Tuesday 16th of April 2024
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and don’t forget to wash your hands!...

panic

Pray for me, my friends, because I have the flu. No, not the Chinese Bat Flu, or Pangolin Flu, or Covid-19, or Coronavirus, or whatever it’s called now … just the regular, annoying Winter flu that goes around Berlin every year during flu season.

 

From CJ Hopkins

 

It’s a particularly annoying flu this year. You get it, recover from it, then you get it again. All you want to do is crawl into bed, or sit around watching garbage on Netflix. When you get it a second time, and sometimes a third time, it’s kind of a low-grade version of itself, maybe because your immune system knows it … or something. I’m not sure how that works. I’m not a professional virologist or anything.


Or, I don’t know, maybe it is the Bat Flu. The more I read the corporate press, the more I’m beginning to suspect it is. My suspicion isn’t based on facts. I don’t have any of the Bat Flu symptoms. It’s just a feeling … like the feelings people had that Saddam had secret WMDs, and that Trump was a Russian intelligence asset, and that the world was going to end in the year 2012.


OK, those feelings turned out to be wrong, but this one feels like an accurate feeling, and not like just the result of being relentlessly bombarded with hysterical headlines, pictures of people in hazmat suits, and obsessively researching ever-changing, wildly-varying statistics on the Internet, which … I really need to stop doing that.


According to my latest Internet research, the Bat Flu will either subside by late April or will infect approximately 5 billion people (i.e., 60 percent of the world population). If my little Windows calculator is correct, at a death rate of 3.4 percent, that’s 157 million dead people, and at a 4 percent death rate (which I just saw somewhere), we’re talking 200 million dead people!


If you consider that the 14th Century “Black Death” killed 100 to 200 million people, nearly a quarter of the world population (because there weren’t as many people back then), and if you get hysterical and try to compare them (which I’m finding it increasingly difficult not to do), this Bat Flu plague could kill 2 billion people, or maybe 6 or 7 billion people, which is almost the entire human species … anything is possible, after all!


Plus, even if I just have the flu (i.e., the regular flu, not the Chinese Bat Flu), the statistics on that are pretty scary. I don’t know the numbers here in Germany, but, according to the CDC, since 2010, in the United States, the regular old garden variety flu has resulted in the following, annually:


9 million – 45 million cases

140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations

12,000 – 61,000 deaths

When you multiply all those numbers by 10 (because it’s been 10 years since 2010), you get:


90 million – 450 million cases

1,400,000 – 8,100,000 hospitalizations

120,000 – 610,000 deaths

That’s 450 million possible cases and over half a million deaths, and that’s just in the United States! To make it concrete, if you stood all those dead people on top of each other, head to toe, so that everyone was standing on everyone’s head, and used them as an enormous ladder, you could climb to the moon and back four times … or once or twice at the very least.


And that’s nothing compared to this Covid-19!


No, according to The Guardian, Covid-19 is “about ten times more deadly than the seasonal flu,” so that’s 610,000 deaths just this year, and if the CDC tracks it for a full 10 years, that’s pretty close to 6 million dead people, which will make it just as bad as the Holocaust (although the Holocaust only lasted four years, so I’ll have to adjust my math for that).


And, remember, that’s just in the United States, which is only 4.25 percent of the total global population. So you multiply the Holocaust by 95 percent (you can round the numbers to make this easier) and you end up with 7 billion dead people, which is nearly every last person on Earth, except for 700 million people! Which, OK, that sounds like a lot of people (i.e., the 700 million, not the 7 billion), but it’s fewer than there were in the 14th Century, i.e., before the “Black Death” plague killed everybody!


Anyway, whatever I have, or don’t have, and regardless of the fact that I’m under 70 and in fairly good health as far as I know, and notwithstanding my algebraic skills, I’m thinking it’s time to take extreme measures. I recommend you do the same.


The first thing to do is to arm yourself and go out and load up on toilet paper. The epidemiologists are now predicting a worldwide toilet paper crisis more or less approaching the scale of the deadly Toilet Paper Crisis of 1813! This toilet paper crisis could continue for months, so you will want to purchase (or otherwise obtain) as much toilet paper as you possibly can, and then hoard it in your house or apartment, or your remotely-located toilet paper depot.


