₿oogaloo
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Well said Ilargi.
Perhaps you should start working in some paintings with the guillotine to give your readers some hope that circumstances may change!
My earliest American ancestor, Bridget Bishop, wasn’t on the Mayflower but her luck ran out in 1692! She was the first Salem witch to be hung!
So dissenting from the official narrative runs in the family!
Let’s make it a threesome:
Well let’s compare the results between Seoul, Sweden and the US state of Michigan.
Seoul has about 10 million people. Sweden has about 10,127,000 people. Michigan has 9,987,000 people.
Seoul has fewer than 200 deaths. Sweden 7,067 virus deaths. Michigan 10,321 virus deaths.
Seoul has no lockdown but everyone wears a mask, there is hand sanitizer everywhere, and more people have changed their lifestyle to avoid large gatherings. Sweden no lockdown. Michigan total lockdown.
Seoul has some loss of freedom but there is widespread support for the measures. Sweden no loss of freedom. Michigan near total lost of freedom.
So which of the three would you choose?
In a normal year, cases of “influenza like illness” in Korea go parabolic in December. They call it “inffuenza like illness” because they do not actually test everyone to confirm whether it is the actual influenza virus (or if it is, which strain). If it looks like the flu, they treat it like the flu and classify it as ILI.
This year the line for ILI cases has barely ticked up. So far, from the flu perspective, the healthiest year (by far!) in recent memory. There is still not a confirmed case of flu in people (birds yes, people no)
Is that because cases are misclassified as Covid? Nope. Those numbers remain low (on a comparative basis), and the KCDC treats every positive PCR test as a “case.”
Looks like this is going to be a healthier than expected winter!
http://www.kdca.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30504000000&bid=0033&act=view&list_no=711330&tag=&nPage=1
Well everybody cheer up!
Here’s a thought to cheer everyone up. The billionaire class has learned that it can make a killing during a pandemic. They have also learned that it is possible to manufacture viruses like this in the lab. And the pharmaceutical companies have learned that they can make a killing making vaccines, even if the vaccines are never approved.
If it worked once, why not try it again?
What are these “sides” you speak of?
There are at least two, and probably a whole lot more. I am talking about those who have an agenda, and who put their agenda above the facts. One “side” is the pharmaceutical establishment, which would like to convince us that we are all paralyzed until they can develop a vaccine. Another “side” comes from those who have downplayed the virus from the beginning, whether from ideological or financial reasons. Or for political gain.
There is battle raging for control of the narrative.
I agree with BGrahamMD. The articles criticizing the PCR tests are misguided. The purpose of the PCR test is to detect whether the virus is active in the patient. That’s all. The purpose is not to determine whether the patient is sick. The purpose is not to determine whether the patient can infect others. If you want a test to measure those things, you will need to go out and develop one on your own. If anyone has a better idea for a diagnostic test, then what is your suggestion?
You might say that makes the PCR test useless. I beg to differ. I think it is useful as a measure to determine how far the virus has spread and how many people have been exposed. There are limits to what the test tells us. So what? It’s the best diagnostic test we have.
Yes, it is possible to get false positives by making a test like this too sensitive. What is the correct response? Don’t make the test too sensitive. Reduce the number of cycles.
So some companies or some countries may have made the tests too sensitive? Which companies? Which countries? Don’t throw PCR under the bus just because there may have been local problems with some tests.
Beware the propaganda. On both sides.
You should get your D level checked and adjust accordingly.
This is the best advice.
My Vitamin D was tested in December last year and it was below 20. Starting in February I took John Day’s advice of 10,000 IU per day for a month or two, and then 5000 IU per day after that. I had my blood taken again at the end of June, and my Vitamin D was up above 60. I have continued to take 5000 IU per day. I should get tested again to see if it leveled off or kept going up.
Foods are fortified with Vitamin D in some parts of the world, so daily supplement might be lower. I recall from when I lived in the US that most of the milk was fortified with Vitamin A and D. Breakfast cereals (often 90% sugar) were also fortified. But here in Korea the milk is not fortified and I am taking the 5000 IU softgels (manufactured in Canada).
