COVID-19 Coronavirus Thread

[SawMaster]

Those ''rules'' are selectively applied, that's the issue.

You can have no argument with someone doing as they wish with their own private property unless you think it right and proper for others to tell you what you may and may not do with your own private property. You're free to decide who you allow into your house and yard and they are free to decide who is allowed on their platforms- it's the same thing. And Alphabet and Apple are free to decide which apps are offered on their store pages, also the very same thing. In the TOU's you agreed to when you signed up to use these services, you agreed to things being this way. You can have no complaint if things are the way you agreed to them being. You were never promised anything and being private property you have no inherent rights to make claim of there- your legal rights are only applicable in public and in the confines of your own property or on the property of others who have explicitly conveyed such rights to you while you were there. If you don't agree, or cease to agree your only right is your freedom to leave that private property without undue hindrance.

This is more close to a private telephone company not letting you making phonecalls to your friends.

Nope, not at all; once again you don't understand the difference between what has been deemed private and public. Telephone companies, while perhaps privately owned, are publicly regulated utilities, and as such are required to respect your public rights as are given to you by law. They are not allowed to restrict your right to free speech as long as that speech would be legal in another public setting. They can not illegally discriminate against any user of their services or do that arbitrarily, and they are legally compelled to offer their services to anyone wanting to use them for legal purposes.

This what is so very wrong with what is being called "conservative" in America these days. They are not calling for or wanting freedom to exist- they are hiding their desires to control other equally-endowed Free Americans under that smooth-sounding and appealing moniker. They are not "Patriots" either, for the true Patriots who founded this nation clearly knew and understood that if power to control were allowed to be applied against others, then those exact same powers could be exercised against them too. Not only would they be appalled at what this 'conservative' movement stands for and is calling for, they would fight to the death to prevent it from taking hold.

You are not free if you are only free to be like others want you to be or to live as others want you to live. And in America you have the freedom to do that (public rights) right up to the point of your actions taking away from the freedom of others (private rights). You cannot cross that line without also allowing those others to do the same to you equally, and you cannot compel them to agree to those terms. If you want freedom you must give that same freedom to all others- not just some others- and if you do not, then none are truly free and that includes you.

Phil

 

[jokiin]

Nope, not at all; once again you don't understand the difference between what has been deemed private and public. Telephone companies, while perhaps privately owned, are publicly regulated utilities, and as such are required to respect your public rights as are given to you by law. They are not allowed to restrict your right to free speech as long as that speech would be legal in another public setting. They can not illegally discriminate against any user of their services or do that arbitrarily, and they are legally compelled to offer their services to anyone wanting to use them for legal purposes.

I don't recall the term exactly but I think when you do something illegal over the internet or a phone service it's something about using a 'carriage service' to commit an offense which is the issue, so even if it's a private conversation it doesn't mean the service can be used to commit an offense, that's not the telephone company restricting you talking to your friends, but if you use the service to communicate/plan/commit some sort of offense then it becomes a problem, I think there are similar rules with using postal services and freight companies to commit offenses, do they have a right to shut you down, I would hope so

 

[Dashmellow]

I couldn't believe it when Joe Biden had to put in the dig about how this would have not have happened if it was a BLM protest. I guess all that footage of Portland and Washington DC on fire is fake news? I think he said antifa is "just an idea".



It's funny how twitter doesn't ban the Chinese Communist Party?
Youtube took down TalkRadio's youtube channel last week (they are an ofcom regulated radiostation here in the UK)
Mind you, the UK is pretty bad for free speech these days:

Mum spared jail for calling trans woman 'pig in a wig' on Twitter

'It’s calculated to violate my dignity as a woman. It’s just harassment.'

metro.co.uk

You apparently have interpreted Joe Biden's comment entirely out of context. He was contrasting the anemic response from law enforcement to an all out planned assault on the seat of goverment by armed far-right wing extremists to the heavy handed police actions used against mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters. Both local and federal police including the National Guard attacked BLM protesters with truncheons, rubber bullets, tear gas and mace, dogs, and other devices. These cops even attacked journalists and innocent bystanders.

In contrast you even had a Capitol police officer captured on camera posing for a selfie with one of the insurrectionists!

Biden Said Black Lives Matter Protesters Would Have Been Treated "Very Differently" Than The Trump Mob Was At The Capitol​

Entirely peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. were faced with National Guardsmen stationed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial even though there was zero threat against the monument. Yet when armed violent extremists attacked the Capitol building the National Guard and other police agencies were intentionally withheld from coming to the aid of the Capitol police!



Joe, this is now the second time in this thread you've brought up the issue of the violence we saw in some of the protests in Portland and Seattle as if that was the entirety of what occurred during the BLM protests.
Maybe you have an agenda in doing this or perhaps you are merely ignorant of the facts? Well, the fact is that those riots and violent protests were just a small percentage of the overall peaceful BLM and George Floyd protests that occurred all across the nation. In addition, it has been shown that many of the violent scenes we all witnessed were initiated by violent counter protesters such as the Proud Boys, Q'anon and white supremacists who showed up at these protests. Much of the violence was also initiated by the police, often for no good reason.

