> Daily life is dangerous and carries a risk of death, lockdown has reduced the number of traffic deaths - does that mean we should ban all forms of travel permanently?

Of course! Risk of any kind is completely unacceptable under the "new normal" regime. We should ban all alcohol products, tobacco products. We should force all fast-food restaurants to shut down. Everybody should be under house arrest, but with a daily government-mandated exercise routine.

In fact, I would vote Kim Jong-un in for president in November! Everybody is so much happier and healthier in North Korea!

. /s

> And the reason for that are most likely the strict corona measures, which 'coincidently' also prevent other sicknesses to spread. (*facepalm*)

Sure, however, everybody dies eventually. They will just fall over when the next flu virus (or corona cold virus) comes around this winter. Pretty much every year follows that pattern: A spike in deaths during the coldest weeks of January / February, followed by a calmer spring and summer. The 2021 spike will be higher since more people were "saved" by sitting inside in house arrest or wearing masks this year.

Yet, that was not really the point. The main idea regarding year-to-date numbers was: The coronavirus deaths didn't even move the needle when compared to the total, expected and excess deaths. In most but a few cities, it was a complete non-event.

What was real, was the manufactured panic. Millions of people losing their jobs was real. People failing to see a doctor for other health issues because all that mattered was COVID. Societies and entire countries falling apart due to mass hysteria.

So sure, wearing a mask will keep grandma alive a few months longer. The price the rest of the world has to pay is so much higher.

> Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand are examples of free presses, so we can assume relatively good data. They followed the science, and it worked.

What worked? Containing COVID? No, it didn't. Here are some news-flash and graphs for you, since you're apparently making up stories.

https://www.worldometers.info/...

https://www.worldometers.info/...

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

> Instead, we find ourselves a leader in a different metric: deaths per capita. We're number 10! USA! USA!

We can do better than that. USA is best at COVID, the best! When we reach 300k, then we might be on top (in deaths per capita). Think we can do it!? There's plenty of more grandmas and grandpas to take from!

Every claim in your post is of the [citation needed] kind. The most interesting would be:

> "people who have died from COVID-19, on average lost 12-13 years from their lives."
> "even if you are young, healthy, fit person you have a high chance of getting (possibly permanent) damage to your lungs"
> "Chances are quite high also on getting a long-haul form of COVID-19."

And we're not looking for the anecdotal evidence of a few samples here and there, which there are hundreds of articles about already. What we need is global data on the same level as the case / testing / deaths numbers we regularly get, but for the points you mentioned.

A recent study (link below) found that 3.4 million had already had COVID in England. That is approximately 11 times more than the registered cases in UK. (No finer granular data on UK vs England atm). So, assuming the 11x number (which is rather conservative, considering testing is far lower in many countries) we're looking at some 240 million affected worldwide by now.

Now, from those 240 million, how many with serious longterm issues are we talking about? Presumably, a far lower number than the total registered cases. Maybe in the low millions?

If the health of those millions is so critical, I can think of many other initiatives with significantly higher impact than masks: Ban all tobacco products, alcohol products. Limit sugar and fat levels in food. Mandate compulsory exercise programs. Reduce high-way speed-limits to turtle speeds. No? Seems unreasonable and excessive?

I think we're starting to see that rational fact-based arguments have left the building a long time ago. All that is left is emotions, hysteria and fantasy beliefs. Which people should be free to voice. It's just that they should not govern public health policy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

https://www.worldometers.info/...

> Because, in capitalism, money is more important than human life.

That argument is growing long in its tooth. "The economy", and "money" are not abstract concepts that only politicians care about. Record numbers are unemployed as a direct effect of the lock-down and it is already poor who are hardest hit. The mass protests have sustained due to the unemployed rates. Unsurprisingly, upending all of society has a destabilizing effect.

By now it is very clear that the lives we're "saving" are senior citizens, often well above their life expectancy age. They would have died later this year anyway. In some countries, the excess death rate year-to-date is now negative. Meaning that despite the excess deaths in March/April, fewer people have died to date overall compared to previous years during the same period.

