically speaking, the [World Health Organization] wouldn't be calling this a global pandemic. But it certainly is on the verge of that happening reasonably soon unless containment is more successful than it is right now," he said.
There have been several significant developments in the battle against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and the resulting illness COVID-19. This story gathers a selection of stories from across the web.
WHO Director-General's Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19 - 24 February 2020
WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 24 February 2020:
We're encouraged by the continued decline in cases in China.
Earlier today the WHO-China joint mission concluded its visit and delivered its report.
[...] The team has made a range of findings about the transmissibility of the virus, the severity of disease and the impact of the measures taken.
They found that the epidemic peaked and plateaued between the 23rd of January and the 2nd of February, and has been declining steadily since then.
They have found that there has been no significant change in the DNA of the virus.
They found that the fatality rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan, and 0.7% outside Wuhan.
They found that for people with mild disease, recovery time is about two weeks, while people with severe or critical disease recover within three to six weeks.
The team also estimate that the measures taken in China have averted a significant number of cases.
The report contains a wealth of other information, highlights questions for which we still don't have answers, and includes 22 recommendations.
[...] But the key message that should give all countries hope, courage and confidence is that this virus can be contained.
[...] The sudden increases of cases in Italy, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Korea are deeply concerning.
There's a lot of speculation about whether these increases mean that this epidemic has now become a pandemic.
Many nations have begun to take special measures to address the problem of the spread of the COVID-19 virus over every continent. It would be pointless to report the details of all such measures; they are limited to each specific country and liable to frequent change as the situation develops. The USA FDA (Food and Drug Administration) have carried out what they describe as a "Supply Change Update", see the link below, but for others we suggest using a bit of web-search-fu to discover a site more appropriate to your own area of interest.
Worldwide, newspapers and other media need to maintain sales and subscriptions — many tend, therefore, to sensationalize their reporting. This has two undesirable effects: firstly it can result in data being quoted out of context to support the report they are making and, secondly, it tends to stress the possible effects of the COVID pandemic, should it be declared as such. In a comment elsewhere, I reported 2 tables which contain the most accurate figures we can find from a reputable source. They indicate the vulnerability of people to the virus by age, and any links to comorbidity (as far as they are known). There is no doubt that the virus poses a serious threat but it is not the same for all ages and many deaths are attributed to a combination of COVID-19 infection and other pre-existing conditions. For the latter it has not be proven that the virus was the sole cause of death; it is possible that the person would have died anyway. As postmortems have not been carried out in the vast majority of cases, the figures are open to misinterpretation. The WHO (World Health Organization) stresses that they will be unable to clarify these findings for a long time to come.
As it stands, for a person below the age of 70 with no other medical conditions, the chances of dying from a COVID-19 infection is less than 1%. That is still a large number of people at risk and the implications for every nation are significant. It is, however, much lower than some of the figures that have been quoted in the press. The figures for people over 70 and with other conditions cause the rate to rise quite sharply, and I would suggest that we all keep an watchful eye on the elderly or infirm members of our family and friends.
The majority of people will only suffer mild flu-like symptoms and will make a full recovery. - janrinok
Even though it has only been a short while since our last round-up there are 22 separate stories merged into this round-up. Many report duplicate news but, nevertheless, we have tried to distill the important elements of each submission.
Firstly, there is some confusion regarding the actual names that are reported for the virus, the disease that it causes, and names frequently seen in media reporting. From https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0695-z:
The present outbreak of a coronavirus-associated acute respiratory disease called coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is the third documented spillover of an animal coronavirus to humans in only two decades that has resulted in a major epidemic. The Coronaviridae Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which is responsible for developing the classification of viruses and taxon nomenclature of the family Coronaviridae, has assessed the placement of the human pathogen, tentatively named 2019-nCoV, within the Coronaviridae. Based on phylogeny, taxonomy and established practice, the CSG recognizes this virus as forming a sister clade to the prototype human and bat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (SARS-CoVs) of the species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus, and designates it as SARS-CoV-2.
In order to facilitate communication, the CSG proposes to use the following naming convention for individual isolates: SARS-CoV-2/host/location/isolate/date. While the full spectrum of clinical manifestations associated with SARS-CoV-2 infections in humans remains to be determined, the independent zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 highlights the need for studying viruses at the species level to complement research focused on individual pathogenic viruses of immediate significance. This will improve our understanding of virus–host interactions in an ever-changing environment and enhance our preparedness for future outbreaks.
There is much more information at the link provided.
Secondly, as this is a fusion of stories received over the last week or so take all quoted figures of casualties as possibly out-of-date. At the time of merging these stories (12 Mar 20) there have been 127,863 confirmed cases world-wide resulting in 4,717 deaths. 68,309 people have already recovered with the remainder either in self-imposed or advisory isolation, in basic hospital care and a relatively small number in critical care. The pandemic has affected 116 countries/regions. Source: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 - a graphical display produced by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Many countries have taken emergency measures to restrict travel or large gatherings of people. As this is a very fluid situation we suggest you refer to the media of any specific country in which you have an interest. President Trump has banned transatlantic air travel from countries in mainland Europe to the USA from Friday 2020-03-13 at 23:59 (no timezone stated) for a period initially of 30 days, and air travel within Europe is also significantly disrupted.
A lot has already happened this year. SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) which can cause COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease 2019) has been making headlines shortly after it was first reported. The first cases were reported to WHO (World Health Organization) on 2019-12-31. The virus spread. It began as an epidemic in China . The world watched apprehensively. Reports surfaced of cases in other countries and the the apprehension grew. For many folk, it turned to fear when it was upgraded to a pandemic: WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020: "We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic."
We have seen increasing efforts to stem the spread of the disease. Efforts have run the gamut. Closing of borders. Cancellation of sporting events. Conferences cancelled. Churches and other places of worship also closed. Schools closed. Panic buying of household goods and supplies. Supply chain disruptions affecting manufacturers. Restaurant, bars, and other such establishments closed. Work-from-home policies established and enacted.
The changes have been many, widespread, and continuing.
Reading about all the ways that "other people" have been affected is one thing. It seems different, somehow, when it hits closer to home and affects us directly. With many of our usual social activities curtailed or cancelled, it is easy to begin isolating and lose perspective. SoylentNews arose from a troubled period (the SlashCott) and a community has formed from that challenging period.
How have you been affected? Have you been infected? Had a family member or friend who was? Helped neighbors who are struggling? Hunkering down and isolating? (In a basement is optional.) Are you suddenly working from home and finding it challenging to manage your time? Still working on site, but now have a faster commute due to all the other people staying home? Catching up on watching TV shows? Reading more SoylentNews? How has your life changed?
From a somewhat different perspective, how have others helped you to cope... and how have you been able to help others? One of the potential impacts of social distancing is isolation and depression. I count myself fortunate, indeed, to have served this site for over 6 years and for all the people I have gotten to know, here. For those who may not be aware, SoylentNews has its own IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server. Feel free to drop in to #Soylent and just say "Hi!"
Social distancing is permanent when you're dead. So, practice good hygiene and stay safe.
Previously (oldest first):
China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates
2019-nCoV Coronavirus Story Roundup
Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Roundup
Coronavirus Roundup
Coronavirus Roundup (Feb. 17)
Roundup of Stories about the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus and COVID-19 Disease
COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 - CoronaVirus) Roundup
CoronaVirus (SARS-CoV-2) Roundup 2020-03-12
Working from Home: Lessons Learned Over 20 Years
Charter engineer quits over "reckless" rules against work-from-home
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A Charter Communications engineer called the company's rules against working from home during the coronavirus pandemic "pointlessly reckless" and "socially irresponsible" before subsequently resigning instead of continuing to work in the office, according to a TechCrunch article published yesterday.
