World at ‘tipping point’ following government debt binges, says HSBC boss - "The world is at a “tipping point” on debt that threatens to spark a global reckoning after years of government borrowing binges, the boss of HSBC has warned. Noel Quinn, chief executive of the bank, which is one of the world’s biggest, said countries risked being “hit hard” after allowing borrowing to balloon in the wake of the financial crisis and pandemic. Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative Institute’s summit in Saudi Arabia, known as Davos in the Desert, Mr Quinn said the current rate of borrowing was unsustainable. He said: “I’m concerned about a tipping point on fiscal deficits. When it comes, it will come fast and I think there are a number of economies in the world where there could be a tipping point and it will hit hard.”... Larry Fink, the chairman and chief executive of Blackrock, suggested that growing tensions threatened to throw the world into recession... The International Monetary Fund and World Bank sounded the alarm over global debt levels earlier this month, warning that the US and China had put public debt on course to approach the size of the entire global economy by the end of the decade. Ayhan Kose, the World Bank’s deputy chief economist, described the debt binge since 2010 as “the fastest, most broad based and largest” the world had ever seen. Previous debt waves have all led to financial crises. Mr Kose warned that emerging markets were already in the middle of a “silent debt crisis”, where governments are crushed by debt and unable to fund public services. Mr Quinn also described Europe as “a very low growth economy”, adding that countries including the UK were likely to see higher for longer interest rates to tame inflation... Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of Wall Street giant JP Morgan, called for “some humility about financial forecasting”. “I want to point out that central banks 18 months ago were 100pc dead wrong,” he told the event in Riyadh."
What a heartless monster. He just wanted grandma to die
Rex Murphy: You could drive an 18-wheeler through our Charter of Rights and Freedoms - "Have there been any instances in, say, quite recent years, where the Charter has been absent or removed from its grand functions? Has Canada experienced some interval when all the protections so solemnly proclaimed and grandly stated in this wonderful document have been — shall we say, sidelined? And, strange as it might be to say this, but sidelined or disregarded with very little resistance, explanation or even notice? Well, yes, there has been such an instance, a period of two full years when a vast sweep of the most basic rights of every man, woman and child in Canada were suspended, circumscribed or withdrawn. Naturally I’m referring to the COVID regimens. During this time, all governments — federal, provincial and municipal — and numerous institutions and companies for that matter (I’m thinking particularly of school boards) set out grand rules on how people should act, where and in what number they could meet, what they must wear, and how far apart they must stand. Those rules cut deeper into our everyday lives than we have ever experienced in this country. They governed the most intimate and heart-wrenching of experiences — when people could or could not visit ailing, or even dying, loved ones. The images from the early COVID days of sons and daughters standing outside the windows of nursing homes, hand-signalling to parents they were not allowed to be physically near, were both painful and present to this very moment. Now let us make the obvious point. A new disease, a pandemic, will reasonably justify measures for the health of all. A government that didn’t act during such a crisis would be rightfully condemned. But the suspension of so many rights, so quickly, in most cases without elaborate or even minimal debate, the shifting and reverse injunctions, the exceptions — big stores can stay open, small must close — the designation of essential and non-essential, the whole great web of limitations and restrictions — all this just happened. During COVID the Charter was silent, less a shield than a thin veil, and hardly even mentioned by the various governments that so readily ignored it. And then, we had another experience. The bald, imperious declaration of the Emergencies Act during the truckers’ protest. Now this was not a pandemic. It was a protest, a gathering of citizens expressing their concern over government legislation. The act was a sledgehammer brought down from a woeful height without the slightest testing in court, and fully in opposition to the Charter’s guarantees. Huge fines were announced, people were charged and given no bail, the private transactions of citizens were investigated, bank accounts were entered and frozen — and these were the invasions of our rights that we know of. What calls were made on our famous charter during this period? What were the noble words about the charter then — that it “defined us as Canadians,” that it “brought us together as a country?” The truckers’ protest was the one episode, par excellence, in which the charter, if indeed it was a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, should have been called upon. It should have warranted real debate in Parliament. But the Emergencies Act blasted a hole in that sacred document you could drive — do I dare the metaphor, yes I do — an 18-wheeler through. All in, this is not the best week, or the best year, for those who have waltzed around and through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to be Twitter-singing its praises. They would be better off trying to explain why they worship the document when it suits them, and ignore it when it doesn’t."
