Tag Archives: COVID-19

January 3, 2022 · 19:51

The virtual quarterback

We can consider me being the Monday morning quarterback, it would be fair to call me this. I have been for the longest time a champion of science, I believe that not unlike evidence in law, science is the cornerstone of all daily life decisions. So I tend to take sides with science for nearly all cases. Yet today, in opposition of a piece in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/02/britain-got-it-wrong-on-covid-long-lockdown-did-more-harm-than-good-says-scientist) I take another side, the non-scientist setting. I oppose the views of Professor Mark Woolhouse. So feel free to oppose my views, which would be fair enough. But in all matters take a long hard look at some of the things we are handed here today. I believe that not unlike some wannabe journalists who wanted to cash in on Jamal Khashoggi with their fiction view of ‘Blood and Oil’ this professor might be trying to find the same rabbit in a different hat with ‘The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir’.

So where do I oppose?
It starts with “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.” In March 2020 there was a lot we never knew. Do not forget that the disease was out for only 2-3 months, and it had not spread to the degree it has now. China had no answers, and the people who were responsible for calling this a pandemic did not do so. In addition, the media gave us “This might become a pandemic” all whilst the points of calling it a pandemic had already passed. I wrote about it on February 3rd 2020 in ‘Corona?  I Never touch the stuff!’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/corona-i-never-touch-the-stuff/), a month before we see given here. I already saw the pandemic threshold passed, yet most media were in denial with “This might become a pandemic” as such, it seems to me that Professor Mark Woolhouse will have to explain a few things. Then we get to “We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt” in this is resort to the blunt ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ In the first there was a lot we did not know, and for the longest time there are still questions, so the response I see with “We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence” is something I would like to refer to as bullshit marketing. You see the first peak of daily deaths did not start until April 13th 2020, with 6916 dead people (aka the non-living). 

I found a table from April 2020 from New York. In this table we see 6839 died, but the interesting part is that 5151 cases had an underlying condition and in that case the older you get the higher the chance of an underlying condition, and in that up to 44 years old 312 died. Most with an underlying condition, but there was a lot not known in that setting. More important, there was no vaccine, there was no protection. The Pfizer solution was still in clinical trials in November 2020. And when you start looking at the facts as they were known, I believe that Mark Woolhouse is trimming his own trumpet for the sake of book-sales (a speculative view, but it is my view). 

Were mistakes made?
Yes, of course mistakes were made, they were made all over the world and with the US having an idiot as president in those days did not help much. There was a large void of knowledge and there was a large void of experience, so looking at the facts after the fact does not help much (apparently it might help a certain professor with a book to sell). And in all this the professor does not take into account the anti-lockdown idiots spreading the disease, the ignorant anti-vaxxers adding fuel to the fire and then the people who were ignorant of the way the disease spread going to relative, friends and so forth needing their social moment. 

And in London that is a large powder-keg waiting to explode and now that it is doing just that we see the blame game in effect. So consider the anti-lockdown protest, it only 10 people had it at that point, at least 1000 could have it 3 days later. And everyone remains in denial, oh boo hoo hoo!

So when we get to “the country should have put far more effort into protecting the vulnerable. Well over 30,000 people died of Covid-19 in Britain’s care homes. On average, each home got an extra £250,000 from the government to protect against the virus, he calculates. “Much more should have been spent on providing protection for care homes,” says Woolhouse, who also castigates the government for offering nothing more than a letter telling those shielding elderly parents and other vulnerable individuals in their own homes to take precautions.” Where is the time line? When did we know what we know now and that is before we add the complications of Alpha, Delta and Omicron. And with the last quote “By contrast, we spent almost nothing on protecting the vulnerable in the community. We should and could have invested in both suppression and protection. We effectively chose just one.”

In the first, the government could not afford both paths (slight speculation), there were too many unknown factors and with Omicron raging now, anti-vaxxer idiots and anti-lockdown dumbo’s, how can you protect a community? You can claim you can but stupid people will do whatever they feel like, the vulnerable be damned. That is how people tend to be. 

So this is my view on the matter and it is a rare event when I oppose a scientist, especially a professor, but here I feel it was needed. And I had a few more views concerning covid over that year and last year too. I kept it low, because I am not a medici (ha ha ha), yet the larger stage is also ignored in the story. The media was fear mongering all over the place and that too resulted in negative actions. There were several factors and I believe that too many factors were unknown, or untested for the longest of times. 

So, if you decide I am the Monday morning quarterback it is fine, I gave my reasoning and my views that go back to February 2020 when it was in the earliest stage. So I am not exactly the Monday morning quarterback, but I am definitely a virtual one. Consider the facts and consider the blah blah from Professor Mark Woolhouse and draw your own conclusions.

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January 14, 2021 · 22:33

WYSIWYS

We have a stage where what you see is what you speculate. I agree and I do not deny it, but the numbers (as I have stated over and over again) are wrong. As such, the COVID mess will get a hell of a lot worse this year. We will get governmental people spouting yaba-yaba, yet the stage is there and the damage is soon coming. For this, we merely have to look to the Corona site (at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/), this site has been giving us numbers since the beginning, they are not starting. They report on the numbers given to them and that is where the shoes become too tight for dancing. 

You see, to consider my point of view we can use the Netherlands with 17 million people and the numbers reflect that one in 20 wither had or has the coronavirus. Then we go to number one, the United States where 25% of all global cases  had or has that flu. For them it boils down to roughy 7% of the population. Now consider India where only 10 million in 1,300 million, a mere 10% of America. There is no way that this adds up, it is what I call the left view, if you do not mention it, it might go away, well it does not and it will not.