Charter CEO Tom Rutledge last week told employees in a memo to keep coming to the office even if their jobs can be performed from home, because people "are more effective from the office." Employees should only stay home if they "are sick, or caring for someone who is sick," Rutledge wrote.
Nick Wheeler, a video operations engineer for Charter in Denver, sent an email expressing his displeasure with the policy to a senior vice president and "hundreds of engineers on Friday," TechCrunch wrote. The email said:
I do not understand why we are still coming into the office as the COVID-19 pandemic surges around us. The CDC guidelines are clear. The CDPHE [Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment] guidelines are clear. The WHO guidelines are clear. The science of social distancing is real. We have the complete ability to do our jobs entirely from home. Coming into the office now is pointlessly reckless. It's also socially irresponsible. Charter, like the rest of us, should do what is necessary to help reduce the spread of coronavirus. Social distancing has a real slowing effect on the virus—that means lives can be saved.
A hazard condition isn't acceptable for the infrastructure beyond the short-term. Why is it acceptable for our health?
The CDC's advice to businesses stresses that sick people should not come to the office but also urges businesses to "Ensure that you have the information technology and infrastructure needed to support multiple employees who may be able to work from home."
Within hours of sending the email, Wheeler was out of a job.
-- submitted from IRC
This story presents a roundup of a selection of our COVID-19, SARS-Cov-2, coronavirus story submissions. Some stories have been omitted because they were a duplicate, outdated, superseded, and sometimes just as a matter of keeping the size of these roundups managable. etc. (Before thinning, this story contained over 16,500 words (excluding HTML markup) and that excluded what is contained in this introduction.
If you are not interested in this coverage, then please ignore this story; another story will appear presently. Otherwise, please see the rest of the story below the fold:
This story is a merge of 30 story submissions. Given that it was well over 17,000 words of original source material (excluding HTML markup!), a great deal of pruning was performed to get it to a manageable size. I strongly encourage folks to read the linked articles for more information.
For latest statistics, and finer granularity, see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.
As of 20200330_151936 UTC, it reported these world-wide totals:
- Coronavirus Cases: 743,081
- Deaths: 35,347
- Recovered: 157,046
- Active Cases:
- 550,688 (Currently Infected Patients)
- 522,206 (95%) in Mild Condition
- 28,482 (5%) Serious or Critical
- Closed Cases:
- 192,393 Cases which had an outcome
- 157,046 (82%) Recovered / Discharged
- 35,347 (18%) Deaths
Stories appear below the fold.
This story is a merge of 26 story submissions.[* See Note] Given that it was well over 18,000 words of original source material (excluding HTML markup!), a great deal of pruning was performed to get it to a manageable size. We strongly encourage folks to read the linked articles for more information.
For latest statistics, and finer granularity, see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ or https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6.
Coronavirus Cases: 1,182,827
Deaths: 63,924
Recovered: 244,224Active Cases:
874,679 Currently Infected Patients
832,714 (95%) in Mild Condition
41,965 (5%) Serious or CriticalClosed Cases:
308,148 Cases which had an outcome:
244,224 (79%) Recovered / Discharged
63,924 (21%) Deaths
[*] NOTE: We had an issue with the site's story-merging interface. It apparently was not ever used all that much, and certainly not for merging more than a couple stories or so. Further, we have repurposed the submissions classification feature to gather all COVID-19 stories into the "Hold" classification. That gives us a clean view of all virus stories in one view. And, even more usefully, a clean view of all the non-virus submissions exactly where we would normally see them.
The story submissions list page we use tries to be helpful (or maybe just fails to notice and uses a hard-coded value?) Anyway, there are times when one's view of the "Hold" stories is automatically changed to the "Unclassified" (normal) view. During the processing of this story, we clicked the button to "Select all stories in the submission queue, and then clicked "Merge". There was some surprise, when it was realized we accidentally got a new story containing a merge of all of the non-virus stories.
The error was corrected by a manual re-submission of each of the 26 accidentally-merged, non-virus stories. If you had a story submission pending at the time, you may find that your story is marked as "Accepted" as a result of this mistake. We regret the confusion if your story submission was one of these. --martyb
Stories appear below the fold.
This story is a merge of 28 story submissions. Given that it was well over 18,000 words of original source material (excluding HTML markup!), a great deal of pruning was performed to get it to a manageable size. We strongly encourage folks to read the linked articles for more information.
For latest statistics, and finer granularity, see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ or https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html.
Coronavirus Cases: 1,700,741
Deaths: 102,774
Recovered: 376,572Active Cases:
1,221,395 Currently Infected Patients
1,171,568 (96%) in Mild Condition
49,872 (4%) Serious or CriticalClosed Cases:
479,346 Cases which had an outcome:
376,572 (79%) Recovered / Discharged
102,774 (21%) DeathsData as at 11 Apr 2020, at 08:01 UTC.
2020-05-03 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories
| total_count | 3,565,120 | |
| total_deaths | 248,245 | |
| total_recovered | 1,153,956 | |
| active_count | 2,162,919 | |
| active_mild_count | 2,112,878 | (98%) |
| active_serious_count | 50,041 | (2%) |
| closed_outcome | 1,402,201 | |
| closed_deaths_count | 248,245 | (18%) |
| closed_recovered_count | 1,153,956 | (82%) |
The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals (archive)
One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients.
The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws.
The hasty retractions, on the same day this month, have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of respected medical journals just when they are needed most.
[...] "The problem with trust is that it's too easy to lose and too hard to get back," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published one of the retracted papers in early May. "These are big blunders."
If outside scientists detected problems that weren't identified by the peer reviewers, then the journals failed, he said. Like hundreds of other researchers, Dr. Kassirer called on the editors to publish full explanations of what happened.
See also: US FDA pulls its emergency approval of chloroquine use for COVID-19
[NB: This follows up on "Doubt Looms Over Hydroxychloroquine Study That Halted Global Trials" which was part of 2020-06-15 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories --martyb]
Study shows a third of COVID survivors suffer neurological or mental disorders :
One in three COVID-19 survivors in a study of more than 230,000 mostly American patients were diagnosed with a brain or psychiatric disorder within six months, suggesting the pandemic could lead to a wave of mental and neurological problems, scientists said.
Researchers who conducted the analysis said it was not clear how the virus was linked to psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, but that these were the most common diagnoses among the 14 disorders they looked at.
[...] The new findings, published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, analysed health records of 236,379 COVID-19 patients, mostly from the United States, and found 34 per cent had been diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric illnesses within six months.
The Lancet article includes this disclaimer:
Big-data studies of this kind have intrinsic limitations, even when drawing on 81 million people, 236 379 of whom had COVID-19. In this pandemic context, not all individuals who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 (particularly those with mild or asymptomatic illness) will be diagnosed, which could result in some contamination of the comparison groups.
The question: will severe, enduring, and less common conditions such as psychoses behave more like neurological disorders or common mental disorders? Among the COVID-19 cohort in this study, a first diagnosis of a psychotic disorder was substantially more common in patients hospitalised with COVID-19.
Lungs, hearts and brains..
