Tag Archives: Sweden

Something rotten in Denmark

I always liked that line from Hamlet. I have nothing against the Danes, but I have been several times and the people in Copenhagen look down on others and more so on foreigners. A sort of extrovert nationalism. They were never openly negative about me, but that vibe is undeniable. Should you doubt me, be there for half a day, then take the ferry to Malmo and compare the feel, the Swedes are much warmer. But that is as far as I can take it, my co-workers in Copenhagen were really warm and kind and even now, 10 years later they still are. So when I saw ‘NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report, I merely had to giggle. And when we are given “The Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to gather information, according to a report by Danish broadcaster Danmarks Radio” we need to wonder just how united that EU really is. There is the optional “Intelligence was collected on other officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway, according to the report”, which implies that any Dane hoping to have a jolly good time in another Scandinavian country is up for a nice surprise. So even as we take notice of “In a new report shared with several European news agencies, the NSA is said to have accessed text messages and the phone conversations of a number of prominent individuals by tapping in to Danish internet cables in co-operation with the FE.” we can boast and shout, yet if we consider that this was there in 2013, where exactly does ‘In a new report’ come from? In addition, we see the Netherlands and Belgium being not part of that equation, why is that? So as we are given “Mr Snowden accused US President Joe Biden of being “deeply involved in this scandal the first time around”. Mr Biden was US vice-president at the time when the surveillance took place” my question becomes, whose bread is he buttering and his look like a super sad puppy dog with the byline “US whistleblower Edward Snowden expresses wish to return home”, I merely wonder if traitors should be given any choice in the matter, although there is something satisfying on him coming from Russia to end up straight in front of a firing squadron. And when we look back to June 2015 where the BBC gave us ‘Snowden NSA: Germany drops Merkel phone-tapping probe’, I feel that someone kept it all alive to be used when appropriate, and now seems to be that time. And one little item comes to mind, We see Operation Dunhammer, yet the Dunhammer is “a species that are wild in Denmark or grown there”, it seems very specific doesn’t it. Did the NSA seek out that name, or is there a lot more to the story? Even as we see “Mrs Merkel, then-German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and opposition leader at the time Peer Steinbruck were also reportedly targeted”, it is something specific within a specific scope and that tends to be not of interest to the NSA unless there is a specific case, optionally with an operational push from the White House. That and the fact that between France and Sweden several other nations were not mentioned, we seem to see half a story, not the full ball of wax (as they say). 

If we want a simple comparison, someone is farting in the lunchroom and someone else is pointing at the air vents to focus attention to the wrong area. How typical is that?

And it is Channel 6 news that gave us “In August, Bramsen relieved the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service, among others, after an independent watchdog heavily criticised the spy agency for deliberately withholding information and violating Danish laws”, there are more sources, but this one also gives us “the Danish Defense Intelligence Service, known in Denmark by its acronym FE, in 2014 conducted an internal investigation into whether the U.S. National Security Agency had used its cooperation with the Danes to spy against Denmark and neighbouring countries.” Which is basically the left hand offering the right hand to do what needs to be done. Yet the stage is coming out now as it was then, in the stage of a Democratic president, I find it odd that the information remained contained under the previous REPUBLICAN president. It seems that some have no issues letting NSA secrets out of the bag when it suits someones political agenda, which as I personally see it constitutes treason of a very different kind. 

So elaborate in my own way, consider the Mexican mathematician, Dr Fibre Nachos, he gives us a number of food clients to grow his business, one gets us a second one, the two gives us three, three and the previous two give us five, five and the previous give us eight and so does one grow ones business. But alas, there is always a person hindering the growth (me in this case), I do not want to share my nachos, they are all mine (it is the one element that the hungry, the greedy and the selfish have in common). 

So we are at the beginning of one. One element threw this out in the open and they did it AFTER the republican was gone, and no one in the media is looking into it? We can all cry over “systematic wiretapping of close allies is unacceptable”, yet sometimes we have no choice, should you wonder that consider the events surrounding the Martel affair in 1962. Now we have a larger scaled problem, it is not merely governments, it is the stage of large industrials who also set a stage of political imbalance, and as the surrounding areas become less and less stable any nation needs to find issues to keep their nation safe. The EU is perhaps the best evidence in all this. The entire Vaccine rollout with Astra Zenica and the concealment of documents and pricing in a place where they claim to be transparent gives rise to a lot more subterfuge than can be found at Grizodubovoy str. 3, Moscow. And everyone is crying foul? Can anyone tell me the setting on why someone let the information out now? This was not Snowden, he had already done that, someone decided to play traitor all by themselves and it seems that it is OK with the powers in Washington DC. The fact that it is a specific list of nations and that the US seemingly trusted Denmark is also a point of discussion, one that seemingly hasn’t happened yet. Why is that? I might reflect on Hamlet and something rotten, but that is a reflection on Shakespeare and his view on ‘it shows that everything is not good at top of political hierarchy’, in my view one person got the green light to release information, the problem is that the hierarchy is not the problem, it is the treason of a chosen few who are in a stage to set a stage of imbalance and that tends to be the one not in charge, optionally a big tech push for whatever reason they have. I believe that the US needs to hunt down that source because it is limiting their options to grow their economy as well. Yet that is merely my speculated view on it all. 

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The assumption of knowing

It all started yesterday, the NOS notified us via ‘8 wounded by optional terror attack Sweden’. The stage was less clear through two parts. The first that this was not a big city, it was Vestlanda, which is in the South of Sweden, basically a village with less than 15,000 people. About an hour ago the BBC gives us ‘Sweden attack: Man injures seven in stabbing attack’, a very different headline. Two different headlines, but neither is wrong. The BBC also gives us (as did the NOS) “Police are treating the case as attempted murder but also investigating the possibility of terror motives” as such SAPO is on the case. The Swedish Security Services (formerly known as Säkerhetspolisen, or SAPO), it is at present under the leading and watchful eyes of Klas Friberg (aka Big Boss). We are told “Initially, detectives began treating the incident as suspected terrorism, before re-classifying it as attempted murder. According to the local police chief, the suspect is a resident of the area and previously known to police but in the past he was only suspected of “petty crimes”, AFP news agency reports” (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56272565) there is a need to side with caution, there is no harm in treating it as one and finding out you are wrong, it is always better than not acting and learning too late it was a a dry run. 