The problem is that India could fester into a real global problem and the news is silent on that. In all this I mention the infected, not the mortality rate, because that will become a rather worse setting and a much more complex one, as such I merely focus on the infected. 

All this is important, it is important because we get dragged into these lockdowns, and I am not against lockdowns when it serves a purpose. But India is a much larger stage. You see, what nations have a restriction with people from India? In addition to that, when we consider the Dutch epidemiologist Frits Roosendaal who gave us that there is a 40% chance on a false negative. (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), at The Lull of writing.

Now, we do not like the word ‘false’ I get that and a false positive is one thing, but a false negative? The infected can travel and infect others and we are left in the dark.

Most governments are seemingly IGNORING this. I get the setting that they want to check whether the findings are supported or not. They might even be set to oppose it, that is fair if there is a valid reason (the Dutch LUMC is on the same quality as John Hopkins, so good luck with that). The setting is ignoring a dangerous situation making things worse. I did find something (at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242958), there we are given “The collected evidence has several limitations, including risk of bias issues, high heterogeneity, and concerns about its applicability. Nonetheless, our findings reinforce the need for repeated testing in patients with suspicion of SARS-Cov-2 infection given that up to 54% of COVID-19 patients may have an initial false-negative RT-PCR (very low certainty of evidence)”, and 54% amounts to one in two persons, this is bad, this is really really bad and the media and governments seemingly intentionally ignoring these findings is making matters worse. 

Most nations have ignored the stage to shut down all airports, they happily spread the disease from nation to nation and in this India might be ten times worse than the Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) ever was, but do not fear, most of us will get to learn that lesson in 2021.  

We do not need a media that hides things from us, we need one that genuinely informs us and this is the second source I found which was less than a month old, when I started seeking the information, I had access to the original report in 10 minutes, so either I am a lot more intelligent than any media person, or someone is telling them to hide facts, and when exactly was that EVER a good idea?

WYSIWYS – What You See Is What You Speculate. I am not saying it is the greatest setting, but I am doing it based on two academic pieces, two sources of scientific origin, can you do better?

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January 5, 2021 · 16:39

Kill the law

Yes, that moment has finally arrived, I for the most was against the need to do that, if only the politicians and lawmakers would not have been such a collection of pussies, it might not have been an essential act, but the stage we are on now is one is one that Shakespeare gave us in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”, yet at moments away we have arrived at this moment. A few things happened, first there is the stage of the British wankers on ski’s, then there is ‘UK judge blocks extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to US’, in this the BBC reports that “because of concerns over Mr Assange’s mental health and risk of suicide in the US. Mr Assange, who is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, says the case is politically motivated”, he was such an outspoken great man when he released the documents, we can’t have him being a pussy now, can we? Even as I am still in the mindset that he is not a traitor as some call him, he is in a stage where he broke the law and so far half a dozen nations went out of their way to cater to him. A stage of law breaking without accountability, as some would say. And in all this, the one winner is Stella Moris, in all this she gets the limelight she needs to cater to her career. 

Then there is ‘Covid-19 in Switzerland: Mutated UK virus strain found in several cantons’ (at https://www.thelocal.ch/20210104/mutated-coronavirus-strain-found-in-several-regions-of-switzerland), the British pussies (or cunts) that slipped into the night afraid of being in lockdown travelled all over Switzerland too get to France, to get to Freedom, and as I personally see it infecting the Swiss along the way. Now this speculation should be matched by investigation, I understand that, yet if any are found and the British tourists find themselves out of prison instead of in prison for a decade, the basic line is set that the law has become useless and serves the mere large corporations in legally avoiding taxation, to smite the common man in a ruleset that they break again and again. So when we see “Several other cases of the UK variant were also found at the end of December in Zurich, Graubünden, Valais, and Bern, and one case of the South African strain was detected in Ticino, according to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH)”, we need to wonder what is next. So when we see all kinds of versions of “British tourists have fled the Swiss ski resort of Verbier “clandestinely” under cover of darkness rather than submit to a new quarantine imposed on UK visitors, a local official says”, all whilst the British governments are solent on the matter (as far as I know), we see a stage where we cannot accept the irresponsible acts of others. I wonder if the UK has considered what the larger contemplations are when Switzerland calls for the UK citizens to be pronounced ‘Persona Non Grata’, not one, not 200, but all. I wonder if the law suddenly sees a setting where they either pucker up or they will find themselves left no longer being considered valid by the largest group of people. 