Journal Reference:
Jonathan P Rogers. A longer look at COVID-19 and neuropsychiatric outcomes, The Lancet Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(21)00120-6)
Previously:
Experts Warn Coronavirus May Cause 'Wave' of Neurological Conditions Including Parkinson's Disease
2020-06-15 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories
(Score: 2, Informative) by leon_the_cat on Monday June 15 2020, @12:37PM (6 children)
She got it in her iris
whilst eating a pyrus.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @03:34PM (2 children)
Yeah... I wouldn't touch that with a 6 foot social distancing stick.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @03:45PM
Wiki reports Miley is pansexual.
So good luck getting within 6ft before you suffocate in the hetero male white rage frothing out of your mouth.
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Monday June 15 2020, @07:22PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYyr8W3WCeQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Monday June 15 2020, @07:16PM (2 children)
Dunno why this is offtopic as its about coronavirus.
And as i made it perfectly clear
She got it from Osiris
after reading a cursed papyrus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:30PM (1 child)
Should get a hat and read more Dr. Seuss. Might help :|
(Score: 2) by leon_the_cat on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:59PM
I did as you said with a hat on my head. After reading Suess I find your comment obtuse.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NickM on Monday June 15 2020, @01:28PM (101 children)
<rant>
There are upward trend that correlate with the protest as it started 14 after, yet the various media and experts are carefully avoiding that inconvenient link and are blaming the reopening that started +-28 days ago, if the reopening was the main factor driving the uptick, this would have started to become apparent 2 weeks and it wasn't not that significant mostly because people still respected physical distancing, after the protest almost nobody continued to apply precautionary measure and its is reflected in the number.
I am a classical leftist, not from the regressive left cancel culture clan and I feel like the media are conspiring to make me vote conservative, or in my localized situation vote for the Bloc Quebecois, I use to be a soft federalist but the current response to the current event are making the nationalists policies of the Block more and more digestible. Sadly the regressive left has made a stronghold in Montreal and those activists are starting to leak into the regions.
Being a liberal used to be that you were against racial identity (no difference of treatment based on the color of your skin) , against state brutality (not against brutality based on the identity of the victim's), against all form of censorship, for public health and harm reduction (not only when I suit's you) and against discrimination of possibilities (not outcomes).
I don't recognize myself in the current liberals and I don't feel attracted to the right wing. I am not a true libertarian as I believe in the role of a welfare state for the good of the commons man. What's a classical liberal should do in those troubled and troubling times? Should I betrayed my ideals and turn right or libertarian, (after all I have enough income that I could rationally say fuck you I've got mine), should I go full retard and become part of the outrage culture? Knowing myself, I will just wait until the Overton window move somewhere else while privately highlighting the incoherence of the current events (I am not stupid enough to be on social media and I consider Soylentnews more like an antisocial media ).
</rant>
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @02:40PM (3 children)
NYC contract tracers are explicitly told not to ask if people have attended a demonstration, because apparently only small businesses and Trump rallies spread this disease.
The far left don't speak for my ideas of a welfare state because I think welfare dependency is also a problem. So social liberalism has been hijacked, that's why so many of us responded by dropping back to classical liberalism. In my case, for my own sanity rather than reconcile the constant stream of mutually exclusive ideas.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:12PM (2 children)
Citation for your comments about contact tracers in NYC? I found this:
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/nyc-announces-universal-covid-testing-contact-tracers-reach-out-to-600-people/2443837/ [nbcnewyork.com]
Which seems to indicate that demonstrations are discussed by contact tracers along with every other possible contact. They are trying to have a ~one hour interview with everyone that tests positive. Anyone at a demonstration is urged to get tested.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @06:04PM (1 child)
https://www.thecity.nyc/coronavirus/2020/6/14/21290963/nyc-covid-19-trackers-skipping-floyd-protest-questions-even-amid-fears-of-new-wave [thecity.nyc]
Looks like a don't ask don't tell situation. So questions like "been to a restaurant?" or such would be an acceptable prompt to jog a person's memory, but "been to a protest?" would not. Because reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:16AM
So? They are also told NOT to ask if the person is an illegal immigrant. Why? Because their duty of care is not to immigration law or protest suppression, but to their client - the preseenting patient.
Whether it was at a protest or not is immaterial to the degree of exposure, which is the clinically and statistically relevant data here.
If you don't grok this you don't grok institutional suppression. Perhaps you think China and Russia are free societies? Etc.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @03:16PM (3 children)
Agreed. It's worth adding that the sanctimonious "follow the science" scold from the regressive left is applied selectively, and only to things which support their ideology. Add to this the actual purges that are going on in the legacy media things are looking ominous for any sort of rational media narrative. Matt Taibbi has a great article on this topic: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself?r=1ejgy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter [substack.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:24PM (2 children)
We leftists do not need to regress you, hemocyanin, you are doing it quite well on your own. Just a couple more years, and you will be full-blown, Fox News-watching, Trump supporting, QAnon-believing old person who no one wants to talk to.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @07:05PM (1 child)
You are a marketing genius. I am now ready to selectively administer social and economic ruin on people based on inscrutable criteria:
FIRED: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/bon-appetit-eic-adam-rapoport-resigns-brownface/ [dailydot.com]
ELECTED: https://atlantablackstar.com/2019/02/10/new-poll-reveals-shocking-discovery-about-americans-attitudes-toward-blackface/ [atlantablackstar.com]
So ... if blackface on a Democrat governor is OK, but "brownface" (though in pic there appears to be no makeup) for someone with exponentially less power and authority is bad ... then what? You're goal is what? To destroy as many of the little people as possible while entrenching your own power? One law for me, and one law for you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:16AM
They have no where to go. They cannot fix racism within the confines of capitalism, and they know that their wealth is based on systematic exploitation that perpetuates racism. But they don't want to give up their wealth, and this is the result.
They must know on some level what they are attempting is quixotic. But their guilt will not let them stop.
Unlike the Republican Party, which threatens with guns to make us listen, we may simply tune them out. When enough people stop listening to them crying wolf, they will disappear. These lives and careers are being destroyed on the basis of the free market. The actors in that market need to tune it out like any other crazy person or tabloid. If their guilt will let them....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @03:34PM (25 children)
Libertarianism does not preclude welfare - that itself would be antithetical to libertarianism which values *freedom* above all, which naturally includes the freedom to organize a welfare system. It simply holds that government is not the right place for such. And I think there's an extremely compelling argument for that in the US. The modern perpetual welfare state in the US only began in the mid sixties and only became widely implemented by the mid seventies. So it's really just about the perfect age for analysis. It's old enough for us to judge the results, yet young enough that the times before are not only recorded but even still in living memory for many. So let us do that. What has our welfare state accomplished? Poverty was already plummeting prior to its adoption due to economic development and it's not like people were just starving to death before food stamps. Perhaps the most visible effect is the [intentional [snopes.com] (snopes does not affirm the quote, but the context and history provided is plentiful evidence of the sort of man LBJ, who started the welfare state, was)] creation of a perceived government dependency on certain groups.
Recent events emphasize what an absurd scenario this has created. This [blacklivesmatter.com] is the black lives matter page. Click on their donate link and it goes straight to an Act Blue page. Act Blue is a democratic fund raising organization. This seems reasonable at first. They claim they're facing systemic issues so they want to get people who 'stand for them' in power. The problem is that in most of the places they're protesting, the people they think stand for them have been in power, uncontested, for decades. Minneapolis (the heart of the George Floyd issue) has had literally 50 straight years [wikipedia.org] of democratic rule - pretty similar for Minnesota as a whole. And so BLM's solution is to have another 50 years of it? What a great solution. It's easy to mock but it's also easy to understand. It's like the beaten wife who feels she can't leave her husband who treats her like shit, but does provide for her. She defends him even as she turns more shades of purple and black.