Be prepared to fight for your toilet paper. Things are getting rather ugly out there. Gangs of heavily-armed toilet paper bandits are roving through the streets of Hong Kong robbing people of their toilet paper. An Australian man was tasered by the police at the Big W store in Tamworth Shoppingworld after “becoming aggressive” over the lack of toilet paper.


In California, where a state of emergency is in effect (and presumably a full-scale lock-down is imminent), shoppers have been running amok at Costco, stripping the shelves of toilet paper, Kleenex, and feminine hygiene products.


New York has just declared a state of emergency (possibly toilet paper-related). Italy has locked down the region of Lombardy, although it isn’t clear exactly why, as they mostly use bidets in Italy … but that’s not really important at the moment.


Next, after you secure the toilet paper, you’ll want to load up on mineral water, hand sanitizer, those paper masks, MREs, protein bars, DVDs of the film Contagion, and other essential survival items. You will want to do this in a mindless frenzy of butt-puckering Chinese Bat Flu panic, ideally while wearing a full-face respirator, or a wearable anti-Bat Flu shield, or some sort of homemade hazmat suit. Don’t forget to bring along your favorite “modern sporting rifle” to mow down anyone who gets in your way … and anyone who might be infected, which at this point you have to assume is everyone!


Or, I don’t know, maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I just have the flu. I mean, what if this whole Corona thing is just nature doing what nature does and not the end of civilization? Look, I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I can’t help wondering whether this virus warrants all the mass hysteria that the corporate media have been pumping out at us, relentlessly, for the last two months, and the states of emergency that are being declared, and the quarantines that are going into effect, and the curfews, and banning of public gatherings, and whatever other “emergency measures” are going to be imposed in the coming weeks and months.


It all seems a little out of proportion to the actual threat we’re facing here, not to mention rather conveniently timed, in light of what’s happening around the world, politically, what with the global capitalist empire right in the thick of a War on Populism, and the American election season underway, and the protests in France, and the general mood of public discontent (or unbridled rage) with global capitalism throughout the West.


Or, I don’t know, perhaps this Bat Flu panic stems from a deeper ideological source. Maybe it has less to do with politics, and more to do with our fascistic pursuit of “perfect health” and “perfect bodies,” and our fear and hatred of ageing and dying, and our narcissistic obsession with ourselves, and our total disconnection from the cycle of life.


OK, take this with a grain of salt, because it’s probably just my fever talking, but sometimes I get this crazy notion that we human beings aren’t actually the Primary Purpose of the Entire Universe, or the Apotheosis of Creation, or whatever, and that it’s natural for some of us to get sick and die, and that every last single disease and health threat doesn’t need to be utterly eradicated, and life doesn’t need to be rendered “safe.” Because maybe sickness and death are, sure, things to be avoided whenever possible, but not at the cost of conditioning everyone to believe we are supposed to live forever, and never get sick or injured by anything, and to believe that things like sickness and death are “enemies,” like hostile aliens, or the sadistic whims of a God who hates us, or errors in the code of creation … which human beings are able to correct.


We’ve been doing a bang-up job of that so far, correcting nature’s (or God’s) mistakes. Haven’t we? I mean, look around. And we have only been at it for a few hundred years. Give us just a little more time, and we will get this whole ugly mess cleaned up, under control, and functioning smoothly if we have to lock down, quarantine, and genetically-correct every sentient creature and particle of matter in the universe to do it! What is the alternative, after all … to just let nature take it’s course, and let people die, like a bunch of savages?


Sorry, I think I’m getting delirious. It’s the fever. It makes me all philosophical. I’d better sign off and get back to Netflix. Good luck surviving the Chinese Bat Flu, and the collapse of Western civilization. And don’t forget to wash your hands!

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/11/the-great-chinese-bat-flu-panic-of-2...

 

May CJ recover soon... GL

gaseous emissions...

Australia’s severe bushfires released a massive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual emissions from commercial air travel worldwide, a new report reveals.

