It sounds bad, but man I get 'Iraq war' vibes from this in an awful way. While I trust many countries wouldn't have done this....would the USA be one of them? If not, it really makes me question...
It sounds bad, but man I get 'Iraq war' vibes from this in an awful way.
While I trust many countries wouldn't have done this....would the USA be one of them? If not, it really makes me question if this is good-faith and honest dissemination of information. The state depts have lied about and hidden far more before, when that info didn't fit a narrative. Should we trust this information considering Trump and cronies have been priming the pump with racist rhetoric. Already initiated one trade war against China, why not sanctions?
Hell, they could be itching for another war. War is the ultimate hail-mary play to win an election that otherwise would be lost.
Is it inherintly immoral? China was looking out for its best interest, and possibly the world's by trying to contain quickly.
It just feels super sketchy that the country that is taking the longest to contain is pushing blame on other countries. Sure the USA hasn't had the same death rate as others, but that's also impacted by other factors. Almost every other country was able to contain faster, and the best prepared (like South Korea) was able to keep the death toll far lower.
Perhaps this importing was just a byproduct of China trying to respond quickly knowing how bad SARs was, and seeing how much of a symptom lag there was this time.
From the very onset it was pretty obvious this was a very big problem. The world should have locked down immediately, instead of waiting for cases to appear.
COVID-19 is a collective, worldwide failure of emergency protocol. Trying to blame and shame is petty and is a redirection move to absolve our own country's failures.
But it's not just the USA. A lot of countries are lining up to criticise China's handling of the pandemic. And Australia is leading the charge - even though we have no failures to be absolved...
Trying to blame and shame is petty and is a redirection move to absolve our own country's failures.
But it's not just the USA. A lot of countries are lining up to criticise China's handling of the pandemic. And Australia is leading the charge - even though we have no failures to be absolved from. We're one of the best countries world in this pandemic; we have no need to shift blame.
This isn't an attempt to direct attention away from other countries' domestic problems. This is acknowledging that China messed up the initial handling of this pandemic which didn't need to be a pandemic.
I'm not suggesting China didn't mishandle in various fashions. However.... Trump has been pushing this 'China did it and needs to pay' narrative for quite some time. Most of the countries calling...
I'm not suggesting China didn't mishandle in various fashions. However....
Trump has been pushing this 'China did it and needs to pay' narrative for quite some time. Most of the countries calling for investigations do have deep alliances with the USA. And it's always risky to resist USA demands, given size of military. Who knows what private conversations occured leading up to this. If the USA is pushing a narrative, it would make sense for the 'call to action' to come from another country to give a sense of legitimacy. Hell, that was half the plot of the Star Wars prequels.... A trade war leading into military action and a pawn calling for temporary dictatorship powers in the name of stability...oh god we really are in the worst timeline.
China is claiming this was a military action by the USA, which the USA denies. It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. The USA has a long, well documented history of overt and covert military interventions to provide USA-friendly outcomes regardless of the impacted citizen's lives.
So if the USA or USA allies are running an investigation where they have an incentive to conceal the whole truth, is that not a tremendous conflict of interest? Again it smells of 'Here's our proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.'
And I like to invoke Occums razor: If China is looking to play hero, would it really fit their narrative to be 'the cause of the pandemic'? It really seems more likely that the countries that really despise losing money would want to force crippling reparations to be paid over discovering the truth.
Well said. I was going to point out too on "And Australia is leading the charge" that Australia hasn't had an independent foreign policy since the 1975 overthrow....
Well said. I was going to point out too on "And Australia is leading the charge" that Australia hasn't had an independent foreign policy since the 1975 overthrow.
I know I'm taking a risk, and this will probably get messy, but I'm going in anyway! I can't let this statement stand unchallenged. It was a legal action, taken by the Queen's representative to...
I know I'm taking a risk, and this will probably get messy, but I'm going in anyway! I can't let this statement stand unchallenged.
the 1975 overthrow.
It was a legal action, taken by the Queen's representative to resolve a constitutional crisis. It was hardly an "overthrow".
That might be the USA's motivation for an investigation. I doubt it's the motivation for France or Germany. And it's definitely not Australia's motivation. The USA is no longer the centre of the...
That might be the USA's motivation for an investigation. I doubt it's the motivation for France or Germany. And it's definitely not Australia's motivation.
The USA is no longer the centre of the universe. Other countries are figuring out they need to do for themselves while there's a fool in the White House, implementing an "America First" policy.
Just because something applies to the USA, we can no longer assume it applies to the USA's so-called "allies".
This will not, and cannot be true until there are multiple countries with equivalent military firepower. Since the phrase was coined, the USA follows many principles of 'Speak softly, carry a big...
The USA is no longer the centre of the universe.
This will not, and cannot be true until there are multiple countries with equivalent military firepower. Since the phrase was coined, the USA follows many principles of 'Speak softly, carry a big stick'. Adversaries dare not substantially lash out in the face of blatant acts of war (eg: Iran leader assasinations). Allies play ball to get their own itches scratched.