In Sydney (on 15–16 December 2014) a mental case called Man Haron Monis was a self pronounced ISIL operative, there was enough evidence in the early hours that this was not the case and that he was a head case, but there is nothing wrong with siding with caution, lives were on the line. In Sweden there is a different setting, optionally one that requires Swedish Intelligence to take a larger look, and it makes sense, terror has several definitions, yet the one that matters is the result when the things we hold for granted are no longer reliable and a terror attack in Vestlanda would do that in Sweden much more than in the three larger cities, in this setting dozens of smaller places would have a security issue and that worry would run over to Norway and optionally Denmark as well. Yet, it is early days and we do not know what is and what is not. And the problem is not over, actually the PM (whilst being openly honest) gives us “Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said the “horrific violence” was a reminder of “how frail our safe existence is”.” He is not wrong, but I believe him to be incorrect. The application of ‘how frail our safe existence is’ is the problem. There is no such thing s a safe existence, the fact is that Scandinavia is perhaps one of the least likely targets, as most terrorists will use bombs, they do not care about one person, they care about hundreds, Stockholm is perhaps the most likely of targets, yet it is still small compared to Munich in October, Amsterdam in April, or London and Paris most time of the year. They all have infrastructures that have too many weak spots, to many options and as such the largest part of Scandinavia (including Finland) tend to be less likely places to hit, that is beside the point that in these places tourists and foreigners shine like Christmas lights and these terrorists tend to dislike Christmas lights, a stage we all need to recognise. That does not make a person like Klas Friberg wrong. I am speculating, he needs to be certain and that is what he is doing, making sure. 

Still, the assumption is there and the truth is we really do not know at present. Even as I dug through the papers in a dozen nations, most of them are somewhere between the BBC and the Dutch NOS, merely one or two are playing the terror card, the others merely mention that it is investigated s an optional one. There is a small caution in many cases and at present there are too many unknowns. As we are told “Five different crime scenes, a few hundred metres apart, were identified, local police chief Jonas Lindell said.” We need to realise that this is not a person merely going nuts, he was seemingly on a ‘nutty’ rage trip over a distance and that calls a few things into question, optionally that this was ore than merely an attack by a head job and as such the authorities need to be certain, I get that. If Sweden gets to be lucky, the person was a head case, if that is not the case this might optionally be a lone wolf act and that is the problem, there is close to no attack against such a strategy. There are too many settings where lone wolves will achieve what they are told to do and the Swedish Security Services needs to be certain, that is clear and I hope that we can soon return to the happy view of 

Instead of

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Setting a standard

As I am rewatching the Stand (1996), I am also interested watching the new version when it is released. A stage where we wonder if the Stand is fiction or a stage where it becomes future history, and if that is debatable,  should the Stand now be seen as a documentary? You think I am joking, but merely partially so. You see, the news gives us ‘Ten Republicans voted to impeach Donald Trump. The backlash has been swift’ (at https://www.sbs.com.au/news/ten-republicans-voted-to-impeach-donald-trump-the-backlash-has-been-swift). A stage tht SBS gives and a lot do not, why is that? So as we see “In Michigan, a challenger to Mr Meijer received a boost when Steve Bannon promoted him on his podcast”, we should wonder if Steve Bannon, who was (quote NY Times) “charged on Thursday with defrauding donors to a private fund-raising effort called We Build the Wall, which was intended to bolster the president’s signature initiative along the Mexican border”, should we give any consideration to a person who was pardoned before it went to court? And this is a man who was directly connected to Cambridge Analytica. A person like that is (as I personally see it) tainted, and as such I wonder if we can trust a person who is challenging Peter Meijer in Michigan. I personally see it that anyone pushed forward by Steve Bannon will come at a cost, can we afford to accept that? It is equally an issue that there were only 10 republicans on the impeachment side, I reckon that they are ten people who still have some level of morals and the US has seen enough moral-less behaviour.

The setting is a lot bigger than you think, as we see the far right scrapping for attention, we also see the danger of Trumpism, especially in a stage where its industrial complexes are surpassed by China. We hear all the accusations of IP theft, yet so far the US, Sweden (Ericsson) and Finland (Nokia) are barely catching up with China, they are still decently behind Huawei, and if that IP was stolen, they would at the very least be on par and Europe is catching on. The US is about to become irrelevant. Irrelevant due to a $25 trillion debt, irrelevant due to a lack of innovation and irrelevant due to Trumpism, the US needs to set a standard, the Republicans need to set a standard and they have to do it fast, or they will not be seen in office until past 2035, optionally past 2039. With the Democratic nanny state in charge, and no exit strategy in place, the Corona issues will merely set a much faster downfall than ever seen before. Even now we are treated to ‘New Zealand reports first case in the community in months’, the cause was a woman who had been in self isolation for 2 weeks. And it gets to be worse, what I warned for recently is now a given “The Ministry of Health said the woman had tested negative twice before leaving an isolation facility in Auckland on 13 January”, we see one patient and two false negatives, yet the media is drowning the events. Then we see ‘despite Pfizer shortages overseas’, a setting I expected as the amounts required were nowhere near possible and in all this the stage of properly informing the public is out of the question, we see small bites of events and I see a lot as I check 8-14 news sources, but a lot of it will not be seen everywhere, merely in some places, and why is that? Sop whilst the US is trying to figure things out, the world has its own demons to fight and in all this the media is seen as less and less reliable. 

