Coronavirus

July 2024 Forums General discussion Coronavirus

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  • #199615
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    The USA is the country of the conspiracy theory, everything is explained thru a conspiracy including the famous phrase of the Deep State created by the right-wingers too, but they never go the real root of the real problem which is capitalism, it is like the Nazis who always blamed all the problems on the Jews and the Communists but they never blamed the problem on capitalism, and still, the neo-Nazis continue doing the same thing, now the new topic are the Federal Reserve

    #199618
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Long live our great leader Groucho Marx.

    Chico and Harpo be with you too, in Marxismus spiritu sancti

    #199619
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    And there are the new Nazi left (Strasserism).

    #199669
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Scientists complain about the science. It seems as if experts are suffering the exact same problem as we have found – the unreliability and lack of access to actual facts.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/scientists-criticise-uk-government-over-following-the-science

    Prof Mark Woolhouse, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, said modelling had had a disproportionate influence. “I do think scientific advice is driven far too much by epidemiology – and I’m an epidemiologist. “What we’re not talking about in the same formal, quantitative way are the economic costs, the social costs, the psychological costs of being under lockdown,” he said. “I understand that the government is being advised by economists, psychiatrists and others, but we’re not seeing what that science is telling them. I find that very puzzling.”

    Woolhouse said that while it was understandable that saving lives was the top priority, the idea of doing this at any cost was naive. “With any disease there is a trade-off…”

    “The government isn’t using expertise simply to validate claims, it also appears to be using it as an insurance policy,” Prof Christina Boswell, a political scientist at the University of Edinburgh, wrote this week. “If things go wrong – and the curve gets too steep – it will be the scientific advice that is to blame.”

    #199698
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    More than one in five New Yorkers may have already had the new coronavirus, a testing sample showed Thursday, suggesting infections are much higher than confirmed cases suggest.

    Those would translate to roughly 2.6 million people state-wide and around 1.7 million people in the Big Apple as having already had the new coronavirus.

    There are uncertainties about the accuracy of antibody tests and the sample was small. But Cuomo noted that, if the data played out across the state it would mean that the death rate for COVID-19 there was only 0.5 percent.

    https://www.france24.com/en/20200423-fifth-of-new-yorkers-infected-with-covid-19-antibody-test-suggests

    #199713
    ALB
    Keymaster

    So that people here can get a flavour of some of the conspiracy theories circulating, here’s a email we’ve received at Head Office (from someone in fact who is a subscriber to the Socialist Standard):

    “The Covid-19 lockdown is a global power grab – pure and simple. The incremental steps towards a new world order has taken a giant stride forward with no going back. Economies worldwide have been destroyed by governments during a period when deaths globally are at normal levels. As science journalist, Peter Andrews, states, “Covid-19’s meant to be a new Black Death, but in Britain no more people are dying than normal. What does this say about the virus?​” As Dr John Lee, a recently retired NHS consultant and professor of pathology says, writing in the Spectator, ‘’We have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world’’. So what’s it all about? It’s a false flag emergency that has been opportunistically created to curtail civil liberties across the planet, to roll out the globalist agenda at a faster pace (see Agenda 30, World Government Summit, etc).”

    #199714
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    “New world order” is a favourite phrase of conspiracists. (Conspiracy “theorist” wrongly dignifies these idiocies as “theory”).
    So what about the “old” world order – the one we suffer under already, and have done for a couple of centuries give or take? It’s name is capitalism, by the way, and it’s bloody awful.
    Roll on the yet to be attained new world order: global indeed. Or do the conspiracists want a return to the fragmentarism of 1914, the fragmentarism we have got (nationalism) still?
    In fact, conspiracists tend to be or become nationalists, many racist even (or – the leftist ones – in the state of becoming so).

    #199717
    Dave B
    Participant

    I object to this automatic sneering contempt for all conspiracy theories,

     

     

    As I find a lot of problem solving scientists, good computer programmers and engineers who work in the real world do.

     

    It is properly called hypothesis testing; as long as it is logical and disprovable it is OK.

     

    Often the answers to big head banging problems are the least expected and can be quite incredible.

     

    All it requires is for the premises to be ‘logical’.

     

     

    In the one Adam gave , which I don’t agree with at the moment; are the capitalist class a bunch of bastards and would some of them like to atomise us and keep us in a north Korean kind of police state and total mind control.

     

    It is a bit too much of an extreme extrapolation of Chomsky material on the “bewildered herd” stuff for me.

