One good thing about Coronavirus is that people are suddenly paying attention to all the cheap easy ways to slow viruses. Hopefully we will get a bit better at preventing other respiratory infections too.
As I’ve mentioned before, masks stop as much as 75% of influenza, and now we know the number is similar with Coronavirus. If any drug was this effective, it would be hailed as a Gamechanging Breakthrough (!).
Indeed, just yesterday Anthony Fauci said he’d settle for 70%, 75% effective vaccine, but masks are here already. And we don’t have to wear them forever, just til we starve the virus, set up border checks, and get the cases to zero. Then we wait for a long term solution. 2020 is going to be the year of the mask.
Given the cost in deaths and dollars of the spread of this virus, it would be cheaper to give out free masks, free glasses and a years supply of Vitamin D for whole nations than to lockdown for one week. Even if a lockdown is necessary, masks and social distancing would shorten it. What’s not to like?
As with all counter-virus measures, there are no guarantees, but masks protect both the wearer and protect those around them. In regions with free-range viruses, the sooner masks and distancing are started, the better.
Metastudy shows masks and distance helps
A review study pooled 172 studies with 25,697 participants. They looked at whether distancing or masks reduce the spread of Coronavirus, or SARS or MERS. Most were in healthcare settings, unfortunately none were randomized.
Remarkably, surgical masks reduced the odds of getting infected from 17% down to 3%. N95 “respirator” masks were even more effective. The lower grade surgical masks reduced the odds by 78%, but the N95 masks reduced that to 95%. Distancing was also useful. Even being more than 1 meter apart reduced the odds from 12.8% down to 2.6%.
Eye protection may also prevent 60% of infections.
The authors found good evidence that both face masks and eye masks significantly reduced transmission of the virus for health care workers and people working in the community, such as care home workers.
The odds of developing an infection with a coronavirus were reduced by 78% when wearing any mask, compared with the odds of infection when not wearing a mask. When using masks that conform to the N95 standard, this figure increased to 96%.
According to co-lead study author Dr. Holger Schünemann, who, like Dr. Chu, works at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, “Although the direct evidence is limited, the use of masks in the community provides protection, and possibly N95 or similar respirators worn by healthcare workers suggest greater protection than other face masks.”
Some of the error bars are wide, but the message is consistent. Masks = lower spread.
People who are not trained won’t find them as useful. (So let’s train people).
…
We are so lucky Coronavirus is not measles. Even I am surprised that a 1 meter distance was useful.
If you really want to avoid it a three meter distance is probably much better.
The authors conclude that there is good evidence that maintaining a minimum distance of 1 meter, or about 3.3 feet, from other people is likely to have a significant effect on reducing the spread of the virus.
Across 38 studies that included information about distancing, infection rates overall were reduced to 2.6% when maintaining a distance of more than 1 meter from a person with the infection. By comparison, among studies in which distancing was less than 1 meter, the infection rate was 12.8%.
Furthermore, the authors found evidence that increasing the distance to 2 meters was likely to have an even greater effect.
In the graph below distancing helps reduce the spread.
Review | Click to enlarge
Eye protection may prevent 60% of infections, hard to say:
Thirteen studies (across all three viruses, including 3,713 participants) focusing on eye protection found that face shields, goggles, and glasses were associated with lower risk of infection, compared with no eye covering (risk of infection or transmission when wearing eye protection was 6% vs 16% when not wearing eye protection). The authors note that the certainty of the evidence for eye coverings is low [1].
Still no non-randomized study, nor big study outside the hospital setting?
Amazing what we don’t know. Here we are with 10 million cases, and half a million deaths, and one hundred years of influenza, and yet we still don’t have top notch, mass randomized and solid studies.
That said, spare a thought for researchers — just yesterday Medpage discussed why so many single point studies in coronavirus had failed — they barely got time to raise funds and start enrolling patients when the wave moved to another hospital.
Chu et al (2020) Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis, www.thelancet.com Vol 395 June 27, 2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31142-9
UPDATE: The page this links to may or may not be “inactive” at Forbes. Perhaps they’ve run out of electrons? If the article link doesn’t work. Try Google Cache. Web archive. Or Tallblokes PDF.
At some point there will be a rush — a phase change as real environmentalists realize they are being used as useful idiots for multinational giants and Big Bankers. Then there will be a scramble to outgreen the establishment Greens by denouncing some key aspects of false alarm. We’re not there yet. But the Michael Moore documentary is significant and Michael Shellenberger fits a similar mold. We’ll know the moment has arrived when there is more cheering for rather than vitriol against the “traitors”.
Michael Shellenberger was, a long time ago, very Green. Among other things, he was named a Time magazine Heroes of the Environment (2008), winner of the 2008 Green Book Award. In 2015, Shellenberger joined with 18 other self-described ecomodernists to coauthor An Ecomodernist Manifesto. He’s been shifting through a transition over the years from extreme Green, to pragmatic Green (pro nuclear in 2004, see his TEDX in 2017) and now to a pro-civilization, pro power, anti-alarmist. But seemingly not as far as to become a climate science skeptic?
This is what I mean by extreme Green:
Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.
How easily bullying and namecalling silences people
At first he didn’t speak because he was embarrassed. Then he was afraid:
…mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.
At least he’s honest:
I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr….
Back in 2004 he was criticized as A radioactive wolf in sheeps clothing. So this is part of a long transition. It’s not like he discovered the wonders of nuclear power last year.
Agreeing with the IPCC but disagreeing with their recommendations
His list of points, as he said “from” the IPCC, FAO and IUCN:
Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declinedby an area nearly as large as Alaska
The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations for decades and peaked in Britain, Germany and France in the mid-seventies
Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture
Lukewarm? Does Shellenberger still think CO2 needs to be reduced?
He’s an energy and policy skeptic, but not necessarily (yet) a skeptic of their science. He’s called a “science communicator” so we hope takes a hard look at it. As long as junk science rules, we won’t figure out how the climate works, or stop science from being abused and used again for the next scare, and the one after that. I suspect he still thinks CO2 should be reduced. If I’ve missed it, let me know.
