Karlyn Borysenko didn’t like what she was seeing in the world of knitting — it’s hard to believe, but even there the Social Justice Warriors were mobbing people for innocuous offenses. Watching the anxiety and pain inspired her to get out of the echo chamber in an attempt to understand the deplorable Trump supporters. But in attending a Trump rally she discovered how toxic and out of touch the Democrats were.
These are just snippets — read the whole piece. This awakening and others like it could feed a deadly meme for Democrats. If the idea of attending both kinds of rallies catches on it’s a major breach in the wall. The idea of bridging the divide by listening to the unspeakables, by meeting them, threatens the whole freeloader elitist cult. Apostates face harsh punishments. Borysenko may need some support.
The parallels in the climate world are obvious. As I said ten years ago, it’s the overdone hate and namecalling that drives fencesitters to come seeking answers from skeptics…
As that hate invades every corner of life the Empty Left sows it’s own undoing.
I’m an organizational psychologist and mindfulness expert…
…I started to question everything. How many stories had I been sold that weren’t true? What if my perception of the other side is wrong? How is it possible that half the country is overtly racist? Is it possible that Trump derangement syndrome is a real thing, and had I been suffering from it for the past three years?
And the biggest question of all was this: Did I hate Trump so much that I wanted to see my country fail just to spite him and everyone who voted for him?
Fast-forward to the New Hampshire primary, and we have all the politicians running around the state making their case. I’ve seen almost every Democratic candidate in person and noticed that their messages were almost universally one of doom and gloom, not only focusing on the obvious disagreements with Donald Trump, but also making sure to emphasize that the country is a horribly racist place.
It took some bravery to visit the enemy territory. Everyone said it was risky…
I’m not going to say it didn’t get to me a bit. When everyone around you is nervous for your safety, it’s hard not to question if they have a point. But it also made me more determined to see it through, because it was a stark reminder that both sides view each other exactly the same way. They are both afraid of the other side and what they are capable of. I couldn’t help but think that if they could just see the world through the lens of the other for a moment or two, it would be a stark revelation that they don’t know as much as they think they do.
Waiting in lines with four hours to go:
As I waited, I chatted with the folks around me. And contrary to all the fears expressed, they were so nice. I was not harassed or intimidated, and I was never in fear of my safety even for a moment. These were average, everyday people. They were veterans, schoolteachers, and small business owners who had come from all over the place for the thrill of attending this rally. They were upbeat and excited. In chatting, I even let it slip that I was a Democrat. The reaction: “Good for you! Welcome!”
Democrats are full of doom and gloom. The Trump rally was full of jubilant excited people:
Once we got inside, the atmosphere was jubilant. It was more like attending a rock concert than a political rally.
I had attended an event with all the Democratic contenders just two days prior in exactly the same arena, and the contrast was stark. First, Trump completely filled the arena all the way up to the top. Even with every major Democratic candidate in attendance the other night, and the campaigns giving away free tickets, the Democrats did not do that. With Trump, every single person was unified around a singular goal. With the Democrats, the audience booed over candidates they didn’t like and got into literal shouting matches with each other. With Trump, there was a genuinely optimistic view of the future. With the Democrats, it was doom and gloom. With Trump, there was a genuine feeling of pride of being an American. With the Democrats, they emphasized that the country was a racist place from top to bottom.
People in cults don’t question their leader:
Some people say, “Well, obviously they’re having a great time. They’re in a cult.” I don’t think that’s true. The reality is that many people I spoke to do disagree with Trump on things. They don’t always like his attitude. They wish he wouldn’t tweet so much. People who are in cults don’t question their leaders. The people I spoke with did, but the pros in their eyes far outweighed the cons. They don’t love him because they think he’s perfect. They love him despite his flaws, because they believe he has their back.
As I left the rally—walking past thousands of people who were watching it on a giant monitor outside the arena because they couldn’t get in—I knew there was no way Trump would lose in November. Absolutely no way.
I refuse to be a part of the divisiveness any longer. I refuse to hate people I don’t know simply because they choose to vote for someone else…
Global Markets were shaken by the sudden rise in numbers out of China yesterday. But the increase was not a surprise for anyone who has been watching social media and the measures being taken in China. That China is now allowing the WHO in may be an admission that they really do need help. The explanation for the jump is that China changed the definitions. They are also admitting that there may be many cases of people with low grade infections, but also unattributed deaths as well. For days the ratio of cases to deaths was suspiciously 2.1%, 2.1%, 2.1% … Now perhaps it’s a tiny bit closer to the truth.
The tally outside China continues to rise: there now 587 cases, with 3 deaths (1 new one in Japan) and 24 people classified as “serious critical”. These are the key figures to watch. We expected the number of cases that were severe to rise as the five to eight day lag unfolds from the first symptoms to the onset of breathing trouble. So at the moment 4% of cases outside China are headed for hospital intervention, perhaps ICU (does anyone know the definition of “Serious Critical”?). That will keep rising. We need to see that leveling off so we know what kind of load to plan for with ICU units. The early days rates of serious cases in Hong Kong (11%), Singapore (14%) and Japan (2%) are a concern. Unless there is a genetic factor or other localized risk the current low levels elsewhere will presumably trend up to match. I’ll write more on that soon, but “hoping” those rates will be lower is not much of a strategy, though if we are lucky, rates may be lower.
Germany has 16 cases, none of which has progressed to severe. The first five cases were all diagnosed by Jan 28th, but how many cases were there in Germany on 4th Feb? The lag in case progression means only these early cases would be expected to have become “severe”. Oh for more data… Also bearing in mind about 32,000 in Germany – are currently suffering from flu.
Let’s stress these rates of severe cases are very early and small caseloads and the numbers are highly variable. It’s still possible that Covid 19 is widely spread and with a low grade infection, and all the rates are therefore overestimates among the population as a whole. We hope.
About 14% of patients have recovered but it can take a month so there is a long lag there too.
First lock down outside China occurs
At this point, even to limit the load to a manageable level we ought be stopping more flights from at risk countries. Vietnam has only 15 cases but has locked down a small village of 10,000 in the north.It’s only 40km from Hanoi.
The locking down of Son Loi, about 40 kilometres from Hanoi, is the first mass quarantine outside of China since the virus emerged from a central Chinese city late last year. “As of February 13, 2020, we will urgently implement the task of isolation and quarantine of the epidemic area in Son Loi commune,” said a health ministry statement. “The timeline… is for 20 days”. The health ministry previously said five people in Son Loi had been infected with the virus, and on Thursday reported a sixth case.