In the past we simply had different systems. Instead of relying on the government playing robin hood, people turned to public facing organizations such as food banks or churches. There were also things such as poor houses for more long-term types where anybody willing to work would be given a bit of cash and a place to crash in exchange for a day's labor kind of working like an earned basic income in that all of your needs are taken care of and then you're given cash on top of it - but only in exchange for a service.
---
Ultimately I think big government is an increasingly destructive force. It results in normalized demagoguery where those in power start to become more concerned with staying in power even when those efforts run contrary to the interests of the nation they're supposed to be building. In particular it's so much easier to stay in power by making everybody hate and fear your alternative, than it is to convince everybody that you're doing a good job yourself - and so that's what happen. It ends up running a divide right down the middle of a nation and working as a catalyst, if not instigator, for social discontent. Rather than do away with democracy, I think this problem can be resolved by reducing the size and power of government which is fundamentally what libertarianism aims to achieve. Because a government with limited powers leads directly to a population with less limited freedoms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @03:56PM (24 children)
As I detailed the other day [soylentnews.org], that BLM folks overwhelmingly support the D's isn't very surprising.
What is surprising is your apparent lack of understanding the dynamics involved. Perhaps you should educate yourself.
What's more, Rudy Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg (among others) pretty much erases any passing resemblance your screed has to a legitimate argument.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @04:16PM (8 children)
It is the regressive right's new strategy, impersonate liberals while pushing to support rightwing fascism overtly, and if that fails leave the door open to 3rd party votes. Just another strategy to disenchant liberal voters like in 2016, but this time we have seen how harmful the western version of conservative has become.
Even if the terrors of "cancel culture" were 10 times as dire as you predict they still wouldn't reach the levels of harm inflicted in the US by the GOP. At least conservatives haven't had a president actively calling for violence against them.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @04:57PM (7 children)
I get your point -- it is to alienate every liberal minded person who disagrees with the regressive left. Let me tell you -- it's working. Kudos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:29PM (5 children)
Your Republican tendencies have been noted, hemo! You are one of the bad faith poseurs the previous comment refers to. I see no reason to think you ever were an actual Liberal, and your "disappointment" is disingenuous at best, and mendacity at worst. Please quit whining, you conservative snowflake!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @07:09PM (4 children)
And you were never a liberal, else you wouldn't support left authoritarianism.
Maybe you're right. Maybe all I ever was, was anti-authoritarian and in the first half of my life, that made me oppose the GOP and the right. Now I oppose the regressive-left because it is you who are most dangerously authoritarian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:04PM (3 children)
Who is supporting "left authoritarianism"? Just constant "no u" from trumpers, gets so old.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2020, @10:10PM (2 children)
If you support the riots and destruction of monuments, you are "left authoritarian." If you support cancel culture, you are "left authoritarian." If you think it's OK for an armed group of people to seize territory in the heart of a major American city, you are "left authoritarian."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:31PM
1. destruction of monuments: no I would prefer they were taken down by the community, but I shed no tears for their loss
2. cancel culture: just the counter to "woke", idiots taking flak for posting stupid shit, should be settled in court. you conservatives had no problem with gays or transgenders being canceled so go stuff it up your moldy ass. Freedom of association is fine by me.
3. armed group seizing territory: totally depends on how it is being done, it is an interesting experiment. you never seemed to get worked up when it was rightwing assholes doing the same thing soooo womp womp.
You sound like a rightwing wacko clutching desperately at an America that never was. These societal problems have been lurking ever since the 60s/70s, a solid group of US citizens took serious exception to the Civil Rights Movement and has been using fascist tactics ever since to maintain their hegemony. Now you want to cry foul because people are exercising their Constitutional rights while not being Republochristian enough for you?
Get fucked Phoenix, in the nicest possible way of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @08:43PM
No one supports any of those things. Just a bunch of Fox News straw men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @07:12PM
I'm so sad we lost the support of a Trumper, so very very sad.
What will we do now???
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @04:34PM (13 children)
Whites make up 32% of NYC demographics and are suspects in 3% of murder and homicide cases, 11% for rape, 13% for sex crimes, 4% for robbery, 8% for assault, 12% for grand larceny.
Blacks make up 22% of NYC demographics and are suspects in 62% for murder and homicide cases, 47% for rape, 42% for sex crimes, 66% for robbery, 53% for assault, 61% for grand larceny.
Where are your police resources going if you want to reduce crime? And how is it "muh racism" when blacks and hispanics are also overrepresented as the victims of crime? If you were diagnosed by your doctor with a melanoma on your left leg and he told you to amputate your right arm, you'd be okay with that? Your apparent lack of understanding of "the dynamics involved" is not surprising. Perhaps you should educate yourself. [nyc.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @04:39PM
Non-sequitur much?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday June 15 2020, @05:01PM (11 children)
The first question is: How many of those suspects are actually guilty of the crimes? That more of them are suspect may be caused by more of them being guilty, but also by more of them falsely be suspected. The latter may be caused by racism. A better (though still far from perfect) measure would be the number of convicts.
The second question is: What do those numbers look like if corrected for income/social status? Because there's a well-known correlation between criminality and poverty, and also a known correlation between ethnicity and poverty. Without correcting for those correlations, any correlation between ethnicity and criminality doesn't tell you anything.
There is a clear correlation between regularly watching kids shows and not being very tall. Does that mean watching kids shows makes you shrink?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:48PM (8 children)
Keep in mind when looking at statistics that the first thing you should do is normalize the data. One easy way to do this is to look at the % something adds per percent of population. So for instance blacks are suspects in 62.4% of murders and make up 22.8% of the population. So, normalized, they account for 2.74 percent of murder suspects per percent of population. This gives us a number we can use to compare relative 'homicidality' rates between the groups. For whites the homicidality ratio is 0.09.
That's actually kind of crazy. It means that the black ratio is about 3050% of the white ratio! So for any of your biases to have a meaningful impact they'd need to scale to a somewhat comparable rate. That's generally not going to be the case. Anyhow, these numbers are so extreme that I decided to look up AP's stat doubting their legitimacy. Yeah, they're real. And NYC, as an aside, keeps some really nice public records!
NYC Police Crime Reports/Breakdown [nyc.gov]
NYC Poverty Stats [nyc.gov]
The bottom of the crime reports page gives the population estimates. The non-hispanic white poverty rate in NYC is 13.4%. For black's it's 19.2%. For your hypothesis there's also another interesting datum. Hispanics have a higher poverty rate at 23.9% and Asians have the highest of all at 24.1%. They also have nowhere near the crime rates. The hispanic homicidality ratio is 1.05. For Asians, the most impoverished demographic in NYC, their homicidality ratio is 0.3.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:15PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:57PM
Can you read?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:46AM (5 children)
Those data sources use different measures. For example, one defines "Hispanics" as belonging to any race while the other excludes white, black, and other races from their Hispanic count. Which means you are counting some of the same people twice and can't compare samples without adjusting for race. In addition, there is a huge sampling bias in the crime data in regards to the race of suspects, both in the missing data and in the ambiguity of determining race in many circumstances. Finally, with the focus on NYC statistics from the police department, you are potentially losing any statistical inference due to other confounding variables and selection bias.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:30AM
This, alone, disqualifies that data source.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:59PM (3 children)
Think about what you're saying, on two accounts. The first is that what you're saying is simply wrong. Both datasets in the crime paper clearly count hispanics individually so I'm not really sure where you're getting that idea.