UPDATE: Charles Battig reviews the Shellenberger book with Michael Moore’s documentary, and Bjorn Lomborg’s new book.
He [Shellenberger] reflects upon his early devotion to environmentalism as a manifestation of an “underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the natural environment.” It became a quasi-religion offering “emotional relief” and “spiritual satisfaction” for those, like him, who may have lost the guidance of traditional spiritual faiths.
Schellenberg concludes with the observation that “the trouble with the new environmental religion is that it has become increasingly apocalyptic, destructive, and self-defeating.”
It’s easy to be cynical about a slick marketing campaign (which the book promotion certainly is). It’s a tad pompous to apologize on behalf of “environmentalists everywhere”, as if he is a self annointed spokesman, and it means something. At least his book and interviews will open some new eyes, and that can’t be a bad thing.
Here’s hoping he really looks at the science of CO2, not just rehash the options for a different kind of low carbon future.
h/t Another Ian. Charles M. Climate Skepticism. Adam W. John Droz. Eduard H.
* Yes, that’s an affiliate link, and I might get a small commission.
We can tell skeptics are winning by the scale of the panic
Labor made a “big” concession this week and it has triggered the Anti-carbon Tribe. Anthony Albanese dared to concede that coal might have a future but only with impossible fantasy carbon capture limits. In his horror at this, Bernard Keane of Crikey.com puts forward his best scientific argument — essentially that 50% of Australians who don’t hate coal like he does, are ignorant denialist terrorists who vote for pork barrelling representatives who are willing to “blow up their own government”.
As usual, he is projecting his own destructive politics onto those who disagree. He aims to silence debate through personal denigration, to win an argument through character assassination, and to continue being (in his terms) a debate-denialist who pretends that tens of thousands of skeptical engineer’s and geologist’s and meteorologist’s opinions should be mocked and ignored. He’s also a voter-denialist suggesting that the representatives of half of Australia could not possibly represent a genuine point of view. They work as agents of “Murdoch”.
Bernard Keane promotes the science of tribal namecalling
The worst possible outcome would be … offering to negotiate:
In offering bipartisanship on energy, Labor is offering to do a deal with the ‘terrorists’ who have thwarted all forms of climate action for years.
Cherry-pick a few hot years, ignore 4.5 billion, and namecall:
After the second hottest year on record globally, the hottest year on record in Australia, our second hottest summer ever after 2018-19, an unprecedentedly catastrophic summer of bushfires and record-breaking Arctic and Antarctic temperatures, Labor has opted to, in effect, surrender on climate to the denialists of the Coalition.
It’s not that Australians voted for people who disagree with Bernard, it’s just a big conspiracy:
By abandoning any interest in a National Energy Guarantee, Anthony Albanese will position Labor as weaker on climate action than Malcolm Turnbull, who at least sought to include both energy security and emissions reduction within his energy policy framework before another right-wing/Murdoch putsch forced him out.
When Labor sends carbon credits to Big Bankers, and giant multinational conglomerates for expensive ineffective methods of carbon reduction, that’s “accepting the science”. When Tony Abbott designs a scheme to pay any business that can reduce carbon cheaply, that’s “pork barrelling”.
In the Coalition’s hands, direct funding ends up being treated as a pork barrel, handed to key supporter groups like farmers, or to its donors.
Like most religious believers, Keane only cares about carbon reduction when it suits his politics. Carbon Capture is useless, but so are carbon emission taxes. Direct funding of carbon reduction reduces carbon at $14 a ton — 300 times more effective per dollar than the Carbon Tax.
For Keane, the point of “carbon taxes” is to send funds to fellow lefty dependents, not to change carbon emissions.
We know how far left Turnbull was because of how much the extreme far left still admire him:
As Malcolm Turnbull correctly put it, these people operate like terrorists, intent on blowing up their own government, with the support of News Corp, if anyone tries to address climate change. You can’t do any sort of deal with them. That merely rewards terrorists.
The people trying to “blow up the government” were the panic merchants who overthrew a 90 seat landslide winner because the ABC told them he was unelectable.
Adelie Penguins would probably benefit from a bit of global warming. When 175 were tagged and tracked it turned out that they ate more krill when there was less sea ice. This is not so surprising given that they swim better than they waddle, so long stretches of sea ice make it harder to get to the supermarket and back.
And Krill (dinner) apparently like less sea ice too. Phytoplankton bloomed when the sea ice was gone.
“Counterintuitively for this ice-dependent species, body conditions and breeding success improved in the ice-free environment,” wrote researchers from the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research, in the journal Science Advances.
The scientists used accelerometers, video cameras and tracking devices to plot each hunt. They found that when there was no ice the penguins did a lot more swimming — and this was a good thing.
“For penguins, swimming is a whopping four times faster than walking.
For the first three seasons the sea ice was large, then it shrank and the penguins went crazy:
Fig. 1 Sea-ice conditions and penguin behavior. (E to H) All foraging trips recorded by GPS loggers for each season. Yellow circles represent the colony.
When sea ice is higher penguins don’t breed as well, and populations are less likely to grow. Though for the 30% of penguins living in the warmer parts of Antarctica, the pattern is the opposite.
Of course, a warmer world may or may not mean more sea ice. For most of the last few decades Antarctic sea ice grew til it reached record highs in 2014-2015. Then during the last few El Nino years Antarctic Sea ice plummeted to record lows, and nobody can figure out why. If only climate scientists understood the climate.
Whatever happens, it may take a while for Adelie Penguins to die out in Antarctica because there are about 15 million of them. And they are pretty well adapted to climate change since Antarctica was warmer 1,000 years ago, and about 40 other times in the last 10,000 years.
Vostok Antarctica, last 12,000 years of Interglacial temperature.
But penguins that need a perfect climate are dead.
Lüning, S., M. Gałka, F. Vahrenholt (2019): The Medieval Climate Anomaly in Antarctica. Palaeogeogr., Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol., doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2019.109251
Labor dumps a bit of green extremism, but it’s mostly symbolic
Anthony Albanese says “Yes” to Coal (only with Carbon Capture) but still “No” to Nukes. Keeps the same emissions target.