Australia’s black summer took 33 lives, killed one billion animals, destroyed 2439 homes, burnt millions of hectares, wiped billions out of the economy and put a devastating amount of CO2 back into the atmosphere, the first comprehensive overview, compiled by the Climate Council, shows.

The catastrophic bushfires spewed an average of 900 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, more than Australia’s annual emissions that sit around 531 million tonnes, Australian National University climate scientist Will Steffen told The New Daily. 

“This is an enormous burst of carbon [dioxide], bigger than what we’ve ever seen before,” Professor Steffen said.

“They were more than our annual national emissions.

“The question now is, we’re not sure what type of forest or ecosystem is going to regrow.

“If you have a new ecosystem that sucks up less, that will be a net loss to the atmosphere and affect the climate in the future.”

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/03/11/australian-bushfires-climate-...

 

Note, we were onto the problem of forest and loo paper since the inception of this site... See: 

Forest Policy

 

hell is rice without sauce...

 

From Dan McGarry

 

I’ve lived in the south Pacific island nation of Vanuatu for 16 years. Tropical weather regularly interrupts trade. Even when they’re hundreds of kilometres away, cyclones wreak havoc on shipping. Isolation and deprivation define our lives. We know better than most how to cope.


So imagine our bemusement when we see ranks of empty shelves in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, denuded by people who pretty clearly have never dealt with a shortage before.


And when we read about fisticuffs in suburban grocery stores over toilet paper, of all things… well, we’d facepalm, but that’s unsanitary.

Since 2003, I’ve endured half a dozen or so supply shortages as a result of cyclones and too many near misses to count.

In 2015, cyclone Pam devastated our tiny island nation, damaging 90% of all buildings in the capital. Days later, after visiting the devastated island of Tanna, I penned a few lines:


My house has blown down
And my garden is gone
And I don’t know what ship
My next meal is on.

 

Take it from someone who’s dealt with disruptions before. You’re facing two challenges: shortages, which probably won’t be terrible; and isolation, which can be.

But first, the world won’t run out of toilet paper. Your city won’t run out. Your neighbourhood store wouldn’t either, if you’d just leave some on the shelves. The same goes for canned foods.

Fortunately for everyone, the electricity and water supplies aren’t at risk from coronavirus, so refrigeration, communication, and light aren’t a problem. Count your blessings. A friend wisely observed once that the only real luxuries in life are hot water on a cold day, and cold water on a hot one.

If you have the cash to spare, there’s no harm laying in a few weeks’ worth of staples. No need to overdo it, experts and officials say enough food to tide you over for two weeks if you’re forced to self-isolate should do it in most places.

If you do choose to lay in supplies, don’t forget the small stuff. Sartre said “Hell is other people”. I say it’s two weeks of rice without sauce.

Back in 2004, cyclone Ivy stranded me on the island of Ambae. It took weeks to restore contact with the outside world. Within days, we were scouring the dregs of my host’s spice rack in order to make our daily plate of rice more palatable. That was an adventure that quickly stopped being fun.

 

Don’t get caught unprepared. Keep a supply of your favourite sauces and dry seasonings, the ones you love so much you’re willing to end up hating them. Because you will.

Other advice if you are stockpiling: buy things you know how to cook, nothing else. This is no time to experiment. Any tasty snacks you buy will be gone in 48 hours. Though I do recommend keeping a secret chocolate stash, so you can savour that.

And think about others. The people who most need to stockpile are the least able.

If you ask me, isolation is harder to cope with than any shortage. If we see widespread home-quarantining, and people forced to self-isolate for weeks to manage the spread of the virus, most of us are going to be distanced or alone for the first time in our lives. Kindness is going to matter more than ever.

If you do end up quarantined, your greatest enemy will be boredom. 

I remember being trapped by a cyclone in a single room with three brilliant friends. We started out in high-minded discourse solving all the world’s problems, but twenty hours later we were reduced to debating whether Boutros Boutros Ghali or Kofi Annan was hotter. (Kofi, of course. Like it was even close.)

Things get silly – or serious – fast. You can either roll with it, or it will roll on you. Lighten up and you’ll make it through.

And be kind, even when you don’t feel kind. We’re all alone in this together.

  • Dan McGarry is an independent journalist based in Vanuatu.


Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/12/advice-from-...
Read from top.

virus on the gold coast...

American actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson have tested positive for coronavirus.

The couple is in hospital on the Gold Coast.

On Instagram, Hanks wrote, "We felt a bit tired, like we had colds, and some body aches. Rita had some chills that came and went. Slight fevers too. To play things right, as is needed in the world right now, we were tested for the coronavirus, and were found to be positive."

Hanks was in the Queensland city to work on an Elvis biopic with director Baz Luhrmann. 

"Well, now. What to do next?" Hanks wrote.

"The medical officials have protocols that must be followed. 

"We Hanks' will be tested, observed, and isolated for as long as public health and safety requires. 

"Not much more to it than a one-day-at-a-time approach, no?

"We'll keep the world posted and updated.

"Take care of yourselves!," his social media post said.

More to come.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-12/tom-hanks-and-rita-wilson-coronav...

 

Get well soon...

refereeing the toil of toilet rolls...

What will British sport look like in the peak of coronavirus? Not as we know it, is the general consensus, with closed doors, postponements and cancellations an inevitability. Though I’ve yet to see the computer modelling, my sense is that the search for sport-effect content will then become one of the great goals of our nation’s humankind. Indeed, as footage of panic buying continues to go viral, my preference is for Premier League referees to be redeployed to supermarket aisles. Mike Dean imposing himself on a lively pasta aisle derby feels like the coronavirus event we deserve.

Though of course, Dean might regard himself as the natural choice for the rather bigger game. And as has been made abundantly clear of late, that is the loo paper aisle. Over the past week or so, footage of toilet roll fights has emerged that could easily replace football if we were stuck with making do. I assume you’ve seen some of these? They’re arguably the perfect replacement. Right off the bat, viewers find it easy to immediately hate the players as well as sneer at them. They remain convinced they would never behave like them, and they wouldn’t want their three-mansions-worth of Cushelle packs even if they had the chance.

Plus, it’s a proper spectacle. Having myself witnessed a tightly fought battle over a 16-pack of Andrex Classic Clean in a London supermarket last weekend, I can attest to the vicarious thrill of this sort of live contest. Hate to say “I was there” – but this is another part of the true experience simply not grasped by plastic overseas fans. Or, I’m afraid, by so-called fans watching in other areas of the country. You just don’t get the atmosphere if you’re watching one of these ties on social media, and while I imagine the employee CCTV in the supermarket back office gets the best angles of all, there mercifully simply isn’t time to hear from them while the fixture is under way. So instead of a thrilling toilet roll fight being ruined by VAR, you are returned to a sort of prelapsarian state where play is entirely uninterrupted by technology – or, indeed, by anyone approaching a responsible adult.

Of course, it is quite easy to get sucked in to having A Strong View about the players, and I did find myself having to bite my tongue as one of the participants said something particularly extreme in front of the other one’s child. Then again, it’s a man’s game, when all’s said and done. If you don’t like it – and it’s not for everyone – you can always do one to fruit and veg, or olives and hummus.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2020/mar/11/monday-night-toilet-r...

 

I though I would spare you a picture of deserted shelves, but got "the viral virus" and shot a couple. Here is one:

 

tolls

 

not the spanish flu...

 

...

For the past week, pro-government Spanish journalists have ridiculed the drastic measures of other countries and chanted that pernicious mantra: “the coronavirus is nothing but a flu.” And so, while Italy, Iran, France, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, and Japan decreed important bans and urged their citizens to avoid rallies and take extreme precautions, the Spanish government threw protesters into the streets while millions of people maintained their travel plans and social gatherings.

On Sunday, as I watched the packed feminist march in Madrid, I suspected something terrible might happen. The Spanish government led the Spaniards to believe that, for some mysterious reason, perhaps associated with the magical properties of our red wine, we were immune to this virus. And according to official reports, we were, but only until the first minute after the end of the last feminist march. Then they admitted we didn’t have 374 coronavirus cases but in fact more than 1,200, an evolving disaster equal to or worse than the Italian one.