Lacking a proportional response?
Yes, one might say that and it would not be entirely wrong, yet when we are told “More than 2,500 break virus restrictions at illegal rave” (France), even as some sources state that the group had reached 10,000. As well as ‘Demonstration party in Duindorp’ (Netherlands), there are a few more, but they are instances not the common field and we acknowledge that, yet the law cannot sit by, it has to be strict and it has to be firm this time around, if only to get to some specific tourists, they have no valid defence, no matter how they slice it.  This is seen in the larger stage, COVID-19 was a reality for the longest part of the year, they could have let go of this one holiday, until it was safe, they decided that ego was more important, as such they should pay. Yes, we know that the lockdown was not initially in play, but we have had two already and other nations have other stages and settings, they also have the new viral strain and no action was promptly taken until it had spread to 40 nations. In one stage I can say, the more that die, the more valuable my services will be, some will say that is inhuman e, but they decided not to act when it mattered, now it does not. And with 86 million people diseased, we will see the death rate go up beyond 2,000,000 and those are jobs that can go somewhere else, optionally solving unemployment to a much larger degree. In the US there are 12 states where masks are not required, which implies (an unproven imply) that the disease will have a lot more fun in those 11 states (Yes I mentioned 12), Alaska is perhaps the only one that is a bit out of shot, they got a partial save by weather and environment. I reckon that the initial clouds will rise after march, if there is any healthcare or NHS left, we will need to massively address tax law issues on an international scale, if we falter again there is every chance that the uprising against the law will turn massively violent, I myself am totally against the Nanny state (my Republican blood), yet there needs to be a level of accountability and so far the law has merely served those wanting to evade accountability, and the people are stating to notice this and they are putting two and two together, I speculatively reckon that being by tech senator will prove to be a lot less healthy in 2021 than ever thought possible, but I could be wrong.

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December 21, 2020 · 21:21

When fear becomes key

This is me, sitting on my sofa, laptop in my lap (that is why they call it a laptop) and reading the BBC News, giving us ‘Covid: Australian states enforce travel bans amid Sydney outbreak’, I am at home, which is fine, no Wife, Girlfriend or hookers here, so the chance of me getting infected is close to zero. When this is in effect, the friends coming to visit you might not be friends, it is that time of year and the situation is not a great one. So when I see “The events of the past few days… are incredibly frustrating and disappointing for people all around the country who had plans in place to get together and move in between states”, I personally go ‘Yea, whatever’, we might not like it, yet most understand the essential part of nipping this in the backside, especially 4 days before we remember a person being born who got nailed to the cross by the Italian government and eating way too much, and all kinds of exotic items (Christmas plum pudding with custard) doing so. Some might end up watching a classical work by Charles Dickens or Frank Capra on the small screen. That is what we have to endure when we optionally eat too much. 

So why do I giggle when I see: “Sydneysiders scrambled to leave the city for other states on Sunday”? You see the Coronavirus was shown to be an issue because people were travelling although they were unknown to already be infected, they felt fine until at least two days later, so this thing will end up all over the place. It is good to see that people tend not to learn. In addition, I learn “Scrutiny has again fallen on the hotel quarantine system – which is believed to be the source of Sydney’s new outbreak, as it was with previous outbreaks in Melbourne and Adelaide”, a sidestep that is optionally a larger issue, as these people came by Bus, train and taxi, how many did they infect? I am merely asking. Yet, it is not all bad news, especially when we consider “Australia so far has recorded 908 deaths and 28,200 cases in the pandemic – a level far lower than seen in many other nation”, although, 3.2% mortality, all whilst France is showing 2.4% mortality, and Germany reportedly has as low as 1.7% mortality (if all the numbers are to be believed), the setting of “a level far lower than seen in many other nation” is still up for debate. But I get it, in a place with 20,000,000 people, less than a thousand jobs and houses became available and that should be seen as a positive thing. And indeed, we are doing marginally better than the United Kingdom who has (apparently) a 3.3% rate of non living, we are alike both island, yet they have 68 million, but we are roughly 3,078% larger, so yes, we are doing better, even if only to hide the bodies in all those stretches of untouched wilderness (See movie Wolf Creek for explanation). It is also nice to learn at the very end “Testing has shown the latest outbreak is likely to have come from the US. However, it remains unknown how the virus was taken into the community”, which is OK, it is optionally not their fault, but in that light and in the light of what is happening, I still have a giggle at “Sydneysiders scrambled to leave the city for other states on Sunday”, I wonder where the next hot points are. That issue was seen 12 hours ago when 9News gave us “‘Complacency is not our friend’: Warning as interstate arrivals found breaching quarantine rules in Queensland”, yes, fear (and optionally stupidity) is the key when we are confronted with ‘breaching quarantine rules’ and I basically wonder if that person gets to court and that his or her defence would become a crying ‘But I was so afraid’ is seen, optionally with a fear of life without his or her teddybear. 

And in all this the added news “Two travellers from New South Wales have breached their home quarantine orders after travelling to Queensland amid tightening border restrictions” I basically am wondering how many people will it take for the next 15 hotspots to become explained by quarantine breaches. This is not merely the end of it, that is seen when we turn to the New York Times (at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/03/world/covid-19-coronavirus) where we see ‘After a Skirmish Over U.K. Vaccine Approval, Fauci Offers an Olive Branch’, so why id Dr. Fauci having to offer an olive branch? Even when we take notice of “As the U.K. claims bragging rights for the best vaccine regulators (yes, really), U.S. officials beg to differ”, I for one tend to think that Dr Fauci has had to deal with too many idiots in government positions, but that might be just me. It is shown with “British and American officials sparred Thursday over how Britain had beaten the United States to authorising a coronavirus vaccine, a debate touching upon both regulatory standards and politics that has heated up as wealthy countries vie to receive the first shipments of vaccines”, I wonder why properly testing a vaccine has become a pissing contest, my inner self tends to doubt the fast one on being thorough and that is purely from within me. And when we compare all this to new strains, hotspot issues and stupid travellers, in the end, the disease will get to where it needs to go and it wants to go EVERYWHERE.

Did I oversimplify the problem here? 