After losing three elections in a row on and with help from SARS-2, the Labor Party have realized they can’t wedge the coalition by being holier-than-all-the-workers that used to vote for them. They can’t be seen as anti-coal. So just in time for a key marginal byelection, Anthony Albanese, leader of the Opposition, offers a token olive leaf.
He’s got his eye on the Queensland election due in October, and all those seats the Labor party lost one year ago.
Federal Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has urged the Coalition to work with Labor on a bipartisan energy policy…
So Labor will support “development” of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). This is the impossible idea of stuffing a gas back down the small hole it used to live in, when it was a rock and before it met O2 and grew threefold in weight and 2,000 times in volume.* Everyone in polite society knows it can’t work, but if you have to hate coal and also live with it, CCS is the get-out-of-jail card, where people can pretend that they want to find a low carbon way of burning a fuel made of carbon.
They probably figure if they get lucky, and the Coalition does create a “scalable” energy plan with them, they can just ramp up the targets on it if they win the election, then say they’re just using the bipartisan plan and “speeding” it up.
It’s not about reducing carbon — it’s about helping the renewables industry
Watch the deck-chairs of Labor desires:
However he said those [CCS] projects should not be funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) or the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), as recommended by a recent review, arguing support should not be diverted from renewables.
Labor also remains opposed to the Emissions Reduction Fund, which pays organisations to reduce their carbon emissions…
Labor don’t want climate-money paid to friends of the Coalition, meaning farmers or small business owners, it wants money shuffled to renewables companies (friends of Labor). But the farmers and small business owners are reducing carbon at bargain prices compared to multinational Renewable giants.
The Emissions Reductions Fund was Tony Abbott’s direct auction plan, but Big-solar and Big-wind can’t compete with $14 a ton carbon reduction, which is why Albanese wants to funnel the money through other agencies. He says he wants to stop the pork barrelling, but he’d be stopping a successful program in order to send more pork to his friends. Big Renewables need Big Government.
Nukes would be a disaster for the Labor Party, they’d “solve” the climate crisis
Some Coalition MPs have called for the Government to look at establishing a domestic nuclear power industry, but Labor has again made it clear it does not back such a move.
The worst thing for the Labor Party (and the Renewables industry) is if the Coalition managed to get a nuclear plant running in Australia. It would achieve all the carbon reduction that wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and carbon capture could never do.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor criticised Mr Albanese’s speech today at the National Press Club, arguing it left a lot of questions unanswered. “They didn’t explain how their energy policies will create a single job,” he said.
“They didn’t explain how they’re going to bring down prices, how they’re going to keep the lights on, they didn’t explain what their targets were and they didn’t explain how they’re going to achieve those targets.”
The most significant change announced here is that Labor is aiming more for the centre, trying to look less extreme-Green. They’re still pandering to the Green vote, but they are trying in a small way to pander to the struggling Australians and blue collar workers too.
The Coronavirus era has meant people like seeing more bipartisan governments — with some agreement, good manners, and less adversarial nit-picking and demonization. Albanese is trying to look statesmanlike and cooperative. But that’s a lot better than trying to present themselves as smug Guru’s opposing corporate Nazi planet wreckers..
The Labor leader’s speech and letter to the Prime Minister shows the coronavirus, not the bushfires, is framing climate change policy for Labor — as distinct from the Greens. Albanese is taking Morrison’s success with co-operative politics over COVID-19 and inviting him to achieve “bipartisan agreement” on climate change.
It is a neat but deceptive ploy. There will be no negotiation and no grand bargain. Albanese’s calculation was that if Morrison agreed, that would boost Labor’s “olive branch” credentials; but if Morrison declined, then Labor would have the moral high ground for seeking to repair the great energy policy divide.
Symbolic deck chairs are shaking.
——————————-
*Calculating the expansion of coal to CO2: 1 ton of Coal generates 2.8 tons of CO2. 1 ton coal fills 0.74m3. 1 ton of CO2 fills 556m3. Therefore, 1 ton of coal expands from 0.74 to 1590m3. or about 2148 times.
London: One in three patients who recover from COVID-19 could be harmed for life, with long-term damage to their lungs, as well as chronic fatigue and psychological disturbances, research suggests.
Experts said there was growing evidence that the virus could cause persistent or even permanent trauma, including impairment to the brain and an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr Hilary Floyd, clinical director at the NHS Seacole Centre in Surrey, said she had been shocked by how young many of its patients were. Healthy people who were in their 40s and 50s when the virus struck were now facing long-term fatigue and disability.
“These are people who were independent, they might be running their own business, going to the gym, swimming, active – now they are at the point they can’t get out of bed,” she said.
“We have a couple of patients in their 40s at the moment; we really didn’t expect that. We were expecting them to be older, we have seen a lot in their 50s and 60s, who are really struggling, particularly because their expectation of getting back to normal is much greater.”
The rate is even higher in patients who have been in ICU — perhaps as many as half suffering long term damage.
We won’t know for years what the recovery rate and actual numbers are. The biggest concern appears to be the blood clot damage. But even half of those with asymptomatic covid show some lung damage with blood clots. Some level of this must be repairable.
This story would have been better if there was some attempt to estimate the percentage of total infections that led to this. If 15 – 45% are asymptomatic and if, say, 5% of known infections are hospitalized, that implies long term permanent damage may be around 1.5-2.5% of total infections. Though that assumes that all of the damage in half of the asymptomatic cases can be repaired. That’s still quite a disease burden.
The COVID-19 pandemic has set in motion the largest drop in global energy investment in history, with spending expected to plunge in every major sector this year—from fossil fuels to renewables and efficiency—the International Energy Agency said in a new report.
The unparalleled decline is staggering in both its scale and swiftness, with serious potential implications for energy security and clean energy transitions.
global investment is now expected to plummet by 20%, or almost $400 billion, compared with last year, according to the IEA’s World Energy Investment 2020 report.
Not only has the money gone, but renewables have been out-competed at the thing they are supposed to do best.