     

    But it is written down there in theoretical advice for the ruling class and well read by its technocrats eg Walter Lipmann.

     

    It is amazing that a lot of the early people to push back on the civil liberties came from the libertarian right wing.

     

    And you end up finding the real “Anarchists” in the Spectator ,Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday!

     

     

    But I appreciate that Adam doesn’t read that kind of stuff.

     

    I actually think at the moment this has been caused a very complex set of affects and not consciously coordinated.

     

    As is often the case, taken for example from Engelist theory, you can have a powder keg of material conditions and then a spark.

     

    We obviously must start off by blaming capitalist so I think the following could be something to begin with perhaps as a contributing factor.

     

    We can be incredibly obtuse here; so to reiterate this is definitely not a sole cause!

     

    Covid-19: Check the Source of your Information!   War against…  Corruption?

     

    …..Introduction

    I am not a conspiracy theorist.  I am not a great fan of social media, blogs or controversy on the Internet; nor am I a journalist, at least not by profession.

    I am a doctor……….

     

     

    It is on the GlobalResearch site.

     

     

    Just please spare me the stuff about it being a site for paedophiles, flat earthers and Christian creationists.

     

    It is very patchy in content but you can get very good articles; you just patience and intelligence to find them.

     

    I found one there on RT-PCR by someone who knew how it worked !

     

    I haven’t read it today and by the way they were very slow to pick up on the covid hoax stuff and were parroting the BBC amd mainstream media line for sometime.

     

     

    There also this;is of more “conspiracy theory type stuff” on the same site from 21<sup>st</sup> of April taken from offguardian

     

    Coronavirus Lockdown and What You Are Not Being Told

     

    I am not sure what it is with people maybe I am just used to ploughing through stuff and just picking out the material that intrigues me as I have to do it as part of my job all the time.

     

    There are yet more falsehoods in some of the above posts but I can’t be bothered with fighting with people whose sole source and internet links are the BBC and the Guardian.

     

    I have got quite interested in this epidemiology thing now and have read about 50 scientific papers written by the big boys.

     

    It is like a test, if you can follow them you have a good grasp of the subject.

     

    It is a bit weird really as it is or has been pretty much an observational, predictive but non interventionist science I suppose like astronomy.

     

    It is not like chemistry and engineering where we can make stuff happen.

     

    The Swedes were perfectly correct when they said it is not us that are carrying out an experiment it is you.

     

    The non Lockdown Belarus data is going to be interesting I think ; they are probably early on and seem to be doing a lot of testing so it is not quite the banana republic as I expected even though the president is a bit of a nutter I think.

     

    And The Russians are doing a lot and there data looks good as in matching ; I need to look at it properly later.

     

    I am going to have to take this because I do have serious PSTD.

     

    I am scared panicked and hysterically really anxious about what your lockdown is going to do.

    #199718
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    I do hold some sympathy for DaveB’s view on lockdowns.

    It may be okay for suburbans in semi-detaches with gardens with occupations that can be adapted to home-working but what if you live in a high-rise flat and just had your income cut by 20%? Your budget doesn’t go to bulk buying.

    For those around the world living in shanty-towns, ghettoes and slums, lockdowns appear only to be working only by the deployment of police and army. In Nigeria more have died from being shot by police for breaking imposed curfews than from coronavirus.

    In Africa, Latin America and in Asia where many are in poverty, living cheek to jowl, who are more likely to have whole families sharing just one crowded room and different families sharing facilities, lockdown is simply not working as it should. They rely on a daily income and governments are failing to distribute adequate financial assistance. In India, many thousands have been penned up under conditions worse than a refugee camp. It is only a matter of time before many other infectious illnesses appear.

    The link in my message #199669 shows that other expert opinion has cast doubt on the lockdown where the government is ignoring the detrimental effects of it…not just the economic impact but the psychological downside.

    That as DaveB is suggesting the State is accepting for political convenience (rather than advantage)  just one side of the scientific view and dismissing all others.

    Lockdowns are class-based more than we are willing to admit. If I was ungenerous, I could say it is the “middle-class” protecting themselves from the great unwashed poor.

     

    #199720
    rodshaw
    Participant

    I think world governments are basically fumbling around, but on the whole following the best scientific and medical advice available on this one specific issue (which makes a change) to try and do the least harm to capitalism as a whole while also having an eye to their re-election chances. They don’t want to be seen to be messing things up.

    I don’t think any of them will shed tears about older people dying off or about stricter population controls, but of course if any politicians can be seen to be ‘saving’ their local health services and causing the least deaths possible they will make political capital out of it later.