But the second point is perhaps even more important. If you were right this would work as a factor that would substantially *understate* relative criminality rates. In nearly all datasets the trend is blacks have, by far, the highest crime rates, followed by hispanics who are a good clip away, and then non-hispanic whites much further away. "Nearly all" is a weasel word there, I know of no exceptions. When you mix hispanics into black and whites it helps to reduce the black crime rate and increase the white crime rate which, overall, reduces the relative rates between the groups.
And on your other stuff, it's similarly inconsequential. There's zero difficulty determining race. There was actually an interesting paper on this question here [stanford.edu]. It's interesting because of how small the deviation actually is. In a study of 3,636 different people mapping hundreds of racially indicative genomes they found that racial identity and genetic identity were only different in 5 of the 3,636 cases. Things like this are one of the reasons I believe certain colleges are increasingly indoctrinating people instead of teaching them. You are obviously just repeating something you heard somebody say, yet it is absolutely contradicted by the most reputable evidence available. But I mean even just beyond scientific evidence, this should also be damn obvious to you as well. Outside of the *tiny* minority of folks that are multiracial, especially hispanic + white, race is trivial to determine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @08:51PM (2 children)
So you do acknowledge that the data sets measure different things, but just pivot to the "crime data" one to support your point. One of your sources literally says, "Hispanics, any race." And no difficulty picking out race? I know people who are literally from Africa that are lighter skinned than some of the people I know from France. Which leads nicely into your next point about people who know their history and background and how they self identification accurate matching their genetics in a single study, versus some random person off the street recognizing them solely based on stereotypes and skin color while undergoing a stressful situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @05:43PM (1 child)
Both papers categorize hispanics into their own group in the exact same way. And the Stanford study wasn't on people "who know their history and background and..." - it was just on people. Their study group was on a group participating on a genetic study about hypertension. The racial study was a secondary study, and also done how science should be done. The scientists genetically defined race and then categorized the individuals and predicted their race - getting only a mismatch in about 1 in 1000 cases which is low enough to potentially even be attributed to a mechanical mistake by the participants such as accidentally ticking the wrong box.
Race is not defined by skin color. This [ibtimes.com] is what an Albino African looks like. Almost indistinguishable from a white, yeah? The races were created by prolonged geographic isolation over millennia that resulted in the accumulation of large numbers of distinct but shared traits. Melanin levels (which determine skin color) is but one of many different characteristics. You'll never confuse an individual who is genetically black/white/asian for somebody of any other race regardless of their personal mutations simply because the mutations you undergo as an individual are negligible in contrast to what you inherit as part of your genetic race.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @08:26PM
So people are born in bubbles with no knowledge of their ancestors or what they called themselves. Got it. Guess what race they assigned themselves was a blind guess. Good thing there weren't any albinos there to get confused and call themselves white. It is also very easy, much easier than you let on, to confuse a person's race, especially when you are talking about crimes. They don't get to sit there and study the face for various features or take hi-res photos for later reference. And that doesn't even get close to the stratification and selection biases nor the other confounding variables.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:07PM
https://www.knoxnews.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/usa-today-revealing-misconduct-records-police-cops/3223984002/ [knoxnews.com]
Shouldn't bother engaging the troll who is obviously trying to play the "stats show blacks are violent" card while pretending otherwise. Their new trick is pretending they are the opposite and saying "gee look at this data I found, let us discuss these interesting findings" while dismissing every rational argument. As you can see with their reply there is no normalization they will accept, because their goal is to prove "minorities bad."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:26AM
Well, no. That's one of the worst, in fact. "They" do exist; "they" are institutional entities who, after the Nixon tapes got out, stopped taping their discussions on, literally, how to suppress blacks and other persons of colour. But the Nixon tapes give us a snapshot of that era's highest powermakers' race suppressing policies.
So, since Nixon, "they" made rules that criminalize existence. And then sooomehow only black people and brown people - and some white people they don't like the look of, or are uppity, or they have beef with - get picked up for existing. Pot is still a jailable offence in some jurisdictions in the USA. Do you think that white college kids there have not, overwhelmingly, tried pot? But the incarceration ratios for pot are staggeringly imbalanced - something like a 10:1 per capita ratio of blacks to whites jailed for pot. Can you imagine!
So, no. There is, literally, no measurement within the US jurisdictions that has not been contaminated somewhat by race. Not all of it is as prominent as the pot ratio. Sorry. You will only find reflections of the capturing system's opportunities for profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:36PM
There's a world of difference between "Given the choice between R and D, I'll take more D -- bad as it is under D, I believe R would make it even worse", and "the best way to solve the problem* is handing money directly to the people who are already in power and unwilling or unable to solve it".
The former is of course unsurprising. The latter is fucking insane; even assuming for the sake of argument that "R vs. D" is not a false dichotomy, there are options likely to get you more justice per buck than donating to establishment politicians of any stripe.
*Unless, of course, BLM has already gone through the well-known metamorphosis where an organization's primary mission becomes perpetuation of the organization, rather than solving the problem it was founded to address. But this takes time, and I wouldn't think they'd been around long enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @03:38PM
San Diego County posted a warning last week that all protesters should get tested for covid-19. They should also get an IQ test for stupidity. Either way, nature found a way to get rid of SJW.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @03:58PM (51 children)
LoL, yet another "they are forcing me to vote for Trump."
This "I really don't want to but I just might go rightnwing" style of post is so ridiculous. As usual they are always based on fears of persecution, what might happen, versus the current rise of rightwing fascism. It is a troubling backlash against movements like BLM which are continuously portrayed by rightwing media as some kind of racial division. It seems to be working magically, scaring rational people into thinking there is a "regressive left" coming to chop their heads off. It is manipulative propaganda of the worst sort aimed at creating division and violence in western nations.
It is sad to see the influence here on SN, but not terribly surprising.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @05:11PM (19 children)
Nice screed, except for the fact that "fears of persecution" are not mere fears, they are facts.
And these are the stories that get written about due to the stature of the victims of the alt-left. Average people being pilloried and destroyed via social media over nothing is an ever more common tactic of the witch-hunting-left. Not to mention the book burning, suppression of speech, the bending of science to fit ideology, the literal violence (we live in a world where destruction of property is not violence, but words are violence -- WTF??). The casual indifference with which you will destroy someone over nothing, is gross. We see you for what you are -- you are the fascist you claim to hate.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:23PM (13 children)
So let me get this straight, Trump and Co. have been attempting to go full fascist for years now and you sit around saying nothing. But some people get caught up in scandals with a lot more context involved than you include (citations ever?) with the worst outcome is someone gets fired and you want us to flip out about "cancel culture"?
That is something for courts to decide in each case. If there was unjust discrimination then the courts will decide.
I don't trust you one bit, you come off as yet another partisan conservative no matter how much to pretend otherwise. Plenty of people out there believe they are one thing and years later come to realize they are quite another. Sounds like you're a not-totally-asshole conservative with mildly legitimate complaints, but again I don't trust you since you are blowing up rather minor issues while conveniently ignoring larger ones, you know, like people being murdered.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @07:45PM (12 children)
As a fascist, Trump is utterly inept.
You keep poo-pooing cancel culture, but I know people who are afraid to say anything lest it is misinterpreted and they lose everything as a result. The sort of mob justice you stand for is not just dangerous, it detracts from your cause.
You also keep making the charge that I am not nor ever was a liberal. It occurs to me that perhaps the definition of liberal has changed in much the same way that the definition of violence(*) is currently in flux. Let me know, because if the definition of liberal is going the way of the definition of violence, I will happily relinquish any claim to the modern definition of the term.