The hunt is on for the single case source in Singapore that has not yet been identified. This story is worth reading if you want to understand the burden of tracking cases to limit infections. That single case source may well be fine now, and not shedding, but what are the odds that they didn’t unknowingly infect just one other person who is now “at loose”?
Three weeks later, global health authorities are still scrambling to work out who carried the disease into the mundane meeting of a firm selling gas meters, which then spread to five countries from South Korea to Spain, infecting more than a dozen people.
The firm said it immediately adopted “extensive measures” to contain the virus and protect employees and the wider community. Those included self-isolation for all 109 attendees, of whom 94 were from overseas and had left Singapore.
But the virus kept spreading.
Two South Korean delegates fell sick after sharing a buffet meal with the Malaysian, who also passed the infection to his sister and mother-in-law. Three of the firm’s Singapore attendees also tested positive.
Then cases started appearing in Europe.
While quarantine is very expensive, if these numbers are correct and the virus is easily spread with many low grade infections it is still probably cheaper to limit and contain now, rather than have to close schools and factories in a months time. With winter coming in three months in Australia it would be a huge advantage to stop the virus getting hold before the weather turns cooler.
Added up from the Worldometer page with an extra column from me to the right and below:
Life on Earth mostly made it through 500 million years of asteroids and supervolcanoes only to be wiped out by a half a degree temperature rise. This really will be unprecedented.
Despite animals surviving temperature rises of 20 degrees every day, a half a degree of warming in 50 years will kill off half the species on Earth.
A disturbing new study suggests that climate change could wipe out half of the planet’s animal and plant species by 2070.
The research notes that if temperatures rise 0.5 degrees Celsius around the globe, approximately half of the world’s species would become locally extinct. If temperatures were to rise 2.9 degrees Celsius, 95 percent of the species would become locally extinct.
Note the scale on the graph of the last 500 million years. I marked half a degree in the red box.
I’m not too concerned about life on Earth surviving the next 50 years. But at this rate of decay, science is cactus.
These researchers think Earth is a simulation:
“By analyzing the change in 19 climatic variables at each site, we could determine which variables drive local extinctions and how much change a population can tolerate without going extinct,” study co-author Cristian Román-Palacios added.
No meaningless study is complete without overly detailed meaningless numbers. Let’s take that ten year trend and run with it:
Wiens and the other researchers looked at data from 538 species in 581 different parts of the globe. The focus was on “plant and animal species that were surveyed at the same sites over time, at least 10 years apart,” the statement said, adding that 44 percent of the 538 species had already gone extinct at one or more of the sites.
“Surprisingly, extinctions occurred at sites with smaller changes in mean annual temperatures but larger increases in hottest yearly temperatures,” the study’s authors wrote.
Australian cities are increasingly becoming concrete jungles as trees and canopy coverage disappear, according to experts who warn this is contributing to an urban “heat island” effect.
“We know a tried and tested strategy is the introduction of more trees and green roofs in urban spaces, reducing surface temperatures by up to 40 per cent,” Griffith University urban and environmental planner Tony Matthews said.
40% of what, we might wonder, but the ABC doesn’t.
Could this huge heat effect possibly affect temperature records creating a systematic century scale bias inflating and creating fake hottest ever records. Nothing to see here, nevermind.
What radiates like an oven but doesn’t heat thermometers?
A national initiative — called Greener Spaces Better Places — brings together academic, government and industry groups to promote further greenery in our cities. Its research says black bitumen and dark roofs compound the already-hot days by creating a so-called heat island effect, absorbing heat and radiating it back like an oven.
Radiating like an oven? You mean like the carpark under the official Streaky Bay thermometer for 30 years? Which incompetent, careless national agency did that I wonder. And which incompetent careless national agency helped them hide that?
Who killed the trees?
The primary reason there are less trees:
The reasons for greenery loss were varied and complex, said RMIT associate professor in international planning, Marco Amati.
In some areas, greenery might be lost because houses were getting bigger and land plots were smaller, so there was less space for plants, he said.
Which political party pushes for high density, overcrowded, concrete cities? Who wants more immigration yet smaller city footprints? Who hates the suburban backyard?
“So street by street we need a kind of campaign to make people aware of why greenery is important right there in their backyard.”
And if they have no backyard because there aren’t enough houses, or enough land for sale?
One day the Bureau of Met may stop adjusting the old readings down….
Last summer, Galloway Street in North Parramatta experienced five days of temperatures above 40 degrees.
People on Daking Street — which is a short walk north — sweated through 13 days above 40 degrees.
It’s the hottest street in the City of Parramatta’s municipality.
The reason? Trees.
New research from Western Sydney University has revealed the temperatures at ground level could vary wildly — in some areas the difference was more than 10 degrees.
Despite that, the science is settled and we know the temperature of the entire nation to a tenth of a degree …
We’ve been walking the cusp of containable versus pandemic for two weeks but the growth of infections outside China is just a bit too fast, a bit too random and the news suggests its easier to spread. At least the number of severe cases outside China is still only 2% of the total. But there’s a lag of a week or two, so that’s likely to rise. If it is even possible to stop, I suspect only the mass closure of borders will do.
World (ex China) Cases: 517 Deaths: 2 Recovered: 54 Severe: 12
Click to enlarge
While Australia and the US and even India have the illusion of stability, the rise in Singapore, and on that ship is hard to ignore. Singapore is doing advanced tracking, yet still it spreads (see the chart, right). The difference between Singapore and Australia may be part luck — one superspreader versus one man who didn’t infect anyone on a whole plane.What matters then, is just how many people are superspreaders? The one ray from Singapore is that 15 people on that list are already listed as recovered. When I say we hope it’s less deadly, “hope” is the key word. If 10% of people need an ICU unit, by the time Australia has 20,000 infections, the ICU beds will be full. That’s only a bit over 10 doublings from now (about 10 weeks, unless containment measures, like tracking and isolation and perhaps anti-virals help).
What happened to the precautionary principle? Wouldn’t it be prudent to temporarily close some more doors to South East Asia just until we know how hard this virus may hit us? Buy time…
The lack of cases in Indonesia is a bad sign –– suggesting they are not even finding the cases, let alone doing reliable quarantine measures. So far it has tested only 64 people. What we are seeing may be the tip of the iceberg. A few prisoners have turned up with suspected cases in the UK. One flew in from Thailand 16 days ago (theoretically longer than quarantine). Maybe it’s just the real flu? Wait and see.
