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Showing content with the highest reputation on 12/16/21 in all areas

  1. The stupidest action that was done was the evacuation of tourists, businessmen, citizens, to the homeland.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuations_related_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic Which was basically importing the disease into the country.. What tourists do when they return home after a week or two of vacation? They go to the store or mall to buy food, where they spread disease to the local population (hard/impossible to track).. Then they meet family, friends, colleagues, neighbors (possible to track, if people are honest) and the disease spreads..
    3 points
  2. In this thread I would like to explore the legal and ethical basis of pandemic (or public health in general) related restrictions of human rights. I will focus on human rights as outlined by the universal declaration of human rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights as well as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx. Specifically Article 12 of the covenant is important here: In a specific comment the office of the high commissioner for human rights outlined that: In other words, they see a close connection between these rights. Yet certain health measures might curb rights. The basic framework to realize health within a human rights framework is therefore that any restrictions need to be implemented in a way that maximizes the outcome but must also be lawful, proportionate, necessary and applied fairly. These limitations have been outlined in the Siracusa Principles https://www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/1984/07/Siracusa-principles-ICCPR-legal-submission-1985-eng.pdf So independent of the actual implementation in the last years, there are guiding principles for the lawful implementation of public health measures. As such implementing public health measures, including isolation or other mandates are not necessary at odds with human rights principles. In fact, I would argue it is dangerous to frame it that way as it would necessarily decrease compliance and delegitimize the measures themselves. That being said, it can be argued that many implementations might have been insufficient in following these guidelines. Fore example, self-isolation can result in the loss of job. While many countries have provided some worker benefits, that may be insufficient. Likewise, it can be argued that many of these measures are not applied equally. Low-income folks have a harder time following many measures as they are strapped for means, while higher income folks or folks with jobs that allow remote work are barely affected. This is not only exclusively a human rights argument, but also one of public health, as folks with economic constraints are often less likely to get tested in the first place, in fear of losing their jobs. We can explore the intersection of each of these rights with a view on public health and discuss their implementation (and potential violation) of a given right. For example: Quarantines and lockdowns are obviously a limitation of the the freedom of movement. In order to ensure lawful implementation several aspects must be safeguarded. These include: - only implement mandatory restrictions when scientifically warranted and only when individual health and safety can be safeguarded. This includes ensuring that folks can continue to secure their livelihood, have access to necessities and have access to other necessary services (e.g. support for disabled). Fundamentally speaking, mostly voluntary measures in conjunction with education, widespread screening and contact tracing are in fact likely to work better in most areas as it will increase cooperation. Erosion of public trust on the other hand is likely to result in more folks trying to evade these measures.
    1 point
  3. The timeline is a bit inaccurate- it was detected later on in Korea and Italy, but retrospective studies (i.e. looking back in time to check for evidence of infections) indicate that it was circulating already before the first cases were detected. In fact, the high fatality rate is likely associated with significant underestimate of ongoing cases (i.e. many positive cases were simply not detected, especially in the early months of the pandemic). You are correct that if other countries had followed a zero-COVID strategy going forward (as e.g. New Zealand), it might have burned out, or at least kept levels low enough that vaccines might have eradicated it. My point was that single-point lockdown at least for this pandemic, would not have worked. It would needed to be a more global effort. And if the a next major outbreak has similar characteristics (i.e. positive cases are not easily spotted before transmission happens) it is unlikely, regardless of country in which it happens, that we are able to detect it in time to lock down before it gets out of the country. In other words, we also need better surveillance measures to make public health measures to be effective.
    1 point
  4. If your education is "relatively" limited, how would you recognize a core-shaking demonstration? You've had many replies to your arguments, and you don't seem to be actively trying to see what they're saying, so it may be that your limited knowledge isn't enough. Sometimes when we fill in the gaps in our knowledge with things we've made up, those things seem to make more sense to us. It can make us think we're right because we don't understand what others are demonstrating, so we think they must be wrong. I think learning is a lot like breathing. Even if your lungs work great, you need a certain O2 concentration before breathing becomes effective. With learning, I think you need a certain concentration of background knowledge so you can recognize what other knowledge looks like. How many members join to argue against mainstream explanations, get tons of replies showing them where they're wrong, and then declare they've seen nothing to persuade them from the belief in the core sentiment of their arguments? I suspect it's because they just don't know enough about the basics of the subject to understand the more complex applications of it, like a first-time actor trying out for the part of Hamlet. If you only know a little maths, you're going to apply what you know to every mathematical problem, and you'll find that your limited skill doesn't stretch to fit every calculation. The solution is to learn more, not make up new stuff that only makes sense to you.
    1 point
  5. So what, though? The subtleties of nature are not anything like determining the existence of a country. If you had been a Newtonian physicist, you would have used logic and evidence to "determine" that the kinetic energy of a moving body is 1/2 mv². And you would, a couple of centuries later, have been shown that that was not the case. If you had been J J Thomson, at the turn of the c.20th, you would have used logic and evidence to "determine" that the atom had a structure like that of a plum pudding - only to find out a decade or so later, that that was entirely misconceived. Science has been burnt often enough in history by such changes in understanding that it avoids speaking of truth or reality where a theory is concerned, but only of models that predict the behaviour of nature. These models aim, in that limited sense, to represent physical reality, but they are potentially imperfect, not definitive and always subject to change in the light of new evidence. So it's not really at all like whether a country exists or not.