The Global Pandemic is the world’s greatest carbon reduction program since the Black Plague:
Those short-term benefits [of the Coronavirus] have been substantial. Consumption for jet fuel and gasoline, for example, declined by 50 and 30 percent, respectively, from early March to June 7, while electricity demand fell by 10 percent.
Fans of green investments must be feeling squeezed out of the public arena as well as out of investors wallets.
The industry dependent on death threats from climate models has been crushed by real deaths from Coronavirus. Realizing they are in danger of dropping right off the Radar of Death, they have reshuffled advertising memes. The new approach is to convert the usual extinction-extortion into Pandemic-speak, which means trying to compete with the pandemic in deaths per million, or failing that, deaths per month. Remember Coronavirus has killed 476,000 people (so far). But, by saving all the Avgas and petrol, the lockdown is saving, wait for it… “an estimated 200 lives per month”.
So fighting for relevancy, the Green Blob’s new tack is to plead for subsidies and help because if investors don’t keep pushing money into windmills and solar panels, 40 people a month will die:
Under a worst-case — but realistic — scenario, they predict an additional 2,500 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — or the equivalent of nearly 3 trillion pounds of coal burned — could be emitted, causing 40 more deaths per month, through 2035.
They must be very worried, and so they should be. Humans did the ultimate Paris Lockdown, and CO2 hits record high anyway. The renewables industry is pointless every which way. It doesn’t make much money, or energy, or save much CO2. The CO2 it does save makes no difference to global CO2, and the global CO2 makes no measureable difference to the climate.
Western Australians will be allowed have 30,000 spectators at the biggest venue in the state this weekend. Phase four means half packed stadiums, nightclubs bars and gyms are all back in action. Venues will be allowed to pack in people to the two square meter rule. Phase five starts July 18th where all rules are dropped, bar two — the state border will stay shut and so will remote indigenous communities.
The state border is the reason nearly everything else within it, is close to normal.
The West Australian: “Big events at these venues can be organised over the next few weeks. Western Australians will hold the largest crowds in the country by far.
Suddenly open borders doesn’t look so appealling to NSW
All states in Australia closed their borders, except for New South Wales and Victoria. For the last month the states with the most virus to share have been demanding the states without virus open up their borders. But after 160 new infections in Victoria this week, the Premier of NSW is now advising constituents not to visit Melbourne or the hot-spots in Victoria “unless it’s absolutely essential“. Other members of the NSW government are “not ruling out” travel restrictions. Queensland, which was thinking of opening up its borders, is now rethinking. The irony is that if NSW closed borders to Victoria, they might be able to travel everywhere else in Australia so much sooner.
This is the paradox of border control: the smaller the units, the more expensive it is to impose, but it can be shorter, faster and much more flexible. In the post-covid world, hopefully we will see stronger national borders that can be quickly opened and closed as needed.
In Western Australia closing the borders with an enforced two week quarantine was the most effective virus control, but they weren’t closed soon enough. There was still community spread from unknown sources which meant some domestic restrictions were necessary.
Cases are still arriving from overseas, but they are stopped by the two week quarantine.
In Western Australia closing the borders made the biggest difference. Source: Dept Health WA
According to the graph the last case of unknown source was the 6th of June (which doesn’t sound remotely distant enough to safely start filling stadiums). But it may be a misprint or error, as Health Dept press releases at the time appeared to account for all cases. About 120,000 tests have been done. Currently there are only about 500 tests a day for Covid in the state at the moment, but test positivity is obviously “low”.
Good luck to Victorians.
Why is almost no one talking about the biggest mistake in national policy for decades? Open Borders.
The News
…
PS: Tonight on the 7:30 Report was the first time I’d heard anyone (other than me) say say that we should have closed borders earlier. That was former National Treasurer, Peter Costello, just wistfully. 8mins 50.
Two weeks after restrictions were partially released and the BLM rallies took place in Melbourne, the surge comes. Actual spread at the BLM rallies is hard to pin down but the rank hypocrisy that allowed the rallies to take place skewered the community commitment to social distancing. With thousands congregating, almost entirely without fines and in breach of the rules, no wonder family gatherings grew. People had given up so much during the lockdown, but indulgent rally organizers could not delay the rallies by another month, or shift them to an online form.
Among a new string of coronavirus cases in Victoria are people who knew they were infected but continued to work and socialise anyway, Premier Daniel Andrews has revealed. The state will reintroduce restrictions after recording another 25 new coronavirus cases in the past day, with concerns that a second wave of COVID-19 is possible.
Blaming families seems a bit rich given the flagrant disregard shown by protestors and the politicians, academics and journalists that enabled them.
Victorian Covid19 infections | Click to enlarge From Wikipedia
The outbreak in Victoria doesn’t look like much of a second wave compared to the first one. Indeed, it doesn’t look much different to the bump on May 5th. But the big difference is that the May 5 bump was largely due to the meatworks cluster, and a couple of others. This latest jump in numbers is more sinister because it is more widely spread and much harder to contact trace.
Other states in Australia may have dodged a bullet if the rallies came after community spread was near zero. Some states appear to be free to rally away.
Readers outside Australia may marvel that 25 new cases qualifies as a problem, but here is a big distance between some community spread and none at all, with 97% of normal life, travel, business and socialization beckoning, as opposed to 20 person limits at restaurants and bars. This will be heartbreaking for some businesses.
By acting fast, hopefully Victoria can join the rest of the country again soon.
Second wave in Florida
Two weeks after reopening the state the numbers are up dramatically. Though testing has doubled since May, so that explains some of the rise, but test-rate positivity has risen too. One expert cites a general fatigue with social distancing and the lack of masks., but there were BLM rallies in Florida too likely skewering the mood for social distancing. Not many people seem to be mentioning that.
Tourists are also arriving. The Republican Governor, who was trumpeting their success a few weeks ago, claims the numbers are up due to extra tests and cluster outbreaks in places like prisons and farms (one watermelon farm has 90 positive tests out of 100). But with 4,000 new cases a day, that’s a lot of clusters.