We need to set a standard, we need to stop facilitating and we need to hold people to account, that includes politicians that facilitate for greed and industrial needs, and as the media (in this case the Guardian give us “World Health Organization estimates air pollution kills more than 7 million people each year”, we still see the absence of the actual issue, even as they source against ‘1% of people cause half of global aviation emissions’, a stage that is debatable at best, the Guardian is actively ignoring the fact that the European Environment Agency told us all that 1% of ALL plants are responsible for 50% of the Air pollution damages, they did not come out against with evidence, no with the Commercial world having 24,000 planes flying, we get “Frequent-flying “‘super emitters” who represent just 1% of the world’s population caused half of aviation’s carbon emissions in 2018, according to a study”, so 80,000,000 people caused that, all whilst the 1% of plants are more manageable, so why keep us in the dark? Hiding behind the word ‘study’ is equally BS. And the setting will get worse as the nanny state pussies will cater to the media again and again, because, as I personally see it, they cater to the share holders, the stake holders and the advertisers and they are the industrials that are greed, revenue driven, contribution driven and profit driven, and if you think that Trumpism is a problem, the sliding of standards is pushing Trumpism to the surface, because the greed driven profit from that side too, and that is debatable, I know that, I get it and I understand it. Consider the quote from a comedy ‘Operation Petticoat’ (1959) where we are treated to the quote “In confusion there is profit!”, we are living the confusion, you better believe that someone is banking on the profit, and until we regain a setting of standards this will continue.

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A,B,C,…..D?

We all have ways to promote the thinking pattern within ourselves, we all have our way to get about it, I am no exception. Yet, today is a weird day, I am overwhelmed with a thought and a sensation from the 60s. I was a wee young lad (a little piss ant is more like it), I was never a saint, especially when I was young. And in all this we all had our own ways to deal with ourselves, again, I am not exception. 

The sensation that bugs me today is something that has been in the back of my mind for a while. It is like a nuisance that keeps on bugging me and I do not exactly know why. It is a drink, in the Netherlands it was for a small time (in the 60s) decently wanted. The bottle was long and slim, with a light blue lid, it contained some form of a tangerine drink. That drink has been on my mind for a while now, and I miss it, but until recently it’s been nagging me and I do not know why. I looked up a few things and I noticed that there is no decent tangerine liquor. The drink I used to have was a lemonade, basically tangerine juice, settled with a third ingredient like water, still water. So why was it on my mind so strongly?

I had been considering a lot more from that era, mostly TV series, it was all before the house of Pong set up its shrine (a manhunter New York joke). And then it hit me, it was 1968, the Dutch TV series ‘De Fabeltjeskrant’ created by Leen Valkenier started, the UK got it later titled ‘The Daily Fable’, the setting had connections to the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, Aesop, and others. No matter how simple it was then, it was close to unequalled until it ended in 1989 after well over 1600 episodes, a gem too many had forgotten about, The adventures narrated by Mr Owl, with Miss Stork, 

Mr. Cunningham the Fox, Mr. Crow, Boris the Wolf, Bert and Fred Beaver, Zippy the Hare,Shelly the Tortoise, Miss Ant, Gerald the Pigeon, Milord the Horse, Harold the, George the Guinea Pig in the British version, Mumbles the Mole, Myra the Hamster, Greta the Cow, and Zaza the Zebra. There were more characters, but I stopped watching when I grew a little older, yet consider the simple fact that this series ran for over 1600 episodes and consider all the old tales as well as the tales of Grimm and others, what a treasure trove it could be, even today, we are all looking at the hi-tech series, but there is a reason that Tim Burton struck gold with the Nightmare before Christmas, stop motion animation is still an art that can move all the senses we have and we forgot about that tiny detail. We seemingly forgot about the situation where what was is still good, but how to embrace it? The fair part is that children do not mind, they embrace the story, the interactions, the inclusion, it is the inclusion that tends to take the cake, but it is merely one of a few factors and to be around for 22 years, that matters, that shows that you have a winner. So can it be relaunched? That is the question we need to face. E can remaster it, it can be remade, but in the same way? It is like the original Mass Effect, these gems are close to timeless, in 15 years when we have the Playstation 6 and the Zbox (or XboxX), a game like Mass Effect will still have a value that equals its weight in gold, so TV series too will have their moment and the IP and its owner sees a new life where none was expected. It is the showing of a real visionary, a game like Mass Effect (the original trilogy) is truly one of those. 

So whilst my mind focussed on a tangerine smell and a faint taste of what was, the reason was lingering in the back of my mind and the Daily Fable is not the only thing from those days. Netflix is investing a little over $17 billion in this year alone, but on how much actual IP? What if a fraction could get them several series that could give them a much larger offering of series? As the workflow comes back (after another lockdown), we see that there is a need for materials that will be there for the younger and the not so young viewers. 

It is about series, games, streaming and non streaming. It is all directed via IP, but it is not the only option, there is a whole league of games that lost their IP protection years ago, the same for TV series and the clever mind is one that looks in the past and find the troves most forgot about.  A setting we need to take another look at. So consider on what Netflix is spending and then add the billions that DisneyPlus is spending and see what some can get at a mere farthing per pound, a setting too enticing to ignore, but the will be the name of the game soon enough. 

It links to an old joke, what is the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant? A zookeeper has a $10 note and hands you 10 $1 coins, an accountant squeezes the $10 note until it gives up 11 $1 coins. We can laugh at the or realise that the Netflix has an optional $1,700,000,000 around, all because not the right accountant took a look at the $10 notes. We can laugh at the joke, or we can consider that there are parts none of them looked at, why is that? Or better stated, where are the gemstones? You already saw one, let me give you one more, it was a Swedish series called ‘Den vita stenen’, a series based on a 1965 award winning book. In a collection of nations, a mere 2 options and that is before you realise that France, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. They all have the gemstones no-one noticed or they forgot the impact they had focussing on a local market tends to have that impact and the time goes short, soon more than one will catch on and when they get it done it will be too late for them.