I did like the response by Dr. Fauci ““We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the F.D.A.,” Dr. Fauci said. “The U.K. did not do it as carefully and they got a couple of days ahead.”” This gives light to my pondering, at what moment in time was a race the best way to go about all this? We are globally at 77,236,327, a million more than yesterday, in what setting is a race the solution? I will offer that only in the needy eyes of short sighted politicians is a race a solution. It is not in the eyes of scientists and vaccine creators, there it is finding the best solution and that takes time, especially as we are now seeing version 2.0 of the Covid-19 virus, as such I am willing to bet that this all is far from over, giving in to a key element like fear will not help anyone in anyway anytime soon.

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December 20, 2020 · 18:40

The rest of our lives

Yes, we all look towards the rest of our lives, yet how much of it is left? There is every indication that is is a little less than we expect it to be. I was looking forward to write more on the TV series my mind created (Keno Diastima), I was adding a little more science to it all, science makes fiction easier to swallow for the sceptical among us and I like plenty of science with my fiction, so there.

Yet, as I was brooding on this, I saw the Coronavirus messages from all Directions. The Netherlands is banning all flights from the UK, a part of Sydney now has a larger problem and the news keeps on coming in, I especially ‘liked’ ‘Covid: WHO in ‘close contact’ with UK over new variant’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55382212), there we see “The new variant is spreading more rapidly than the original version, but is not believed to be more deadly”, it is the application of ‘is not believed’, which basically implies that they do not know and that is fine, we accept that not all answers are available at point zero. Yet, who considered the impact on these to approved vaccines? Is vaccine one good enough to fight off and prevent version 2? What will happen when there are more mutations? And the largest issue the media and most people ignore is the 1% speculation. In June (6 months ago) we could see a global increase of 1% over 3 million cases, which is 30,000. In September the number was 7 million, in three months, the number had doubled, as such we come to a stage of 70,000 new cases. Day (globally), now the total number number is 76,635,408, 10 times of what there was three months ago and it is time to button down the hatches, because the 1% rule gives us 766,000 cases a day (globally) and all whilst some sources make claim that in India there is a 60% setting of people with the Coronavirus, 60% of 1.35 billion, a number we do not see anywhere, making optionally the source unreliable, yet I have had my concerns with the Indian numbers for the longest time. You merely need to see actual footage on the population pressure in the Mumbai region alone to see that question mark. The reported figure are present is at 10,031,659, When w apply the 1% rule we see 13,500,000 a day, and so far that number has been exceeded on a global stage by nearly every country, so not in India? Consider the population:

If even one person in this crowd has the Coronavirus, how many will have it tomorrow? That is the ignored part, partially because most non-Indian people have no idea just how populated India is and that is the larger danger, we tend to ignore what we do not know and in this case it is a dangerous setting to have. And this is not some sought special picture, Google Search can give you well over 100 images like it, all from different areas of India. 

As such, when you contemplate the rest of your life, did you consider your life (if you have any left) after the coronavirus? The numbers are in my favour here. The 1% rule was surpassed by a lot over the last 6 months. We might lockdown everything, but it takes one stupid person to ignore this and quickly visit a friend, and the scared ones do it more quickly than any other. 

At present the BBC (at best) give us “There is no clear-cut evidence the new variant of coronavirus – which has been detected in south-east England – is able to transmit more easily, cause more serious symptoms or render the vaccine useless”, which is fair enough, more importantly, we also do not know what we do not know, this sounds complex, but variants are tricky bastards and there are no real answers until a laboratory have positively analysed the mutations, this is fair (at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55312505), but the number one scare for governments is “or render the vaccine useless”, several players paid billions for the vaccine, so the term ‘useless’ is one they do not need to hear, but in the end, we simply do not know. Neither do we know whether the vaccine to strain one will also lower the power of strain 2, 3 and optionally 4. Anyone who believes that this ends today is paving the road to hell, all on their own.

In this the West Australian had the funniest setting for all this, they give us today “Coronavirus crisis: WA Premier Mark McGowan says hard border with NSW needed to ‘save our Christmas’”, yes because saving Christmas trumps the need to keep our lives safe, that made perfect sense and if you are forced to self-isolate celebrating Christmas is really topping your chart, isn’t it?

Well, whatever you do, you will have the rest of your life contemplating it, and should you die tomorrow, then I hope you resolved whatever you were brooding about. #Oversimplification

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October 19, 2020 · 14:17

Anticlimactic

Yup we all have these moments, it usually comes after a ‘watch this’, or ‘you’ll never believe what I just heard’. There is no escaping these moments and anyone reading this has a few instances where this happens, or as some married women say, welcome to my life, I get this at least once a day. Such things happen and for one station one could argue that they should not have married that person (40% divorce ratings proof me right).