The Cruise Ship has another 39 cases. It remains the most affected “nation” by far outside China. A sombre lesson that perhaps cruise ships are not good quarantine units for an virus that spreads via aerosol. Indeed, ships resemble floating apartment blocks, and in China, that may turn out to be part of the reason things are going so pear shaped so fast. (Aside from mass censorship, totalitarian rule, and “edgy eating habits”). The original infection (perhaps) on the ship was an 80 year old who got off the ship in Hong Kong on Jan 25th. From one infection to 175 in just 17 days. That’s 7 doublings — unless there were other asymptomatic passengers — which there may have been.
Another cruise ship is wandering the ocean as nations turn it away in fear. Some 2,257 passengers on board are apparently healthy, but Japan, Taiwan, the Phillipines and Guam have said they can’t allow the boat to dock or the people to disembark. At the same time hundreds of planes land every day. For some reason that does not scare people. The Westerdam cruise ship looks like it may be accepted by Cambodia, of all places.
The mismatch between official numbers and the scenes in China on twitter continue. Suddenly there are nice stories of people dancing in hospitals, and food deliveries to quarantined homes, but we also know that in two provinces of China private property can now be legally requisitioned for the purposes of virus control. That’s homes, vehicles, everything. Teams are roaming through student dormitories tossing their belongings into the quadrangle, and turning their rooms into makeshift hospital facilities. This is desperate.
Hilton has 150 hotels in China and they are all closed. All 33,000 rooms. Will the CCP commandeer them?
For anyone wanting a not so scary documentary look at one community in Wuhan, see this video. At least there people are getting food deliveries. It all looks calm. Better than the videos of people falling from skyscrapers in the hope of getting rice or the truckloads of animals being dumped in pits. There seem to be less scary scenes today, but is that just thanks to the scary CCP filtering? At least one journalist has recently gone missing…
CoVID quarantine plants springing up everywhere. Hmm. Not like the flu.
Pick a number, any number — the message is always the same. In 2018 the IPCC dropped the arbitrary 2C target to an arbitrary 1.5C target. The world hadn’t warmed fast enough, and worse, the new round of CMIP6 models were pushing their estimates of climate sensitivity up. But regardless, there are PR points to be made in every change. It’s an excuse for another round of “worse than we thought” press releases.
All the wild predictions are based on “Post Industrial” there has been about 0.95 deg since then, plus 0.5C brings us to the magic 1.5.
What you have to see is that all the $billions is about “preventing” an imperceptible and completely harmless 0.5 deg C change in temperature that might just come naturally anyway.
You are being duped. The aim frankly is to create an income stream via treaty that requires sovereign countries to levy taxes (Carbon credits) that are required to transit the UN so they can skim it like the charities do.
The whole thing is a UN shakedown.
Actual predictable consistency would be a disadvantage — they wouldn’t have the chance to reissue headlines that roll with cycles.
The numbers are irrelevant anyway in the quest for clickbait. To distracted, time-strung people every number bigger than 100 is “big”.
Watch the PR machine roll with the cycles
When Climate sensitivity goes up:
” It’s worse than we thought”
“Scientists have underestimated how bad CO2 will be”
“Seas will swallow your suburb”
When temperatures aren’t rising as fast as expected:
“Even a small amount of warming will be catastrophic”
“Even 1.5C will cause ( … insert disaster… more storms, more rain, less rain, more reckless fish).”
“We are closer to dangerous climate tipping point than we thought”.
“The margin of safety has just become smaller”
When climate sensitivity falls again (the cycle):
“new discovery means models have improved, are more accurate than ever”
“models find missing factor, are uncannily, reliable…”
“for the first time warming in the 1700s can be attributed to mankind”
When temperatures rise faster:
“scientists have underestimated the effect of CO2”
“climate change is accelerating”
“it’s the fastest rate since last week!”
In every situation above:
Apocalypse coming. Give us your money.
So silence those deniers, sack them, boycott companies that do business with them. Mock them, namecall, bully and coerce people to toe the line on the dogma, even if the line keeps changing, that’s part of the PR plan. As long as the media cycle is controlled by arrogant innumerate lefty-voting people the parasites win every round of the “cycle”.
Here in Renewables-World downunder, most people don’t know the grid has barely scraped through the last two weeks. We almost lost an Aluminium smelter, came close to a statewide blackout and South Australia is (possibly) still islanded from the rest of the National Grid.
The AEMO held a crisis meeting yesterday but this trouble started Friday week ago in what was described as a “white knuckle event” by energy analyst, Paul McArdle at WattClarity. A storm knocked down six large transmission towers on the high voltage interconnector line in Western Victoria which left South Australia suddenly islanded. This time SA had 1,000MW more energy than it could use, so frequency in SA suddenly rose to a near disastrous 50.96Hz and briefly perhaps even higher. (Wait for the official reports). The system teetered but managed to stay running. Prices rocketed up to the usual spike to $14,500/MWh in both Victoria and South Australia.
It would have been nerve-wracking in the control rooms. The Portland Aluminium Smelter in Victoria, which is the largest single user of electricity in Victoria, had a near death experience. Both pot lines shut down immediately. It appears emergency workers only managed to get 50% of the power back up 3 hours and ten minutes later. The future of the plant hung in the balance — after a few hours without power pot lines can freeze permanently solid. It’s referred to as a “near fatal event”. If those 1,000°C pot lines cool to 700°C the molten aluminium sets solid and that’s the end of the plant.
The smelter is on the SA side of the broken transmission line, so it’s now a part of the extended South Australian network. Though it is largely powered by Mortlake Gas generator — which is also in Victoria, but on the western side of the break.
SA is effectively still islanded without the main interconnector. The only line in or out is the small 300MW direct current”MurrayLink” line, which has been constrained to zero (meaning, left unused, ready for an emergency.)
UPDATE: Remember a DC or direct current line is not able to help with frequency much — it can’t do “FCAS” except in an indirect way to help match generation and load a bit better. Obviously DC power doesn’t run at 50Hz or any Hz or it would be AC.
It presents itself with a situation almost unique in the world – a state grid that is normally powered more than 50 per cent by renewables operating without any major links to another grid. — Giles Parkinson, Reneweconomy
In this situation, it is causing a headache for the grid operator, and it underlines why AEMO has been pushing for new measures and mechanisms that allows it to have some sort of control over the output of rooftop solar, now totalling more than 10GW in Australia on more than 2.2 million rooftops.