“… experts at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania to conclude that Florida has “all the markings of the next large epicenter of coronavirus transmission”. “
Fortunately, deaths are not rising as quickly at the moment, because the cases are younger.
Cindy Prins, [an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida] noted that, anecdotally, a lot of Floridians appear to have given up on wearing masks.
Public health experts are familiar with the phenomenon she is describing: caution fatigue. One of the main reasons experts think Florida avoided a catastrophic epidemic in the first place is because its public began staying home before it was ordered to do so. But now, mentally exhausted after three months of stress, even residents in the hardest-hit parts of the country have grown complacent.
“Israel is entering a second wave of the coronavirus illness and we have to take immediate and urgent steps connected to enforcement and to stopping the loosening [of regulations] in order to prevent the need for another lockdown a month from now,” according to an official statement released Saturday evening by Israel’s National Center for Information and Knowledge in the Battle Against the Coronavirus.
The second wave in Israel was seemingly not from foreign travellers, but from within. And strangely, from students. Sigh.
Rina Bassist Jun 2, 2020
Thousands of students in the towns of Jerusalem, Hadera and Beersheba on June 1 were sent home to isolate after teachers in their schools were diagnosed with the coronavirus. Education Minister Yoav Galant said any school found with active cases of the virus must immediately close down.
Israel’s health authorities are expressing concern in recent days over a surge in coronavirus infections all across the country, especially in schools and preschools. According to recent data, some 5,000 students, teachers and staff are now isolating at home.
One hundred and fifty thousand new cases were recorded around the world (that we know of) each day this weekend.
Results from China, Japan, and USA show that half or more of asymptomatic cases have lung damage
Asymptomatic cases show a weaker immune response. In a small study in China, the asymptomatic cases had a lower, slower immune response, which means they shed virus for longer than the symptomatic cases, perhaps even as long as 14 days. Though the presence of viral RNA does not necessarily mean they can infect other people. It may be fragments of the whole virus.
a, CT scan of a 45-year-old female showing focal ground-glass opacities in the lower lobe of the left lung (arrow). b, CT scan of a 50-year-old female showing ground-glass opacities and stripes coexisting in the lower lobe of the right lung (arrows).
Below, a Scripps review found the rate of lung damage was as high as 70% of asymptomatic cases. Both these studies are small, non randomized, retrospective studies.
It’s not surprising that people might not notice that their lungs were underperfoming. We have so much extra lung capacity for day to day living that many people don’t notice damage. In cases of lung cancer, people are often not diagnosed until they are in an advanced late stage. Presumably, humans hardly ever push their lungs to the limit now, so we don’t notice if they are not performing at peak.
Asymptomatic individuals carrying SARS-CoV-2 shed the virus longer than those with COVID-19 symptoms, with other lab findings suggesting the symptomatic patients mounted more robust immune responses, a small study in China found.
Virus-specific IgG antibody titers and cytokine levels were also significantly lower among asymptomatic patients in the acute phase of infection, when viral RNA can be found in respiratory specimens, the authors wrote in Nature Medicine — both of which indicated that immune responses weren’t as strong in the asymptomatic group.
For the study, they examined data from 178 patients with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in the Wanzhou District in China, including 37 without symptoms. Median age in the latter was 41, and 22 were women.
Lab tests show there was lung damage in just over half the group, inflammation (CRP), and there was some liver damage (ALT):
Lab values and imaging were not entirely normal for the asymptomatic group. Eleven had increased C-reactive protein levels (CRP) and six had elevated levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT). Chest CT found “focal ground-glass opacities” in 11 and “stripe shadows and/or diffuse consolidation” in another 10 of the group; in two-thirds of these 21 patients, the abnormalities were in only one lung. The remaining 16 showed entirely normal imaging.
Antibody levels fell faster in asymptomatic people
In the early convalescent phase, defined as 8 weeks after hospital discharge, symptomatic patients had higher IgG levels, though both groups experienced over 90% decreases in IgG levels. A larger proportion of asymptomatic patients had decreases in neutralizing serum antibody levels versus symptomatic patients (81.1% vs 62.2%, respectively).
These findings should serve as a caution against assuming prior infection confers immunity to future infection, Qiu and colleagues said.
A Scripps study out a few days ago also suggests in people with no symptoms, Coronavirus may be damaging lungs. When they did a CT scan of asymptomatic people on the Diamond Princess, as many as 70% showed some lung damage.
The authors also conclude that the absence of symptoms may not imply an absence of harm. CT scans conducted on 54% of 76 asymptomatic individuals on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, appear to show significant subclinical lung abnormalities, raising the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection impacting lung function that might not be immediately apparent. The scientists say further research is needed to confirm the potential significance of this finding.
A $1,500 million dollar emergency line is needed to rescue South Australia from renewable blackouts. Image: Marcus Wong Wongm
Why do so few see the enormous subsidy cost of keeping the South Australian electricity experiment alive?
Having got too much intermittent, unreliable electricity, the state is still in danger of another statewide blackout. One third of the solar panels on homes are being switched off automatically because the electricity they provide is not just useless, but dangerous. What the state needs is baseload power, but the solution we’re told is to spend another incredible $1.5billion dollars on an interconnector with NSW, presumably so SA gets a lifeline to the reliable coal power in Queensland.
That’s a $1,500,000,000 repair bill for an unreliable system that cost a fortune to build, but is unsustainable without a giant bandaid.
Price rises coming in NSW and QLD:
As more unreliable generation and random green electrons infect the NSW and Qld grids, their cheap baseload providers will also find it harder to compete. The increased downtime will chew out some of their profit margins, but their costs will be almost the same. So, as sure as the sun rises, they will have to raise their charges during the shorter profitable time they operate. Thus costs for electricity per kilowatt hour will rise in NSW and QLD thanks to the increase in useless electricity coming from SA.
The subsidized interconnectors will make property developers and renewables investors happy though. They will profit from the giant transmission lines, paid for by hapless consumers. The new lines will open up vast arid zones where land is cheaper and investors can now afford to build a few more solar and wind plants that were otherwise uneconomic.