The idea that most of the BLM protests were peaceful demonstrations is not just somebody's random opinion. It was intensely studied and reported on by the The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)

Demonstrations & Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020​

According to the ACLED study linked above:

"While the US has long been home to a vibrant protest environment, demonstrations surged to new levels in 2020. Between 24 May and 22 August, ACLED records more than 10,600 demonstration events across the country. Over 10,100 of these — or nearly 95% — involve peaceful protesters. Fewer than 570 — or approximately 5% — involve demonstrators engaging in violence.

An Overwhelmingly Peaceful Movement​

"The vast majority of demonstration events associated with the BLM movement are non-violent. In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity. Peaceful protests are reported in over 2,400 distinct locations around the country. Violent demonstrations, meanwhile, have been limited to fewer than 220 locations — under 10% of the areas that experienced peaceful protests. In many urban areas like Portland, Oregon, for example, which has seen sustained unrest since Floyd’s killing, violent demonstrations are largely confined to specific blocks, rather than dispersed throughout the city."

This summer’s Black Lives Matter protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful, our research finds- Police and counterprotesters sometimes started violence​

93% of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful, New Report Finds​

​

 

[Dashmellow]

Well, by now we all know that Twitter has permanently suspended Donald J. Trump's account due to his inciting acts of violence but now he's been banned from PornHub too!

I wonder what he's been posting to THAT account that got him banned?

 

[country_hick]

Back on topic...
Our medical future may owe a great debt to Donald trump.

MRNA Vaccines Could Vanquish Covid Today, Cancer Tomorrow

The night is darkest just before dawn, they say. Dark it certainly is right now. The more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2 coming out of the U.K. and South Africa will make the pandemic worse before mass vaccination can make it better.But take another look at some of these...

www.newsmax.com

 

[country_hick]

Off topic, the capital doors opening was planned for by those who should have been able to stop it.

NBC: NYPD, FBI Informed Capitol Police of Threats Ahead of Jan. 6

Capitol Police were given intelligence from both the FBI and the New York Police Department on potential threats before the storming of the Capitol Building last week.

www.newsmax.com

 

[jokiin]

Back on topic...
Our medical future may owe a great debt to Donald trump.

how so?

 

[country_hick]

how so?

The article says the MRNA approach could result in a vaccine for cancer and other things.

The warp speed project brought out medical advances that might have not happened otherwise.

 

[Matt_V939]

Seems some people don't get that if you break the law you will be punished by the law through due process, not by a company deciding what constitutes or not a breach of the law.
But yeah, let Twitter decide who can discuss or not on their platform and who need to be silenced and what consist breach of their rules.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1003332853525110784

 

[Nigel]

The warp speed project brought out medical advances that might have not happened otherwise.

No, the medical science already existed and had been proven to work, and was going to be used for things like cancer anyway.

Warp Speed funded construction of the manufacturing facilities for making large quantities of the covid vaccines when normally nobody would have be prepared to do so for an untested vaccine. It has made the vaccines available maybe a year earlier than normal, although that assumes that others would not have provided funding.

I think it is unreasonable to praise Trump for that, if another president had been in power then they would surely have done the same, or more. Other countries have also provided funding, Bill Gates alone has provided $1.75 billion and unlike Trump he is still providing more:

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

We are a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world

ww2.gatesfoundation.org

Trump has defunded a lot of scientific research, slowing down the development of cancer and other treatments. Even as Covid was spreading into the first wave Trump was cutting tens of billions of $ from science budgets:

Science | AAAS

www.sciencemag.org

 

[kamkar]

recall the term

I think it is wire fraud

 

[jokiin]

The article says the MRNA approach could result in a vaccine for cancer and other things.

they'd been working on that for quite some time already, perhaps OWS has sped things up, cash injections help for this sort of thing as they're largely underfunded most of the time

 

[kamkar]

New study about about after infection immune"ness" Seem like you are good for 6 months or so.
About "that APP" it now seem to have been taken down completely as it was hosted on Amazon servers, maybe Donald will talk to Jeff about that next time they meet, probably to discuss how to dethrone that new king of the money hill.

On the virus flip side, so far only 20 Danes have been diagnosed with the regular flu, which are next to nothing in a normal year where it would have been several thousands by now.
Normally 1 in 5 Danes get the flu every year, and that kill 1000 - 2000 people, so far 1530 or so have died from corona.

 

[SawMaster]

Here in the US pharmaceutical companies are very well funded by private investors. They are one of the most highly recommended stocks to buy as new medicines can get huge profits once they are approved by the government as being safe and effective. Not so well known is that a lot of the research and development they do is already being payed for by the government through research grants OWS only increased the amounts they get, and any politician would have done the same thing with some probably doing more and better than was done here.

The main problem in getting the vaccine out was the requirements for testing. That process was sped up and somewhat truncated in scope due to imminent necessity. The US took a moderate approach here while other countries went more for speed over absolute testing for safety. So far there seems to be no major difference in the results of both approaches as far as safety, and only time can show efficacy of each vaccine. As best I can tell the shortages of vaccine are pretty much universal regardless of location and the approaches taken for production.