LATE NOTE: Rooftop solar doesn’t help with FCAS either. Another reason the AEMO would be concerned about it dominating the lunchtime slot.
Markets go haywire
Prices in SA have been zero or slightly negative in SA — there are just too many generators there. But what there isn’t is much stability — there are few big turbines. So the gas generators have been reaping in the maximum FCAS (Frequency Control Ancilliary Service) fees.
The share of renewables in the state’s grid has averaged 50 per cent since it became an energy “island”, with rooftop solar providing much of daytime demand, and wind energy playing its role at night time. Prices have been volatile, it’s been negative more than positive.
That has created more problems, however. AEMO has had to intervene to prevent an “excess of negative pricing residues” flowing between South Australia and Victoria, and causing price settlement issues in both states. It has also had to impose a price limit on the frequency and ancillary services market, after the various FCAS markets pushed the price to the market cap for several days running.
This is the result of the few gas generators capable of delivering FCAS in South Australia having no competition from interstate, due to the failed Heywood interconnector, and the lack of competition from local batteries otherwise seconded by AEMO.
Commenters at Reneweconomy are cheering at the thought of lots of renewables and cheap electricity. But they don’t seem to realize that investors might not be as enthusiastic.
Bidding games?
For the next day or so the national system balanced on the brink. Paul McArdle described his bafflement at some of the sudden volatility. Far away in NSW an LOR 2 situation (that’s a Lack of Reserve) suddenly appeared on Saturday at 5pm without warning, out of nowhere. The margins were extremely tight. The whole state of NSW had a bare 350MW of extra capacity ready to go in a system that was generating 12,000 MW. Apparently in toto with imports NSW was using 13,717MW at 16:55. This is close to an all time high.
McArdle goes on to point out that the sudden loss of capacity was coincident with some very tricky bidding by Colongra Gas Turbines (Snowy Hydro) which suddenly withdrew capacity and then offered it back 28 minutes later after the LOR2 was called. They essentially invited the AEMO to direct them on, he says. Too tricky by half. Were they gaming the system to ensure compensation?
McArdle says he “can imagine that others would use a few different adjectives in relating their own perceptions of this sort of process, and participant behaviour.”
There could be some unintended consequences in fake markets where customers don’t get to choose the cheapest energy unless the wind isn’t blowing.
Looks like the dams will still fill. Sydney’s main dam — the Waragamba was only 42% full a few days ago, now it’s 70% full, and most of the fires are out, or will be soon. 16 river systems have flooded, and 13,000 people are being evacuated. Where is that hotter-drier future when you need it?
Sydney rains: Record rainfall brings flooding but puts out mega-blaze
Sydney has been hit by its heaviest rain in 30 years, bringing widespread flooding but also putting out two massive bushfires in New South Wales. Australia’s weather agency said 391.6mm of rain had fallen in the past four days in Sydney, more than three times the average rainfall for February. About 100,000 homes are without power, and officials have warned flash floods could be life-threatening.
Jan 2nd 2020: “February to April has roughly equal chances of being wetter or drier than average for most of Australia.
While outlooks for drier than average conditions have eased compared to those issued for late 2019, several months of above average rainfall are needed to see a recovery from current long-term rainfall deficiencies.”
Predictions for rain in Australia for Feb
Two days before summer started the phrase was “hot and dry”.
Summer is looking hot for most of the country and dry for the east, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s summer outlook.
Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasts at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), said the overall outlook for summer is generally warmer than normal conditions over much of the country, with particularly dry conditions for the east.
“The highest chances of it being drier than normal, unfortunately, are in those drought areas through central New South Wales, southern Queensland and eastern Victoria,” he said.
One day ago, the statistics were looking good but there have been a few ominous shifts. Another 26 infections have been recorded, some in a French ski chalet, some in Singapore —at least three of which are hard to explain. These appear to be transmissions outside China, which is what we are hoping to avoid. It’s bad, but could have been a lot worse. Fortunately the Diamond Princess tally hasn’t risen much — standing at 64. Another plus — it’s almost two weeks since one passenger on a Tiger Air flight in Australia flew as he was coming down with symptoms yet the other 157 passengers appear to be OK. Promising.
…
Just 2% of cases so far are severe outside China (but that may grow)
The all important statistics outside of China are starting to accrue — So far there are 355 infections. Of those, 35 have recovered and only eight are marked as severe (see the table below). It’s good news that only 2% are severe, however it’s too soon to know — 90% are still unwell.
The illness appears to be less severe outside China, but a new study reports that this virus often looks benign to start with. It begins with a mix of mild symptoms that can look like the common cold, or resemble gastro. But some patients go on to develop breathing trouble five days later, and may need the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) by day 8. Sometimes people get released from medical care, but then have to return the next week. So not only must we wait 14 days for the incubation period, there may be another 8 days (or more) before we know how many will need emergency life support and we can begin to calculate the fatality rate. Unfortunately that means there may be a sting in this tail coming. We can’t take too much comfort in all the early reports of mild effects. Though we hope that the outcome in the West will be different due to a better resourced medical system that is not overwhelmed with an unmanageable case load, and other local factors.
Reporting on Friday in JAMA, the authors said their data suggested that rapid person-to-person spread of the virus had occurred among their cases. That was in part because of patients like the one admitted to the surgical department, whose symptoms misled doctors into suspecting other illnesses and failing to take precautions to prevent spread of the virus until it was too late.
About 10 percent of the patients did not initially have the usual symptoms, cough and fever, but instead had diarrhea and nausea first. Other uncommon symptoms included headache, dizziness and abdominal pain.
Another cause for concern was that some patients who at first appeared mildly or moderately ill then took a turn for the worse several days or even a week into their illness. The median time from their first symptoms to when they became short of breath was five days; to hospitalization, seven days; and to severe breathing trouble, eight days.
For this series of patients, the death rate was 4.3 percent.
In other news, it’s been confirmed CoronaVirus can spread via aerosol — like Influenza. That makes it easier to spread that just via contact, or respiratory droplet, though these are still described as the main routes. Protection from this means well fitted respiratory masks, 6 feet spacing between people, increasing ventilation and air flow, negative pressure rooms, and also goggles to protect eyes. It means cancelling large events in at risk populations for the moment. See the CDC recommendations.