Instead of spending $1.5b to subsidize renewables, SA could afford 5 new gas power plants, or could put it towards a new HELE coal plant which would make industry and manufacturing affordable again in the post covid world.
The South Australian government wants to prevent further statewide power blackouts by developing an interconnector with New South Wales.
Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the interconnector was critical to the long-term security of SA’s electricity system.
“We are still at a real risk of another statewide blackout. We have identified the problem, we’ve asked for expert advice and we’re going to follow that,” he said.
278,000 solar panels on homes threaten to dump too much electricity on the SA grid.
Mr van Holst Pellekaan said an area of concern was that the amount of electricity going into the grid from the 278,000 homes with solar panels could outweigh what was drawn out. “We’re not far away from that. That could create a statewide blackout.
“Up to one-third of all (solar) inverters used in SA have already been cutting themselves off in response to voltage changes. We weren’t aware of that so we’re going to fix that.
Despite getting subsidies and being the cause of the problem, Solar Citizens Campaigner Stephanie Gray, said that curtailing the solar panels needed to be the “last option”. Solar home owners have no idea what a burden their panels are on other electricity consumers. Until the media, or some politicians start to discuss that awkward fact, solar panels owners will remain in the dark and continue to insist on more subsidies and bigger handouts.
The numbers are still the conversation stoppers they always were. Ponder that China uses half the worlds coal. While the USA closed 32 GW of coal plants over the last two years, China added 43 GW just last year.
China has promised a few meaningless deck-chair-type vows which it then ignores anyway. The government vowed to cut the number of coal mines, as if that matters. It’s just closing the smaller less efficient mines and opening larger ones instead. As it happens, the number of coal mines was 3,373 in 2018 but now China is aiming just to cap it at 5,000.
The Chinese government has outlined a plan aiming to make its coal industry more efficient by continuing to reduce “outdated” production capacity, while simultaneously raising capacity in major producing regions.
A batch of “outdated” mines should be shut permanently this year, China’s main economic planning agency NDRC said in a document released today to reduce the number of coal mines to no more than 5,000. This will help raise production at major mines so that they account for more than 96pc of national output this year.
Right at the end we find that even despite the major pandemic crash that is 2020, Chinese coal production is up nearly 1%.
China’s national coal production reached 1.47bn t during January-May, according to the national bureau of statistics, up by 0.9pc from the same period last year.
China consumes more than half the world’s coal. Today, it has almost as much new coal generation in planning or construction (206 gigawatts) as the United States has in operation (235 GW at the end of 2019).
But no country matches China’s appetite for new coal. The country added 43 GW of new coal capacity last year, up from 32 GW in 2018, according to Global Energy Monitor. Almost 100 GW is under construction and another 105 GW is either permitted or applying for permits. China permitted nearly 8 GW of new coal plant construction between March 1 and March 18, or more than the 6.3 GW permitted in all of 2019.
By comparison, the United States has retired 32 GW of coal capacity since 2017, according to an E&E News analysis of federal statistics. America last built a coal plant in 2015.
Australia can’t even add one new 2GW coal plant. China effectively added twenty times as much.
A glut of new coal-fired power stations endangers China’s green ambitions
The Economist, May 21st 2020 (paywalled)
China is home to half the world’s coal-fired power stations, the most polluting type of generator. Their share of the country’s electricity market is shrinking as nuclear plants and renewables slowly elbow them off the grid. But Chinese investors and local governments are still keen on them. Last year coal-fired generating capacity expanded in China by 37GW (factoring in plant closures)—more than the amount by which it grew globally.
China has been relaxing curbs on building such plants. That suggests more to come.
BEIJING (Reuters) – China added 194 million tonnes of coal mining capacity in 2018, data from the energy bureau showed on Tuesday, despite vows to eliminate excess capacity in the sector and to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
However, the total amount of coal mines in China declined to 3,373 in 2018 from 3,907 in 2017, the NEA said in the statement, as Beijing has been phasing out small and ineffective coal mines in eastern regions and expanding capacity in the west
China produced 3.55 billion tonnes of coal in 2018, up 5.2 percent from a year ago, while generating 4.979 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity from coal-fired power plants, up 6 percent from the 2017 level, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
There are more skeptics in the USA than anywhere, followed by Sweden, Australia, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Finland, and Germany. And in the same large report, we find that Australian “trust” in the media has fallen yet again from 44% last year to 38% this year.
As well as those listed dismissively as “deniers” (see the graph below) another 10% say climate change is “not very serious”. So about 1 in 5 people, are outspoken skeptics — which doesn’t add up with the “Four out of five news consumers say they consider climate change to be either somewhat, very or extremely serious (79%).” They had to rule out those who aren’t “news consumers” to get the figure up to 79%. It also doesn’t fit with many past surveys that show that half the people in Australia, and the UK and the US are skeptics. (See “Polls“)
They don’t say how many people were neither concerned, nor unconcerned. Where is that data?
Skeptics, country by country. USA, Sweden, Australia lead list of “deniers” | Click to enlarge.
From this report we can see why censorship is the main tool of the climate believers. People exposed to both sides of the story (even partially, such as The Australian does) is enough to enable more to shift to sensible positions. Only the poor sods who watch the ABC or read The Guardian, and Fairfax papers have no idea and little courage to form their own views.
Summary: This year’s survey shows that Australian news consumers are more than twice as likely than their counterparts in other countries to think that climate change is ‘not at all’ serious. The data reveal that perceptions of climate change reporting are strongly divided along generational and political lines.
It’s divided on predictable lines. The left believe in climate change and also believe the media tell the truth:
Those on the left of the political spectrum are more concerned about the issue and think the coverage is more accurate and informative, whereas those on the right are less concerned about it and view the reporting about climate change less favourably. Older generations are also less concerned, pay less attention to the coverage and are less likely to view reporting about it positively. While the distinction is most prominently seen in those aged 74 and over, Baby Boomers are also less concerned about climate change and pay less attention to news about it.