Given the size of the world's population not much more can be done and nobody has done anything particularly special about it. Everyone everywhere is giving their best and that's all we can do. If the effectiveness of the vaccines prove to be too short-lived we're going to have to concentrate on producing and distributing them for some years to come until there is enough control of Covid to it only needing attention in places where outbreaks are reoccurring. Until we reach that point there will be no other benefits from this as there will be no time for doing anything else. Little is being learned here other than things directly relating to Covid and vaccine distribution in general; all of what we're seeing is essentially small refinements of known processes being implemented on an unprecedented scale. There's little chance that anything more than this will come from things in the long run.

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Here Lego are some of the biggest, and opposite as people / kids choke to death swallowing one of their bricks.
At least Danish pension funds are no longer using peoples money to buy into weapon manufacturers

 

[Dashmellow]

Here in the US pharmaceutical companies are very well funded by private investors. They are one of the most highly recommended stocks to buy as new medicines can get huge profits once they are approved by the government as being safe and effective. Not so well known is that a lot of the research and development they do is already being payed for by the government through research grants OWS only increased the amounts they get, and any politician would have done the same thing with some probably doing more and better than was done here.

Moderna received some additional funding as well. Dolly Parton donated 1 million dollars towards the research as a result of what she learned about COVID during the early days of the pandemic from her friend Naji Abumrad, a surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who she met when he treated her after a car accident.

Mark Denison, director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University, says that among other protocols and research Dolly's donation help them develop a high-quality test that could be used during the vaccine trials.

Dolly Parton Donations Helped In Developing Coronavirus Vaccine​

 

[kamkar]

I wonder how much the google boys donated.

I am a big fan of philanthropy, one of my biggest wishes is to be able to do that myself one day,,,,,, but as things have panned out, there are only 1 chance left and that is to do with other peoples money, if i was so lucky to strike it big in the lottery.

 

[Nigel]

Little is being learned here other than things directly relating to Covid and vaccine distribution in general; all of what we're seeing is essentially small refinements of known processes being implemented on an unprecedented scale. There's little chance that anything more than this will come from things in the long run.

Once covid is over, a few of the big vaccine makers will have massive capacity for making vaccines, and we will be able to try things we would never have considered in the past, maybe we can wipe out all colds and flu over the next decade? I doubt it, doubt we will wipe even covid-19 out for quite a few years, but much of the money has been used for things that may turn out useful, if the people capable of putting them to use are kept funded for a while and given the opportunity to use them to good effect.

If you want freedom you must give that same freedom to all others- not just some others- and if you do not, then none are truly free and that includes you.

I think you have all forgotten what is important, the dream should not be of free speech or freedom, or guns!

 

[Dashmellow]

Seems some people don't get that if you break the law you will be punished by the law through due process, not by a company deciding what constitutes or not a breach of the law.
But yeah, let Twitter decide who can discuss or not on their platform and who need to be silenced and what consist breach of their rules.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1003332853525110784

Some people don't get that companies like Twitter are private corporations which have no obligation to let people behave any way they damn please. They have longstanding rules, outlined in their Terms of Service, a legal contract which everyone who signs up for an account agrees to before they are allowed to begin posting.

Those who lament their suspension or permanent ban from traditional social media platforms typically punctuate it with complaints about their constitutional rights of Free Speech being violated as if they have no accountability for the things they say, the threats they make, the hatred they extol or the illegal activities the may promote and advocate for. While much of this may indeed violate the law this is not Twitter's concern, per se. They are a business and you agree to their Terms of Service if you wish to be a customer, and social media companies have rules of conduct (just as DCT does) that govern participants behavior that includes issues such as harassment, threats, hate speech, glorification of violence, sexual exploitation, privacy, copyrights, trademarks and spam to name a few. As such, getting booted from Twitter is no more a political event than getting your Minecraft account suspended.

 

[kamkar]

I will have to agree.
Real true freedom of speech, you pretty much only get if you stand up on a box on the corner of 2 streets and start yelling.
The problem is, thats not much of a audience, and some people think the whole world are agreeing with them, or would "if i could just explain to them"
My flavor of crazy find little audience here as it is much opposite to what is the norm here, and i think it is pretty normal to seek shelter in among a group of people, even if the group are not 100% to your liking.
I still take pride in rocking the boat, even if it will never amount to anything. Always liked the underdog and the trend setter, people that strike out and "do it my way" even if the rest of the world are racing by up there on the elevated highway.
Some people also take pride in getting booted from various social media, that do not impress me, it take so very little effort to do that, and it surely do not make you a martyr on the altar of free speech.

That said. I am a bit bummed that there are no place on the internet where you can let loose,,,, okay maybe 4chan ASO, but otherwise there always are some basic rules and most often also a bias towards one side or the other of the political spectrum.

I think i am saying i would like a speakers corner on the internet, something that quite a few countries have, and i guess for good reasons.
As my grey goo tell me, this tradition of a good argument was also something the ancient Greeks practiced.

Speakers' Corner - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org