Something truly awful is going on in China. Dip into #coronavirus
People are being chased down the road by “medical teams”, dragged forcibly into quarantine. A woman in an apartment tower yells for help, “my husband is dying. There is no way out”. Officials carry guns, and there are frightening videos of them welding doors shut and locking people inside their homes. But I can’t find footage of deliveries of food and medicine to trapped citizens. This is not what people do in “a flu season”, they’re acting like it’s the plague.
There are reports, allegedly from within Wuhan hospitals that hundreds of patients a day are being classified as “pnumonic”, not as coronavirus. “Daily removes pnumonic patients to not return, whole sections of hospital, 200 rooms each and not recorded. They are filled immediately with new pnumonic. Please know we are trying but there is simply too much…. would post more photo but other workers here and typing this under table…”
There are movies displayed below. If you can’t see them, try another browser.
This behaviour of the ccp was expected!
Locking people inside their homes!!
CoronaVirus can spread via aerosol.
No surprises here It can also be spread by contact and by respiratory droplet. What does this mean? It’s hard to stop.
—————————-
China is now literally chaining families inside their homes and barring up their windows so they are unable to leave. #coronaviruspic.twitter.com/iQSmHOw3f0
The sprinkle battalion is back on the streets of Wuhan, China. Night after night and more trucks than ever before. #coronaviruspic.twitter.com/NedT55hxSQ
————-
If I were ruler of the world I’d be closing borders and sitting tight for a few weeks
We’ll know so much more then. The cost of quarantine is enormous, but the cost of getting this wrong will be counted in “millions” — and that’s not dollars. If we wait to find out how serious this is, it could be too late to stop it. The recent UK / France outbreak has come via Singapore, so we know there is a risk from even well managed nations which are taking precautions. After a few weeks, borders can be opened again on a case by case basis with “clean nations”. This means people can confidently organize tours, conferences, holidays and weddings without fear of them being cancelled at short notice. A mandatory two week quarantine would be essential with nations that had outbreaks.
Wired Magazine pushes back against the trite comparisons with the flu.
There are as many as 5 million severe cases of flu worldwide each year, and 650,000 deaths…
Call it “viral whataboutism.” … this mutant form of rhetoric has come into discussions of what could be a massive epidemiological threat. Is the new coronavirus something to worry about? Yeah, sure, but so’s the flu… and you don’t seem to care too much about that!
For goodness’ sake, stop. Yes, we know the flu is bad—no one likes the flu. But the gambit of positioning the influenza virus as the scarier of two foes is as dangerous as it is hackneyed.
…these whatabout statistics aren’t really meant to sharpen our vigilance around the flu, or even to encourage us toward higher rates of vaccination. They’re just supposed to calm us down…
Millions get the virus every year, and fewer than 0.1 percent of them perish from it. What’s the rate of death from the new coronavirus? No one can say for certain, but estimates have hovered at around 20 times the rate for influenza, or 2 percent.
The statistics Sunday — thanks to Worldometer.
The Diamond Princess tally is included in the Japanese numbers.
Assuming that these official statistics from China bear a faint connection to reality (in trend, if not number) this may be a sign that the draconian quarantine is starting to work. If real, it is only a slight slowing in the rate of growth, but it’s a good sign — one I have been looking for. It is a barely visible slowing of the rate of change in the cumulative tally of victims. The exponential curve is slowing. Of course, if this takes off in Africa this would be but a pause…
The virus which had been growing at 50% a day two weeks ago, slowed to 20% last week, and 11% today. One week was such a long time ago in exponential land. Last Friday night the tally was 9,700 infected, and 213 deaths. At that point, no nation had cut off flights or refused visas. UPDATED: Saturday.
..
Sadly the brave doctor who tried to warn the world has been taken by the virus. Ominously he was only 34 — presumably with no “underlying disease”. Instead of listening to him, the Communist Govt tried to silence him. Consequently, there is anger and outrage in China and his death may become a lightning rod. The Party has created so much unnecessary pain and suffering.
Outside of China the news was as good as we could hope — everywhere bar the hapless Diamond Princess Cruise Liner in Japan but with a sudden 61 recorded infections (UPDATE: Now 64 cases). Apart from that — what matters most (selfishly) is that we are not seeing a pattern of doubling in the West. This is significant as we approach a point 6 days after flights were closed in Australia. Though there is potentially a 14 day incubation, the average is around 6 days. Thus in theory, if the virus had made it to the first world and was sufficiently infectious, we should already be seeing half the first “uptick”. Instead most of the small number of new cases are immediate family members of people who flew in from China, usually from Wuhan. We know 5 of Australia’s 15 cases have been sent home apparently fully recovered and noninfectious.
No news is not necessarily good news — Indonesia has no cases, but apparently hasn’t done any testing either:
There is growing concern that the new coronavirus may be going undetected in Indonesia, where officials have not confirmed a single case of infection among the 272 million-strong population despite the country’s close links to China, reports Rebecca Ratcliffe, the Guardian’s south-east Asia correspondent. As of Thursday, Indonesia said it had no confirmed cases of the coronavirus and that 238 people evacuated from Wuhan. The Australian.
The “virus ship” is now a must-see experiment. (Apologies to those involved).
Details are scarce, only that the latest Australian diagnosed says she feels fine, and that 21 of the latest batch that tested positive, are Japanese. The Australian was on the same bus as the 80 year-old man who got off the ship in Hong Kong carrying the virus. When figuring out viral behaviour, all these forensic details are important at this early stage. Epidemiologists will be tracking the boat closely.
We all want to know the health status of the 61 (hoping they are well), and to trace the path of infection. Was it only one source or were there others from the Hubei province? Were the 61 mostly close contacts or is this spreading at random through air conditioning or door knobs. Is the cabin air finely filtered?
UPDATE:Worldometer does not record any severe cases in Japan yet (and they include the ship in this tally). Only 4 “recovered”. But if this is accurate hopefully it means none of the Cruise Ship passengers has the severe form.
If these were my relatives on board, I’d be asking the government for assurance that they were not at risk of acquiring a new infection now. If so, a fully fledged quarantine flight rescue would seem humane.
UPDATE:Cruise liners are starting to ban anyone who is Chinese or has been in China in the last 30 days. It is sad to see this apply to Chinese passport holders who may not have been near China. Presumably Cruise liners are desperate to reassure passengers to stop mass cancellations.
UPDATE: The Diamond Princess visited Taiwan on the way to Japan, and the government of Taiwan is now advising thousands of people who were near the tour group at any time that day to self isolate. This shows just what a huge logistical problem the containment of an asymptomatic spread can be. Scores of healthy people may put thousands at risk.