The centre of the universe is not decided solely by who has the biggest or most guns. Money also carries a lot of power - and China has a lot of money. The European Union is another centre of...
The centre of the universe is not decided solely by who has the biggest or most guns. Money also carries a lot of power - and China has a lot of money. The European Union is another centre of power in the world.
Just because Australia works with the USA, that doesn't mean we follow its every move or obey its every order.
Money is a false power, it is a social construct that is only as valuable as people imagine it to be. China could own 99.9% of the USA on paper. The USA, could, in less than a week, pass...
Money also carries a lot of power - and China has a lot of money.
Money is a false power, it is a social construct that is only as valuable as people imagine it to be.
China could own 99.9% of the USA on paper. The USA, could, in less than a week, pass legislation to the effect of 'Effective immediately all debt/money/whatever owned by China is null and void. Anybody who is found to be honoring the now void currency will have a nuke dropped on their largest city.'
I realize this is a very hyperbolic example, but these sorts of plays happen all the time on smaller scales.
There is a very good reason the USA gets very hostile to countries that don't play ball, esp with respect to the petrodollar.
Addressing this point specifically, I would personally give that honor to South Korea for swift action and prepared medical care. They should be the leaders for how to move forward.
We're one of the best countries world in this pandemic; we have no need to shift blame.
Addressing this point specifically, I would personally give that honor to South Korea for swift action and prepared medical care. They should be the leaders for how to move forward.
That's fair, I wrote that as an afterthought after missing 'one of'. And I hadn't looked at the data recently, but I figure I'll look again. With the giant grain of salt, because I am assuming the...
That's fair, I wrote that as an afterthought after missing 'one of'. And I hadn't looked at the data recently, but I figure I'll look again.
With the giant grain of salt, because I am assuming the figures presented here are reasonably accurate with no additional research. Countries below 100 deaths might not be accurate and are excluded (I know it's arbitrary but I needed a cutoff somewhere), except Australia because it's central to the discussion.
India (1.03 deaths/million)
Bangladesh
Pakistan
South Africa
Indonesia
Malaysia
China
Australia (96 absolute is close enough)
Japan
Egypt
Morocco
South Korea
Saudi Arabia
Argentina
Philippines
Ukraine
Columbia
Russia
Algeria
U.A.E
Greece
Chile
Mexico
Poland
Czechia
Israel
Serbia
Dominican Republic
Brazil
Moldova
Hungary
Norway
Peru
Romania
Turkey
Finland
Panama
Austria
Iran
Germany
Denmark
Ecuador
Portugal
Canada (102.5 deaths/million)
USA (206.56 deaths/million...yea BIG jump)
Switzerland
Sweden
Ireland
Netherlands
France
United Kingdom
Italy
Spain
Belgium (ending with a whopping 686.74 d/m)
This isn't exactly scientific, although I would welcome someone with more time to do a more thorough analysis...In particular I'd love these stats weighted against population density, total cases, time before flattening the curve as well. I understand death rate/million pop doesn't tell whole picture, but it does give a rough glance to who is doing well and who is not.
See my other post about the 14 eyes countries, and plausible scenarios. I bolded those countries (at least the ones that made cutoff). See anything....odd? I see Australia being the only one of those doing pretty damn good. Everyone else (except Norway) is running damn near last in the 'handling it well' category. If I (as a corrupt country who can exert lots of power over other countries) were doing very poorly, and wished to make a political rival who is not-14-eyes look bad, I would probably ask the best-performing 'close ally' to initiate proceedings as it gives an air of credibility and conceal the underlying motives.
Edit: Holy hell, I didn't mean to write this wall of text. My mind rambled as I started typing, and it lead down this rabbit hole. I apologize for that.
Do consider in your evaluation that the countries you're listing can have drastically different manners of counting the dead. I have little faith in poor, densely populated countries (top of the...
Do consider in your evaluation that the countries you're listing can have drastically different manners of counting the dead. I have little faith in poor, densely populated countries (top of the list) to get a full tally of the dead. Others, I'm reasonably certain are lying through their teeth. (iran maybe) Some countries are also fairly unlucky. Island states (South korea is a de facto island state) have a big advantage, while the EU for example has a bit of a disadvantage. Your list is a list of "how bad we believe it is with all that taken into account". So some countries are actually faring better or worse because their situation makes it harder or easier.
@Algernon_Asimov - if you feel that I'm bashing Straya there, don't. AUS and NZ have made the most of their location and situation and reacted properly. Compare for example to the UK, another island nation.
Austria on the other hand deserves a way worse rep than the list gives them. They are a major cause for the fast spread of the virus all over europe. Germany can trace a lot of its cases to Ischgl, and many more countries can probably do the same. While that was not fully preventable, Austrian reaction of stalling and denying certainly made it a LOT worse.
Wow. So you're implying that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is taking direction from Donald Trump when he suggests we should have an international inquiry about the coronavirus? Even better, you...