    Labour are of course whingeing that the Tories aren’t doing enough. As if they would have done any better.

    Dave B, could you space your paragraphs more closely together? They are very difficult to read and because they are usually long I often give up half way through.

    #199726
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    My experience of conspiracists though is that they become enthusiastic about one “theory”, and then adopt the lot. They are “on a roll” or, as their jargon has it , “into the rabbit hole”. Once they get into the mode of following one internet guru they become followers per se of the latest thing going.

    #199733
    Dave B
    Participant

    for Scottish Alan

     

    As I mentioned Scotland earlier

     

    There are still some authentic journalist around obviously not at the BBC.

     

    They tend to work for some of these minor papers and not closely monitored tend yo go off script.

     

    Eg at the Scottish Herald.

     

    So it can be worth while looking at them sometimes.

     

    ….There is also disquiet among some public health professionals that the sheer severity of the lockdown measures, designed to curtail the virus and bring Covid fatalities under 20,000, will precipitate an excess of deaths from other causes.

     

    Modelling suggests at least 5,700 – but maybe far more – will die from side effects of this strategy.

     

    One Scotland-based expert, who has a background in flu pandemic planning for the NHS, said mass testing and contact tracing should have been introduced at a much earlier stage but that the apparent lethality of the virus globally owes much to the record numbers of elderly and sick people around the world who were “living on borrowed time as a result of modern medicines that extend their lives and reduce symptoms, but make them vulnerable to a novel zoonotic infection like this one”.

     

    Speaking on condition of anonymity, they added: “I believe we will have to pay a high price for this lockdown in terms of the backlog of clinical problems put on hold by GPs and hospitals; a rise in gender based violence; a return to abuse of children on the at-risk register who should be in school; a rise in mental health problems induced by isolation that will be most prevalent in those without access to space and outdoor greenery; a loss of jobs, particularly for the low paid; and the demise of businesses and even industries.

     

    “There is no doubt in my mind that this attempt to control a pandemic, for which planning was woefully inadequate from the beginning, will increase social inequalities in health.”

    #199740
    Bijou Drains
    Participant

    It is on the GlobalResearch site.

    Just please spare me the stuff about it being a site for paedophiles, flat earthers and Christian creationists.

    Why should the source of your information not be placed under scrutiny, surely as a sceptical worker, that’s what we should all be doing?

    Are you saying that whatever you post is beyond scrutiny?

    The website you quote from has some interesting videos

    • “The truth about 5G”,
    • “The Who is funded by Bog Pharma and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” (I don’t think they mean the band by the way, although by all accounts John Entwistle and Keith Moon were very aquainted with various forms of pharmaceuticals)
    • The seven step path from pandemic to totalitarianism

    That’s in a 2 minute search, I’m sure there are more weird and wacky articles in there as well.

    As to the article you point out:

    First of all the claim “I am a doctor” is used to give the writer credibility, I’ve worked with lots of doctors over the years, some good some bad, some complete fruit cakes and many who I wouldn’t trust to get to the bar and back withthe drinks without fucking it up. Incidentially the same “I am a Doctor” claim could have been made by Dr Harold Shipman, Dr Mengele, Dr Bodkin Adams, to name but a few.

    Looking at what he is saying, the jist is that the major health organisations are influenced by Big Pharma, they all have place men who have been in bed with big pharma for years and therefore are not the paragons of virtue that they claim to be, well there’s a surprise.

    Doctors at all levels have been targets for the profit seekers, every GP is visited by Medical Reps flogging their latest version of a particular medication and hopeing the GP will prescribe this instead of a rival brand. You only need to go into a GP surgery to see the table littered with note pads, coffee cups, etc. plastered with the names of the various brands of medicines. On the basis that this shows the GPs are corrupt and in bed with big pharma, would you automatically dismiss the advice of your GP. Would you claim that any advice given by him or her is automatically tainted and incorrect.

    AS stated the article’s main thrust is that as the national and supranational decision making bodies are up to their collective necks with pharmaceutical companies they are making decisions which suit Big Pharma. There is one pretty huge whole in this argument, Big Pharma haven’t got any treatments, or vaccines to sell.

    What does it profit them to have everyone locked up, it sould suit them more to have everyone out and about getting ill and increasing their profits?

    So the big question is why would big pharma try to use their influence to enforce a lockdown?

    So let’s look at what the article says about the lockdown (by the way it’s not mine or anybody else’s on here and I thought you were trying not to make this personal?)