(*) https://youtu.be/5QLzaUvCbys?t=66 [youtu.be]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:18PM (8 children)
I'm not pro mob justice, that is simply the reality we live in where publicly posted stuff is easily found. As I keep saying, such "injustice" should be argued in a court of law. If there are real Constitutional violations occurring, or unjustified discrimination, then we'll get some laws updated.
Your excuse that Trump is an inept fascist, but you'll gladly vote for him over Biden because "dnc sucks" just really shows your true colors. You keep using vague descriptors that could apply to any ideology and now suddenly claim modern liberals are the real fascists?
Gaslighting of the highest order, go fuck yourself you conservative troll. You care more about some racists getting fired than minorities being murdered and fascism on open display as we speak. You're so full of shit it isn't even entertaining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:22PM (6 children)
To head off the inevitable reply, I realize the DNC has plenty of its own corruption and I was angry about 2016 and 2020 where Sanders had the nomination stolen. However, I won't let my anger over their corrupt bullshit allow me to ignore the existential threat to the very heart of the US that is Donald Trump and the current incarnation of the GOP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:30PM (4 children)
Really? I think the millions more people who voted for both Clinton and Biden would disagree. Are you claiming that the votes cast in those elections were somehow altered or manipulated?
Full disclosure: I voted for Bernie in 2016 and will vote for him *again* on June 23rd. If he's no longer on the ballot, I will vote for Amy Klobuchar. If *she's* not on the ballot, I will vote for Elizabeth Warren.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:09PM (3 children)
Not stolen the way the GOP does it, but political maneuvering and advertising attacks.
A protest vote was more reasonable in 2016 but for 2020 it is more important to get Trump out. If you do not agree that is your choice, but the priority is to limit the damage from the current GOP led by Trump. They are looting the country in a brazen fashion and destroying our unity and international reputation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:46PM (2 children)
I voted for Bernie in the 2016 primaries to push the party to the left. And it worked. I certainly voted for Clinton in the general election. I mean, what choice did I have? The alternative was Donald Trump. And as we've seen, he's even worse than we thought he'd be (and we thought he'd be pretty awful).
And I'll do it again this year too.
Regardless of what I do, my state's electoral votes will go to Joe Biden. That said, I vote in every election. Because it's one of the responsibilities of citizenship and I take that seriously.
I wish more people would. Of the total pool of *eligible* voters, some 43% did not vote in 2016. [washingtonpost.com]
Note that means 57% of eligible voters voted. Of those, Clinton got 48% and Trump 46%. That means Clinton got the votes of ~27% of eligible voters and Trump got the votes of ~26% of eligible voters. With 43% not voting at all, that means a plurality didn't vote for *either* candidate.
Sigh. And people wonder why our democracy has issues. Go out and vote! I don't even care who you vote *for*. I have my preferences, of course, but I believe that eligible voters, of whatever stripe, should make their voices heard.
I mean WTF is wrong with you people?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:32PM (1 child)
So you voted for Clinton but won't vote for Biden because now you're suddenly sick of the two party monopoly? I'm calling horse shit, or you replied to the wrong post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:41PM
No. I replied to exactly the right post [soylentnews.org].
You seem to be having a reading comprehension issue. I said [soylentnews.org]:
That is, I'll vote for Biden and once again will not vote for Trump this year. I guess I should have used smaller words so you didn't get confused.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:37AM
Right -- but you'll vote for the guy who actually accomplished fascist policy (noted in post below), was instrumental in starting the Iraq war, and played a large role in the 1994 crime bill that has caused so much mass incarceration. And I'm the idiot?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:35AM
Fascist: due process free execution of American citizens based on the content of their speech. Originator: Obama/Biden.
You expect me to oppose fascism by voting for a guy who was a part of the administration directly responsible for the most fascist policy in American government? Yeah -- I'll take an inept bully over an experienced fascist every day of the week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:27PM
Back in 1993 or so, when the large company for which I worked first connected internet email to our corporate email system, a memo was sent to all employees.
It recommended, among other things, that one "shouldn't put anything in an email that they wouldn't want to see on the front page of your local newspaper."
Well, it's almost 30 years on now and things have changed. But that advice is more relevant than ever -- for all online platforms, not just email.
Don't want a other folks critiquing your point of view? Don't put that shit out into the public sphere.
That was easy. And you're welcome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:13AM (1 child)
No offense, but "utterly inept at fascist" is a funny way to describe someone who holds the highest position of power in one of the most influential nations in the world, and who is, by modern definitions, fascist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @08:19PM
By _modern_ definitions, violence doesn't include arson.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:33PM
Yes, they are, hemo! We can smell your shitted pants, feel your white fragility, and hear the tremor in your voice that might make you mince your steps when walking down a ramp. You are scared to death of being equal to others in your country. And you should be afraid, because antifa probably knows just where your scaredy heart is at. I suggest you hie thee unto thy bunker!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:19PM (3 children)
You placed your "citation" in a quote block, but you didn't provide a link to the source.
Was that an oversight/typo, or are you just making shit up and pretending it's a quote?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:28AM (2 children)
A mistake on my part: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself?r=1ejgy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter [substack.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:41AM
Thank you.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:42AM
Looking at the link I just posted, I remember when I posted the quote I immediately thought "oh darn, I left off the link" and I remember posting a comment with all the referrer stuff left off -- which I forgot to leave off above -- but I think I posted it in the time frame where you can't post another comment, and didn't notice that I was in timeout.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:13PM (4 children)
I don't know why, but somehow you post strikes me as earnest. In that you do genuinely believe what you are saying. So let me, in earnest, share a different point of view. These [youtube.com] are the sort of speeches being given at CHAZ. It seems kind of harmless for now, just some sort of racist guy playing up for some other racists - but this is literally the exact way that Hitler came to power with small scale speeches, in his case at taverns. Only difference is that instead of targeting "white people" - he was targeting Jews. The fact people are cheering for that awkward guy who seems to have absolutely no charisma whatsoever is something I do find disconcerting. Those people are just itching to find their next racist leader and if a guy comes along with the striking charism of somebody like Hitler, we're going to see some bad stuff happen.
The typical way the media try to play down things is to somehow blame even stuff like this on "white supremacists". But it, to me, seems absurd to even imagine that this individual might be some sort of secret white supremacist just giving speeches to make these guys look bad, let alone the people cheering him on. By contrast, when you look at the argument for "rightwing fascism" the arguments frequently tend to rely deception. One of the more clear examples of this is Trump's 'both sides' statement. Remember, where Trump said there was some good white neo-nazi or white nationalist types? This [realclearpolitics.com] article provides the entire context of his comments, and also has a link to a complete transcript:
Everybody in the media is fully aware of the complete context of that quote, which makes the fake news around it all the more heinous and intentionally deceptive. Speaking of chop, the "protesters" that have occupied the CHAZ region have also changed the name from the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone to Capital Hill Occupied Protest. I'm not privy to the internal discussion there but choosing to change a widely reported acronym to what will be #CHOP is an interesting decision, don't you think?
Anyhow I wholly agree with you that a lot of the rhetoric being spread is largely intended to divide people and turn them against one another, but the problem is that it's succeeding. The thing for me is that I obviously see some isolated incidents of extreme right wing types doing some awful things. But that's nothing new nor indicative of some growing undercurrent. By contrast, I am seeing organized and orchestrated hate and even violence coming from the extreme left wing types. And that, in my opinion, is something extremely new and also extremely dangerous.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:36PM (1 child)
"Oh, look, dear! It's another Dark Enlightenment" pseudo-intellectual posting revisionist history and agit-prop on the SoylentNews! How precocious!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:37PM
you misspelled atrocious.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @07:54PM
Actually there is no need to speculate on the whole #CHOP thing. More video [twitter.com] from #CHOP.