This survey was done in late January in the glowing embers of the summer heat and fires. This would have been Peak Believer Time downunder:
The number of climate deniers in Australia is more than double the global average, new survey finds
…new research …surveyed 2,131 Australians about their news consumption in relation to climate change. The Digital News Report: Australia 2020 was conducted by the University of Canberra at the end of the severe bushfire season during January 17 and February 8, 2020.
On the good side more than half say they want impartial news and 62% think independent journalism is important for society to function. Scarily — that means 38% don’t think independent journalism matters.
Those who access news via commercial AM radio (i.e. 2GB, 2UE, 3AW) (35%), Sky News (35%) and Fox News (32 %) are less likely to think climate change is serious.
So one third of people think the news is giving them the whole story, one third don’t know, and one third are sure the news is fake:
News consumers are evenly divided in their opinion about the accuracy of reporting on the issue with one-third (36%) saying it is accurate and one-third (33%) saying it is not.
At least 1 in 5 admitted they just want news to reinforce their world view. At least they are honest.
more than half (54%) of news consumers say they prefer impartial news, but 19% want news that confirms their worldview
two-thirds (62%) of news consumers say independent journalism is important for society to function properly
around half (54%) think journalists should report false statements from politicians and about one-quarter don’t
news consumption and news sharing have increased since 2019, but interest in news has declined
only 14% continue to pay for online news, but more are subscribing rather than making one-off donations
Trust in media is falling
These are Australian statistics, not global ones. Trust is in rapid decline.
Trust in news generally is falling across all platforms that participants said were their main source of news. Trust among those who mainly use print newspapers and magazines has fallen the most, dropping by nearly 20% since 2018 to a low of 39% in this year’s survey (see figure 6.3).
Trust in news is falling. page 73.
Who do they blame?
Naturally, the believers consider everything except the possibility that the skeptics might be right. The report highlights a journalist who also happens to be an academic. Not-so-independent, eh?
Greg Jericho, Journalist, Guardian Australia/ Lecturer, University of Canberra, thinks it’s a conspiracy of “major media groups”:
IN SEEKING BALANCE, THE MEDIA FAIL TO COMMUNICATE THE SERIOUSNESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
““So much of a journalist’s job when reporting on climate change is devoted to correcting falsehoods.””
“….the big problem with climate change is that major media groups are also behind the clouding of the truth. It is hard enough to convey scientific knowledge to the lay person without having to compete with news organisations who devote large space and time to those who push the view that climate change is a conspiracy. It is so very easy to fake reports about climate change – to suggest scientists in the 1970s believed we were about to have an ice age (they didn’t), that scientists ignore a multitude of factors such as sun spots and volcanic activity (they don’t), or to argue that the world hasn’t warmed since 1997, 2001, 2010 (it has), or that it has but not significantly (it has) and then throw in reference to hacked emails and “hiding the decline”. And such columns can be regurgitated, and once again the demand comes from readers for you to correct or answer them.”
So Jericho won’t even consider that his answers fail to persuade anyone because they are weak, wrong, badly researched, or just ignore the most serious skeptical positions. And despite his assertions, newspaper records show scientists claimed we were headed for an ice age. The IPCC models don’t include anything on solar magnetic cycles, solar wind changes, or solar spectral cycles. And no sane adult believes that honest scientists would “use tricks” to “hide declines”. Since the Guardian hasn’t ever acknowledged that or tried to expose corrupt and inept scientists, everyone who knows about “hiding the decline” also knows that Greg Jericho doesn’t care about the climate or “the science”.
Only 37% of rightleaning consumers think climate change is very serious.
The interesting question that Jericho doesn’t even think of: When right leaning voters don’t care about climate change, why are right leaning parties pandering to left leaning voters so much?
Audiences expect there to be political debate across media outlets over aspects such as the efficacy of a tax cut – in a sense there is a balance that can be found when covering such issues. But the climate change debate, despite over 30 years of extensive coverage (Time Magazine named “The Endangered Earth” its “Person” of the Year in 1988), remains largely stuck. The finding of this report showing that 82% of leftleaning news consumers regard climate change as very or extremely serious compared to just 37% of rightleaning consumers is bad enough. But that only just over half of those who class themselves as politically “centre” are very or extremely concerned suggests those journalists attempting to seek a balanced path are mostly doing so by underplaying the issue.
The answer is that right leaning parties are cowering in fear that the left leaning journalists will be petty, nasty and target them spitefully. Fear and bullying can control politicians up to a point, but in the privacy of a ballot box, the voters keep choosing anything-but-climate-propaganda. Shall we have another “climate change election”?
A lot of the audience just isn’t listening
Jericho is baffled that even believers can’t be bothered with climate news.
And while you might expect that 36% of those who do not at all regard climate change as a serious problem to say they do not pay attention to any news on the issue, more worrying is that 27% of those who see it as “somewhat serious” also do not pay any attention to such news. That suggests a major media failing – especially given a higher likelihood for such people to live in rural areas that are at the sharp end of climate change impact.
While it may be right to put a majority of the blame on those political parties and media companies which seek to sow doubt about climate change, these results also suggest other media organisations perhaps should reconsider how they are telling the stories, and think more about how to reach those who are not currently listening.
My reply:
Dear Greg Jericho,
People on both sides stopped listening because one-sided repetitive news with no debate is stone-boring propaganda. If you want to learn how to reach those who are not listening, you might start by listening to them, instead of preaching at them. (Call it “interview and research”, eh?)
You could try treating readers with civility. Calling them petty names like “denier” marks you as an unprofessional, ignorant writer, who hasn’t done his homework, and doesn’t know what skeptics think. The people you call “deniers” are engineers, doctors, geologists, meteorologists and some even have Nobels, and others walked on the Moon.
The “undereducated” older folk you mention are streetwise farmers, business owners, truckies and taxi-drivers. They know a con when they see one. Only the babyface snowflakes are easy to fool.
If you told both sides of the story, people wouldn’t be reading blogs.
Thanks for sending traffic my way.