Here it is also an option here to go to the doctor and get a shot of Vitamin D to bring your levels up instantly.
If we were actually living through a catastrophic pandemic there would be no need to debate statistics, would there? The evidence would be right in front of our faces.
In the beginning it was. We saw the body bags. But then something happened, and the viral load numbers started to drop. Once that happened, the death rate plummeted. Why did the viral load numbers drop? Mutation? Weather? Social distancing? There has been a conspiracy of silence about viral load — it’s just not discussed.
teri, one more, lest you think there is anything partisan about this. Here is a May 2016 critique explaining the insecurity of the US voting system — six months before the last election and the allegations of Russian hacking:
teri, the problems with the voting machines has been known since well before this election. Check out this 2018 criticism of the voting machine from University of Michigan computer science professor Alex Haldermann
And this 2016 criticism from Princeton Professor Andrew Appel:
https://rumble.com/vb5ve9-princeton-professor-hacks-voting-machine-in-seven-minutes.html
Don’t kid yourself VietnamVet. Whoever gets inaugurated on January 20 will not be another Romulus Augustulus. Although the Empire is rotten to the core, its army is still intact. And well fed. That is the secret of having the world’s reserve currency. Even if you are correct that the USD is on the brink of losing that status, there is no successor in line to take its place. The only possible successor is FOFOA’s freegold. But even if gold is remonetized and emerges like a phoenix as the world’s new reserve asset extraordinaire, the problem is that most countries have most of their gold parked in the US. The Pentagon will never let it leave. The Empire’s army will remain well fed, and nobody will dare to oppose it. The Empire will grow even stronger. Don’t be surprised if the person inaugurated on January 20 is wearing a black mask and holding a light sabre by 2024. The Death Star should be completed by then, and you can scratch those ragtag rebel planets called Iran, North Korea and Venezuela off the list. This is our destiny.
Ilargi, I tried three things to post a jpg but none of them worked. First I put the jpg on my desktop. I opened it with Exporer to show the url address on my computer. Then I highlighted that address (which ended in jpg) with the “img” button. Didn’t work. All that posted was the name I assigned to the files.
Then I noticed that the “img” button seems to require a www address, not a local address. So I put in the www URL where I found the file, thinking that maybe the file would be extracted and posted in my post. That was wishful thinking. As you say, the address needs to end with jpg.
Then I decided to just upload the files using the “attachments” option. I clicked the browse button below, found the first jpg on my desktop, and clicked that. Then I clicked the “add another file” link to add the second file. But when I did that, I was unable to add another file. Instead, it just took me to the top of the page. Unable to add a second file, I decided to proceed with only one. But even that did not work. The first file did not post.
Then I gave up and just tried the link.
Oh well, I guess not. I have always been computer illiterate. Anyway, the report and the charts are here:
http://www.kdca.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30504000000&bid=0033What strikes me is that there is not a single confirmed case of influenza so far this year in Korea. Not a single case. Every week they run 100-200 test samples. But for this season, so far, it is nothing but goose eggs. That’s the bottom chart in the report. Of course, they do not test everyone with flu-like symptoms for influenza. I think most doctors have historically just treated influenza-like symptoms as influenza, without the need for a test to confirm. That’s why the top chart shows “influenza like illness” — shown as number of cases per 1000 consultations. The blue line is last year’s flu season. As you can see, the number stopped going up right after coronavirus started making headlines. It dropped off sharply in March, and by April was way below the rates for the previous two years. And that rate has stayed exceptionally low into the current flu season (shown by the red line).
So what do I make of this? I think it is strong evidence that when everyone gets on board with a program, disease can be kept under control. Those who claim that masks and social distancing don’t work — what do they make of this data? Maybe it doesn’t work unless there is widespread compliance. Maybe that’s the key. And maybe that’s why the failure of such measures in Western countries (especially the USA) was always baked into the cake. On that point I think D Benton’s hilarious post earlier today nailed it. That’s a cut and paste keeper.