Oh, and before I forget, the next instalment of the free RPG IP for Sony products comes next. So that is one part that will be coming, I was actually about to work on it when ‘Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2020/oct/18/revealed-sheikh-khalifas-5bn-london-property-empire) passed my eyes. I wanted to add a comic I remembered, but I cannot find it. It was the early 80’s and in that instance you see three Arabs talking, one saying ‘Shopping was nice, today I bought Bond street and Piccadilly’, which was a reality around 1985, the shops would worship you if you came with German Marks or American Dollars, it was that bad, so the idea that a lot of prime real estate is not British owned is not really a surprise. In 2014 the Daily Mail gives us ‘How wealthy Gulf Arabs are buying up huge swathes of the capital – and now make up a tenth of all buyers in exclusive Mayfair’, as such what the Guardian had in mind to make it some exclusive ‘revealed’ story seems to be a bit of a stretch. In addition to this we can argue (and no disrespect intended) that Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan with a £5,500,000,000 real estate empire is according to some sources not really super wealthy, but he is getting up there. Yes, how sad are we when we gawp at an amount that other refer to as ‘Meh!’. The article goes on with “Now, leaked documents, court filings and analysis of public records have enabled the Guardian to map Khalifa’s property holdings in the UK, revealing how the oil-rich nation’s president became a major landlord in London. Khalifa’s London property empire appears to surpass even that of the Duke of Westminster, the 29-year-old billionaire aristocrat who owns swathes of the city”, which makes me go ‘Really?’ Consider 1 Hyde Park, how many British owners are in that building? Can we get a rundown per nationality please? In 2019 we got (source: Elite Traveller) “London’s luxury real estate market has been given a well-timed boost with the news that a super-prime penthouse has sold for a reported $72million. The sale represents one of the biggest in the United Kingdom in the last year. The property is the largest in the new Clarges Mayfair development on Piccadilly, which has proved popular with the global elite since its completion last year. The purchase was completed by Quintessentially Estates working on behalf of an international client”, there are actual Arab run investment firms in the UK who specialise in real estate projects, and they are pretty much the only ones who can afford living in London, so why is anyone surprised? Why is the Guardian (in this instance) going all ‘revealed’ over one person who might not be the biggest investor in London, and in a stage where the London city administration is pushing these events, why is there a lack of that part of the equation? Even as Forbes gave us earlier this year ‘Is It Time To Move Out Of London?’, we see stage where the Coronavirus is hitting landlords with almost no manoeuvring space, they are all panicking. Even as they focus on “Similarly, rents in the capital are also extortionately high for many, with the latest Rightmove Rental Index putting average London rents at £2,119 per month in Q4 2019, compared with £817 in the same period for properties outside of London. And although the latest ONS Index of Private Housing Rental Prices showed that London prices increased 1.3% year on year in January, compared to 1.6% for the rentals outside of the capital, it’s of little meaning in the bigger picture where capital rentals are on average more than twice of their surrounding neighbours” the stage of landlords is less clearly stated, some when on a limb because it was a sure deal, as such no-one was ready for an even outlier like Covid-19, and no-one was expected to, so nw we see that others are taking over with discount a large setting of the housing available. London will grow back to strength and those with a few millions here and there and not needing them will make a rather nice profit over the next 3-4 years. That is how it works, so when I look at “Analysis of Land Registry data suggests Khalifa’s commercial and private property portfolio includes about 170 properties, ranging from a secluded mansion near Richmond Park to multiple high-end London office blocks occupied by hedge funds and investment banks” I merely shrug and say ‘Meh!’, and the stage of “hedge funds and investment banks” has been the stage of London properties for decades, so why is this big news? Was it so you could avoid reporting on ‘Islamic State calls to attack Saudi Arabia over Israel’s deals with UAE, Bahrain’, yes it makes perfect sense to attack nation A, because nation B and C had a deal with nation D. Yes, that might actually have revolutionary details (sorry, pun intended). And as I go over the Guardian article, I cannot say that it is a bad article, it is actually a good article, yet the entire ‘revealed’ part is a little anti-climatic and the idea that a decently wealthy person from the United Arab Emirates is investing in London might not even constitute news, or newsworthy. That  has been going on for well over a decade. So when we consider “housing a secretive Liechtensteinian company, Holbein Anstalt, which manages the royal family’s private affairs”, an optional actual fact (I did not check the fact), we might consider asking the editor of the Guardian (Katharine Viner) if she has been drinking the other cool-aid. 

The issue is not the current owners, it is the setting where the City of London is doing actual work to set a stage where affordable housing becomes more readily available. I wonder if the waiting list of that part has diminished below 10 years yet. London is one f the few plays in the world where a first house is only affordable for people at the END of their career, it is quite the achievement for the City of London.

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October 7, 2020 · 19:06

The stage of Medici

Yup, we understand (or most at least) the stage that the Medici bring, it is a political stage, it does tend to get a bit confusing when those who who employ the tactics of the medici also study medicine, they are not the same. In this we call the stage (or boxing ring) between Dr. Fauci and Dr. Atlas. In one corner we have Dr. Fauci, an immunologist has had a career in infectious diseases since 1984. This man is extremely qualified on the stage of Covid-19. In the other corner we see Dr. Atlas, a neuroradiologist. It is a subspecialty of radiology focusing on the diagnosis and characterisation of the central and peripheral nervous system, spine, and head and neck using neuroimaging techniques. So oversimplified, one takes pictures and one looks at infectious diseases. I am arrogant enough to say that I could do (after learning it) what Dr. Atlas does, but I would never be willing to claim that I could ever do what Dr. Fauci does.