The idea that we can stop and isolate these viruses has now proven wrong in pretty much all countries where it's been tried. (And let's not talk about China, where data is politically motivated and factually wrong).

If you want to continue believing in Santa Claus, Jesus and stopping COVID feel free to. But let the rest of us get on with our lives.

That small article is so full of plain common sense, facts and perspective it's blinding. It's an oasis of clarity, surrounded by panic and hysteria.

The sunken cost, no loss of face strategy by almost every country around the world is abhorrent. As the article points out, it was already clear mid-March that mostly older people were at risk. Yet, here we are, two months in, with no way of holding our leaders accountable for the worst destruction to social and economic life since WW 2. And the majority of people still believe in the propaganda!

I guess it's more the fact that fist-fights and the occasional knife attack would make a dull GTA.
Also, with the blanket camera surveillance, you'd never be able to escape the cop's search radius.
Oh, and they drive on the wrong side of the road! That would just be confusing.

The way I understand Common Law vs Civil Law practices is that precedent weighs less under the latter. Thus, this would not set legal precedent in the Netherlands, and presumably nor in the EU.

https://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/bl...

Your comment is an oasis of sanity surrounded by hysteria.

At this point, I suspect we've entered a vicious loop, where any kind of clarity and de-escalation is not beneficial to those who ought to communicate it. "Everything is fine" never sold a lot of newspapers. And "let's go back to normal" does not benefit those in power, partly because a crisis is useful to push agendas, and partly because the masses have been whipped up into such a frenzy they wouldn't accept it.

The perspective is there for those who care to look up the data behind the headlines. Information on other causes of death for example, where various kinds of tumours are the primary cause of around 30% of deaths. Or that fact that about 90% of those dying of covid are above pension age and about 30% above average life expectancy.

Globally, about 160,000 people die during any 24 hours of any cause, every day, for a total of 60 million per year. Or put into perspective, covid was listed as a cause (although most likely not primary) in about 330,000 deaths since January this year. That's equivalent to the normal baseline in about 50 hours. The birthrate is more than double that, at about 370,000 newborns every day. In terms of global death and populate rates, this "crisis" will hardly register.

The statistics of deaths give meaningful perspective. For example, on the site GP linked, you can find that 954874 people died in Germany in 2018. That's 2616 people on average every day. The 100 to 200 people who died from the virus per day make up 3 - 8% of the total daily deaths.

Scale that up globally, and there are about 160k deaths per day, every day, for a total of about 60 million per year. (Birth rates are about double that). Global deaths to COVID-19 is currently at 114k total since January. Or to put it differently, in the next 17 hours, more people will die globally, than all who died from the virus till now.

https://www.destatis.de/EN/The...

https://www.worldometers.info/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The dark numbers must be massive. New articles talk about ~300 k registered cases. So what is the actual number? 10x, 100x, 1000x?

> Web based adverts don't work well.

110 billion dollars in Google's 2018 advertising revenues says you're wrong. Or rather, as you pointed out, "it's a multi-billion dollar industry", where the winner already has the majority share.

So yeah, of course Disney, Netflix will slap on ads, just as Youtube already do. The question is, will it still be possible to pay to opt out, or will it go the way TV works today, where you pay for the cable package AND still have to watch ads.

Google as a cool place to work has been a slippery slope for a decade at least. It's amazing how long they've managed to hold on to the cool hipster vibe, while growing into one of the biggest multinational behemoths.

Now, the only cool thing left at Google is the money. So, for those who care to get fucked in the ass for about $1000 a day, 250 days a year, it's your place. Then again, I hear there are other professions which would give you the same money, but without the TPS reports.

And through the Streisand effect, his chants received far more attention than he otherwise would have gotten.

You'd think that was common knowledge by now. Yet time and again somebody gets burnt by attempting to suppress speech.

+1

My work stations are (some of) my servers. There's constantly things running.

Then there's the benefit of picking up exactly where you left off. In fact, a good tip for effective work is to leave one small thing unfinished before leaving for the night. When you get in the next morning, you pick up that failing unit test, which you already know the details of, and from there on, get right back into the groove.