Okay, I am trying to post two images from the weekly report posted on the Korea CDC website. If this works, I will comment in the next post.
First:
Second:
Yeah, sorry about that. Sometimes after posting I notice something I want to edit. Every so often after a quick edit, everything disappears after hitting ‘Submit’.
The same thing has happened to me. It happened to me only a couple days ago. This is part of the reason I do not comment very often — my posts disappear and it is a really aggravating experience.
It is usually my fault. I usually do not proofread what I have written until after I click submit. Then I see my post and I reread it again, and usually find at least a couple typos that I want to change — things that actually affect the meaning. This often happens with little words that are easy to overlook — the last time I wanted to change a “to” to a “do”. So even after the message successfully posted, it was completely deleted once I tried to make a correction. I did not have the energy to draft everything again from scratch.
I’m sure we all would want to know if anything fraudulent has happened in the November 3 election. Right?
I don’t think so. I remember listen to an amazing podcast after the 2016 election about all of the problems of the US voting system. Of course that was against a background of alleged Russian hacking into the voting machines. The podcast, which was almost like a documentary, explained all of the vulnerabilities, and also went into detail about the companies that developed the software, their connections, and the propensity of the software to malfunction (by design or otherwise). The main message was that the system is broken, it is insecure, it is vulnerable to fraud. And then after that, barely a peep for several years until the problems with the software in the Democratic primary. But there is no bipartisan effort to create a secure reliable system.
On the whole, I think both sides like the current system because they think they can game the system better than the other party. Democrats accuse Republicans of disenfranchising voters and selectively targeting certain minority communities, and I think there is a lot of truth to that. And now Republicans accuse Democrats of ballot stuffing, and there is to my eyes a lot of truth to that. Trump Derangement Syndrome was so strong that there are an awful lot of people who would do anything — yes, anything — to make sure Trump did not win. Election integrity be damned. Does anyone doubt that for a minute?
This will all blow over. The system will not be fixed. There will be fraud and dirty tricks again in the next election. The loser will scream fraud again. But it will blow over, and once again the system will not be fixed. Because both sides play their own games, and neither side wants an honest system.
A pox on both halves of the kayfabe Duopoly.
It’s not very often that I agree with Bill7. But I fully agree with that.
As for Lily’s comment, all I can do is shake my head and shrug my shoulders. There are a handful of people who understand the underlying problem: both political parties in America are bought and paid for, they both serve the same donor class, they are all presiding over a looting operation, and neither side is governing in the best interests of the people. But the majority of people, like Lily, seem to think otherwise. And I do not think there is anything we can say or do to convince them otherwise. Shake. Shrug.
I am not sure I understood the questions. This article has more information, including a breakdown of the cases: http://www.monews.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=214756 (but you will need to run it through a translator)
For perspective, 14 million people have received the influenza vaccine in Korea so far this year.
So far, ZERO actual cases of influenza this season according to the weekly influenza reports on the KDCA (fka KCDC) website:
https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30504000000&bid=0033With everyone being so careful this year, I predict that this flu season will be a nothingburger here.
@V. Arnold
The numbers are higher now. Here is the latest:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/10/119_298250.htmlMy family got the vaccine before the story broke. Odd thing is that none of these deaths were cases of anaphylaxis shock. And it seems few, if any, were accompanied by any flu-like symptoms.
But this is the seasonal flu vaccine, not a vaccine against coronavirus.