Canada’s defence chief was warned military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate may not be legal - "Catherine Christensen, the Edmonton lawyer who obtained the briefing note through the Access to Information Act, argued the document shows Eyre’s order was driven by politics... The memo suggested a universal mandate was unnecessary to protect the health of the Canadian Armed Forces, given that more than 90 per cent of Armed Forces personnel were already vaccinated at that time."
External review found military's COVID-19 vaccine policy violated Charter of Rights - "A tribunal that is part of the military grievance process has found that the Canadian Armed Forces' COVID-19 vaccine policy violated its members' Charter rights. The Military Grievances External Review Committee reviews grievances that are referred to it by the chief of defence staff, and provides the chief with non-binding findings and recommendations... The vaccine policy required Canadian Armed Forces members to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or face release. By the time the requirement ended last October, 299 people had been released and another 108 left on their own... "The characterization that members who are 'unwilling' to get vaccinated are displaying misconduct is in contradiction with the CAF's own pre-existing policies and statements that also guarantee their members' choice towards medical treatment," she wrote."
Military leads the way on declaring vaccine mandates unconstitutional - "In January 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ruled out COVID-19 vaccine mandates. In March, he shot down the idea again. In May, he dug in, saying, “We’re not a country that makes vaccination mandatory.” But in August of that year, Trudeau made a U-turn, announcing mandatory vaccinations for public servants and anyone boarding planes and trains. Then he called a snap election. The Liberals made a calculated decision that they could capitalize on the anger that the vaccinated majority felt toward the unvaccinated by mandating vaccines at a time when Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole insisted vaccination was a personal health decision. Liberal strategist Scott Reid outlined the plan on Twitter: “OToole is a nail. Vaccines are a hammer. Swing hard.” Back in power, Trudeau mused on Quebec TV about whether we should “tolerate” these “extremists,” “misogynists” and “racists.” And yet, when the pandemic subsided, Trudeau changed his tune again. He claimed that he never forced anyone to get vaccinated. Grounding passengers and firing public servants were mere “incentives.” Now, the Military Grievances External Review Committee, which was tasked with reviewing the cases of Canadian Forces members who were kicked out of the military for refusing to get vaccinated, has called out the claim that no one was ever forced to get vaccinated. While service members “theoretically” retained a choice, “the consequences of a refusal are such that this choice is not really a choice,” wrote committee member Nina Frid in her review. Citing Judge Mark Phillips of the Quebec Superior Court in the 2022 case Syndicat des métallos, Frid explained that policies that force people to choose between staying unvaccinated and keeping their jobs engage the charter-protected rights to liberty — which includes the right to direct one’s own medical care — and security of the person, which protects bodily integrity. Not only were these rights engaged, Frid found the policy was unconstitutional. Frid is correct. Judges who upheld vaccine mandates were wrong to accept that requiring someone to choose between vaccination and severe consequences like termination did not violate their charter rights. In fact, binding Supreme Court precedents require judges to conclude that Section 7 of the charter is engaged when a people left with no meaningful choice between complying with the law and exercising their liberty or security of the person rights. The most egregious case of a court buying the claim that vaccine mandates did not engage Section 7 is Lewis v Alberta Health Services. Annette Lewis was refused an organ transplant after she chose not to get vaccinated. The Alberta Court of Appeal somehow concluded that the transplant program’s vaccine mandate was not “coercive,” even though Lewis faced virtually certain death if she did not comply. The court claimed Lewis remained free to make choices about her medical care without state interference, even though her choice was to comply or die. The Supreme Court, shamefully, refused to consider her appeal. Lewis was not left with a meaningful choice, and the Supreme Court has clearly ruled that governments infringe people’s rights when they leave them with no meaningful choice but to comply. In Bedford v Canada, the court struck down three prostitution laws as violations of security of the person."
Meme - Albert Bourla @AlbertBourla: "Excited to share that updated analysis from our Phase 3 study with BioNTech also showed that our COVID-19 vaccine was 100% effective in preventing #COVID19 cases in South Africa. 100%!"
Albert Bourla @AlbertBourla: "I would like to let you know that I have tested positive for #COVID19. I am thankful to have received four doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and I am feeling well while experiencing very mild symptoms. I am isolating and have started a course of Paxlovid."
Meme - "COVID-19 Survival Rates by Age Group
0-19: 99.997%
20-49: 99.98%
50-69: 99.5%
70+: 94.6%
Source: CDC (Estimated infection Fatality Rates for COVID- 19)
Guy in mask: "I'm scared."
Guy with dossier of facts: "Here's proof that you don't need to be."
