81–90 of 134 posts
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The problem is, I'm not sure you can trust any news out of china to be the 100% unvarnished truth anymore. Seems the only way you hear any bad news out of china is when it gets 'too big to hide'.
And you'd trust the news out of ... where, exactly? I think it's pretty clear from the last decade that the major journalism providers in the US (for example) are also corrupt, and that's true of every country I've experienced. Which is not to say that everywhere suffers this problem to the same degree, but just that the notion of a "trusted source of news" is demonstrably naive.
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Vaccines and mass masking work. Lockdowns not so much: "Overall, our meta-analysis fails to confirm the notion that lockdowns – at least in the spring of 2020 – had a large, significant effect on mortality rates. Studies examining the relationship between lockdown strictness (based on the OxCGRT stringency index) find that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 3.2% co…
(I'm not asking about the other negative effects of lockdowns not directly related to the spread of disease, which is obviously also relevant to the broader discussion.)
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Which one was the second one? I'm assuming the first and third are the Great Recession and Covid.
Millennial bingo: 2008 financial crisis 2020 pandemic (& Brexit) 2022 war start + highest winter temperatures ever recorded 2023 economic downturn and layoffs Who knows what the future holds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is, I'm not sure you can trust any news out of china to be the 100% unvarnished truth anymore. Seems the only way you hear any bad news out of china is when it gets 'too big to hide'.
And you'd trust the news out of ... where, exactly? I think it's pretty clear from the last decade that the major journalism providers in the US (for example) are also corrupt, and that's true of every country I've experienced. Which is not to say that everywhere suffers this problem to the same degree, but just that the notion of a "trusted source of news" is demonstrably naive.
Because unlike China there exists enough of a free press, from institutions down to individual bloggers and professors, who can jump on the Internet and write almost anything without repercussion and if they write something very good or very important it’ll be spread.
BNONews has been making a dashboard for every maybe-virus the past year (recently they had Monkeypox and some other one, Marburg maybe)? None of those turned into any major problem. They're pandemic profiteering, so while I appreciate the data they're collecting, I'm not quite ready to start freaking out about it.
Why do these viruses often appear in China first? Has there been any study to find out any common patterns? Is it the food? Culture? Living environment?
If I were working on the problem "how can we reduce the frequency new very dangerous viruses are introduced" I would pay attention to this aspect.
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Vaccines and mass masking work. Lockdowns not so much: "Overall, our meta-analysis fails to confirm the notion that lockdowns – at least in the spring of 2020 – had a large, significant effect on mortality rates. Studies examining the relationship between lockdown strictness (based on the OxCGRT stringency index) find that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 3.2% co…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vaccines and mass masking work. Lockdowns not so much: "Overall, our meta-analysis fails to confirm the notion that lockdowns – at least in the spring of 2020 – had a large, significant effect on mortality rates. Studies examining the relationship between lockdown strictness (based on the OxCGRT stringency index) find that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 3.2% co…
I'm not sure the definition of lockdown, but it appeared effective in Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.
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Don't forget sheer number of people.
India is almost the same size but doesn’t seem to have this pattern.
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Yeah, probably not sufficient on its own, but I bet it's a factor. It amplifies the others.
The big question is why doesn’t it happen more often via India?
Maybe Indians have less contact with wildlife (due to different settlement patterns, or religious or cultural restrictions on eating wild animals?), or less average physical mobility (more expensive and inconvenient long-distance transportation), or a climate less conducive to certain modes of virus transmission?
A smaller fraction of the population working or commuting in huge indoor spaces?
Maybe (contrary to Americans' intuition) Chinese public health surveillance is both more effective and more transparent than Indian, leading to a measurement bias because some disease outbreaks that arise in China get better-documented?