In other news: Hong Kong is going to jail people who breach quarantine and come in from China. This may get ugly if things don’t improve in China. They may find themselves locked up for six months in Hong Kong, which still may be better than being locked in a demountable pop up hospital back in China.
A short video from the same two guys as previously, this time talking about the censorship in china (12 minutes) and that brave doctor.
So much for the “hotter drier” future they were warning us about 3 weeks ago
As predicted, droughts in Australia often end in floods. It is the way it has always been. Today people are already being rescued from the rising water and possibly another 200 -300mm of rain may fall before Sunday warns the BOM. Many fires have been extinguished.
Forecasters become increasingly concerned that even more rain could fall even faster than expected as five people have been rescued from floods.
The NSW State Emergency Service issued a flood warning for Sydney’s metropolitan areas, saying forecast weather conditions were “likely to cause widespread flooding”.
Flooding has already occurred in Roseville in Sydney’s Upper North Shore and the north-western suburb of Putney, where commuters are advised to allow extra travel time.
Meteorologists have said they are increasingly worried about the unfolding weather events in New South Wales and have “great concerns” that “intense bursts” of rain could see hundreds more millimetres fall far quicker than originally expected.
The NSW Rural Fire Service said the heavy rain was welcome in bushfire-ravaged parts of the state.
“We were over the moon to see rain arrive across many parts of NSW, with decent falls in the state’s north,” the RFS said on Thursday night.
When will our climate experts and the ABC “Science ” team mention that the solar cycles and ocean currents are linked to rainfall all over the world, and their models contradict each other, show no skill and are useless at rainfall.
Western Samoa and American Samoa are side by side islands in the Pacific. When the Spanish Flu arrived in 1918, one would instigate a quarantine while the other had a trading community that did not want to stop trade. American Samoa survived the Spanish Flu without a death. Western Samoa kept trading and lost a quarter of the population.
In 1918 the Samoan archipelago was split between American Samoa (a United States territory) and Western Samoa (previously a German colony but under New Zealand governance from 1914). The 1918 influenza pandemic killed a quarter of Western Samoans, while leaving American Samoa unscathed.
The dangers of ship-borne disease were well known, and exclusion of many diseases, especially plague, had been implemented since the imposition of colonial governance nineteen years before.
On 30 October 1918 the Union Steamship Company’s Talune left Auckland for its run through Polynesia… The new, more lethal influenza variant had arrived in Auckland with the spring, and several crew members were ill.
Western Samoa was a German colony that had three times as many foreign ships visiting as American Samoa which was a semi-neglected military base. Western Samoa had been handed over to New Zealand management. But when the Talune arrived the sailors that were sick hid their illness (captains orders). The Governor of Western Samoa, Colonel Logan, hadn’t been warned of the new Flu, the traders didn’t want a quarantine, and Logan decided to wait for orders. American Samoa was a military base, and it was easy to set up quarantine.
To officials in Washington, American Samoa was a naval station with an incidental indigenous population. There was scant need for traders to maintain a permanent presence in the colony and no effort to attract settlers. This facilitated the American Governor’s use of quarantine: the absence of a trader community allowed General Poyer to impose measures without resistance, and the small number of ships visiting Pago Pago made such an effort manageable. When descriptions of the flu reached Poyer, he acted decisively. Quarantine was established, and implemented under the leadership of traditional chiefs. With modifications, the quarantine in American Samoa continued, with no fatal cases of influenza reported, until late 1921.
In contrast, Western Samoa suffered the highest known mortality of any state during the 1918-1921 pandemic. At least 24 percent of the population died, and most who died were between 18-50 years of age. Half of the most productive age cohort of Western Samoa, and the chiefly and religious elites, died. Western Samoa collapsed.
It was a “bungle that amounts to a crime”. The rampant influenza in New Zealand should have been noted in the ships “bill of health”. It was a reportable disease by the time the ship arrived in Western Samoa.
Even though the virus will arrive eventurally, despite the best efforts, the delay by quarantine is very useful. It’s a general rule of infectious diseases that viruses often mutate and become more infectious but less deadly with time. Natural selection naturally selects the more “fertile” virus, not the one that kills the host in 24 hours before they can spread it to Aunt Martha and her six kids.
… there may be some benefit to keeping the virus out for as long as is possible. American Samoa implemented a five-day quarantine for all boats that kept influenza from its shores until 1920. When it finally did arrive, the virus appears to have lost much of its sting and there were no deaths attributed to influenza in a population of more than 8,000. The main island of Samoa to the northwest, however, lost around a fifth of its population to the pandemic.
Gray looked at all the pockets in the US that escaped the worst of the Flu:
“These communities basically shut themselves down,” explains Howard Markel, an epidemiological historian at the University of Michigan who was one of the authors of the study. “No one came in and no one came out. Schools were closed and there were no public gatherings. We came up with the term ‘protective sequestration’, where a defined and healthy group of people are shielded from the risk of infection from outsiders.”
The people of Gunnison managed this by erecting guarded barricades on the main highways in and out of the surrounding county. Railway passengers were forced to submit to two days of quarantine upon arrival.
Tasmania had a quarantine too
A similar story unfolded on the on the Australian island of Tasmania, which implemented strict quarantine measures for boats arriving on its shores that required all passengers and crew to be isolated for seven days. When the infection penetrated the island in August 1919, medical officers reported that it was a milder infection than that on the mainland. The death rate on Tasmania was one of the lowest recorded worldwide.
Villagers in Barrow and Wainwright in north Alaska posted armed guards around their villages and travel between settlements was prohibited. When scientists tested people living in a number of remote settlements in north Alaska, they found they too were free of antibodies, suggesting they had never been exposed.
It appears that many of these villages were given advanced warning of the oncoming virus as it spread across Alaska by dog sled teams that raced ahead of the infection to alert villages. It was an incredible gamble – mail delivery teams and seal hunters moving through the region were already spreading the virus from settlement to settlement – but one that paid off.
Delaying an infection has other benefits too. It can help spread the peak, thus making resources more available. There are around 2,000 ICU beds in toto in Australia, that’s about 1 bed per 12,000 people. The high Ro infections (which rise and fall the fastest) will be bad news if they are also nastier germs and a high proportion of people need an ICU bed. The system gets overwhelmed.