Speaker: 'Do you know what happened to the people who didn't get on board with the French Revolution?'
Crowd: ... chop.. chop!
Speaker: 'Louder!'
Crowd: CHOP CHOP!!
Speaker: That is the message we need to send.
I am not making up or misrepresenting this in any way whatsoever. Inside of the #CHOP they are having these sort of rallies knowing full well there are dozens if not hundreds of cameras on them. I think there's a lot of people who are kind of playing this like a game. It's time to drop the whole charade. These people are very deluded, very dangerous, and being actively pushed in to a place where we're really all going to wish we never went. This isn't going to result in some glorious revolution, it's going to result in a crackdown, and then the justification for passing ever more draconian surveillance and law enforcement laws that'll make the Patriot Act look like the Civil Rights Act. Oh and it'll be cheered on by most people, just like the Patriot Act was at the time, in no small part thanks to these idiots. God damned useful idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:46AM
Speaker: https://medium.com/@howieechohawk [medium.com]
(Score: 2) by NickM on Monday June 15 2020, @05:17PM (25 children)
Sure, I will vote vote for Trump in Quebec, Canada ... I would prefer a Trudeau majority before electing a populist like Trump, and I don't particularly appreciate Trudeau since he betrayed his promise on election reform ...
Your outrage is blinding you, it's seriously affecting your reading comprehension, or maybe you are ignorant enough that you thought that the Bloc Québécois party ¹ is active in the United States ?
1- A federal, slightly left of center party, in favor of Quebec's separation from Canada.
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:24PM (13 children)
No I saw you're Canadian, but your rhetoric matches that of others who are pushing to vote Trump or 3rd party. With Canada steadily mirroring the US more and more I find it troubling. Simply the problem is that I do not trust anyone who uses outrage culture (you) to pretend they are being forced into supporting rightwing policies.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @06:13PM (12 children)
So basically -- you are a Biden troll. That's your issue. Electing an aged segregationist with a credible rape allegation and dementia is going to solve racism in America. Got it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:42PM
Trolling troll trolls counter-trolls?
Tu quoque, mon comrade? Non-sequitur of the addled Trump brain?
Electing Trump got America into this situation, don't see how it is going to get America out of it. I am concerned about your concern trolling, Mr. Hemocyanin Troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:48PM (10 children)
You sure seemed fine with Trump who is 10x worse than Biden.
I think the real troll here is you, given the choices on the table just bringing this up with a "Biden troll" accusation makes your world view entirely too clear.
You're either a lying douche or an idiot, but I suspect a little from column A and a little from column B.
I will bother to answer your rhetorical question though. Electing Biden won't solve racism in America but it sure won't make it worse like Trump has.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday June 15 2020, @08:00PM (9 children)
I have made no secret of my feeling that the DNC has been a horrific traitor to liberals. I have stated before that I felt great schadenfreude when HRC -- a gross warmonger and job exporter -- lost. This was in part because she was so odious on policy and in part because I believed the Democrats would engage in self-reflection on why they lost, and change. I was wrong on the last part and instead we've had 3.5 years of propaganda, conspiracy theories, and police state overreach.
This has brought me to the conclusion that the DNC cannot be reformed, it must be totally gutted so that we can get to something better after it is stripped of influence. I see no other way forward except for the DNC to lose again, which is why I'm toying with the idea of not merely voting 3d party, but actively voting for Trump. It isn't because I think he's a great president, it's because we will never see a DNC that opposes imperialism, supports the working class, bails out people before Wall St., actually follows ALL the science, supports free expression, opposes the surveillance state, supports real environmentalism as opposed to greenwashing, unless the DNC as it currently exists is utterly destroyed.
If however the DNC prevails this season, it will set back progress between 8-16 years depending on how long they maintain their grip on high level positions. So yes, I'm definitely considering voting for Trump for the tactical reason of eliminating the greatest threat to progress: Democrats.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @08:14PM (8 children)
So you're just stupid, got it.
The GOP has done far more direct damage to the US, and saying "we've had 3.5 years of propaganda, conspiracy theories, and police state overreach" means you have very little grasp on reality and are taking in conservative conspiracy nonsense without a second thought.
Yet another human sucked into the black hole of Fox News & affiliates. Trump is the culmination of everything you say you stand against, yet for magical reasons it is actually the DNC which is the problem.
Truly you have mastered the mental Arabian Double Front!
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @01:52AM (7 children)
There was a time when Democrats professed, as I still do, disdain for the abuses of the surveillance state, who would oppose lying by government in affidavits to a court, and who would oppose FISA courts on principle. They even opposed the notion that lying to the FBI should be criminalized. Democrats today? Love it.
As for conspiracy theories, Rachel Maddow is what Alex Jones would look and sound like if he was a woman. She spent the last 3 years turning the frogs Russian.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:36AM (6 children)
Yes, it sounds like you and I have fallen through a wormhole into a parallel Earth. Rachel Maddow was once bright and incisive. I recall clearly a very prickly, pointed, and yet respectful conversation she had with Jon Stewart once. He was going after her the way you have been fencing in this thread. Now, though, I am embarrassed that I ever thought she was worth the time; it proves the old adage that if you want to reveal a man's true character, don't test him with adversity but rather with success.
It's not just her, either. I would once have bled to put Elizabeth Warren in the Whitehouse. Now I can't get within three newscasts of her because the cringe factor is so acute.
So here we are, the last of a seeming handful who remember Earth Mark I, marooned in Earth Mark II. What are we to do?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @06:34AM (5 children)
It is an unrealistic hope, but if ever there was a year a 3d party candidate could win, this is it. I do think it would have to be a new 3d party though -- too much baggage (whether fair or not) surround Greens and Libertarians.
As for realistic things? I have no idea. When people can't even discuss the merits or demerits of a topic anymore without being a labeled a nazi (virtually always unjustified) there's not much left but for the shooting to start -- I'd like to figure out where to go to be far away from that. That's not a plan for solving things though, just a method of avoidance.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:35PM (4 children)
I don't think there's a chance of a new 3rd party until and unless the Democratic Party self-destructs so hard its pieces cannot hold together anymore. Chances are, though, that one of the major successor factions would form the Woke Party, which will get obliterated even harder at the ballot box. Ultimately those people need to emigrate to North Korea so the Republican Party can then cleave in two to fill the void.
There isn't much chance of escaping what we're in the middle of. It's not like we're citizens of Liechtenstein, seeking refuge from the implosion of that country. America is the world's sole superpower, with a power hungry rival nipping at its heels. When this ship goes down it will draw everything in with it. We have to prepare to fight for our lives where we are, because we are.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:39PM
Another civil war type post. Why do you keep trying to make US tensions worse?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday June 16 2020, @10:57PM (2 children)
I agree with the first half being a real danger, but I'm wondering about the second. Maybe it is because I live in WA which has historically been pretty radical and when I look around, all I see is overt regressive-left (regLeft) messaging and support. My fear is that a Woke3dParty would not get obliterated. It certainly wouldn't on many state and local levels (depending on the state). I see that as a problem because if the extreme right (by which I actually do mean neonazis in a completely non-figurative way) see the regLeft gaining political power, they will either join them (identity politics being completely compatible with with the identitarian right), which would be awful, or fight them, which would be awful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @12:16AM (1 child)
You are seriously nuts.