“fear is a thief; do not let it steal from you”
+1“The passivity of the majority is stunning under the circumstances, IMO…”
What shocks me is how effective the propaganda has been to get the people to buy into the two party system, where there is no meaningful difference in substance — you just have two different brands. Yet massive numbers of people treat the election as if this was a meaningful choice. For those who have not discovered the Jimmy Dore Show, this is a wonderful podcast. Whether you agree with his progressive politics or not, Jimmy is a truth teller, and he has great weekly takedowns of the Democratic establishment. In the most recent episode, he goes back to his show from 2016, where he predicted that there would be fewer deportations under Trump then there were under Obama. And in fact this is exactly what happened. 390K for Obama vs 220K for Trump. Obama puts people in cages and nobody care. But if Trump does it, it puts an ugly face on what has been the bipartisan policy all along, and all of a sudden people are up in arms about the inhumanity of putting people in cages.
The problem is that the vast majority of the people no longer believe in truth. And as they say at the end of the Social Dilemma, once you throw truth out the window, it becomes impossible to have a real conversation, and it becomes impossible to solve real problems.
@zerosum
“Someone better than Trump”zerosum, so funny you should say that. I did not vote in the last election, and I refuse to vote in this one. But after the last one, I shrugged my shoulders and said to myself that the silver lining is that Trump’s election might hasten the decline, and therefore be a catalyst. There was talk four years ago about Trump being a disruptor. But then to survive his first term he appointed a bunch of insiders. Wall Street on Parade did a good post last week about how his appointments to the EPA, Labor Department, Interior Department and Education Department have been disasterous — they are all Koch people. And we know all about his military and financial advisors. They simply continued the policies of the Obama administration. And the Bush administration before that. No real change. And Biden promises no fundamental change.
I have concluded that an elected government cannot and will not turn things around.
I would like to see both parties implode. I think we are overdue for a major realignment. I think that more short term change could come from a Biden defeat. The Democrats would go batshit crazy. And that needs to happen. They either need to do some real soul searching (I am not holding my breath), or fragment, or blame the Russians again. They are a bunch of corrupt sellouts. They are not helping the people they claim to represent. They deserve to lose.
At the same time I would love to see the Republicans blow themselves up. But a Trump defeat delays that. They can never win another Presidential election without someone like Trump because they have no ideas, no policies that anyone but the oligarchs will support. If Trump loses this year, maybe he comes back four years later? No way will people ever vote for the likes of the evil villian puppets Rubio, Cruz or McConnell.
Some when you suggest “someone better than Trump” — I wonder who you have in mind.
RFK Jr is onto something.
There needs to be an uprising against the American oligarchy, the Federal Reserve, the Big Tech monopolies, the corporate media, the TBTF big banks, and the two major political parties. But how is that going to happen if they are all in bed with each other? The power is too concentrated, the propaganda is too sophisticated, and now they control the levers of censorship. Even if you get like-minded people together for a mass protest, they will find a way to discredit it or co-opt it for their own purposes.
What might turn this around and send the pendulum in the other direction? Voting sure as hell isn’t going to change anything. Maybe losing reserve status of the US dollar?
Well I finally got around to watching the Social Dilemma this weekend. For those who have not seen it, I recommend it. There are parts where I wanted to yell at the screen. For example, they take it as fact that the Russians interfered in the election — watch for the scene with Vladimir Putin walking up the steps with a big smile on his face — but they try to turn this back against Facebook by saying that the Russians simply used the tools that Facebook created. The other part that I disagreed with was the message that populism on both the left and right is a bad thing. When the center is as corrupt as it is, I think a realignment is necessary, and populism is the catalyst. At this stage, the only way to turn the country around is for people to be marching in the streets. Elections do not work anymore.
I suppose I can relate to teri’s reaction that this is no big deal, just more of the same corruption.
But to me what makes this case different is the effort to squash the story. The corporate media won’t cover it. The intellegence community blames Russia. Wikipedia insists that it is just a conspiracy theory. Move along folks — nothing to see here. In my mind, that is what we should be most concerned about.
As a followup to my last message, here is how the KCDC is defining a confirmed case (according to the Englisg version of the official website):
A person who has been confirmed to be infected with the infectious disease pathogen according to the diagnostic testing standard, regardless of clinical manifestations
Reading your post makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Where do I begin? How about this sentence: “Presenting one video that show how cloth masks stop spit spray and concluding that the mask can stop everything is quite a leap of faith or is it hope.” There is so much wrong with the logic here.