Remember those exponential curves are so unforgiving. If CoronaVirus has a 6 day doubling period, without any quarantine China is potentially only three months away from having 300 million cases. Officially some 12% or so get the severe form. In the Lancet study 29% got acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Watching those CoV numbers (not the Chinese ones so much as all the other nations.) The good news is that in the Western world the numbers don’t seem to be growing rapidly. We are only 5 days in from stopping the flights, but that’s getting close to the average incubation period. The few new cases in Australia and the US still seem to have come direct from China or through a close relative.
Ooh. Are these the real figures? Is someone on the inside trying to leak out the truth?
There are claims tonight that a flickering set of figures have appeared that are much higher than the official tolls. These ghostly statistics have appeared three times then switched to the much lower official tally. But each time they grow — almost as if there are two sets of data, one for officials, and one for the public.
Ominously, the flickering death tally was 80 times higher than the official one. The infections were ten times higher. If it’s true the death rate may be far worse than the 2% bandied about.
If they are real, this changes everything. If they are fake, who or what would benefit? A glitch?
From Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, and the Taiwan Times, h/t David E.
Tencent briefly lists 154,023 infections and 24,589 deaths from Wuhan coronavirus
Taiwan Times
TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — As many experts question the veracity of China’s statistics for the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Tencent over the weekend seems to have inadvertently released what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths, which were astronomically higher than official figures.
On late Saturday evening (Feb. 1), Tencent, on its webpage titled “Epidemic Situation Tracker”, showed confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (2019nCoV) in China as standing at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure.
The number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Most ominously, the death toll listed was 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.
The image on the left below, shows the numbers that appeared briefly on Saturday. Beside it are the official figures that appeared soon after.
The odd glitch (left) the official figures (right) Columns: Confirmed cases, suspected cases, recovered, deaths.
Ten days ago, shortly after China first started reporting the cases and deaths associated with the coronavirus epidemic, a UK researcher predicted that over 250,000 Chinese would be infected with the virus by February 4. And while according to official Chinese data, the number of infections has indeed soared in the past two weeks, at just under 25,000 (and roughly 500 deaths), it is a far cry from this dismal prediction
On Jan 25th experts from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) estimated that the number of cases in Wuhan were as high as 44,000. So the larger viral infection figure would fit.
The ghost figures come from China’s Tencent — one of the largest video game tech companies in the world. It has a webpage “Epidemic Situation Tracker”. Late on Saturday night briefly it listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808 when the official figure was about one quarter of that.
Ominously, the figure for deaths was 24,589 which reverted back to 304 soon after.
2019-nCoV
This is not how a nation reacts to “the flu”
If this is true, it explains the incredible images coming out of China — of deserted streets, armed patrols, people forcibly boarding up apartments to stop others from leaving, and of forced evictions. Hazmat suited people can be seen coming to take patients away who really really don’t want to go and who are being dragged into ambulances. It explains why the communist government suddenly launched into building new pop up hospitals, and it explains the images of hundreds of beds, in row upon row in town halls and large buildings.
Perhaps it even explains why the position of leaders like Trump and then Scott Morrison suddenly took such decisive action on Saturday. If there were spies on the inside reporting out, perhaps a few key leaders were informed things were were worse than they seemed.
Probably, the spies only needed to be watching #coronavirus on twitter.
(These should show images and movies, if not, try another browser).
#Coronavirus Wuhan starts to disinfect in the night! The question is how long the virus is gonna survive in the air and attaching to objects? It will be horrible if it can survive a long time in the air! pic.twitter.com/mwn8DhtBD7
Wuhan is converting Hongshan Stadium and Wuhan International Conference & Exhibition Center into makeshift quarantine centers with 1,000 more beds to treat #coronavirus patients with less severe symptoms. pic.twitter.com/QNCl1aFujf — A Point News (@APointNews) February 4, 2020
video from #Wuhan resident @fiteray
look at how many corpses left in the corridor of local hospital
forget about the fast bulit new hospital
forget about the low death rate of #Coronavirus
forget about all propaganda from China
There are some truly awful things on #coronavirus. Animals being burned alive. People saying goodbye to loved ones who are medical workers as if it may be the last time they see them. People refusing to get their temperature taken and being beaten.
We are fortunate that numbers are not increasing in the West as fast as the 20% (whatever that means) increase daily that was officially stated in China. So far people appear to be suffering lower grade, and recoverable infections.
There is still the possibility that there are thousands of unrecorded infections in China where people recovered or didn’t even get sick — that could bring the death rate back down.
This week Chinese University of Hong Kong professor David Hui-Shu-choeng said the official tally could be the “tip of the iceberg” as it only reflected those who were in hospital.
“There are many community cases that remain undiagnosed – unlike in Hong Kong, where cases are more carefully handled, including the mild ones. Of the 15 confirmed cases [in Hong Kong], 10 of [the patients] didn’t even need to be put on oxygen,” Hui told the South China Morning Post
“So we’re talking about different denominators here. For an actual picture, one usually has to wait until after the outbreak settles for a general population, zero-prevalence study to be carried out – where blood tests would reflect the number of positive cases containing the antibody without presenting the symptoms,” Hui said.
Donald Trump’s State of the Union is being described as one of the best ever. It was a magnificent campaign speech. Even the LA Times calls it “a pretty effective one”. I don’t watch many political speeches, but this one could be a “how to” guide.
The dour faced white suits of the #Metoo look decidedly unAmerican and self centred when Trump announces great results for all their token mascots and they can’t even clap. Nancy Pelosi petulantly rips up the speech that Trump had to provide her with at 1:42:50. Some news services are trimming that bit off…
Trump shamelessly plugs his heroes and basks in their greatness. Rush Limbaugh gets a Presidential Medal of Honor. Buzz Aldrin singled out early at the start. (6:30)
“This year American Astronauts will go back to Space on American Rockets.”
This puts the Democrats in a tough spot. Through the first half of the speech, President Trump reeled off one item of good news after another: Record low unemployment! Lowest black unemployment ever! Lowest Hispanic unemployment ever! Rising wages, especially at the bottom! Median net worth skyrocketing! And so on. The Democrats greeted all of this with stony silence. When Trump announced that in the last three years, 10 million people have gotten off welfare, the Democrats looked as though they were ready to cry. …
The latest news coming out is mixed. The live map and latest count of 2019-nCoV shows 20,000 confirmed infections, 426 deaths, and most importantly, a spread to 28 countries. It’s slightly encouraging that there are no extra cases in Australia and good to hear 3 of the 12 have been sent home, declared “recovered”. However the incubation period since flights were closed is still only halfway to the average (of 5 – 6 days) so it’s too early to tell.