I see Australia being the only one of those doing pretty damn good. Everyone else (except Norway) is running damn near last in the 'handling it well' category. If I (as a corrupt country who can exert lots of power over other countries) were doing very poorly, and wished to make a political rival who is not-14-eyes look bad, I would probably ask the best-performing 'close ally' to initiate proceedings as it gives an air of credibility and conceal the underlying motives.
Wow. So you're implying that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is taking direction from Donald Trump when he suggests we should have an international inquiry about the coronavirus? Even better, you think Donald Trump has enough sense to think of using someone else to front this?
I simply can't argue against such a ridiculous proposition.
Regarding herd immunity: R0 isn't irrelevant for herd immunity. It basically determines how many people need to be immune for herd immunity to work. If R0 is 20, you need 95% immunity (100%/20 =...
Regarding herd immunity: R0 isn't irrelevant for herd immunity. It basically determines how many people need to be immune for herd immunity to work. If R0 is 20, you need 95% immunity (100%/20 = 5%). So the higher it is, the worse.
My second point is that herd immunity is far off, even in the US. If you need 60% immunity and assume the lower estimate of 0.5% infection fatality rate, natural herd immunity will cost you .3% of your population. For the US, that is one million people. You're 6% of the way there, sweden is similar, italy at 10%. These calculations are naive and assume no preventable deaths occured. A preventable death won't help you in your quest towards herd immunity. I have no numbers for how many deaths in those countries were preventable, but I guess sweden would fare best. (German numbers indicate one out of three people will not leave the ICU alive under the local, tame circumstances. Assuming all people that die, die in ICUs and people in ICU would die without care, deaths could be about 3x as high as the assumed optimal infection fatality rate.) My estimate also doesn't take into account that under some circumstances, non-pharmaceutical interventions could improve the fatality rate. A proposed mechanism is: better hygiene -> less initial virus dosage -> less severe illness -> fewer deaths. If this results in immunities too, that's really good.
Just in case that didn't set in: The US is expected to see at least a million excess deaths until herd immunity sets in. New york City isn't even there yet (about 2/3 of the way), even if we...
Just in case that didn't set in: The US is expected to see at least a million excess deaths until herd immunity sets in. New york City isn't even there yet (about 2/3 of the way), even if we assume that no deaths occurred that were preventable with less overburdened hospitals. Any kind of reopening that occurs before sufficient traceability of all current cases is reached is too early and can cause a second wave.
I think the US is in a major pickle because the lockdowns aren't working as they should due to people breaking orders. That way the disease keeps simmering while the population is suffering. That's no good. The disease must be stopped. I do not think herd immunity is a realistic prospect.
Btw: The "6% of the way there" I used: 100% would mean not 100% are immune, but 100% of the needed population are immune. So with those figures, you need to get to 100, not 60. Just to clarify.
Hammer and Dance. No huge events. Max 50 people, only with complete list of participants. Until vaccination is available. Limits should be even lower where risk is higher. No 49 elderly people...
What is your alternative?
Hammer and Dance.
No huge events. Max 50 people, only with complete list of participants. Until vaccination is available. Limits should be even lower where risk is higher. No 49 elderly people meeting in NYC.
Give them an inch: Relax restrictions to allow some low-risk activities. Allow limited quarantine-breaking with only limited persons. I.e. seeing your partner or close family. Allow some amount of shopping where distancing can be maintained better. Further restrictions are necessary here and there to adjust. So prohibit known-risky behaviors while allowing some presumed-safe behaviors that were caught up in the initial attack. This is to ensure the population has the stamina to keep up the distancing until 5) happens.
2.5) To further boost adherence: You guys need a massive program to educate the masses about WTF is going on. I'm talking once a day put Bill Nye on a conference call with Dr. Fauci. Make a podcast out of that. Get push notifications onto people's phones with govt. sitreps and instructions. Probably a lot more than that, but that's what comes to mind.
Do not let them take a mile. Bring down the hammer on people breaking quarantine, and do it hard. This will only be necessary for a relatively brief while to let case numbers cool down. It can be done adaptively depending on the local virus load, so less restrictions where things go well. In any case, the goal is a daily case count that can be traced by health authorities. Have the cops crash people's BBQs.
At the same time - boost health authorities' capabilities. They need to be able to trace many cases, even if people are fuckwits or uncooperative or both. Maybe they just need extra personnel or they need more powers if people are uncooperative. I dunno.
Once the cases drop to within health authority's reach - trace aggressively. This is also the time to be harsher with quarantining incoming travellers.
After that, relax restrictions, but slowly. Try to estimate risk of relaxations and do a proper risk-reward-tradeoff. If you're taking a big-ish risk, wait until you can see the consequence in the numbers before starting more relaxations. Usually, this means waiting 2 weeks between relaxations. Combine with a lot of testing.