Rightwing assholes are the epitome of identity politics, and the actual neo-nazi KKK white supremacist fucks have been waging war on minorities since forever. They got especially worked up in the 60s/70s when black people actually started standing up and arming themselves. Perhaps you've been tucked away in the comfy white nerd-o-sphere of tech, but a lot of fascism has happened during your lifetime.
Now Trump is trying to inspire the far right movement to actual mass violence and you're here dripping on about "regressive left" identity politics. Pure hysteria while Trump is actively trying to run a coup on the US. Thanfully most of the US is balking at the overt fascism, and much of the US is already really fucking over the racist fascism that has been around forever.
Keep crying, as long as you keep focusing on everything but the real threat no one will take you seriously. Well, outsdie of the boomer cafes and alt-right circles.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday June 17 2020, @01:36AM
Left identity politics is the same as Right Identity politics -- they merely have different supremacists. People with morals don't judge by race or skin color.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2020, @10:20PM (10 children)
What happens if Quebecois side with Western Canada against Ontario?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by NickM on Monday June 15 2020, @10:36PM (1 child)
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:11AM
Such a thing is hardly imaginable, but if it were ever to occur Screech is a perfectly acceptable substitute.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by NickM on Monday June 15 2020, @11:30PM (2 children)
More seriously it wouldn't not happen as we have to many stupid in our respective populations.
In Quebec we have a fair share of irrational environmentalists against any kind of resources extraction¹, a respectable bunch of people unable to make a distinction between Canadian from other provinces and another part that imagine that Alberta is the land of sexual intolerance. In the west you have a good part of the population resenting Quebec for the perequation, another for our apparent opposition to the pipeline and some that believe that Quebec is the land of racial intolerance.
This is regrettable as our provinces used to have more in common with each other than they had with Ontario.
1- Since we need² those resources it's better to extract them here in Canada where there are environmental laws than import them from countries with dubious records.
2- We clearly need most of them : agriculture at our latitude is resources intensive and agriculture is only a part of what is required to power and furnish modern civilization ( even with all transportation removed you still need them for modern medicine, computers, HVAC, etc... Also human³ are incoherent at best: the importance of the environmental issues never scored higher in the polls, yet the before the covid sales of SUVs were at an all time high!
3- myself included
I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:26AM (1 child)
I grew up in the Rockies and always hated the clear-cutting that denuded our beloved mountains, so I have been a life-long environmentalist. Canada, though, has not even begun to scratch the surface of its natural resources. Even modest New Brunswick could keep the rest of Canada in lumber. Along with the world's biggest (I believe) store of diamonds in the Canadian Shield, and oil in Edmonton, Canada feels like a superpower that could be if it stopped getting in its own way.
Perhaps it's not likely that Quebec could side with the West, as you say, but if it's Ontario is the thing that keeps raining on everybody's parade...the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @11:19AM
Maybe, but clear cutting BC and elsewhere gets shipped to the USA and elsewhere.
The checkerboarding and clear swathes are visible from space at coarse resolutions. It's reaching tipping points for animals with larger domains and stopover migrators. The only actual swathe that remains is the Great Bear Rainforest and that's continually contentious as logging and mining try to elbow in.
So, maybe NB could do it, but the profit is in the exporting, and for that we sell our souls.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday June 16 2020, @06:21AM (4 children)
Perhaps we could repeal the Alberta Act? Fucking easterners.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @12:38PM (3 children)
You don't want Alberta to be a province anymore? Or did the government not relinquish control of its resources in 1930?
If Alberta does now have control of the oil money, why not do what every other self-respecting oil producer does and bribe your way out?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:11PM (2 children)
I'm just tired of Alberta trying to push the west around while crying about how bad they have it when it's their bad decisions that have got themselves where they are.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @04:52PM (1 child)
I thought BC and Alberta were on the same page. Or are you speaking from Saskatchewan? (Is Manitoba considered part of the West?)
If they're talking about secession, on top of interests in Quebec that want secession, Canada's got troubles. It's not like PEI threatening to leave.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:56AM
I'm in BC, while some might be on the same page, I don't think the majority agree with the attitude that Alberta has, namely no one can tell them what to do and they can tell others what to do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @04:08PM (2 children)
You forgot to say which side of the protests. There are fine people, on both sides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:42PM (1 child)
There are ill people on both sides too.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:51PM
They are called neo-nazis and/or christian fundamentalists and yes, they have invaded liberal groups in an attempt to derail social progress.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @05:31PM (1 child)
"I believe in the role of a welfare state for the good of the commons man"
well, i think it's pretty clear you're wrong on that one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Monday June 15 2020, @09:21PM
don't mistake the American version of the "welfare state" with what actually works in other parts of the world.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @06:39PM
I hear you. Across the pond, the situation isn't much better. The so-called social-liberal parties haven't had any sort of social platform, they seem mostly preoccupied with right-leaning fiscal policies. Well, maybe on paper (once every four years) they claim have a platform, they just never act on it.
I've voted green the past few years, not because of the eco angle (it doesn't hurt, but it's not my main reason for voting) but because nowadays, they have the most palatable social platform too. At least for now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2020, @09:54PM (6 children)
Thanks, we try.
It is a conundrum that I have been grappling with as well. First, the "current liberals" are not liberals at all, but 红卫兵 (hong weibing, "Red Guards"). So it's not surprising that we are feeling no kinship with them. These Western variants are the mutant love children of Marxists, Post-Modernists, and Gender Studies majors. They are out to do nothing less than destroy the entirety of the Western tradition and replace it with...nothingness. For people who believe in freedom and human rights, science and progress, that nihilism and narcissism of the Western Red Guards is a repellent, noxious brew we can't choke down.
So we're far beyond the Left/Right spectrum we grew up with. Regardless of where we individually see/saw ourselves on that spectrum, we must now reject this assault on everything we hold dear, because it's for all the marbles.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:13PM (5 children)
You really need to go outside your personal comfort bubble someday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @10:37PM (1 child)
666 is speaking outside of your comfort bubble, and that can not be allowed.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 15 2020, @11:12PM
As usual conservatives are crying about non-existant persecution.
Got another one ya whiney bitch?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 16 2020, @05:28AM (2 children)
I live in Brooklyn. There is no such thing as a personal comfort bubble here. Everyone is on top of each other, all the time.
So it's far more likely that you are the one trapped in a bubble. Your daft comment supports that theory.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @03:44PM (1 child)
Ah, your story shifts. You said you moved out of the city to a town just north. No need to argue with a liar, I just hope others can see through your facade or at least dismiss you as the agitator you are.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 18 2020, @01:23AM
I have never said I moved to a town north of the city. Park Slope, Brooklyn, the progressive epicenter of the universe.
So, since you called me a liar, I'm gonna tell you to go fuck yourself sideways, you Coward.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 16 2020, @06:22PM
Coronavirus statistics published in the Globe and Mail [theglobeandmail.com] indicate that in Quebec (I'm guessing you're in Quebec because you mentioned the Bloc Quebecois) the number of active cases peaked on June 1 and has been decreasing since. You have to go to where they classify the numbers by province (no, not on the map; after that), and if you click on QC you get a nice 60-day graph.
I too am worried that coronavirus transmission during the demonstrations would cause an abnormal increase in cases, but that looks as if it didn't happen. Hard to tell from the numbers whether it would have peaked earlier without.
And Quebec is publishing numbers by region [quebec.ca], but not as a time sequence.