121–130 of 159 posts
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Destruction of habitats has been identified as a factor in previous pandemics. Global warming will also result in the destruction of habitats. All this stuff is linked.
Actually it is incomplete destruction of habitats that cause pandemics. If all the bats had been killed, then Covid would not have developed. If we can kill all the disease causing mosquitoes as well, then we will remove another huge cause of human disease.
Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…
Might seem meta but by bringing this up you nailed it. This uncovers the pattern in use. The favorite trick for population behavior design. If social engineers exists, then this is the technique they are advising the ones in power to use the most.
Like everything from firearms to nuclear weapons to face recognition, the questions should focus on who is using the power, for what purposes, how they are held accountable, and so on.
Yes, the anti-COVID measures are social engineering. They're trying to engineer people into not getting COVID.
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Actually it is incomplete destruction of habitats that cause pandemics. If all the bats had been killed, then Covid would not have developed. If we can kill all the disease causing mosquitoes as well, then we will remove another huge cause of human disease.
This really didn't work too well for Mao
What are you referring to?
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This really didn't work too well for Mao
That’s the first I’ve heard about Mao and environmental destruction (aimed at the elimination of a disease vector or otherwise, I’m not clear what you’re denying here), and a quick Google/Wikipedia didn’t help. What are you referring to?
(The west has also collapsed bird populations in the service of agriculture, just over a longer period and combined with crashing the insect population as well)
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This is really the reason why masks were common in Asia. Except Japan. But their pollution is a lot higher than ours. Pollution here in Barcelona is not high enough that I'd consider wearing a mask for it. And the upcoming bans of old diesels and two stroke scooters will make things even better. I'll never get used to masks anyway. They'll always be an extreme annoyance. I wear them because it's mandatory and I agree…
>Especially outside. Who wears masks outside? That's never been required in the UK.
I have on most occasions throughout the pandemic, except last summer right after the second jab when I thought everything was finally over (and even then continued to wear them in crowded places).
IIRC I only forgot 2 or 3 times even for solitary walks, and some of those were 5 hours long.
To my ongoing confusion, me talking here about my intention to continue wearing masks beyond the point of it being needed resulted in someone going to my blog and posting a few abusive messages on an unrelated entry: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2021/06/14/why-do-some...
Ties though, I really don’t like wearing ties.
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That’s the first I’ve heard about Mao and environmental destruction (aimed at the elimination of a disease vector or otherwise, I’m not clear what you’re denying here), and a quick Google/Wikipedia didn’t help. What are you referring to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign : the extermination of sparrows resulted in an explosion of locusts. (The west has also collapsed bird populations in the service of agriculture, just over a longer period and combined with crashing the insect population as well)
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> Just because your city isn’t equipped to deal with an unusually high amount of deaths Nowhere in the world was equipped to deal with the incredibly high amount of deaths that happened, nor with the incredibly high amount of sick people. > does not mean that the lockdowns saved more quality adjusted life years than they cost. Yes, because the death of loved ones, the sickness and long-term effects of COVID, the coll…
> It's incredibly naive to think that life would have continued as usual without lockdowns. What a truly bizarre strawman. > A month of lockdown is worse than an 80 year old (who otherwise might live some years) suffocating to death alone in a hospital? You are very lucky if you got away with just a month of lockdowns. It might not seem that way, but this is actually a simple mathematical problem. How many young heal…
Another lockdown possibly ? /s
Lockdown was bliss for pollution here in London. Air smelled totally different. We don’t want more lockdowns but we need to fix society so we don’t have to travel so much on a daily basis.
While I spent the pandemic in Berlin and didn’t notice much change here, 20 years ago I was in the UK and the daily walk past the A27 was radically improved by the truckers blockading the entire UK petrol supply in protest against fuel taxes.
Maybe we can keep using masks? Now that we already got used to them, we may reduce the effects of pollution with good filtering masks. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't address what's causing the pollution in the first place.
Not all of us are used to them. I think they are absurd, and I'm never going to live my life wearing a mask. It's completely unnatural.
But I’m endlessly curious about how minds work:
Is “unnatural is the same as bad” a foundational position for you, or is it that you dislike masks and this argument is a metaphorical soldier you’re sending out to do memetic battle for you to support that dislike?
Or is it something else entirely? Like I said, I never “got” this type of appeal. The unnatural is too commonplace and too useful.