The goal is to reach a state where you can control the community spread dynamically. You can allow as much freedom as possible but can restrict it more when necessary. Hit it hard now, then keep a sustainable level of locked-down-ness later. Use research (domestic and from abroad) to understand what dangers there are and what behaviors are safe; use that to guide policy of what to allow or prohibit.
I'm not saying this is easy, neither for the politicians handling it nor for the population executing it. But it's (imo) the path of least harm. I have little faith in the current administration to effectively handle this crisis; it's in the states' hands at this point.
The U.S. isn't New Zealand, there is no way to eliminate external input into the system.
Use contact tracing and quarantining as needed. The idea is not to eliminate all cases and go back to status quo ante, it is to reduce R to <0 in a way that can be sustained. With enough testing, localized outbreaks are tolerable. If the border regions end up being a problem, it'll not be unsolvable, but we'll be in a better position to handle it once we actually see the problem.
Ask the actual experts. There's studies on the mobility of the virus in air-conditioned restaurants. That should guide the restrictions regarding distance of seating groups. Probably want to add...
Ask the actual experts. There's studies on the mobility of the virus in air-conditioned restaurants. That should guide the restrictions regarding distance of seating groups. Probably want to add some traceability too, so that waiters can identify customers and customers can identify waiters if the need for contact tracing arises. If one can not be done, I'd say to only allow it for the sake of experimenting what is and isn't safe.
Bars seem very unsanitary to me, I'd say that's a no.
Movie theaters... I have no idea how good the air conditioning is there, so I can't say whether seating distance will help at all.
Well said. The liberties we gave up in the past in response to fear of 'it happening again' are unlikely to be clawed back without serious internal strife.
Well said. The liberties we gave up in the past in response to fear of 'it happening again' are unlikely to be clawed back without serious internal strife.
Imo that depends a whole lot on what kind of freedoms and how they're given up. Patriot act? Yeah, you're not getting rid of that one, sorry mate. Me giving up my right to privacy by voluntarily...
Imo that depends a whole lot on what kind of freedoms and how they're given up. Patriot act? Yeah, you're not getting rid of that one, sorry mate.
Me giving up my right to privacy by voluntarily installing a contact tracing app? Well, I'll just uninstall it.
A freedom given up on an individual basis is one I can take back on an individual basis. One we give up collectively is also only taken back collectively. The latter takes longer and is a bigger struggle.
It's only an API, and doesn't transmit any location data - in fact, it doesn't even USE location data. I'm very curious what it is about the Apple-Google framework that you object to? From a...
It's only an API, and doesn't transmit any location data - in fact, it doesn't even USE location data. I'm very curious what it is about the Apple-Google framework that you object to? From a privacy standpoint it actually seems reasonable to me. In fact they have an incentive to make it non-invasive, as more people will be willing to use it.
We do. Cryptography and ITSec can provide strong guarantees. It's just that these are very hard to achieve in practice. We have an encryption algorithm that can guarantee confidentiality of the...
We have no idea what "anonymous" or encrypted activities will be cracked by the surveillance state a year down the line.
We do. Cryptography and ITSec can provide strong guarantees. It's just that these are very hard to achieve in practice. We have an encryption algorithm that can guarantee confidentiality of the payload as long as the key is kept secret. The problem is that the key needs to be at least as long as the payload. In practice that means that you can securely exchange limited quantities of information over an untrusted channel as long as you previously exchanged the key over a known good one. Give your pal a key on a thumbdrive and you're good as long as you trust both your computers. Or do the decryption manually if you don't, it's not that hard to do. (One Time Pad) And I mean it's literally impossible, as in 1+1=3 impossible. Math says no. There's no way you can crack this encryption because the ciphertext provably does not contain any information about the plaintext.
A similar argument works for the model children of contact tracing apps: Your phone just shouts random numbers into the world. There's no information therein, therefore no leak. The app only starts leaking once you tell the world that those numbers belong to someone who later got infected. That's where the strong proofs end. The model children again will not force you to divulge that info. That way, you stay completely off the grid. Even if you don't warn people if you're found infected, at least you yourself get warned. So "leeching" still provides a benefit to society.
And as said, the API itself doesn't do anything. It's literally code on your phone that is not being run until you install an app that plugs into it. Us code monkeys call such software a library, which is rather apt. A book on the shelf doesn't do anything until someone comes along and uses it, then it becomes a whole bunch of useful knowledge but is still passive in itself.
Those are fair points of course. I think I disagree that something like this should really be considered tracking in a meaningful sense, provided the system is implemented and maintained as...
Those are fair points of course. I think I disagree that something like this should really be considered tracking in a meaningful sense, provided the system is implemented and maintained as planned. Obviously data breaches, either by hackers or intelligence agencies, can greatly alter how invasive these systems are. But in principle, as this framework is currently defined, no information is even transmitted off of your phone to a centralized location that can be used to quantify your movements or activities. The only piece of information that gets sent to central servers is a) a unique identifier for your phone and b) an indicator of whether or not you've tested positive, which is ultimately optional to even transmit. Everything else is done phone-to-phone using Bluetooth. I'm generally pretty tuned in to privacy concerns, and I think that this framework is actually pretty good, and definitely much better than one could have hope for coming from Google and Apple.