Such is life, as such, did you get to point D? If so, is it a square, a rectangle, a trapezium or a parallelogram? All options and none are the same.

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Reality helps out gaming

Yup, it happen, it is a little rare, but not unusual. So as I was setting the stage of a post apocalyptic game in Sweden, I was a little stuck. Yet reality was there to help me out. Yup, the Local SE newspaper gives us (at https://www.thelocal.se/20171101/why-sweden-is-home-to-65000-fallout-shelters) ‘Why Sweden is home to 65,000 fallout shelters’, we assuming that this is partially true, because 65,000 is a bit much, but it is something to work with, and as such we now have shelters, a lot of them, so the game is still in concept stage, but with that many shelters, the idea is starting and in this, Norway is helping out, they apparently have the Sentralanlegget (read: Central Facility). As such we now have a start and I am not one to be the minor, so I am setting the map stage from Alesund (Norway), to Sundsvall (Sweden) and the map is everything south of there, so it is a huge map. Instead of travelling everywhere, the stage would be that you get to chose the top of person you are and from the you wake up in a place (somewhere), and that age is the beginning. I have a few twists in mind, but it will include seeking strawberries on Gotland (the Swedish readers will get this). 

I will not give away the whole enchilada, because the gamer needs a surprise or two, but I want to set the stage where permadeath will make the game a lot more challenging (yet not essential), in addition to that with Oslo, Goteburg, Malmo and Stockholm in play, we have a lot more to see and to do. Yet it all started with one shelter and as we have no idea where we are, the sage is set for RPG, mystery and a whole dose of challenges. 

Wow, that took mot of the day to think this through, but I was hindered by the fact that Fallout is a really good product and I wanted to avoid the overlap, it cannot be completely avoided, but it can be minimised to the least and that is how I went to work. 

In this, the stage was about setting a new game based on a foundation that we have seen dozens time over from the C64 up to the current generation of consoles. 

So the news in the Local dot se was really a nice find, they give us “The country is home to around 65,000 bunkers, fit to host seven million people in the event of war, and an official report has now advised the government to start building more, following a 15-year pause”, implying that every bunker is for around 100 people, that is something we can work with. If the bunker is too big, it might not be operable with one person, with 100 that is still a risk, but a lot less likely. With that starting point, the stage is set for a story, because as I said before ‘the story is everything’, and in that resetting stage we see a larger need to find, to travel and to achieve. 

And the timing is right, some sources are confirming the fears I had regarding AC Valhalla, I will not give them here, because I would merely be repeating their reviews (read: rants). I have not seen it, and mot of the evidence has (as I suspect) been based on previous (pre gold edition) alpha’s and beta’s. So I will wait and take another look in 32 hours when the game becomes available. I know a person who is getting the game and I am not willing to spend a nickel on it (at present), I can wait for Black Friday and get it at 25%-50% of retail value. The other thing is that I am still playing Watchdogs: Legion. Now, that game has a few issues, but it is definitely a step up from one and needs you to engage in more sneak than number two demanded. It can be a good thing depending on your view on what hackers do. Yet there is little to no question, Watchdogs is a decent hit (it is better than a lot of other Ubisoft titles), even as Eurogamer gives us ‘Watch Dogs Legion review – a bleak and buggy retread of Ubisoft’s formula’, I particularly liked “Legion is too terrifyingly real, and just a tad too grim. I doubt the very real climate in the UK is helping much – which clearly isn’t Ubisoft’s fault – but I usually play games to escape the ills of Westminster, not to be smacked over the head by them. I appreciate that terrorist attacks and food banks and too many homeless people add a frosty layer of authenticity to this fictional vision of the capital, and I know this isn’t Ubisoft’s fault, either, but good grief, it’s depressing to recognise so many signs of a fictional dystopia from your local real-life news reports”, perhaps after the American President events it is a little too real, but that too adds to the positive, the hackers and their need to act. The ‘frosty layer of authenticity’ is as I see it positive, not negative. It is about hackers for a reason. Yes the game has issues, but nothing that will break the bank or glitch into reset. In some cases a better description (read: rant) might have been the solution, but such is life. 

Overall, after playing for a while, I do not disagree with “it will eventually grow stale as missions rarely deviate from this template”, yet as a hacker I signed up for the, did I not? Not to get shot in the face when a hacker should have far too little firearms experience against Albion special forces. So the article (at https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-11-03-watch-dogs-legion-review-a-bleak-and-buggy-retread-of-ubisofts-formula) is good, yet I feel that there is a setting that is partially overlooked. Yet I do understand and like the words Vikki Blake give us “Watch Dogs Legion is dark and unpleasant in more ways than one, and it doesn’t matter how many protagonists a game boasts if you’re unable to care about a single one of them”, it is an eye of the beholder view, agree or disagree, it is up to you. That part matters, because Ubisoft got a small reprieve, if AC Valhalla is near perfect they get a shot to survive, if not they might end up being part of Microsoft too. Microsoft is unlikely to pass up on 23 houses with fps experience, especially if they can get it for 5 cents on the dollar and lets face it, they spend most cash on Bethesda anyway. 

So here I aim handing out free Sony exclusive materials because that is the guy I am (when pissed off an absolute nightmare), and I did have some fun designing a way to sink the Iranian fleet (we all need hobbies). As such setting my fingers into a post apocalyptic games was also essential, you see it was an actual snow globe that gave me the idea on how to meltdown Bushehr 1 (a still untested concept), and that side might actually help me to design a few missions for the Swedish post-apocalyptic game which I aptly renamed ‘glödande godis’, and we all need candy, whether we glow in the dark or not. Ah well, such is life.

