The Coronavirus Thread

[NineBerry]

Corona restrictions will be kept some time longer in the Netherlands. Welcome back to the dictators.

[Scot Dutchy]

They have been already taken off. These are the lesser restrictions. Terraces and shops are open. The curfew has gone. Once again great reporting.The politicians are well and truly back although Rutte is fighting for his political life.
The coalition is starting to be formed and looks like VVD, D66, CDA and the two socialist parties PvdA, Groen Links. The big stumbling block is transparency. The Tweede Kamer wants a totally open government.

[Brian Peacock]

My point which you totally missed was about corruption. The latest OECD figures show India received $64 billion in FDI's (Foreign Direct Investment) the third highest in the world last year. Where did it go? Corruption and all it entails is soaring and life is very cheap. One result is the number of deaths due to Covid. The country is in one disastrous mess which always has been thanks to the Brits.

I didn't miss your point about corruption, I just considered it irrelevant as a justification for you disputing the scale of Covid in india based on the numbers. If you think I'm disputing corruption in India you're wrong, but besides it changing the subject that $64bn in international aid you claim disappeared amounts to $0.05 per person - a literal drop in the ocean of the Indian population: a population that reported 13m Covid cases yesterday, despite the govts efforts to talk down the problem ahead of elections.

[Scot Dutchy]

Who is collating and issuing the figures then? The government? Doubt it.

[Hermit]

Who is collating and issuing the figures then? The government?

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

[Scot Dutchy]

So who is talking down the figures? According to Brian it is the government.

[Hermit]

So who is talking down the figures? According to Brian it is the government.

Makes sense. Modi is a very right wing leader. Think of him as a Donald Trump with intelligence. Right wingers rule for business rather than the people. business wants to keep the economy going as strongly as possible. A pandemic that keeps people at home for fear of catching the dreaded lurgy is a serious obstacle. Hence it makes sense to downplay the seriousness of Covid-19.

This article shows two things:

1) The official death rate from the virus is suspiciously low in comparison to other countries.
2) Excess mortality in 2020 makes a mockery of the official death rate.

[pErvinalia]

Anyone who's been to India can easily see how these numbers are ridiculously low. Hygiene is almost totally absent, and massive overcrowding ensures there's no hope of social distancing. There'd be 10's if not 100's of thousands dying in slums without the central authorities even being aware of it.

[Scot Dutchy]

Many births are not even registered especially girls.

[Brian Peacock]

So who is talking down the figures? According to Brian it is the government.

India’s Covid crisis is out of control—but the Modi government won’t let you tweet about it.

As India’s Covid-19 crisis becomes insurmountable, the Narendra Modi government has been widely criticised for trying to filter what the world hears about the worst pandemic outbreak anywhere on the planet.

In the last week, the government has sent notices to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to take down around 100 posts and block several accounts that were discussing the pandemic and its management. On April 23, at the behest of the Indian government, Twitter blocked over 50 tweets from politicians, filmmakers, and others criticising the mishandling of the pandemic.

...

Some of the tweets that were taken down this week were from members of political parties that oppose Modi. These include posts from Indian National Congress member Revanth Reddy, All India Trinamool Congress member Moloy Ghatak, and anti-Modi freelance journalist Pieter Friedrich, among others.

These tweets mention rising cases and deaths, a shortage of medicines, accompanied by photos of Modi’s election rallies even as the Covid wave became uncontrollable, scores of funeral pyres, and patients struggling outside hospitals.

There’s no denying that all these claims are accurate.

Cases and deaths are skyrocketing despite severe undercounting, medicines are running out, finding a hospital bed is becoming next to impossible, and elections are continuing in full force...

[Cunt]

We got our first real outbreak, meaning a bunch of cases which are not connected to travel.

Makes me want to get more cardio. Made a pal want to take her kid out of school.

I think I'll offer to show her more welding. It aint reading/writing/rithmatic, but while that's off the table, I'll do what I can.

[Tero]

Vaccine no good! One woman still got covid and died:
https://www.klkntv.com/nebraska-woman-d ... accinated/

[Tero]

(Onion)

[Brian Peacock]

Ridiculous.

[Tero]

Covid creamation business operator:

Within a year, I passed a funeral director exam and then a life insurance exam, and months later, I had brokered a deal with a local hospital network whose electronic health record system automatically texted us each time a patient “expired”. A family for us to call, a fresh, potential conversion.

One evening, I was on a date with a guy I liked. His name was Patrick. Patrick the accountant.

“So, Alex, what do you do for work?”

“Oh. Um. I’m in … healthcare. How about you?”

My phone buzzed.

*PATIENT 4327 – EXPIRED.*

“Sorry. Work stuff.”

*PATIENT 7645 – EXPIRED.* A beat. *PATIENT 7876 – EXPIRED.* The dead do not mind double texting.

“You can take that if you need to,” he said.

The next morning, while Patrick slept soundly in my bed, dreaming whatever it is that accountants dream, I sat at my desk a few feet away, facing the wall, calling a client.

“Mrs Tanning,” I said into my headset, as Patrick began to wake. “Hi, this is Alex from Grace. Yes, um … so sorry, but we just found out that your husband is 307lbs instead of the 285 you wrote down.”

Patrick tuned in, as one does, when overhearing a conversation like this.

“Well, ma’am, you see, the crematory charges more because heavier people take much longer to cremate,” I explained. “Depending on how overweight, it can be eight to 12 hours instead of the typical four to six. Plus they need to hire an extra person to lift him on and off of the tray. It’ll end up being another $75 or so.”

She yelled and hung up. That was the last time I spoke with her. Or Patrick. A failed conversion on both the sale and the love interest. Both of them having seen the person I did not want to be.

And Grace was running out of money, as most startups do, when they hit top-line-revenue numbers for the sake of doing so, and have no North Star to keep them pointed in the right direction. It was about this time that my COO called.

“In order to increase our margins, we’re going to need to raise another round of funding to buy a crematory,” she said. “We’ll need $5m to $10m, which should last us two to three years. Someone will probably buy us after that. You down?”

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021 ... lex-kruger