I obviously agree with the point that what is secure now could easily be cracked down the line, but in my opinion that concern is 'so true' that it is much to broad to let it influence decisions now. If future vulnerabilities are a concern, then probably the only computer that is truly secure is one that is currently air-gapped and will never be connected to a network in the future, even in principle. That may be true, but I don't think many would find that to be a suitable metric for evaluating privacy concerns today. Just my two cents.
It is also only a API as far as I'm aware. It's just a piece of dead code sitting on your phone, doing literally nothing, until you add an app that uses it. Unless I'm wrong....?
It is also only a API as far as I'm aware. It's just a piece of dead code sitting on your phone, doing literally nothing, until you add an app that uses it.
You think you had privacy before installing that app? Remember Snowden's whistleblowing back in 2013? If you are in the USA, or one of the other 14-eyes countries, your country (and the other 13,...
You think you had privacy before installing that app? Remember Snowden's whistleblowing back in 2013? If you are in the USA, or one of the other 14-eyes countries, your country (and the other 13, and maybe more since then) has had this information for decades, you just are just able to get a glimpse of it as a consumer now.
There are a lot of freedoms that have been taken away because of fear, but I haven't the time to dig them all up. Research about how drastically more authoritarian schools became post-Columbine. I am not making this claim (haven't seen any studies), but I wouldn't be surprised if the schools that experienced subsequent school shootings were also more authoritarian than the ones that didn't.
I hope you see how your argument misses my point? Sure my right to privacy is being violated, and no, I don't believe I have privacy from nation state adversaries. But my point is about...
I hope you see how your argument misses my point? Sure my right to privacy is being violated, and no, I don't believe I have privacy from nation state adversaries.
But my point is about restrictions on a voluntary and individual basis vs. non-voluntary, collective restrictions. Intelligence services generally belong into the latter category.
What I'm saying on the matter of corona is: If we, individually and together, decide that voluntarily installing a tracing app is worth it, there's little reason or possibility of politicians to pass a law that forces us to. If everyone is already using the app (but doesn't really like it...?), making it mandatory is political suicide. Therefore, no law. Therefore, we can stop using the app if the situation improves. Individually giving up liberties now in a controlled manner can stop the uncontrolled removal of those liberties.
It sounds bad, but man I get 'Iraq war' vibes from this in an awful way.
While I trust many countries wouldn't have done this....would the USA be one of them? If not, it really makes me question if this is good-faith and honest dissemination of information. The state depts have lied about and hidden far more before, when that info didn't fit a narrative. Should we trust this information considering Trump and cronies have been priming the pump with racist rhetoric. Already initiated one trade war against China, why not sanctions?
Hell, they could be itching for another war. War is the ultimate hail-mary play to win an election that otherwise would be lost.
Is it inherintly immoral? China was looking out for its best interest, and possibly the world's by trying to contain quickly.
It just feels super sketchy that the country that is taking the longest to contain is pushing blame on other countries. Sure the USA hasn't had the same death rate as others, but that's also impacted by other factors. Almost every other country was able to contain faster, and the best prepared (like South Korea) was able to keep the death toll far lower.
Perhaps this importing was just a byproduct of China trying to respond quickly knowing how bad SARs was, and seeing how much of a symptom lag there was this time.
From the very onset it was pretty obvious this was a very big problem. The world should have locked down immediately, instead of waiting for cases to appear.
COVID-19 is a collective, worldwide failure of emergency protocol. Trying to blame and shame is petty and is a redirection move to absolve our own country's failures.
But it's not just the USA. A lot of countries are lining up to criticise China's handling of the pandemic. And Australia is leading the charge - even though we have no failures to be absolved from. We're one of the best countries world in this pandemic; we have no need to shift blame.
This isn't an attempt to direct attention away from other countries' domestic problems. This is acknowledging that China messed up the initial handling of this pandemic which didn't need to be a pandemic.
I'm not suggesting China didn't mishandle in various fashions. However....
Trump has been pushing this 'China did it and needs to pay' narrative for quite some time. Most of the countries calling for investigations do have deep alliances with the USA. And it's always risky to resist USA demands, given size of military. Who knows what private conversations occured leading up to this. If the USA is pushing a narrative, it would make sense for the 'call to action' to come from another country to give a sense of legitimacy. Hell, that was half the plot of the Star Wars prequels.... A trade war leading into military action and a pawn calling for temporary dictatorship powers in the name of stability...oh god we really are in the worst timeline.
China is claiming this was a military action by the USA, which the USA denies. It's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. The USA has a long, well documented history of overt and covert military interventions to provide USA-friendly outcomes regardless of the impacted citizen's lives.