Guy in mask: "I don't want proof. I want to be scared. *burns dossier*""
Chris Selley: Hating Sunwing's Cancun 'idiots' only distracts from bigger screw-ups here - "The influencers haven’t actually done anything to make the rest of us any less safe than any other mid-pandemic revellers. The only reason politicians have latched on to this crew so firmly is because (a) we know about them and (b) they’re easy to hate. We all need distractions nowadays, goodness knows. So by all means rage at the influencers if it makes you feel better. But for heaven’s sake don’t let it distract you from the systemic failures that are increasingly afflicting Canadians more than most other countries: closed schools, pitiful testing capacity, health-care systems so under-resourced that they’re brought to their knees just by projections of spikes in hospitalization. You might also try a bit of understanding too, of course. A bunch of kids got drunk and made merry. This is of no significant consequence. There is no papering over the divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated Canadians: it is understandable that the former are exasperated with the latter, because they really are an outsized burden on Canada’s hospitals. But we don’t need more division than we already have — especially when it’s so obviously designed to keep our minds off bigger, tougher questions."
From 2022
Taxpayers on the hook for more than $110 billion due to Ottawa’s COVID waste - "Not only were programs poorly targeted, but income support payments exceeded what was needed to restore the income of many individuals. The AG found that the lowest-income Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) recipients could earn more from receiving benefits than from working, and concluded the program “represented a disincentive to work, which impacted some labour markets at a crucial time when the need for employees was trending upwards.” In fact, due to government spending during COVID, after-tax income actually increased across all income groups, ranging from less than 2 per cent for those making up to $162,000 annually to 16 per cent for those making $25,000 or less. Now, as the full scope of government waste comes into focus, the cost to taxpayers continues to grow. According to a new analysis published by the Fraser Institute, of an estimated $359.7 billion of total federal COVID spending, at least 25 per cent ($89.9 billion) was wasted. As this spending was financed entirely through borrowing, Canadians will pay higher debt interest costs on Ottawa’s debt—an estimated $21.1 billion in interest costs directly attributable to COVID fiscal waste over the next 10 years. In total, the cost of the federal government’s COVID fiscal waste will reach an estimated $111.0 billion by the end of 2032/33."
There is a tradeoff between speed and efficiency. But the larger issue is the (unnecessary) cost of covid hysteria
Meme - Soyjak: "UGH, THE BIBLE HAS SO MANY RULES. YOU CAN'T CONTROL MY LIFE" *upset*
Soyjak: "CDC GUIDELINES" *happy*
How the COVID-Zero movement is butting heads with Canada’s health officials - "It’s getting even harder as Australia and even New Zealand, the shining example of COVID-Zero, struggle to contain the delta variant. Meanwhile, public health officials in provinces such as B.C., Alberta and Ontario continue to advocate for keeping COVID-19 cases low while avoiding the adverse effects of heavier lockdowns... Rob DuMont, another B.C. father and photographer in the Vancouver area who is involved with the COVID-Zero movement, said he’s struggled with not getting through to public health officials, especially now that New Zealand is dealing with outbreaks of its own, fracturing the image of a COVID-Zero approach internationally. But DuMont says it’s not New Zealand’s failure for adopting a COVID-Zero strategy, it’s the fault of the rest of the world for not eliminating COVID-19, and allowing variants to form. And now he thinks public health officials who still resist an elimination approach are “playing with fire” when they suggest life can get back to near-normal. “My impression is that within public health, and this is not just a B.C. thing, there are some words and phrases that they seem to have discussed that they use to relieve anxiety and get people out of their houses,” DuMont said. To DuMont that includes phrases like “flattening the curve,” “living with the virus,” and “transition to endemic.” He regrets that some people have responded to his form of online activism by accusing him of being an “armchair epidemiologist.” “Sometime in the spring there was suddenly an attempt to brand anybody who was supporting measures to brand them as a COVID-Zero zealot,” he said. “The general implication is like — nutcase and crazy for wanting to eliminate the virus.” Lisa Iannattone, a Montreal-based doctor and dermatology professor, said she’s also noticed public health officials trying, explicitly or implicitly, to tamp down the message of the COVID-Zero crowd by suggesting everyone return to a more normal form of life. “It’s a little patronizing to tell people not to be worried about something they are justifiably worried about,” she said. “It’s true that all the restrictions have their own negative effects, but the reason we have restrictions is because we have a lot of virus.” That’s true even though Canada has vaccinated more than 70 per cent of its population, initially the threshold thought to be enough to stop COVID-19 from circulating widely in the community... “We could make B.C. an island,” if not physically, then through policies and restrictions, he said. “These are pretty fundamental questions. They are questions of life and death. We’re just not learning.” Iannattone, the Montreal doctor, said they are the ones who are the realists, who have been proven right time and again as long as the COVID-19 pandemic has been prolonged rather than squashed by various measures — distancing, masks, and now vaccines. Iannattone points to a cartoon going around on the corners of the internet where the COVID-Zero movement thrives. In it, there’s a swimming pool divided in two parts by an underwater partition. On one side, about half-a-dozen people float, wide-eyed. On the other side of the partition: sharks. A person outside of the pool, with what looks like a toilet paper helicopter hat on his head, says “When 70 per cent have shark-proof suits on, I’m opening the entire pool.” No one, the COVID-Zero crowd says, would want to be subjected to a shark-infested pool, even if they did have this “shark-proof” suit. COVID-19, they say, is dangerous in the same way. So why would we let it loose?"