So even as reality can help out a gamer, we need a fair amount of indiscriminate imagination to get it all to work and lets face it, at present only the Japanese know what life in a post-apocalyptic setting has been (small reference to August 6 1945).

So whilst we will get to know what is the truth around AC Valhalla in a little over a day, the stage of finding an alternative to fallout will take a little longer than that.

In the mean time we will sit back, relax and enjoy the Trump show (as he is getting fired), for me it means that we can enjoy a more global version of the news in 1-2 days and that has been sorely lacking at present.

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As jobs become available

Yup, there is always good news if we know where to look, even as we see a setting where over 50% of all coronavirus cases are in the USA, India and Brazil, we need to think hard of what numbers are not shown. Even as India has well over 3 times the population of the US, there is no way that the numbers add up, with the US having over 9 million cases and India barely passing 8 million, the stage is not completely seen. The population pressure and environment should give India a lot more than the US, so the stage is not clearly seen. I have less doubts (but some) with Brazil, there are over 5 million there and that number seems off (I am emphasising on seems), when we consider the 211 million people there, the pressures in Rio and Sao Paolo, the number seems low, more important, the mortality rate on Brazil merely seems high, in my personal view, either there are a lot more cases, or the mortality rate is skewed, optionally from connected complications. So as more people die, more jobs open up (one would hope). In this stage we could say that every silver lining is the foundation for a new dark cloud.

These numbers are important, especially as the EU goes into a new lockdown. There is the larger issue. We see Spain and France being at 1.2 and 1.3 million. Nothing wrong with that, but a similar setting of populations is seen in Germany with only 510K sick, these numbers do not add up, especially hen you consider that Germany has 83 million, France has 65 million and Spain has 46 million. The German numbers are as I see them off. This matters, because if the numbers are too surreal, the lockdown will merely be a pro forma exercise that does close to nothing in too many places. The problem is that I can see that these lockdowns are the best we can get until there is an actual vaccine, and there is not date on that. One source gives us “On Tuesday, front-runner Pfizer revealed in an earnings call that the first interim analysis in its Phase 3 clinical trial has not yet occurred. That means there hadn’t yet been enough Covid infections among the trial participants to take a first stab at analysing whether the people randomly assigned to receive vaccine were infected at a lower rate than people who were assigned to get a placebo injection”, so consider that phase three is not done and this needs to come and be confirmed before we have a setting where manufacturing can begin. And it is even earlier ‘the first interim analysis in its Phase 3 clinical trial has not yet occurred’, that implies that we get to a stage where any solution would not be here before January 2021, and that is if the second analyses of clinical trials those who precede towards ‘a vaccine is working’ is well over 8 weeks away, making the earliest stage of manufacturing would start on January 2nd, if a solution if found by coming Monday. Are you feeling frisky yet? And all this before the realisation starts that 2 billion doses will take more than a few days. I got (from Vaccine Europe) “On average, it takes between 12-36 months to manufacture a vaccine before it is ready for distribution” and on top of that Sanofi is one source stating that they can make 2.5 million doses a day. This gets us to the 2 billion shots, taking 800 days to make and that is if everything goes right the first time. So there will be a waiting list that is well over 2 years and that is WHEN a vaccine is a reality. Now consider it takes another 12 months before a vaccine is a reality, implying that Covid-19 will be around until January 2024 at the very least. At what stage will we learn that masks are a good idea, and I am happy to set the stage that lockdowns are some proof, but what proof remains the issue, do you still think those Swedes were nuts? 

And in this, consider the news that CNBC gave us in June ‘AstraZeneca is aiming to produce 2 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine — and it could be ready by September’, do you still think that I was crazy saying that the media is a much larger cause of all the fake news we get?

I am not stating that I know when there is a solution, I am not proclaiming that I have all the answers, yet the numbers are clear and they tell a few stories, and in all those stories we see that some of the reflections offered to us are incorrect, incomplete and dazzled with issues. On the upside, my 5G IP has benefits under Covid (and lockdowns) but they were not designed as such, it is merely an upside to it all. And when we look on, we might see the corporate needs, but they are merely in it to keep their heads above water, and I do not begrudge them that, but a lot of the actions are made on incomplete views and more incomplete data, that much is certain. 

I get it when some state that there is an overreaction, yet some setting (like face masks) are never a bad idea, it makes sense that some lockdown measures are essential, yet how will that ever work in Mumbai, which is 4% the size of Sydney, but has close to 300% of the population, and people under why I doubt the Indian numbers? They test 500 a day, even as they had until recently 100,000 new cases a day. That it’s why the numbers make no sense. And this is merely getting worse, as economic barriers collapse, the setting will continue to degrade. I believe that India is in a much worse state, but that does not absolve Europe (or the US), this will get worse and those governing will be seeing the inside of courts, defending the stage, the setting and their actions. The media (even those with ludicrous headlines) they all want their digital media coin, so they will rely on hardline after headline and it will be about creating flames, not information. That is how I see it and feel free to disagree.

And as November is a mere 2 hours away, consider the time line I gave. Then consider the headline that the Guardian relied on yesterday ‘‘It’s possible’: the race to approve a Covid vaccine by Christmas’, unless the vaccine is properly tested by Friday, that deadline cannot be kept. So when you see “Kate Bingham, who heads the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said the UK was in “a very good place”. But there are still hurdles to clear in the coming weeks” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/30/its-possible-the-race-to-approve-a-covid-vaccine-by-christmas), and when we see “It could be Oxford University, partnered with drug company AstraZeneca. It could be Moderna in the US. Or it could be Pfizer and the German company BioNTech. All three have either recruited the last of the tens of thousands of volunteers they need for the critical final trials or will shortly do so”, in this I merely wonder whose trumpet she is blowing. I am not blaming her or the three, they have a hard job, yet unrealistic time lines are hard on us and they are facilitating for those trying to manage bad news and that is not right, not in this case (well, most often not in any case).