    1 point
  6. I've seen nothing yet to make me think you understand those quite difficult concepts you are throwing about. Energy Infinity Singularity They all have very particular meanings in Science that are similar to but much more restricted than in general English. Please also take note of this excellent statement by swansont. +1
    1 point
  7. There may be some misunderstanding here. @studiot is talking about the UK, where I am also located. So the US FDA is not relevant. Here, we have a National Health Service. If someone were to suffer an anaphylactic reaction, after going home from a vaccination, any medical treatment they received would come from the NHS, who would rapidly ascertain that the patient had just had a Covid vaccination. So there is no doubt that the NHS, having administered tens of millions of vaccinations, would know by now if such events were significant. We do know, from the campaign, about various rare side effects of the different vaccines. Everyone has been on the lookout for them and has been reporting them. There is no way that a serious and dramatic effect like anaphylaxis would somehow have been missed.
    1 point
  8. Had the Moderna booster shot today after previous two Astra Zenaca shots.....As per previous injections, no reactions.
    1 point
  9. Logic is not a substitute for evidence, and evidence is interpreted via models that allow for comparison and prediction. It’s not enough to just be logical. Newtonian/Galilean physics, for example, is logical, but it doesn’t match experiment, so at best it’s an approximation You can do whatever helps you to gain insight, but relativity would not have been accepted without experimental confirmation.
    1 point
  10. Moon's don't just "fall" or "lose orbit", as that is not how orbits work. As far as arriving at a conclusion via "common sense" goes, in my experience, it very often is actually arriving at a conclusion by starting with insufficient or just plain incorrect information, and then applying faulty logic to it.
    1 point
  11. Being fascinated by the OP article and paper, I did some more research...... https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/no-warp-bubble/ Ethan Siegel extract: So, what did this new “warp bubble” paper actually do? The article, thankfully, published in the open access (but often dubious) European Physical Journal C, is publicly available to anyone wishing to download it. (Link here.) Using micron-scale electrical conductors in a variety of shapes, including pillars, plates, spheres and other cavities, teams of researchers were able to generate electric potentials (or changes in voltage) of a few hundred microvolts, completely in line with what previous experiments and theoretical predictions both indicate. That’s what the DARPA-funded project was for, and that’s what the experimental research surrounding this idea accomplished: in a custom Casimir cavity. However, there’s an enormous difference between what teams working on Casimir cavities do experimentally and the numerical calculations performed in this paper. That’s right: This isn’t an experimental paper, but rather a theoretical paper, one with a suspiciously low number (zero) of theoretical physicists on it. The paper relies on the dynamic vacuum model — a model typically applicable to single atoms — to model the energy density throughout space that would be generated by this cavity. They then use another technique, worldline numerics, to assess how the vacuum changes in response to the custom Casimir cavity. And then it gets shady. “Where’s my warp bubble?” They didn’t make one. In fact, they didn’t calculate one, either. All they did was show that the three-dimensional energy density generated by this cavity displayed some qualitative correlations with the energy density field required by the Alcubierre drive. They don’t match in a quantitative sense; they were not generated experimentally, but only calculated numerically; and most importantly, they are restricted to microscopic scales and extremely low energy densities. There’s a lot of speculation and conjecture, and all of it is unproven. That isn’t to say this might not be an interesting idea that might someday pan out. But the most generous thing I can say about it is this: it isn’t fully baked. The most worrisome part, as a scientist familiar with Dr. White’s grandiose claims surrounding physics-violating engines in the past, is that he’s making new grand claims without adequate supporting evidence. He’s going to be looking at tiny, low-power systems and attempting to make measurements right at the limit of what his equipment will be able to detect. And, in the very recent past, he has fooled himself (and many others) into believing a novel effect was present when, in fact, it was not. An error, where his team failed to account for the magnetic and electric fields generated by the wires powering his previous apparatus, was all he wound up measuring. and this also struck me........................ "It may be possible, with the proper configuration, to use the Casimir effect in a controlled fashion to substitute for Alcubierre’s original idea of exotic matter that possessed some type of negative energy. However, one must be careful — as stated earlier, it’s easy to fool yourself. The Casimir effect isn’t equivalent to a warp bubble. But in principle, it could be used to warp space in the negative fashion that would be needed to create one". ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
    1 point
  12. Different observers will measure different shapes for anything that’s not a point particle. Nuclei in accelerators (such as the RHIC) will be more “pancake” than spherical, and this affects the charge distribution when modeling the interaction in the frame where the nucleus is moving. The claim is not wrong, but it doesn’t demonstrate the point they are claiming. I would go a step further and say that we can transform between frames, so the notion that it’s a “different location” is likely another manifestation of the fundamental misunderstanding of relativity. Transforming from (x,t) to (x’, t’) is an acknowledgment that it’s the same location, but each observer has their own coordinate system. The particle is not in two places at once. One person can say a location is 123 Main St while another describes it in terms of latitude and longitude. One location, two ways of describing it.
    -1 points
  13. I can't see China, but using logic to evaluate evidence at my disposal, I have determined it is there.
    -2 points
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