Jo Nova
Details of methods: The survey included 2,131 Australians out of nearly 90,000 in a panel. It may be well be very self-selecting. It’s only online, and bizarrely 7% were excluded because they hadn’t “consumed” news in the last month. (Why don’t they count?) People who don’t use the internet were 100% excluded by definition.
The survey was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire between 17 January and 8 February 2020. The sample is drawn from an online panel of 89,850 Australians. The final sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet. To be included, respondents must have consumed news in the past month. As a result, 7% of the initial survey respondents were excluded.
The most popular drug with doctors all over the world will seemingly now not even be allowed in the US for Covid related treatment:
HCQ No Longer Approved Even a Little for COVID-19
Molly Walker, MedPage
The FDA rescinded its emergency use authorization (EUA) of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19 patients, citing concerns about efficacy and risks associated with its use, and saying the drug no longer meets the criteria for an EUA, the agency said on Monday.
Moreover, the FDA now says the benefits of the drug “no longer outweigh the potential risks,” citing the serious cardiac adverse events associated with the drug.
Comments underneath reveal just how contested this will be.
It’s a strange situation where patients in many poorer nations are being offered drugs that patients won’t be able to get in the richest nation in the world:
Substantial fractions of physicians treating Covid-19 patients in Europe and elsewhere report use of HCQ+AZ: 72% in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in Mexico, 28% in France, 23% in the US, 17% in Germany, 16% in Canada, 13% in the UK (45), much of the non-US use in outpatients.
Yet strangely, despite the thousands of people using HCQ, there are not many (or any) ideal trials. Most are non-randomized, but the few that are, usually started too late, or are not combined with zinc or the right antibiotic.
A few weeks ago, a Yale expert made the case of why the US should be using HCQ as early as possible. He calculates that at the current death rate, by the time the results of the right trial is known 180,000 people will have died.” In this context, we cannot afford the luxury of perfect knowledge…”
Prof Harvey Risch insists HCQ needs to be tried in patients before they get to hospital
Harvey Risch is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. He compares the two top treatments in the USA — the anti-malarial drug HCQ (Hydroxycholorquine) and the anti-Ebola drug — Remdesivir. In a 29 page review he concludes that with the US reopening, and 10,000 people dying each week, they don’t have time to wait for the randomized controlled trials — but that they urgently need a drug that can reduce the rate of hospitalization, and there is already enough data to warrant the use of HCQ + AZ (Azithromycin) and Zinc.
US officials are recommending Remdesivir but there is no randomized controlled trial on that yet either for outpatient use. Instead, it’s a newer drug with mainly lab and animal research. HCQ, on the other hand, is an old cheap drug with very low and well-known risks. It’s being used in poorer countries all over the world, and many doctors on the frontline are convinced it helps, even though there are not yet the proper studies to show whether it does or not.
There are five trials on the ClinicalTrials.gov database for HCQ and Az in the outpatient setting. Risch discusses all of them.
One French study is small, but shows a 50 fold benefit when started early, and only (!) a 25 fold benefit when waiting until it has progressed to the lower respiratory tract.There was a seven-fold benefit from taking the antibotic (AZ) at the same time. He works through all the criticisms below, pointing out that even though the study is small, the magnitude of the effect is so large, it is still obvious the combination is beneficial.
This point has been argued forcefully by the French doctors (20). The first study of HCQ+AZ (24) was controlled but not randomized or blinded, and involved 42 patients in Marseilles, France. This study showed a 50-fold benefit of HCQ+AZ vs standard-of-care, with P-value=.0007. In the study, six patients progressed, stopped medication use and left the trial before the day-6 planned outcome measure of swabsampled nasopharyngeal viral clearance. Reanalysis of the raw study data elsewhere (25) and by myself shows that including these six patients does not much change the 50-fold benefit. What does change the magnitude of benefit is presentation with asymptomatic or upper respiratory tract infection, vs lower respiratory-tract infection, the latter cutting the efficacy in half, 25-fold vs standard-of-care. This shows that the sooner these medications are used, the better their effectiveness, as would be expected for viral early respiratory disease. The average start date of medication use in this study was day-4 of symptoms. This study has been criticized on various grounds that are not germane to the science, but the most salient criticism is the lack of randomization into the control and treatment groups. This is a valid general scientific criticism, but does not represent epidemiologic experience in this instance. If the study had shown a 2-fold or perhaps 3-fold benefit, that magnitude of result could be postulated to have occurred because of subject-group differences from lack of randomization. However, the 25-fold or 50-fold benefit found in this study is not amenable to lack of randomization as the sole reason for such a huge magnitude of benefit. Further, the study showed a significant, 7-fold benefit of taking HCQ+AZ over HCQ alone, P-value=.035, which cannot be explained by differential characteristics of the controls, since it compares one treatment group to the other, and the treated subjects who received AZ had more progressed pneumonia than the treated subjects receiving HCQ alone, which should otherwise have led to worse outcomes. The study has also been described as “small,” but that criticism only applies to studies not finding statistical significance… page 8 ,9
A second study of the Marseilles group (27) involved 1061 patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and treated with HCQ+AZ for at least 3 days and followed for at least 9 days. The authors state “No cardiac toxicity was observed.” Good clinical outcome and virological cure were seen in 973 patients (92%). Five patients died, and the remainder were in various stages of recovery.
In Brazil, 412 patients were treated with HCQ plus deoxycycline (a different antibiotic). Those treated before day 7 had about one third the chance of ending up in hospital, as those did who started treatment later. (29)
Adding zinc to the combination cut mortality in half again:
HCQ+AZ has been standard-of-care treatment at the four New York University hospitals, where a recent study showed that adding zinc sulfate to this regimen significantly cut both intubation and mortality risks by almost half (46).
As far as side effects go, the FDA FAERS database (34) contains 1064 adverse events for HCQ, including 200 deaths, but this goes back the full 50 years of use involving millions of patients. Many of these patients were not using HCQ for five days (as Covid patients are) they were using it for months on end.
Doctors are very well aware of the long QT problem with hearts, and know which people HCQ is not suited too.
For those interested in this debate, his conclusions make for interesting reading. See the PDF.
Recent Comments