    The article states:

    For example: The Belgian and French governments’ recent decision to enter a strict lockdown, as directed by CARE and SCIENSANO, was presented as a totally rational decision shared by scientists worldwide.

    But such was not the case.  It was neither rational nor defended by the global scientific community.

    A large number of physicians, professors, consultants and specialists were and still are opposed to the idea of locking up a healthy majority of the world’s population [27-28], and their opposition is based on scientific evidence.

    So who are these large number, in fact what does large number actually mean, so far as I can see he quotes the same 10 from the Off Guardian site you referred to earlier. So we have the same information being recycled as if it is new information.

    A quick look (I don’t have time for a thorough examination at the moment due to work commitments) at just one of these large numbers (10) of physicians gives us Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, a former Ship’s Doctor and SPD member of the German Parliament 1994 and 2009. A sort of left of centre, German, Liam Fox. A man who has not actively practiced medicine for almost 30 years and in whose former role in the 1980s as head of the Public Health Department  in Flensburg, was responsible for employing as a doctor the medical impostor Gert Postel, later revealed to be a postman by training.

    Our noble doctor also happens to be a member of Transparancy International Germany (TIG).

    TIG, on whose board of directors Wodarg serves, distanced itself from his statements on 17 March 2020: “Transparency International Germany rejects the sweeping criticism of board member Dr Wolfgang Wodarg of the government measures to protect the population from the corona virus. (…) Wolfgang Wodarg is speaking on this matter as a private individual and not in his capacity as a member of the Management Board. On March 25, 2020, the board decided to suspend his membership in the association “until further notice“, which means that Wodarg can no longer exercise any functions on the board or as head of the health working group for the time being. The Board of Directors will commission an independent committee to look into Wodarg’s statements about the Conora virus and to determine whether his behaviour has harmed the interests of Transparency International Germany.”

    Transparency Chairman Hartmut Bäumer said that the reason for this was that “Wodarg had expressed his views on “radical media” such as Rubikon, Geolitico, and in an interview with Eva Herman (Some background information, in August 2015, Herman published a conspiracy theory that claimed the European migrant Crisis was orchestrated by “powerful people in the finance sector” to eradicate the white, christian population of Europe and claimed that the September 11 attacks were a hoax, think sort of right wing David Icke without the tin foil hat), all of “which regularly work with conspiracy theories, with anti-democratic and sometimes anti-Semitic prejudices” and “oppose the basic democratic principles of Transparency”; while “some of them are personally close to the AfD.”

    Sounds like a lovely bloke.

     

    #199744
    Dave B
    Participant

    I mentioned Dr Wolfgang Wodarg earlier and provided a youtube from him and provided what was being said about him eg anti Semitism etc

    I would like to see the evidence for that

    it is possible he hasn’t been very clever when it comes to places his views are going onto.

     

    I really don’t know;  they do do this to people they don’t like like Assange.

    he has spent a longtime in the German SDP and exposed the swineflu hoax of 2009/10

     

     

     

    #199745
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Italy’s lockdown is the strictest and longest in Europe.

    Doctors say both things are creating a mental health emergency. Red Cross staff say they’re overwhelmed by calls from people struggling. Psychologists are warning that Italy is not equipped to deal with the crisis, and that the rest of Europe must prepare.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-52400085/coronavirus-lockdown-s-heavy-toll-on-italy-s-mental-health

    Rod says:

    “world governments are basically fumbling around, but on the whole following the best scientific and medical advice available on this one specific issue (which makes a change) to try and do the least harm to capitalism as a whole while also having an eye to their re-election chances. They don’t want to be seen to be messing things up.”

    Science is a bit complicated when it requires to be applied to everyday life especially when politicians are as you say looking over their shoulder at votes

    From my previous link

    Experts have voiced growing frustration over the UK government’s claim that it is “following the science”, saying the refrain is being used to abdicate responsibility for political decisions.

    “As a scientist, I hope I never again hear the phrase ‘based on the best science and evidence’ spoken by a politician,” Prof Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, told the Guardian. “This phrase has become basically meaningless and used to explain anything and everything.”

    Others expressed concern about the lack of transparency around the evidence affecting decision-making. “We don’t know who sits on Sage [the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies], we see very little of the papers that go to Sage,” said Prof Sheila Bird, the former programme leader of the Medical Research Council’s biostatistics unit at the University of Cambridge. “That scientific underpinning is not evident.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/scientists-criticise-uk-government-over-following-the-science

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