So if you are hoping or relying on a vaccine, think again. The numbers do not add up, on several sides and the media is not asking questions, so I am.

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When is a summit not a summit?

This is a more important question than you might gather. You see we accept the meaning of summit “a meeting between heads of government”, yet the entire virtual thing is not really a setting that most governments are happy with. Any summit allows for the high placed people to have a little tete-a-tete (A face-to-face meeting, or private conversation between two people). In such an event the Dutch King can assure people on clean water projects, all off the books. And plenty of people want them to be off the books. So when I see “Saudi Arabia will hold the scheduled G20 summit online on November 21 and 22 I wonder how effective it will be. And virtual meeting tend to spill, on a global level. In this, when I see “Summit organisers said on Monday they planned to build on the success of the virtual special G20 summit at the end of March and on the results of more than 100 virtual working groups and ministerial meetings”, these will all be on the books and the data would be leaked the moment it is received somewhere. Even as we agree on “The G20 brings together the leaders of both developed and developing countries from every continent”, in a v brutal setting, I doubt that this will be the case. And in this setting the stage we are given with “With its one-year chairmanship of the G20, Saudi Arabia wants to focus on issues such as women and climate protection. The originally planned in-person meeting in Riyadh would have been the first regular G20 summit in the Arab world”, I am actually somewhat doubtful if anything clear will be achieved. When we see “such as women and climate protection”, we accept that in some meetings people will not oppose certain actions when there is a personal conversation between two parties, yet one person in a digital setting is not willing to submit to a decision by himself when the other 19 listen and no agreement will end up becoming a case. As such for this summit, Covid-19 is perhaps the worst thing we could ever face. 

Yet the stage is one that could be powerful, but not for them. If Huawei had prepared correctly, there will be a chance that this is the first summit where it will be completely 5G indoors. You see to weeks ago ‘Zain completes 5G network deployment in Saudi Arabia’ implying that Saudi Arabia is one of the first nations ever to deploy 5G, moreover, the US is nowhere near that setting. This summit could be the first visibility of active 5G solutions, which would be also a first and it is happening in Saudi Arabia, all whilst Sweden in May only had “Sweden’s first 5G base stations in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö”, whilst Denmark gives us “Denmark customers in several Danish cities are now enjoying the benefits of 5G connectivity as Ericsson’s rapid deployment of new 5G”, the list goes on, but in Saudi Arabia we see that Zain completes network deployment, as such there is optionally a need for Saudi Arabia to show off its 5G ability, making it the first nation to have any official stage where we see the power of 5G, the stage is that much bigger. And the people who set the stage on ‘we are going to be there too’ need to realise that they weren’t there, as I expected they are slow, slow by almost 1-2 years and that stage is evolving against those who wanted to play the anti-Huawei card, now they get to see first hand what it is to be second to Saudi Arabia. And it was not a small deployment, we can see that with “Zain KSA’s 5G network now covers 38 cities across the Kingdom” their deployment is a lot larger, it is not three cities in Sweden, or a few suburbs in Denmark and when you consider that only 17 cities in Saudi Arabia are over 200,000, we can see that this is the first true victory of Saudi Arabia over the west, the first time where we see that a lack of evidence and dragging ou heels is going to be the downfall of us. Politicians will make bombastic speeches on how for now 4G is good enough, but they know that they are spilling the BS as wide as they can. Saudi Arabia is now officially a 5G development platform location and as such we would most likely get to see what else is possible and it will be visible first in Saudi Arabia and China. So when is a summit not a summit? When it is a presentation platform, and there is every indication that we are in for a whole range of goodies pithing the next 8 weeks.

 

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On the way to a destination

It was yesterday that I came up with the Vatican game, a way to expose the truth and let it be seen to everyone who wishes to know. It was a stage where I got to design original gaming IP. I have original 5G IP, but the games (TESVII, Watchdogs IV), they are all based on IP others made. I came up with other gaming IP, but the Vatican view is 100% my IP (as a game that is). It is also intoxicating to design original IP. Originality is the food of life, in originality we trust, the rest can fake it until they make it.

Yet the intoxicating side is there, it will always be there and everyone creating or designing original pieces can concur. Yet in the light of the PS5, we can see that the intoxicating part tends to take over, especially as I spend $3 on a MAC game, only to be haunted by the bugs. Then I got a dose of irritating steam, I set up that in ONLY want to see MAC games, but I get every PC game in sight, can people not design anything without massive flaws? Oh and Apple is not off the hook, but I will tell you about that soon enough. I think back to the ideas of ME:A(1,2), Mass Effect Andromeda, both parts 1 and 2, in a very different coat, but that is not what is driving me today. Neither is it the new Mario 3D bundle out in 8.4 hours (when the shops open), no now is about the idea that is moving in my mind, left right centre, up and down. It was an idea I had written about before, a game that is based in Amsterdam, in about 500 years when the population is zero. It is set to people with two life cycles, a normalised on and a biological one. The biological one has no needs, nature preserves it in every way, the normalised one, needs tools, needs technology and it needs sustenance. Yet the two cycles are opposing one another and what heals one, will kill the other. I got the idea watching Aftermath: Population Zero, in this series we see scripted AI showing us what buildings will look like after 300 years and no population to maintain anything. This got me to thinking, what if we set that to a city (Amsterdam) and we deploy it parameters? It sets the stage where every game will be different, more importantly your neighbour playing the same game will get to face a different Amsterdam. That was the premise, so not only do yo get to seek for technology, it will be in a different place, optionally in a different building, in another street. It sets a different stage to survival. Yet this is merely one facet, the other facet is to adapt to a new stage, a stage where the plants that sustained you become poisonous. That too is part of the game and Amsterdam with all its canals will be about plants and water plants. So there I was considering the drive, curiosity can be a drive, but it is not powerful enough. Yet in all this there is a stage, and in that stage does technology drive us, or do we drive technology? 