In all this it is nice to take a look (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/scott-atlas-hits-back-critics-questioning-science-fauci-redfield-2020-10) the link to the article, there we see “a health-policy expert who spent months speaking out against lockdowns and advocating the full reopening of schools, to the White House coronavirus task force in August prompted outrage in the medical community”, in light of a massive part of the White House, now in a stage where no work can be done, all whilst the cases are till growing globally by well over 300,000 each day. There is not. Lot more we can do, because there is every indication that the numbers are tweaked, incomplete and misreported making the US look worse off, but that stage is (as I personally see it) largely incorrect. In the stage I am on the fence, because the stage is larger and there is a lot of fear mongering. No matter how important we see ourselves, the morality rate is still around 4%, optional a little lower when we consider that several nations have not reported or insufficiently tested for hundreds of thousands of people. All whilst 96% will endure. Yes we would like to see 0% death, but that is not realistically, the over reaction is too often ignored, and when we see “after months of Atlas appearing on Fox News and speaking out against lockdowns”, I am not sure if I can disagree with him, the larger stage is about protecting 96% of the people in amber, which is counter productive and almost pointless. I do not disagree with “members questioning his qualifications to advise the president since his background is in health policy and neuroradiology, not infectious diseases”, if we can accept some lists, we could reflect on Sweden, currently in 42nd place, with 96,145 cases and 5883 Covid casualties, giving them a mortality rate of 6.1%, yet the percentage seems 50% higher, but the economic impact was avoided to some degree. There is also the issue that Sweden is massively rural with the exception of the villages Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg. There would optionally be a reason to impact these villages. There is a decent setting that this approach could never work in London, Paris or the Netherlands, the population pressure is too high, it also gives a larger stage that the numbers from India do not add up, yet for the US there needed to be a more fluidic setting. Yes, lock down New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, yet doing that in Arkansas, Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kansas and rural settings makes a lot less sense. Even now, I get it, Face masks is in too many places unavoidable, and I do not object, but the mass fears and the mass ashes were not the greatest ideas. So in this, the Medici move gives rise to “In recent years, however, Atlas has transitioned to a career in health policy. He works as a senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution and has advised politicians including Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani on heath policy”, yet in this case, in the case of Covid, his knowledge is inferior to Dr. Fauci, as such, (again oversimplified) it is a speaker of Medici opposing a speaker of medicine and too many do not understand the difference. I see the wisdom in “his background is in health policy and neuroradiology, not infectious diseases” and I see that too, Dr Fauci is the better expert on the matter, but for any health care worker ever confronted with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we need to understand that this is not a medical book, it is a book for legal settings. It is a rosetta stone so that health professionals can converse with legal professionals and that is the setting a lot of people seem to miss.

I am aware of the stage where psychiatrist Allen Frances has been critical of proposed revisions to the DSM-5, with the generalised quote “it will medicalise normality and result in a box full of unnecessary and harmful drug prescription”, all whilst I am in a stage where I state “if you had to grasp art the book you know there was an issue from moment one of going there”, and in the end it is not a medical book, it is a reference (of sorts). 

So whilst the Fauci and Atlas are brushing up on pugilism, we are standing on the sidelines, tightly packed to see as much of that fight as possible, forgetting that we can make changes to the choices and optionally keep ourselves and other safe. The first lesson that these fanatics seem to forget, because if their actions can be used as optional evidence that they infected others, those relatives of these people could push for arrests towards negligent homicide. At that point it is not about ‘personal rights’ it will not be about ‘freedom of expression’, they got (optionally) others killed and as thousands are getting arrested and jailed before the election, that stage will set a new record of accusations towards election tempering. It is more than merely a silly thought to have.

Yet on the other side I get it, there is a larger overreaction to the situation. It is the impact of fear (as I personally see it). There is no clean setting (other than the Dr. Fauci vs Dr. Atlas setting) and there this president has created a problem for himself. Especially as deaths are on the rise in the US, and it takes only one death in White House staff for the situation to explode (or implode) in a much larger form of consideration, why did President Trump ignore Dr. Fauci in the first place? So far he has not been wrong. I accept that the president has an issue with the ‘better be safe than sorry approach’, yet that is almost every doctor and in this stage Dr. Atlas has a larger disadvantage. 

No matter how this goes, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli has been howling with laughter for days, the fact that the medico are now medico di Medici is something he never expected and he is clearly having fun.  I feel like celebrating (and giggling) too, let see if he has any of that Italian grape juice left.

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September 27, 2020 · 16:11

That foul stench from Denmark

Yup, it is a line that has nothing to do with the Monarchy of Danske (or its nation), it comes from Hamlet and the loser translation gives us “everything is not good at the top of the political hierarchy”, it is what the EU faces. This is seen in ‘Switzerland gets ready to vote on ending free movement with EU’, it was given to us yesterday by the BBC. So as the people in Switzerland decide today “Swiss voters will decide on Sunday whether to abandon their free movement of people agreement with the EU”, we see two parts. The first is “Supporters say the move will allow Switzerland to control its borders and select only the immigrants it wants”, which I will set in green as the positive view, then there is “Opponents argue it will plunge a healthy economy into recession, and deprive hundreds of thousands of Swiss citizens of their freedom to live and work across Europe”, which I will label fear mongering bullshit; the additional “The justice minister says that would create a situation “worse than Brexit”” does not help. It seems to me that there is a growing EU fear, the people have suffered for a decade whilst those on gravy trains have been filling their pockets and the people have had enough. The total lack of checks and balances is a first the so called virtual checks and balanced that are set to promote silence is the other one. A two part harmony sets against the prospering of the people of the EU and merely helping out big business and the Swiss are considering to walk away. To be honest, I am not certain what is the best for the Swiss people, I reckon the those living in Switzerland and those either benefitting or suffering because of it will cast their vote and there is every chance that the bulls of them are not prospering. 