So if the USA or USA allies are running an investigation where they have an incentive to conceal the whole truth, is that not a tremendous conflict of interest? Again it smells of 'Here's our proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.'
And I like to invoke Occums razor: If China is looking to play hero, would it really fit their narrative to be 'the cause of the pandemic'? It really seems more likely that the countries that really despise losing money would want to force crippling reparations to be paid over discovering the truth.
Well said. I was going to point out too on "And Australia is leading the charge" that Australia hasn't had an independent foreign policy since the 1975 overthrow.
https://theconversation.com/worried-about-agents-of-foreign-influence-just-look-at-who-owns-australias-biggest-companies-123343
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence
I know I'm taking a risk, and this will probably get messy, but I'm going in anyway! I can't let this statement stand unchallenged.
It was a legal action, taken by the Queen's representative to resolve a constitutional crisis. It was hardly an "overthrow".
That might be the USA's motivation for an investigation. I doubt it's the motivation for France or Germany. And it's definitely not Australia's motivation.
The USA is no longer the centre of the universe. Other countries are figuring out they need to do for themselves while there's a fool in the White House, implementing an "America First" policy.
Just because something applies to the USA, we can no longer assume it applies to the USA's so-called "allies".
This will not, and cannot be true until there are multiple countries with equivalent military firepower. Since the phrase was coined, the USA follows many principles of 'Speak softly, carry a big stick'. Adversaries dare not substantially lash out in the face of blatant acts of war (eg: Iran leader assasinations). Allies play ball to get their own itches scratched.
If your country is one of the 14 eyes, if they are acting together against a non-14 eyes country, there is a good reason to be skeptical. Every country you listed thus far is one of them.
Edit: See my other post which is kind of a continuation of this post.
The centre of the universe is not decided solely by who has the biggest or most guns. Money also carries a lot of power - and China has a lot of money. The European Union is another centre of power in the world.
Just because Australia works with the USA, that doesn't mean we follow its every move or obey its every order.
Money is a false power, it is a social construct that is only as valuable as people imagine it to be.
China could own 99.9% of the USA on paper. The USA, could, in less than a week, pass legislation to the effect of 'Effective immediately all debt/money/whatever owned by China is null and void. Anybody who is found to be honoring the now void currency will have a nuke dropped on their largest city.'
I realize this is a very hyperbolic example, but these sorts of plays happen all the time on smaller scales.
There is a very good reason the USA gets very hostile to countries that don't play ball, esp with respect to the petrodollar.
Addressing this point specifically, I would personally give that honor to South Korea for swift action and prepared medical care. They should be the leaders for how to move forward.
That's definitely true but I think more than one country can be "one of the best", no?
I specifically and carefully wrote that Australia is "one of the best" countries. Not the best: one of the best.
That's fair, I wrote that as an afterthought after missing 'one of'. And I hadn't looked at the data recently, but I figure I'll look again.
With the giant grain of salt, because I am assuming the figures presented here are reasonably accurate with no additional research. Countries below 100 deaths might not be accurate and are excluded (I know it's arbitrary but I needed a cutoff somewhere), except Australia because it's central to the discussion.
This isn't exactly scientific, although I would welcome someone with more time to do a more thorough analysis...In particular I'd love these stats weighted against population density, total cases, time before flattening the curve as well. I understand death rate/million pop doesn't tell whole picture, but it does give a rough glance to who is doing well and who is not.
See my other post about the 14 eyes countries, and plausible scenarios. I bolded those countries (at least the ones that made cutoff). See anything....odd? I see Australia being the only one of those doing pretty damn good. Everyone else (except Norway) is running damn near last in the 'handling it well' category. If I (as a corrupt country who can exert lots of power over other countries) were doing very poorly, and wished to make a political rival who is not-14-eyes look bad, I would probably ask the best-performing 'close ally' to initiate proceedings as it gives an air of credibility and conceal the underlying motives.
Edit: Holy hell, I didn't mean to write this wall of text. My mind rambled as I started typing, and it lead down this rabbit hole. I apologize for that.
Do consider in your evaluation that the countries you're listing can have drastically different manners of counting the dead. I have little faith in poor, densely populated countries (top of the list) to get a full tally of the dead. Others, I'm reasonably certain are lying through their teeth. (iran maybe) Some countries are also fairly unlucky. Island states (South korea is a de facto island state) have a big advantage, while the EU for example has a bit of a disadvantage. Your list is a list of "how bad we believe it is with all that taken into account". So some countries are actually faring better or worse because their situation makes it harder or easier.
@Algernon_Asimov - if you feel that I'm bashing Straya there, don't. AUS and NZ have made the most of their location and situation and reacted properly. Compare for example to the UK, another island nation.
Austria on the other hand deserves a way worse rep than the list gives them. They are a major cause for the fast spread of the virus all over europe. Germany can trace a lot of its cases to Ischgl, and many more countries can probably do the same. While that was not fully preventable, Austrian reaction of stalling and denying certainly made it a LOT worse.