It is important, but for different reasons. With ‘Dubai may be as indebted as South Africa if dissenters are right’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/dubai-indebted-south-africa-dissenters-200917095907711.html) we see the stage we need to see. Even as we accept “Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings include Dubai’s local bank borrowings to make the calculation, arriving at an estimate of about 290 billion dirhams ($79 billion). The debt burden could equal 77% of this year’s gross domestic product, according to S&P, comparable with what the International Monetary Fund predicts for South Africa and just behind Oman”, consider that the UAE has a population that is less than 10 million, about the size of Sweden, yet the debt is half of that of Sweden and here is the kicker, nearly every nation on the planet has crushing debts, so who has the actual funds that allow for these debts to continue? In a stage where we are polarised against nature, we need to see that embracing nature might be the only option left. Should you doubt the and of course, you can, consider the debts out there and consider that we are handing the debts to the next generation. In all this, IP is the only way for some to keep the next generation afloat. My version of Amsterdam was more spot on than even I realised. And if patent are the next currency, or at least the grounds for basic wealth, I am sitting decently pretty, but is that enough? I reckon that the next generation will see a very different stage of life, one that is not set on what is, and what they are entitles to, but what they can conquer, what they can overcome ad nature is a bitch when it comes to adversity. There is no denying that we are in a state of change, but our governments have gone the way of the dodo and the ostrich. They merely latch onto the largest payday possible and they cloth for bad weather, but that time has come and gone, it is no longer on what we can overcome, it is about what we can survive. You see, the owners of the debts could decide t cash in, and where does that leave us? Some even set the stage by claiming that there is good debt versus bad debt, yet in the end, all debt is bad and we need to catch on. As I see it this is the first generation that is worse off then the previous generations, in addition to that, we have created a life of legalised slave labour, legalised discrimination and legalised inequality. I wonder if we realised that when we were young, did we realise that this was a stage that we were signing up for? We might want to blame covid, but that would be wrong, perhaps it drove it to the surface, but the weak spots were already there. Even as CNBC gives us ‘What Would It Mean If U.S. States Went Bankrupt?’, yet it is too late, the US is already there, with the $25,000,000,000,000 debt, we need to accept that the annual interest would be no less than $150,000,000,000. This implies an amount that taxation is not getting, in addition to that, there are the spiralling costs of keeping the US alive (infrastructure) and it is not the only nation facing this, Japan is also on that scale and the EU is almost there, but they are all in denial that this is so, they are all setting the stage that they will overcome this, so how is that? Covid-19 brought it to the surface a lot faster, but we were already there and those who want to survive, will need to change to a patent grounded economy, which means that China has a decent advantage, so does the US and Japan less so, the EU is pretty much toast. In this everyone is in denial. You see the US amounted to $3.5 trillion collected taxation, but that is before the funding of the US started. When we take this into account, we see that the US was already $900 billion short, and that is before the $150 billion interest hits them and they are not alone, it is not merely an American flaw. Japan and the EU are on the same horse, not as big, but still a massively large horse of deficit. So when this collapses (when, not if) we see that the economic value of any nation will be the patents that they hold and as such, I personally feel that I am sitting pretty and with two new IP concepts created this week alone, I wonder where I will go next, I heard that the pastries in Monte Carlo are super yummy! (Piers Morgan told us that much) and bless his heart, I do like my pastries, so where we end up being, it will be in a very different economy soon enough, how soon? Well that depends on the powerbroker holding onto this failed horse, they like to stay ahead of the debt curve, surfing that wave for as long as they can before the wave crashes, it will drown a massive group of fin-tech people, but those who survive will come to worship the nations with patents, and as the new economy comes up, will you understand that you are merely driving these exploiters, or will you demand a fair system? Because that demand went so well the last time around. 

No matter what destination you go to, the currency you currently have will no longer have value, it is a harsh reality, but it is the one we all signed up for and the only one that the powerbroker accept, they have too much invested in the idea that their arrogance is the only one that ever mattered. 

 

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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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The face carrying the egg

Yup, I woke up giddy (a good meal will do that) and I have been thinking about new IP when the BBC made me giggle with ‘One of Europe’s biggest brothels goes bust’, now this is bound to happen, yet the situation reminded me of an old slogan: ‘Due to a death, the cemetery will be closed for 3 days’. Now I have nothing against the ladies of the night and the business people counting on the mattresses being used day and night, yes they will have a larger issues with a pandemic lockdown. It is nice to see “Some 120 prostitutes usually work at Pascha. It employs around 60 staff including cooks and hairdressers. Mr Lobscheid criticised the German authorities’ handling of the pandemic – particularly their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume. He said officials would tell them every two weeks that they would not be able to reopen”, I am not judging mind you, but the effects of a lockdown implies that you cannot work, not even on your back and when your clients are in lockdown, so will you be. That is the low down on the issue and to see “We can’t plan like that. We might have been able to avert bankruptcy with the help of the banks if we had been promised that things could start again at the beginning of next year”, OK, that is fair, when a brothel is run like any business, that includes paying tax, it is fair to say that it should be allowed governmental protection, and lets face it, if the governments protects its politicians, why not its hookers, there are plenty of situations when most people cannot distinguish one from the other, as such the humour is increasing. Yet the other side is also in discussion, we see this with “Mr Lobscheid criticised the German authorities’ handling of the pandemic – particularly their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume”, I wonder if Mr Lobscheid has all his ducks in a row, you see this pandemic is unique, we haven’t faced anything like this in 100 years and the last time we did it there was a little picnic called World War 1 which had just ended, as such nations were largely in disarray. We have been lucky so far and if governments had taken a longer look at their infrastructure the mess might (i emphasise might) we smaller, but optionally not by a lot. So in all this, as businesses are in lockdown, are in a stage where larger businesses cannot run, we see a brothel, but we also see Airlines, hotels and a whole range of companies losing out of revenue, so in part a business that is properly set up and is paying tax, should be entitled to some form of protection, yet the statement ‘their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume’ is a bit of a stretch. It is almost like the hooker who goes to the doctor because of a symptom and the doctor tells her to stay out of bed for three weeks. yes, it is unfair that businesses like airlines and the one mile high club needs to stop functioning, but I wonder if people have any clue what the impact of a pandemic is. The Spanish flu set the need for 20 million to 50 million tombstones, at present that need is a little below 874,000, so we are only at 5% of the previous caper, now we can toss and turn, or we can adjust. I am in favour of the second, but that too comes with a risk. You see as long as we lockdown the disease remains a risk and the steps make sense, because the more time we have, the more time will be set towards finding a vaccine, and optionally a cure. We are given all these options, but the short, sweet truth is ‘There is no cure or treatment to prevent COVID-19’, as such until there is a treatment, lockdown is what there is and that is it. In this, I accept that the BBC gave us the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54016791) that there is more to life then awaiting death and the setting of Pascha is what it is (as a priest once told others), but the setting that we see with ‘criticised the German authorities’, is to be honest a little insane with the larger stage of unknown variables and minimum distance of 2 meters. I know that some call it a long john, but it’s not that long, not by a long shot. Yet I am still pondering “We might have been able to avert bankruptcy with the help of the banks if we had been promised that things could start again at the beginning of next year”, I know that over religious types go into a banter, but at least it is a business that pays taxation, and if rumours are correct a lot more than a speculated member of FAANG does, so there! 