So when we see “Switzerland decided long ago not to join the EU, but it does want access to Europe’s free-trade area, and it wants to co-operate with Brussels in areas like transport, the environment, and research and education”, so there is a setting of cooperation all whilst the Swiss were never part of the EU. And this is countered with “The EU has consistently told the Swiss there will be no cherry-picking: leaving free movement would mean leaving those lucrative trade arrangements too”, as such my question becomes “Please present a list of lucrative trade agreements”. In all this Thomas Aeschi of the SVP seems to be in favour of abandoning the open borders policy, and even as his setting is overly simplified. I am not convinced that we have to see it any other way. I have been to Switzerland (before the EU coin was a reality), it was expensive, the cheese was great and the chocolates were nice. The people were friendly and there was a lot of white (snow), I reckon the in summer it will be green. I went up the Matterhorn (the easiest side), and in all this food was good. It seems shallow, but that was the view of a person being there for a few days with 5 days and 3 meetings looks at. I considered to open a Swiss bank account (for the fun of it and to be able to boast the I had a Swiss bank account), but in the end and the lack of confidence that I would be there any day soon ever again made me not do it.

When we look at the opposition we see “There will be a clear cost because we depend so heavily on trade with the EU”, which comes from Stefan Manser-Egli (Operation Libero), yet when we re consider the quote “it does want access to Europe’s free-trade area, and it wants to co-operate with Brussels” which was decided long ago. And when we look at a list of ALL the depending imports, how much is at stake and what will the difference be for the Swiss? Now consider that this world is a buyers market, so why is the Swiss choice a bad one? I can see why it stings for all on the gravy train, but the others, the people on an actual income, will they hurt more, less or the same? Unless someone proves clearly to the Swiss people that they are in for a lot more pain, is opposing the open borders policy a bad idea for the Swiss? The Swiss must do what is best for them and for Switzerland. There is more going on in Switzerland and the fear mongering through “worse than Brexit” is not the worst overbearing statement, but it is up there and it is false, Brexit is a much larger issue, which everyone in Europe will know when you see the impact of actual change, yes, I believe that some Swiss people will be hit, but will it protect more? Thomas says Yay, Stefan says Nay. I am not certain but there is a larger issue, and it was voiced through Hamlet, the $13 billion Apple bill is merely a first sign. The issue might be “The European Commission plans to appeal against a ruling that Apple does not have to pay 13bn euros (£11.6bn) in back taxes to Ireland”, the fact that the European Commission and the EU’s General Court cannot agree on simple tex matters, gives a first rise, the fact that two settings reset on a stage to avoid taxation for a $2 trillion dollar company? It seems to be that appeasing large companies is way too important for the EU and when the people end with nothing, hell comes a knocking, and it has. Lets not forget that this did not start with the UK, it all started in 2009 with the Greek government-debt crisis, it showed the EU to be toothless and in the pocket of greed driven people. Up to now not one of the people involved in the matter has seen a prison cell or saw their money captured. It seems to me that several laws are a decade late for overhaul and the is now a stage that sees the escalations. The quantitive easing issues of the last few years was the first stage, the limits it is about to hit will be second and the unforeseen Covid-19 is the third. The EU depleted of reserves becomes a large empty machine and I hoped that the UK would be out already, yet the Swiss are now following, one of the nations I did not expect to leave and this sets the expected steps of the EU collapse a lot faster than anticipated. And it is the last part we see “This Swiss referendum was in the pipeline before the UK voted to leave the EU”, as such, why is it only now on the b ig screen radar? If it was that important, why were the people not given a clear account of the pro’s and the con’s all over the EU? Is that not an interesting question too? 

So whilst we wonder what will be next, we see that the UK has a new player that optionally would like to expend its import and export stage. And as these two are optionally in a stage to do what is best for THEIR nations, we see the EU scramble for any scraps that they can get, that is how it goes in places where allegedly greed is the deciding factor.

 

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September 10, 2020 · 17:18

the Logistical problem

The BBC alerted the people to an upcoming problem. The title ‘Covid vaccine: 8,000 jumbo jets needed to deliver doses globally, says IATA’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54067499) was used to alert us and it makes sense. Getting the stage of shipping vaccines is a real issue, it is not a small issue getting well over 6,000,000,000 people a dose, even if it is not easy yet. So when I read ““Safely delivering Covid-19 vaccines will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry. But it won’t happen without careful advance planning. And the time for that is now,” said IATA’s chief executive Alexandre de Juniac” I get the issue that they are confronted with. It was “Not all planes are suitable for delivering vaccines as they need a typical temperature range of between 2 and 8C for transporting drugs. Some vaccines may require frozen temperatures which would exclude more aircraft” that gave me the idea. I looked up an idea and there it was “To date, more than 2,500 C-130s have been ordered and/or delivered to 63 nations around the world. Seventy countries operate C-130s, which have been produced in more than 70 different variants”, so the Hercules is a military cargo plane and there are 2,500 out there, the benefit is that the Hercules supports the transportation of 10 feet military boxes which also exist in Cooled versions. Aside from that there are a  few other means, so with that, the 8,000 planes required slim down a little. When we consider that 70 countries have an option ready and we know that the larger airlines have transport versions of Boeing planes, we are almost halfway there, the larger issue is the option to have the proper boxes and refrigerated boxes fit, so even if the plane does not refrigerate, the boxes might. So in that setting we see that part of the equation is there. The larger issue is actually not the planes, it is the setting of the amount of vaccines that are required on a global scale. Which gets us to AstraZeneca, who gives us ‘AstraZeneca to supply Europe with up to 400 million doses of Oxford University’s vaccine at no profit’ (at https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020/astrazeneca-to-supply-europe-with-up-to-400-million-doses-of-oxford-universitys-vaccine-at-no-profit.html), so how much will they charge the 350 remaining Europeans? This is not an attack on them, it is the required question, when the setting is there, when the vaccine is finally done, how many vaccine shots a day will Astra Zeneca be able to manufacture? So as the planes are lining up, consider that it will take roughly 2-3 days for all the vaccines that can be set in one C-130 Hercules, the question becomes are there enough small refrigerated shipping containers? It is a question that the BBC did not ask Alexandre de Juniac and I am not attacking them on it, it looks great to say that 8,000 jumbo’s are needed, but who considered the alternative? The time required to manufacture the vaccines to fill these Jumbo’s? 