Wow. So you're implying that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is taking direction from Donald Trump when he suggests we should have an international inquiry about the coronavirus? Even better, you think Donald Trump has enough sense to think of using someone else to front this?
I simply can't argue against such a ridiculous proposition.
You can keep believing that, if you want.
Regarding herd immunity: R0 isn't irrelevant for herd immunity. It basically determines how many people need to be immune for herd immunity to work. If R0 is 20, you need 95% immunity (100%/20 = 5%). So the higher it is, the worse.
My second point is that herd immunity is far off, even in the US. If you need 60% immunity and assume the lower estimate of 0.5% infection fatality rate, natural herd immunity will cost you .3% of your population. For the US, that is one million people. You're 6% of the way there, sweden is similar, italy at 10%. These calculations are naive and assume no preventable deaths occured. A preventable death won't help you in your quest towards herd immunity. I have no numbers for how many deaths in those countries were preventable, but I guess sweden would fare best. (German numbers indicate one out of three people will not leave the ICU alive under the local, tame circumstances. Assuming all people that die, die in ICUs and people in ICU would die without care, deaths could be about 3x as high as the assumed optimal infection fatality rate.) My estimate also doesn't take into account that under some circumstances, non-pharmaceutical interventions could improve the fatality rate. A proposed mechanism is: better hygiene -> less initial virus dosage -> less severe illness -> fewer deaths. If this results in immunities too, that's really good.
Just in case that didn't set in: The US is expected to see at least a million excess deaths until herd immunity sets in. New york City isn't even there yet (about 2/3 of the way), even if we assume that no deaths occurred that were preventable with less overburdened hospitals. Any kind of reopening that occurs before sufficient traceability of all current cases is reached is too early and can cause a second wave.
I think the US is in a major pickle because the lockdowns aren't working as they should due to people breaking orders. That way the disease keeps simmering while the population is suffering. That's no good. The disease must be stopped. I do not think herd immunity is a realistic prospect.
Btw: The "6% of the way there" I used: 100% would mean not 100% are immune, but 100% of the needed population are immune. So with those figures, you need to get to 100, not 60. Just to clarify.
Hammer and Dance.
No huge events. Max 50 people, only with complete list of participants. Until vaccination is available. Limits should be even lower where risk is higher. No 49 elderly people meeting in NYC.
Give them an inch: Relax restrictions to allow some low-risk activities. Allow limited quarantine-breaking with only limited persons. I.e. seeing your partner or close family. Allow some amount of shopping where distancing can be maintained better. Further restrictions are necessary here and there to adjust. So prohibit known-risky behaviors while allowing some presumed-safe behaviors that were caught up in the initial attack. This is to ensure the population has the stamina to keep up the distancing until 5) happens.
2.5) To further boost adherence: You guys need a massive program to educate the masses about WTF is going on. I'm talking once a day put Bill Nye on a conference call with Dr. Fauci. Make a podcast out of that. Get push notifications onto people's phones with govt. sitreps and instructions. Probably a lot more than that, but that's what comes to mind.
Do not let them take a mile. Bring down the hammer on people breaking quarantine, and do it hard. This will only be necessary for a relatively brief while to let case numbers cool down. It can be done adaptively depending on the local virus load, so less restrictions where things go well. In any case, the goal is a daily case count that can be traced by health authorities. Have the cops crash people's BBQs.
At the same time - boost health authorities' capabilities. They need to be able to trace many cases, even if people are fuckwits or uncooperative or both. Maybe they just need extra personnel or they need more powers if people are uncooperative. I dunno.
Once the cases drop to within health authority's reach - trace aggressively. This is also the time to be harsher with quarantining incoming travellers.
After that, relax restrictions, but slowly. Try to estimate risk of relaxations and do a proper risk-reward-tradeoff. If you're taking a big-ish risk, wait until you can see the consequence in the numbers before starting more relaxations. Usually, this means waiting 2 weeks between relaxations. Combine with a lot of testing.
The goal is to reach a state where you can control the community spread dynamically. You can allow as much freedom as possible but can restrict it more when necessary. Hit it hard now, then keep a sustainable level of locked-down-ness later. Use research (domestic and from abroad) to understand what dangers there are and what behaviors are safe; use that to guide policy of what to allow or prohibit.
I'm not saying this is easy, neither for the politicians handling it nor for the population executing it. But it's (imo) the path of least harm. I have little faith in the current administration to effectively handle this crisis; it's in the states' hands at this point.
Use contact tracing and quarantining as needed. The idea is not to eliminate all cases and go back to status quo ante, it is to reduce R to <0 in a way that can be sustained. With enough testing, localized outbreaks are tolerable. If the border regions end up being a problem, it'll not be unsolvable, but we'll be in a better position to handle it once we actually see the problem.
Ask the actual experts. There's studies on the mobility of the virus in air-conditioned restaurants. That should guide the restrictions regarding distance of seating groups. Probably want to add some traceability too, so that waiters can identify customers and customers can identify waiters if the need for contact tracing arises. If one can not be done, I'd say to only allow it for the sake of experimenting what is and isn't safe.