So when we consider the face carrying the egg, we can point at Lobscheid, or we can look at ‘‘The venues are packed’: Labor Day parties cause concern for another COVID-19 spike’ (at https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/labor-day-weekend-covid-19-worries/85-e320d391-da34-49e7-b8c0-1ebb35061367), with the added quote “Georgia health experts are concerned Labor Day weekend could usher in a new wave of COVID-19 infections just as the state’s cases have started to slow down. Despite the warning, large parties are scheduled over the next few days in metro-Atlanta, as state and local officials are doing little to stop it”, so whilst we see one person in denial of clarity, we see a whole group of people in denial of the actual situation. For the unemployed it is good news, as 874,000 move towards 2,000,000, we see that jobs become available, houses become cheaper and it will be all over the US, the EU and a few other places as well. For governments there is another upside, as people get jobs, the cost of governing goes down and as such it starts the end of a recession, positive news all around.

I do agree that the lack of clarity breaths confusion and aggravation, but there is no real solution; until the people realise and clearly realise that the last pandemic took well over 20 million lives, only then will they realise that there is a larger setting and they are taking risks with their lives, the clever people will not. The situation is that at present, new cases are set around 290K a day and that has been the case since July 24th, so well over a month, and since July 17th the number of non living increases by 5,000 a day. These two numbers are not a given, and things will get better, but do you think it gets better when hundreds are together in a bar celebrating labour day? It gets to be a lot worse when we see ‘CDC’s autumn vaccine hint fuels fears of pressure from Trump’ (source: the Guardian), there we see “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had instructed states to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to healthcare workers and vulnerable populations – just in time for the 3 November election”, but at present there is no reliable news that there is an actual vaccine, several sources give us that there is one coming, but when we look at the Sydney Morning Herald (at https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-is-the-new-covid-vaccine-designed-to-work-20200819-p55n33.html) we see “That letter of intent is contingent on the vaccine working – and, scientists have emphasised, we don’t yet know if it will” and that is not all, that was on August 19th, so far we do not see a daily update that there is an actual confirmed vaccine and when we consider “among the more than 165 COVID-19 vaccines under development around the world”, so everyone is racing to fill their pockets with a working vaccine, but so far none is in existence. I do accept the setting “ChAdOx1, the vaccine Australia’s government has signed up to buy, is one of the leaders”, and I know it will take time to confirm, but in all, the stage we are about to see is one that is a dangerous one and too many people have decided not to sit still and ponder the impact of ignoring what is in front of them, time will tell, but the setting is a lot more dangerous than before, the Guardian gives us that with “critics of the Trump administration have worried that the White House would pressure the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the CDC and other agencies to rush a hasty coronavirus vaccine to market before the election” and that is merely the larger stage, the idea that a place like the CDC could be pressured implies that the lives of the people that they are supposed to protect are not protected at all. This is seen with “a key agency in the process, the FDA, which would have to grant emergency use approval for any vaccine candidate to be distributed before the full completion of trials, has shown itself vulnerable to political pressure”, and it is ‘distributed before the full completion of trials’, is the part that should hit you. If that happened, people could be confronted with a vaccine that is optionally worse than Covid-19. I need to be careful, because I will not speak out against vaccines, but we need to realise that proper testing is needed and that requires time. And in this time is the one element that the people are not willing to give, and those on that train will be wearing egg, and a lot of it.

Time will tell us what was the proper course of action, time will tell us what the effects are of lockdown, because that can only be seen afterwards. I am merely nervous that in the end a lot more people will die of the Coronavirus than was needed, merely because governments were too lazy (or too late) to act. And it is not all their fault, that is seen in the Australian Financial Review with ‘Masks are pointless, says Sweden’s maverick chief medic’ (at https://www.afr.com/world/europe/masks-are-pointless-says-sweden-s-maverick-chief-medic-20200730-p55gre). Here we see “With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport”, and we are surprised that people follow this, he is an MD, he should know and all whilst we see hundreds of medics all over the world give us all kinds of images, but a lot give us something like the image seen here. So when we see that and we see the statement by Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. So when was ‘better be safe than sorry’ not a golden rule in an age of Pandemics? 

We still have ways to go, but in all this, I predict that a lot more people will be the careers of egg on face than we think there are and when we learn that lesson it will already be too late.

 

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