And when you consider that 6-8 billion doses are needed, apart from the massive profit (which I am not against), the time required for all this is an actual issue, because anyone thinking that the existence of an vaccine is the end of the matter is wrong, it will merely be the end of the beginning and not realising that is a massive flaw in thinking. No matter how we see it, there is a chance that the vaccine will help most people, just not all of them. “Primary vaccine failure occurs when an organism’s immune system does not produce antibodies when first vaccinated. Vaccines can fail when several series are given and fail to produce an immune response”, we want a vaccine to be a force of good for all, this is not always realistic and the moment we realise that part we get the introduction to the issue at hand: ‘What about the rest?’ Yet that is not an issue we need to worry about for now, the Guardian gives us “Investigators will be examining the details of the illness and the person who contracted it to find out if there is a link. They will also look at the dose of vaccine they received, their state of general health and so on. They will hope this event can be explained and is not a risk to others. If so, the trial will soon resume. Researchers in other vaccine trials – there are nine now in phase 3, which is the last stage – will be looking to ensure they are not seeing a similar issue”, makes perfect sense, and the delay is (as I stated before) optionally short, but we see the media giving us a non-show on the matter of time required to make the vaccines. Again, this is not an attack, yet vaccines are not easily made, one source gave me “Manufacturing vaccines is a complex journey. It takes between 6 to 36 months to produce, package and deliver high quality vaccines to those who need them. It includes testing each batch of vaccine at every step of its journey, and repeat quality control of batches by different authorities around the world”, so even when the formula is ready and approved, there is every chance that the required amount of shipping will not be ready for some time, a stage that will not care how many boeings are required, there is every chance that the Hercules fleet is all that is required to ship whatever is ready, but that realisation will take you a little while and when you are all on par, we realise that soon enough it will be about governments and their needs for their ego and their economy, the setting merely require that stage for people to realise that wars have started over less. A British-Swedish organisation and their largest client (America) demanding 300,000,000 shots on day one, I will let you consider what happens next, it will not be a nice stage.

 

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September 9, 2020 · 16:37

A no-go is not a failure

It happens, things especially in science take a little more than we think it does and it also takes more attempts than one, this was a given from the very beginning, so when I mentioned issues in ‘The worst is yet to come’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/09/06/the-worst-is-yet-to-come/) this wasn’t it. Yet I did give mention of it in a previous article, it was going to take time. So when we get ‘Oxford scientists: these are final steps we’re taking to get our coronavirus vaccine approved’ at September 8, 2020 8.04pm AEST, yet less than 1 hour ago we are treated to ‘AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine trial suspended: Live news’, here we see “AstraZeneca says it has suspended trials of the coronavirus vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford after one of the trials’ volunteers fell ill with an unexplained illness”, this is not a reason to panic, science will hit bumps and optionally this is merely a bump. Yet this bump translates to time, time that most governments no longer have. Yet it is the nature of things, so as we see “More than 27.5 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and 897,383 have died. More than 18.5 million people have recovered”, we see what some call dire statistics, yet in a population of 8,000 million, is it really dire? 

We also do not need to see ‘CSL unfazed by vaccine trial hold-up’, yet the text “Blood products giant CSL is pushing ahead with its preparations to manufacture the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, despite the multinational biotech halting its phase three trial on Wednesday” raises questions. Preparations make sense when the situation has been resolved, or the issue is not a real bump, but the text “This is a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials”, gives a larger worry, and when we see governments eager to push out a vaccine is what might be regarded as a false sense of security, who would benefit? Now this is speculative because the situation is fluid, and even as we get the news from several media sources, they tend to have their own agenda and 7 hours ago, ABC gave us ‘Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial on hold over ‘potentially unexplained illness’, AstraZeneca says’, we are treated to the word ‘potentially’, this is actually fair, especially in light of the quote in the ABC article “AstraZeneca said it “voluntarily paused” the phase 3 clinical trial — which kicked off in July — to allow a review of the “single event” by an independent committee”, an action triggered by a single event, the setting of AstraZeneca makes perfect sense. It is a safety setting and here the no-go (for now) is not a failure. There is every chance that we will see the found explanation in the very near future and that makes AstraZeneca the winner.

In the setting of any normal timeline, we got lucky, if (and we emphasise on if) it becomes the cure, we will see that AstraZeneca has broken records in finding an optional cure for a disease that had no cure, no vaccine and that within a year is pretty spectacular. Especially when a timeline up to 18 months was an expected setting. So even if the bump implies that there will be a delay, AstraZeneca is well ahead of schedule, and before we go out on a limb and get crazy, less than a million died, in a setting with 8,000 million people, there is room to manoeuvre.

 

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