Bars seem very unsanitary to me, I'd say that's a no.
Movie theaters... I have no idea how good the air conditioning is there, so I can't say whether seating distance will help at all.
Well said. The liberties we gave up in the past in response to fear of 'it happening again' are unlikely to be clawed back without serious internal strife.
Imo that depends a whole lot on what kind of freedoms and how they're given up. Patriot act? Yeah, you're not getting rid of that one, sorry mate.
Me giving up my right to privacy by voluntarily installing a contact tracing app? Well, I'll just uninstall it.
A freedom given up on an individual basis is one I can take back on an individual basis. One we give up collectively is also only taken back collectively. The latter takes longer and is a bigger struggle.
It's only an API, and doesn't transmit any location data - in fact, it doesn't even USE location data. I'm very curious what it is about the Apple-Google framework that you object to? From a privacy standpoint it actually seems reasonable to me. In fact they have an incentive to make it non-invasive, as more people will be willing to use it.
We do. Cryptography and ITSec can provide strong guarantees. It's just that these are very hard to achieve in practice. We have an encryption algorithm that can guarantee confidentiality of the payload as long as the key is kept secret. The problem is that the key needs to be at least as long as the payload. In practice that means that you can securely exchange limited quantities of information over an untrusted channel as long as you previously exchanged the key over a known good one. Give your pal a key on a thumbdrive and you're good as long as you trust both your computers. Or do the decryption manually if you don't, it's not that hard to do. (One Time Pad) And I mean it's literally impossible, as in 1+1=3 impossible. Math says no. There's no way you can crack this encryption because the ciphertext provably does not contain any information about the plaintext.
A similar argument works for the model children of contact tracing apps: Your phone just shouts random numbers into the world. There's no information therein, therefore no leak. The app only starts leaking once you tell the world that those numbers belong to someone who later got infected. That's where the strong proofs end. The model children again will not force you to divulge that info. That way, you stay completely off the grid. Even if you don't warn people if you're found infected, at least you yourself get warned. So "leeching" still provides a benefit to society.
And as said, the API itself doesn't do anything. It's literally code on your phone that is not being run until you install an app that plugs into it. Us code monkeys call such software a library, which is rather apt. A book on the shelf doesn't do anything until someone comes along and uses it, then it becomes a whole bunch of useful knowledge but is still passive in itself.
Those are fair points of course. I think I disagree that something like this should really be considered tracking in a meaningful sense, provided the system is implemented and maintained as planned. Obviously data breaches, either by hackers or intelligence agencies, can greatly alter how invasive these systems are. But in principle, as this framework is currently defined, no information is even transmitted off of your phone to a centralized location that can be used to quantify your movements or activities. The only piece of information that gets sent to central servers is a) a unique identifier for your phone and b) an indicator of whether or not you've tested positive, which is ultimately optional to even transmit. Everything else is done phone-to-phone using Bluetooth. I'm generally pretty tuned in to privacy concerns, and I think that this framework is actually pretty good, and definitely much better than one could have hope for coming from Google and Apple.
I obviously agree with the point that what is secure now could easily be cracked down the line, but in my opinion that concern is 'so true' that it is much to broad to let it influence decisions now. If future vulnerabilities are a concern, then probably the only computer that is truly secure is one that is currently air-gapped and will never be connected to a network in the future, even in principle. That may be true, but I don't think many would find that to be a suitable metric for evaluating privacy concerns today. Just my two cents.
It is also only a API as far as I'm aware. It's just a piece of dead code sitting on your phone, doing literally nothing, until you add an app that uses it.
Unless I'm wrong....?
You think you had privacy before installing that app? Remember Snowden's whistleblowing back in 2013? If you are in the USA, or one of the other 14-eyes countries, your country (and the other 13, and maybe more since then) has had this information for decades, you just are just able to get a glimpse of it as a consumer now.
There are a lot of freedoms that have been taken away because of fear, but I haven't the time to dig them all up. Research about how drastically more authoritarian schools became post-Columbine. I am not making this claim (haven't seen any studies), but I wouldn't be surprised if the schools that experienced subsequent school shootings were also more authoritarian than the ones that didn't.
I hope you see how your argument misses my point? Sure my right to privacy is being violated, and no, I don't believe I have privacy from nation state adversaries.
But my point is about restrictions on a voluntary and individual basis vs. non-voluntary, collective restrictions. Intelligence services generally belong into the latter category.
What I'm saying on the matter of corona is: If we, individually and together, decide that voluntarily installing a tracing app is worth it, there's little reason or possibility of politicians to pass a law that forces us to. If everyone is already using the app (but doesn't really like it...?), making it mandatory is political suicide. Therefore, no law. Therefore, we can stop using the app if the situation improves. Individually giving up liberties now in a controlled manner can stop the uncontrolled removal of those liberties.