First, the primary transmission route is by droplets, not airborne. The fewer droplets in the air, the better. There are plenty of other videos besides the one I linked to that show that masks hold back a significant amount of the droplets. Bus as I said, for some people, seeing is not believing, and I realize that nothing I can say or point to will change your mind.
Second, I never claimed or suggested that “the mask can stop everything.” In fact, I say exactly the opposite. I tell you that the mask will not stop everything. There. I said it. Now I will say it again. The mask will NOT stop everything. But that is not the point. The point is that the masks stop SOME of the droplets. And good masks can stop MOST of the droplets. Not all. MOST. But guess what? “Most” makes a big difference when it comes to the spread of the virus. It brings transmission rates down. And it means that when people do get sick, they do not get as sick. Virologists have known for years that dosage makes a big difference in whether people get sick, and how sick.
Third, the studies you are referring to have focused on masks as a defensive protection to protect the wearer from becoming infected. They are not studies that have masked everyone, including asymptomatic carriers, to keep droplets out of the air.
Fourth, just look at the data. Look at the data. Look at transmission rates in Asia where people are wearing masks. Bill7 says that maybe Koreans are a lot healthier than Americans. Yeah, maybe it’s the kimchee. But I say that masks have made a huge difference. And the KCDC agrees with me. Someone else suggested that there has not been enough testing in Asia. Nonsense. Korea led the world in testing at the early stages when they were trying to contain the spread. They succeeded. There is no need for widespread testing once the spread has been contained. And the positive rate for those who are being tested is quite low, showing that the virus is not widespread.
I realize that no matter what I say, I will never convince you, and that the KCDC will never convince you: http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/en/infoBoardView.do?brdId=14&brdGubun=141&dataGubun=&ncvContSeq=3401&contSeq=3401&board_id=&gubun=
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/10/113_297415.html
By the way, Korea just relaxed its social distancing guidelines to Level 1 (the lowest level). We are going about our business as usual, and the economy is recovering, and people are all quite healthy. It has come at the cost of wearing a mask in public, which virtually everyone here agrees is worth it.
Here is the video:
https://mashable.com/video/coronavirus-mask-effective-video/Watching this should convince you. But as I have said before, for some people seeing is not believing.
Happy to answer your question. Will you please repay the courtesy and answer mine?
Here in Korea, anyone who tests positive is regarded as an active case. Here, they do not tell people to stay at home, eat chicken soup, and only go to the hospital if they have trouble breathing. This virus attacks multiple organs, not just the lungs. So the response is a much higher degree of caution. Korea can still afford that give the small number of cases. That would be a luxury we could not afford if we had 50,000 new cases per day.
Now, if not masks, what is your explanation for why cases in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand are so much lower than in the West?
I also wonder why you associate masks with the mandatory vaccine camp. These are different issues. I am with you on the vaccine issue.
As Chris Martenson articulately explains in his most recent videos over the last 2-3 weeks, the pandemic is most likely over. Yes, there are still a lot of cases, but people are not getting as sick as they were in March and April. Viral loads are much lower. Cheap and effective treatments are available. Covid is now a manageable disease. The WHO and CDC continue to misinform, and refuse to do the proper research on various “antiviral cocktails” that use cheap drugs like Ivermectin, Hydroxychlorquine and other well known compounds, but that research is ongoing in India, Bangladesh, and other parts of the world. Yes, there are some evil people hoping to get rich off a vaccine, and others trying to cripple the economy for political purposes until the election. But this has absolutely nothing to do with wearing masks.
@tony smyth
No matter what you say, you are unlikely convince bill7 or Dr.D. While it seems obvious to you in Japan, and to me in Korea, and to V.Arnold in Thailand, that masks make a difference, for some, seeing is not believing.