A South Korean has tested positive after visiting Thailand (not a good sign, but the statement didn’t “rule out China”). Japan has quarantined a whole cruise ship (like Italy did). One passenger came down with the virus in Hong Kong. The whole ship of 3700 is confined to rooms, awaiting test results. It’s reassuring that so many tests can be done. (Yay, Japan). Meanwhile door handles can carry the virus. Soap and hand sanitizer could help a lot.
On the plus side, one team in Thailand say they have treated one patient successfully with anti-virals. It’s only one case, but a nice thought. How big are those stockpiles? The other plus, is that summer may slow it down. Best case is this might be “like a new flu”. We just don’t know.
Statistics Feb 4th, 2020 Click to enlarge.
Worryingly there are reports of thirty year olds coming down with the severe form. Though again, this happens even with the normal flu. Another downer is that the latest Ro estimate appears to be around 4.0 much higher than the Flu. Meaning it may spread even faster. Though I’m skeptical as that’s calculated from Wuhan data, which is both “uncertain” and there is always the possibility that the Ro may be lower in different countries. For comparison the Flu causes around 300,000 to 600,000 deaths every year. The fear here, justifiably, is the death rate might be quite a lot higher. The next few weeks are very important.
There are no recorded cases in Africa yet, though that seems hard to believe given the large Chinese workforce. It’s still possible perhaps for the rich western nations to curb the spread domestically, but if this spreads to Africa, India (3 cases) etc, and possibly to animal populations too, it’s difficult to imagine how it will not become endemic. Most African airlines have stopped flights to China, though not Ethiopia (perhaps something to do with the Belt and Road debt trap and the man running the WHO?).
If Coronavirus takes hold in other nations, then flights to those, and not just China will need to be stopped to contain it. At that point the question becomes “is it worth it” — which depends of course on the death and incapacitation rate — something we still really have no idea of. There are reports from China both of people who just got the flu and recovered, suggesting that for most people and the young and healthy, it isn’t a major threat. But there are also reports of quick and unrecorded cremations, and we know the Communist party has been suppressing the bad news. Photos on twitter imply the army is being brought in. This virus appears to cause the full spectrum from asymptomatic to “needing ICU”.
The prospect is daunting. A pandemic — an ongoing epidemic on two or more continents… The Wuhan coronavirus is spreading more like influenza, which is highly transmissible, than like its slow-moving viral cousins, SARS and MERS, scientists have found.
“It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. “But will it be catastrophic? I don’t know.”
Stopping the spread
For those wondering how the SARS and other potential pandemics were stopped — it takes laborious tracking of contacts, which is difficult with symptomless transmission. The response team must isolate high risk contacts, and sometimes even treat them with anti-virals or vaccinations (if we only had one) pre-emptively. Health workers need to wear Hazmat suits and also get the pre-emptive options. We have to ring fence every single outbreak — something we can do when there are very few cases, but quickly becomes impossible if enough infectious people walk through shopping malls and schools.
In this case, if the virus doesn’t cause a severe illness in all people, it will likely spread further and faster, as asymptomatic people don’t need to report to hospitals or even doctors, and may not realize they are spreading it. Only mass testing around a small caseload would solve that. On the other hand, if there is a significant pool of people who didn’t get sick, if we can figure out why, it may give us another treatment tool. And once many have recovered, there may be potential for antibodies against corona virus to be gathered. In the case of Ebola, the antibodies from recovered people seemed to be the only useful medicine at one point in the battle.
New hospital built in ten days: (*Works in Chrome, but not in Firefox)
FYI, The videos here don’t display in all forms of Firefox, but they do display in Chrome.
China’s 1st hospital for #coronavirus build in 10 days! Construction live-streamed online with 10 of millions viewers at anytime. PLA medical team already took over the facility. It will open tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/KfO7J0Moxj
CNN —Doctors in Thailand said they have successfully treated one Wuhan coronavirus patient with a combination of antiviral drugs, according to a briefing on Sunday from the Ministry of Health.
Dr. Kriangsak Atipornwanich, a doctor at Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok, said he treated a 71-year-old female patient from China with a combination of drugs used in HIV and flu treatments. He said the patient had previously been treated with only anti-HIV drugs.
“I had treated a patient with severe condition, and the result has been very satisfactory. The patient’s condition has improved very quickly within 48 hours.
Divestment Snowflakes protesting at St Johns College Jan 30th
Students at St Johns College were protesting last week at the fossil fuel investments that help keep the College running. Even camping out in the quadrangle in the middle of winter:
Oxford students have occupied St. John’s College since Wednesday, demanding that the College divests its £8.1 million of disclosed investments in fossil fuel companies and all undisclosed fossil fuel investments from its £551 million endowments.
Dozens of students have set up camp in the front quad of St. John’s equipped with banners and placards, to demand that it takes the climate emergency seriously and measures to remove the social licence of fossil fuel companies.
As of Thursday afternoon, there are allegations that St. John’s College had disabled student’s room keys. Instead, they are allegedly doing manual Bod card checks, escorting students to and from their rooms, and are not allowing non-residents to enter the college. There are reports of students bringing protesters food as they have remained on the quad since yesterday.
A solidarity rally has been taking place outside the front gates of the College.
Professor Parker responded with a provocative offer. “I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice,” he wrote. “But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off with immediate effect. Please let me know if you support this proposal.”
One of the students wrote back and said he would present the proposal but he didn’t think Parker was being appropriately serious. Professor Parker responded to that note saying, “You are right that I am being provocative but I am provoking some clear thinking, I hope. It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself. The question is whether you and others are prepared to make personal sacrifices to achieve the goals of environmental improvement (which I support as a goal).” The best part of the story is the response from the organizer of the protest:
Fergus Green, the organiser of the wider protest, who is studying for a master’s degree in physics and philosophy at Balliol College, said: “This is an inappropriate and flippant response by the bursar to what we were hoping would be a mature discussion. It’s January and it would be borderline dangerous to switch off the central heating.”
Karlyn Borysenko didn’t like what she was seeing in the world of knitting — it’s hard to believe, but even there the Social Justice Warriors were mobbing people for innocuous offenses. Watching the anxiety and pain inspired her to get out of the echo chamber in an attempt to understand the deplorable Trump supporters. But in attending a Trump rally she discovered how toxic and out of touch the Democrats were.
bobl
Recent Comments