Tim Groves

 
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  • in reply to: Debt Rattle June 30 2022 #110772
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    The quote about tolerance is spot on. Unfortunately, though, Dostoevsky didn’t write it, It’s a fake quote. But if he was among us today, I like to think that he very well could have written it and that he would have been remiss not to have done so.

    Here’s a nice genuine Dostoyevsky quote:

    “Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts.”

    in reply to: Debt Rattle February 16 2022 #101716
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    @Chooch

    “Is the monitoring of CO2 levels in buildings common in Japan?”

    I’m not sure if it is common, as I haven’t been going very far afield for the past couple of years, but as it happens, I adopted a Siamese cat (who suffers from bladder stones and slurry due to metabolic issues) and I’ve been taking him the only veterinarian I knew of who was competent to the surgery required to allow him to keep urinating. Fun fact: According to the vet, the urethra of male domestic cats has a diameter of around 6mm but it tapers to as narrow as 1mm at the tip of the penis!

    In the waiting room of this vet, where I have spent quite a few happy hours, I noticed that there was a device that simultaneously displays the temperature, barometric pressure, humidity level, and CO2 level on a small gray/black LCD. I’ve seen the CO2 level vary from about 500 ppm when there are only two or three people present, to as high as 1,400 ppm when the waiting room gets crowded. Also, the staff will open some windows when the level goes up, as this usually coincides with the room feeling stuffy.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle February 16 2022 #101703
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    @Boogaloo

    “No, it’s not the kimchee. No, it’s not the sweet and sour pork. No, it is not the sushi. No, it’s not even the chili crab. It’s the masks.”

    Really? Don’t you think the green tea, the seaweed, and the ginseng have something to do with it? Or the relatively low consumption levels of various legal and illegal drugs in East Asia? And more importantly, don’t you think the hugely lower rates of obesity in East Asia and the co-related hugely lower rates of diabetes, heart disease and cancer relative to the West have anything to do with it?

    Don’t you think that food choices and dietary habits have any effect on obesity levels?

    Here in Japan, people were masks all the time, including paper ones that a bumblebee could enter from above on the left side of the nose and exit on the right side, and cute homemade cloth ones fashioned out from recycled kitchen or bathroom towel materials that are nowhere near adequate to prevent viral transmission but that demonstrate the wearer’s community spirit.

    Very often, Japanese people will put on a mask to walk through the door into a café or restaurant, then take it off when they sit down, so they spend twenty of thirty minutes unmasked in a room that may be filled with a dozen or more unmasked strangers.

    But amazingly, these masks work to prevent Corona-chan from spreading, even when they are not being worn?

    Possibly they do, but there are a lot of other factors that need to be taken into account before coming to that conclusion. For instance, it is possible that the higher population densities in East Asia ensure that most people’s immune systems get more practice fighting off germs of all kinds, which keeps them in good condition. But at the same time, you are what you eat, and the standard American “Walmart” and fast food diet is producing a lot of obese people, contributing to poor health and lowering life expectancy. Why shouldn’t it also be playing a role in producing poor Covid-19 outcomes and poor Covid 19 vaccine-related outcomes?

    Just checking the statistics, life expectancy for Japanese in 2021 was 84.79 years, a 0.14% increase from 2020, when it was 84.67 years, a 0.14% increase from 2019. The South Koreans are only a year below the Japanese and the Taiwanese are also living beyond 80 on the average. Meanwhile, life expectancy for people in the U.S. in 2020 was 77.0 years, a decrease of 1.8 years from 2019. So the Japanese are now living a full 10% longer than the Americans. Even the mainland Chinese have caught up with the Americans, living almost 77 years on the average in 2019—despite starting from a very low base half a century ago and living with the pollution that pervades the country and the oppression and coercion that pervades the society.

    Can we put these life expectancy statistics down solely or mainly or even substantially down to mask wearing, or are they the result of a complex interplay of many other factors? And if the later, then why can’t this same complex interplay be resulting in poor outcomes from Covid-19?

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 22 2021 #93294
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    What is Japan doing right about COVID-19?

    First of all, obesity rates are very low. Here’s a factoid:

    “Only 3.6 percent of Japanese have a body mass index (BMI) over 30, which is the international standard for obesity, whereas 32.0 percent of Americans do. A total of 66.5 percent of Americans have a BMI over 25, making them overweight, but only 24.7 percent of Japanese.”

    Also, Japanese diets are on the whole healthier than in the West, with a lot of iodine for instance, and there’s a lot of sunshine between 30 and 40 degrees north so the vitamin D levels are higher. These factors, which contribute to overall longevity, also provide some safeguards against getting sick with many kinds of diseases, including this one.

    The Japanese tend to take hygiene practices seriously. Their cultural practices, such as washing hands after visiting the restroom and before eating, removing their shoes in the porch before entering the house, gargling warm water, salt water and the like after coming home, maintaining a greater social distance when in company than most other peoples and bowing rather than shaking hands rather than hugging. These things might make a difference—or not. I can’t say anything definitively.