On Monday morning, the Spanish government was still paralyzed, overwhelmed, and so no measures were being taken. My sources at La Moncloa suggested the obvious: that “any restrictive measure would have too great an impact on the economy, tourism and work.” So what? The same applies to being bombed by an enemy during the course of war, and surely we wouldn’t dream of not defending ourselves by any means necessary.

The region of Madrid, being the most affected and under a conservative government, decided to close all schools and universities until further notice. It was only on Monday night that the central government admitted the gravity of the situation and “announced that it will announce” new measures.

In short, what Spain, and other southern European countries before it, have done is a good example of what not to do: denying the seriousness of the pandemic, comparing the coronavirus to a flu or cold, slowing down reports of infected and deaths for partisan interests, staying paralyzed for days, suggesting that as soon as the temperatures rise the virus will end, refusing to suspend demonstrations and festivals, only to finally admit that everything has gotten out of hand—which then causes three times as much hysteria as if they had only told the truth from the beginning.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/message-from-spain-how-...

 

Sometimes, one has to die laughing... Sorry. I did not mean to be insensitive... The problem is serious but we need to play the game. Had Donald Trump stopped all air traffic between Europe, China and the USA, at the onset, he would have been ridiculed... Now we want more shut down of everything...

 

Crowds will be banned from Australia’s one-day cricket series against New Zealand with the series to be played behind closed doors because of coronavirus, while the upcoming women’s tour of South Africa was put on hold until further notice.

Cricket Australia took the drastic step on Friday, just hours before the men’s series opener at the SCG. Another match is due for the SCG on Sunday, before another game in front of an empty stadium at Blundstone Arena in Hobart next Friday.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/mar/13/fans-shut-out-from-austral...

 

Read from top.

a reminder...

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33991

a gun or a roll of toilet paper?...

Australians have gone mad for toilet paper and hand sanitiser as the threat of the deadly coronavirus looms ever larger.

In the US, one of the biggest runs has been on guns and ammunition.

Amid widespread shortages of consumer products across the US, guns are one of the most popular items.

At one Los Angeles shop, customers waited more than five hours to be served at the weekend. The queue stretched out the door and a fast-food truck outside took orders for hungry shoppers.

Among them was a medical doctor who would give only his first name, Ray. He told the Los Angeles Times he’d come to buy his first gun.

“I want to buy a handgun, I think they call it a Glock, but I’m not sure,” he said. “I have a house and a family, and they’ll need protection if things get worse.

“The fear is that civil services will break down.”

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/coronavirus/2020/03/16/guns-us-coronavirus/

 

Read from top. Hard to clean your butt with a gun — and possibly dangerous to do so — but as the butts of some Aussies get cleaned twice-over with their humongous stock of toilet rolls, the Yanks are reduced to use the butts of their guns to prevent becoming the butts of satire...

isolation, quarantine and self-protection...

protection

 

Read from top.

taking away the fun of chasing toilet rolls...

The toto washlet is for a more refined clean... It does away with the toilet roll:


Auto Open/Close Lid

Rear Cleanse

Heated Seat

Front Cleanse

Ewater+Warm Air Dryer

Self-cleaning Wand

Deodorizer

Premist

 

https://sputniknews.com/cartoons/202003181078606344-do-as-i-say-not-as-i...

 

https://washlet.totousa.com/?

 

Flush your local politician in it as well....

 

 

Read from top

 

 

 

faulty toilet paper masks...

As the emerging superpower entered 2020, a coronavirus outbreak in the industrial hub of Wuhan swept the nation, then the world, which crippled the global economy in turn.

By March, things began to slowly turn around, as China's drastic lockdown measures appear to have slowed the country's infection rates.

This has placed China in a position to supply sorely needed medical products as coronavirus has shuttered production capacity elsewhere. 

Chinese state media Xinhua reported in early March that China was producing 116 million masks daily, about 12 times as many as a month prior, according to official data.

Coronavirus update: Follow the latest news in our daily wrap

 

But China's efforts to help haven't gone smoothly, as several countries have reported faults with Chinese-made supplies.

This began with Spain's recall of about 58,000 inaccurate rapid COVID-19 test kits late last week, and Turkey also casting aside a number of sample test kits that were faulty.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-04/china-coronavirus-covid-19-medica...

 

 

Meanwhile:

before and after