From 2021. Of course, there're still covid hystericists in 2023.
Given that from the start of the epidemic we knew that the IFR was under 1% and covid would never be eliminated, these people were crazy from the start
Aaron Siri on X - "See Figure 2 in the Cleveland Clinic study which reflects that those with 0 doses had lowest rate of contracting COVID-19 and that the chances of contracting COVID-19 increased with each additional dose."
Thomas Massie on X - "Some have argued that these results aren’t troubling because those at greater environmental risk took more COVID-19 shots, but show me a vaccine for any other disease where rates of disease increase with doses of vaccine received."
Clearly the dose-response relationship is meaningless
Meme - "Robert W Malone, MD
Account suspended
Step 1: All the scientists agree.
Step 2: Here's a scientist that doesn't.
Step 3: <censored>
Step 4: All the scientists agree."
The end of the pandemic will not be televised - "While visual depictions of epidemics have existed for centuries, covid-19 is the first one in which real time dashboards have saturated and structured the public’s experience. Some historians have observed that pandemics do not conclude when disease transmission ends “but rather when, in the attention of the general public and in the judgment of certain media and political elites who shape that attention, the disease ceases to be newsworthy.” Pandemic dashboards provide endless fuel, ensuring the constant newsworthiness of the covid-19 pandemic, even when the threat is low. In doing so, they might prolong the pandemic by curtailing a sense of closure or a return to pre-pandemic life. Deactivating or disconnecting ourselves from the dashboards may be the single most powerful action towards ending the pandemic... History suggests that the end of the pandemic will not simply follow the attainment of herd immunity or an official declaration, but rather it will occur gradually and unevenly as societies cease to be all consumed by the pandemic’s shocking metrics. Pandemic ending is more of a question of lived experience, and thus is more of a sociological phenomenon than a biological one. And thus dashboards—which do not measure mental health, educational impact, and the denial of close social bonds— are not the tool that will tell us when the pandemic will end. Indeed, considering how societies have come to use dashboards, they may be a tool that helps prevent a return to normal. Pandemics—at least respiratory viral pandemics—simply do not end in a manner amenable to being displayed on dashboards. Far from a dramatic “end,” pandemics gradually fade as society adjusts to living with the new disease agent and social life returns to normal. As an extraordinary period in which social life was upturned, the covid-19 pandemic will be over when we turn off our screens and decide that other issues are once again worthy of our attention. Unlike its beginning, the end of the pandemic will not be televised"
When the media create a pandemic. Left wing hysteria doesn't help, of course
Existential Comics (find me on bluesky) on X - "What's great about capitalism is that the very people tasked with ending the pandemic through the creation of a vaccine have a massive financial incentive for COVID-19 to stay around forever so they can keep selling us boosters. Surely there is no better way to organize society."
Damn far right spreading misinformation!
"Nothing says capitalism like government mandate."
'I'm a broken man': Sask. man who refused COVID jab lost job, daughter - "A North Battleford man who was a truck driver for 23 years and refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine says he has lost everything, including his job and young daughter because of his decision to exercise autonomy over his body. Two years later, he hasn't got his trucking job back, struggles financially, and misses his daughter. “I’m a completely broken man,” he said."