    The Chinese, Taiwanese, and Koreans are doing even better than the Japanese at keeping COVID-19 at bay, so it may be an East Asian thing. Or someone may be fiddling with the PCR tests. Who believes a word of official statistics these days?

    I’m in Kyoto, and we get a monthly newsletter from the Prefectural Government’s PR Department. It contains various items of local news and tells us what the authorities regard as “good behavior”. On the cover of this month’s issue (in Japanese) was the following headline:

    “Respect other people’s decision to get vaccinated or not.”

    Below the headline is a single paragraph, which says:

    “On October 12, the second vaccination rate of citizens aged 12 years and older, who are eligible for the new corona vaccine, exceeded 70%. While the vaccination of those who wish to be vaccinated is progressing, there are those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons. It is unacceptable for people in the workplace or in the community to force others to get vaccinated, or to treat others in a discriminatory manner, such as terminating their employment or bullying them because they have not been vaccinated. Please respect other people’s decision to vaccinate or not to vaccinate, and act in a way that safeguards the human rights of both parties.”

    This is the official message going out from the government to the people all over Japan. Let’s not pry. Let’s not discriminate. Let’s respect each other’s privacy and personal decisions. It is simple common sense adult advice. And I am so relieved to be living in a country where common sense and respect for human rights have not yet been totally banished from the political and administrative sphere.

    At the same time, I am cautious because I know that what happens in the West often happens a little later here. And I know that things can change suddenly almost anywhere after a member of the Soros family pays a visit.

    But for the time being, we seem to have been overlooked, and a strange subdued normality is enduring. There are no lockdowns, no state of emergency, and not much COVID-19 being reported anywhere according to the published figures.

    in reply to: The Virus Is Far From The Biggest Danger #74086
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    @V. Arnold

    #2; Is there sex after death?

    There could be… if Jimmy Savile is visiting the morgue.

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/26/savile-bodies-sex-acts-corpses-glass-eyes-mortuary

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 21 2020 #65922
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    The “Nixon” memorandum on CO2 was actually written by Daniel P. Moynihan to John Ehrlichman. Here’s a link to the memo, which is at the Nixon Library.

    https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/jul10/56.pdf

    Moynihan also wrote in the memo, “Hugh Heffner knows a great deal about this.” He wasn’t referring to the Playboy publisher, who’s surname has only one “f”.

    Although he was a Democrat and an ally of the Kennedys, Moynihan joined the Executive Office of President Nixon in January 1969 as Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and executive secretary of the Council of Urban Affairs.

    The long and the short of it is that we got our 25% increase since 1967 in atmospheric CO2 by about 2014, but we haven’t received our 7ºF temperature rise yet. NASA has it at a bit less than 2ºF, if you can bring yourself to ignore their data “adjustments”. From the official figures, it seems harder work for each molecule of CO2 in the air to heat up 25 to 30,000 other molecules than the authors of this hypothesis suspected.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 14 2020 #64449
    Tim Groves
    Participant

    While we’re waiting for Bill to reply, we might note that comparing countries East and West on numbers of COVID cases is a bit like comparing apples with oranges.

    The COVID case counts are certainly related to the number of COVID tests given. The more tests performed, the more positive results are obtained and the more COVID cases are counted.

    According to Statistica, as of October 12, the US (population 328 million) has performed over 118 million tests and the UK (population 67 million) 27 million tests. Meanwhile, as of October 9, a total of around 2.3 million people in Japan (population 126 million) have undergone such tests, and as of August 24, over 1.8 million COVID-19 tests were conducted in South Korea (population 51 million).

    If the number of tests performed in South Korea and Japan were increased from the current 2% of population to the US level of over 30% or the UK level of 40% of population, it is likely that the number of COVID cases (positive test results) would increase by an order of magnitude.

    Other factors are more speculative. Obese people are a lot less common in East and Southeast Asia than in Europe and North America. There are huge differences in patterns of diet, medical treatment, medication and air conditioning use. Overall, East and Southeast Asia are further south than much of Europe and North America and so get stronger summer sunshine. Social cohesion and a strong sense of national identity in the East may reduce overall levels of irritation and stress. They drink a lot of green tea. They don’t shake hands or hug very much. They are less likely to be couch potatoes. And different countries have different endemic diseases and live with different pathogens that may modify the ways in which people react to the presence of COVID-19.

    Now, masks may make a huge difference to COVID infection rates. Superficially, it’s plausible and reasonable to think that they do. But it that is the case, what is your explanation for why the CDC reported last month that 71 percent out of a group of 154 COVID case-patients contracted the virus despite reporting “always” wearing a cloth face covering or mask for at least 14 days before illness onset, and a further 14 percent contracted the virus despite reporting “often” wearing one at least 14 days before illness onset.

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