How do they explain the very low transmission rates in densely-populated Asia? They offer no explanation. Maybe they think that Asians are more hygienic? Or that they have superior genes? Or maybe they think it is because of the diet? I have been waiting to hear a non-mask explanation, but so far nothing but crickets . . .
This post, like many others these days, certainly deserves more comment. But I am busy, distracted, and immersed in the world. And more importantly, I concur with the content. So it passes by with no comment.
Has the WHO actually flip flopped on lockdowns, as the headline proclaims?
Read the quotation carefully: Dr. David Nabarro appealed to world leaders, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method.”
Did the WHO ever suggest to use lockdowns as the primary control method? Does anyone in their right mind believe that a lockdown should be the primary method? Lockdown is the fallback when less restrictive social distancing and contact tracing methods have failed (or were never implemented in the first place) and your health care system is failing. Lockdown is the firewall.
I am not sure this quote from Dr. Nabarro is all that controversial. Or that it signals any significant change. It is just a common sense statement of what should be obvious.
The issue that people should be asking is why viral load numbers are so much lower now compared to the cases back in February and March. If they stay low, we can expect the fatality rate to stay low, and we can expect the rate of serious cases that require hospitalization to stay low. If these stay low, then the pandemic has become much ado about nothing, and I agree it is better to let people make decisions from themselves (though I would not say that back in the spring when viral load numbers were through the roof and we saw all the bodybags).
Another question nobody is asking: If we assume for a moment that SARS-Cov2 was engineered in a lab, what are the odds that we might see a SARS-Cov3 intentionally released this winter?
This rush to supplement cornucopia has me concerned.
So says the man who lives in perpetually sunny Thailand! If not for the fact that I work long hours in an office building with small windows, and that I like what I am doing and do not want to move, I would agree with you . . . But not this time.
Zinc and Vitamin D supplements both tie up bio available copper – the copper is what enables us to properly “exhaust” the lifelong accumulation of iron…. I would only reach for the zinc if I got a COVID diagnosis.
Susmarie, I recall that the magic ratio of zinc to copper is 30 to 1. So okay to take zinc regularly as long as you also take copper in that ratio. But instead of an everyday supplement, how about taking zinc only when you start experiencing cold symptoms?
You are preaching to the choir with this short essay. Even in Korea, which seems to have done a lot of things right, there is no clear message from the KCDC that people need to get their Vitamin D checked. But the population here is smart and well educated, so a lot of people have figured this out even without guidance from the government.
I have been trying to figure out what standard of care is here. The answer I typically get: “If you have Covid, you go to the hospital.” So far, so good. “But what will they give me for treatment?” Blank stares. No idea. Only the doctors seem to know. Then an idea comes, and they say something like “There’s that new drug Remdesivir — the government bought millions of doses of that.” To which I respond: “Yeah, but that doesn’t work.” To which they say: “Yeah, I know. I don’t know why the government did that.”
On zinc, that is a good idea too. But it does not work well unless you take it with a zinc ionophore (like quercetin or epigallocatechin gallate). Without the ionophone, the zinc cannot easily get into the cell to stop viral replication.
On your masks comments a couple of days ago, Ilargi, I think you missed the mark. Even if masks don’t prevent people from getting infected, they still help. The key is viral load. Viral load in patients back in February and March was off the charts. That’s why so many people were dying. Viral load in most patients since then has been much lower, and the death rate has plummeted. Why the lower viral load? I have read at least three theories. First is that the virus has mutated to become weaker. Second is that people have been spending more time outdoors so their immune systems have been stronger. Third is that with social distancing and masks, people are exposed to fewer viral particles, so their bodies respond more effectively in the early stages of infection — and they can keep viral load under control.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-decline-viral-patients-covid-pandemic.html
Masks might actually be functioning in a way analogous to a vaccine:
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1336624/coronavirus-update-protection-face-masks-symptomsI wonder what will happen to viral load in new patients as we come out of the sun to go back indoors this fall. This brings us back to the Vitamin D issue. I am very curious to see how this plays out.