On COVID, We Fought the Last War. And Lost - "Nearly every element of COVID policy was derived from a misapplication of lessons learned from HIV policy. Among these include a number of false presumptions:
that recovery after COVID disease would not produce immunity;
that herd immunity was impossible with COVID;
that the primary deleterious clinical impacts of COVID disease would occur after recovery from acute infection;
that everyone is at equal risk of a severe outcome—hospitalization or death—from COVID disease;
that a physical barrier to a basic human bodily function (breathing) would prevent infected people from spreading COVID disease;
that tracing the contacts of infected individuals would be an effective means of limiting the spread of COVID disease; and
that closures of locations like schools where the disease was thought to spread and the limitation of travel would effectively limit COVID disease spread."
Meme - Jason (he/him/ia) Ko Jason taku ingoa @Jason_gasdive: "I unfollowed when Naomi Wu mass blocked his followers. She's usually a good judge of character. This is my bed in the garage because my partner has dropped precautions. I take precautions 100% of the time. Don't tell me that this hasn't upended every fucking second of my life" *tent with heater*
jaane @yiihya: "This dude is like that Japanese soldier who hid in the Filipino jungle for 30 years, refusing to believe that the war was over."
When you're still a covid hystericist in 2023. Sadly I still know of people going on about the dangers of long covid and advocating wearing N-95s in public
The fact that he's boasting about how much his life has been disrupted is telling - some people want to suffer, so they can paint a grand narrative
Meme - Pale Fire @PacificGirl2021: "I'm sorry you have to live like this. I no longer see my family since they stopped masking."
Jason (he/him/ia) Ko Jason taku ingoa @Jason_gasdive: "I do. Outdoor barbeque, P100 mask, no eating with them."
Pale Fire @PacificGirl2021: "My parents make negative comments about my mask and refuse to go outside to meet me"
Jason (he/him/ia) Ko Jason taku ingoa @Jason_gasdive: "That sux. I'm pretty lucky. Some of my family even do a RAT before coming over."
Meme - Jason (he/him/ia) Ko Jason taku ingoa @Jason_gasdive: "Ok, this didn't get the traction I expected. So here goes @DoctorKarl this one's for you. Studies show that with the current strains about 100 virons is an infective dose. Other studies show that each breath of a shedding person contains between 100,000 and 10,000,000 virons. The numbers show that at any given time, about 2%, or 2 in 100 people have an active C19 infection. Slightly less than half of the active, shedding infections are asymptomatic. So let's put that all together for an indoor space that @DoctorKarl describes as low risk.Let's look at a space with 100 people in it. Assuming that the symptomatic people stay home, the expected number of people in the space shedding virus is one. (Yes, it may be zero, or it may be some higher number, Google Poisson distribution for details) Now we're just keeping track of orders of magnitude. Assume the lowest shedding, 100,000 per breath. Divide by the 100 virons for an infective dose, that means the person is exhaling 1000 infective doses with each breath. If there's 100 people in the space, and you're inhaling 4% exhaled air, then 4%/100 of each breath comes from the one shedding person. Multiply 4%/100 by 1000 to get the percentage of an infective dose per breath. That's 40%. So each breath in this "low risk" environment you'll inhale an advantage of 40% of an infective dose. Most people take about 12 breaths a minute. So after 10 minutes, that's 120 breaths. 40% X 120 is 4800% of an infective dose. For the avoidance of doubt, that's not low risk.
These numbers are not unique to a space with 100 people. In a space with 30, the expected number of infected people is less than 1, but that just means it might be more than one visit before your number comes up. But when it does, your dose will be higher. It's been pointed out that 4% equals 2000 ppm CO2. The basics still hold though. 1000 ppm still gets you an infectious dose in just a few breaths if outdoor air is the only ventilation."
AugustInLebanon @AugustInLebanon: "Have you ever considered the very real possibility that you may be schizophrenic?"
Wesley geer @Wesleygeer88: "Your future only has 2 options. 1:Get COVID, realize that you spent 4+ years of militant avoidance for nothing, and have a mental breakdown. 2:Never get COVID, because you lived your entire life alone, afraid, until the last of your relationships wither away. Curious what #3 is"
Roman Baber on X - "Must Watch! On Tuesday, Doug forgot he was live on TV & repeated what he says to MPPs/Staff. The ONLY reason Ontario is in Lockdown is @fordnation thinks it's political suicide to disagree w/CMOH. He is only worried about re-election, not lives. It's truly evil. Retweet! #onpoli"
From 2021. Trust the (political) science
David Lammy caller: 'Racism is a greater risk for black people than Covid' - "A caller told David Lammy that racism in is a "greater risk" for black people in the UK than Covid, in a conversation around vaccine hesitancy amongst some ethnic communities."
We need lockdowns to end "racism"
