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Do we believe these figures? Do I believe them? That 91% of Chinese tell the IPSOS Global Happiness Survey pollsters that they’re happy? Well, yes, on the whole and based just on my trips to China, where I always make a point of chatting to folks. All I talk to are happy, optimistic. Then again, I find that about the States, too, despite all the sturm und drang we see on the news. And most place, tbf. Except Russia, when we went across it in 2017, everyone seemed as sour as the borscht.
But Saudi Arabia at 86% happy? Huh? I’ve been there and I find it grim. Perhaps it’s because most Saudis haven’t been outside. Netherlands at 85%? Yes, believe, kind of… though there’s plenty of farmers who aren’t too happy with the government that wants to take away their farms because …”climate crisis”.
I wonder where Australia is. Hong Kong is fairly down the list.
ADDED: Australia is on 80%, quite high, but 4% down on the last survey. Hong Kong is not covered. Here.
We see the playing out of the battle between highly-credentialed scientists on opposite sides of an issue. That’s science. Never settled. Redfield v Fauci on lab leak v zoonotic origin of Covid.
Update from Matt Ridley on the latest story about Racoon Dogs as a spreader. Word doc here.
A mate here in Hong Kong, a man I’ve known and loved for years and who I’ve always thought sound, says that he’s a full-on Biden supporter because, he says, Biden is a “steady pair of hands”.
Now here goes. And here goes — please to note — from a non-Trump person. Just I’m a Biden Bear big time. Joining other Democrats who criticise the man. As the late-night comedians used to do to any administration, part of the deal, to keep the powerful to account. But who now to a man are simply Biden boosters. Enough.
Off the top of the head, re Biden as a “safe pair of hands”. Nothing Googled:
“A steady pair of hands?”
A man who screwed up handling Covid, with unnecessary mandates and lockdowns — many that continue to this day. With zero sense and less science.
That locked down the economy, ruining mom-and-pop stores nationwide. That closed schools. When told Europe kept their schools open, said “that’s Europe, this is the US”. Science, right?
That pumped Trillions— with a “T” — of US dollars into the economy, to make up for his lockdown damage and when told this will lead to inflation said “no, it won’t”.
And when did lead to inflation was told it would lead to increase in interest rates, and said “no, it won’t”.
And when it did lead to increased interest rates, we have banking collapses, and stagflation — high interest rates, high inflation and high unemployment.
Which is where we are now.
And that’s just domestically. (And far from a full accounting of the domestic damage from Joe’s “steady hands”. E.G. the whole Title IX stuff, room for a book).
Internationally there’s:
Afghanistan which he abandoned, even though he didn’t have to, that was just “steady hand Joe”. Which handed the Taliban not just the country, and all its women to suppress, but also hundreds of billions of latest American armaments. All unnecessary and so, so sad, for the abandoned people of Afghanistan.
And then have the green light for Putin to invade Ukraine, by letting him know the US would do nothing if they “just” invaded the East, the Donbas region. And so: Ukraine war.
And then bombed the Nordstream gas pipeline, to punish Germany for being too close to Russia, and lied about it, even as we know he did it — you could only believe he didn’t do it, if you’re the person that believes he’s a “steady pair of hands” — that’s an act of war on an ally.
And none of this to even mention his dealings with spies in China, with crooks in Ukraine, the money he made from them, all recorded by his crackhead son, on Hunter’s laptop, which the MSM assiduously ignores, because … well, “steady hands Joe.”
And not to mention — how can we?— that he shat in his pants in Germany. That he farted in front of the Queen. Well, she did laugh, so there’s that.
We have in Joe Biden a President who shits on the world, literally and figuratively, who farts in the face of royalty. Who screws up his own nation. And this man, this senile, this flatulent, this incompetent, this corrupt, this pathetic old man is …
“Steady hands Joe.”
Right.
BIDEN SUPPORTERS: give me the counter!
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She is a women’s rights activist. Saying “anti-trans” is wrong. As you’ll see from the long-form interview above.
She speaks for women’s rights in the face of intrusions by some in the trans community and Radical Trans Activists (TRA), many of whom are left wing and not at all trans!
Nazis turned up. Who knows why. Spoiling for a fight maybe? Or could they have been a Fifth Column? Sent in by TRAs to make Kellie-Jay look bad? So that bad across like the Victoria Premier Dan Andrews can call her a merchant of “hate speech”?
What she actually talks about is:
And yet when I look at Dan Andrews’ tweets, in all he talks as if the Nazis and Kellie-Jay Keen’s “Let Women Speak” were made to sound ine and the same. I’ve seen Keen in several long-form podcasts and she is in no way a Nazi and would have been horrified by Nazis intruding her get together, a gathering of women who are speaking up against the erosion of rights that were hard win over the last half century. Shame on Andrews, and all the MSM that you read if you Google “Kelly Jay Keen in Melbourne”.
ADDED: Kellie-Jay Keen on Wikipedia says she’s an “anti-trans activist”. If you look at what that means, she is none of it. She is only concerned with protecting the rights of women in the face of challenges by radical trans activists to overtake women’s spaces. Imagine young girls and women in female spaces being confronted by biological males, with full kit (around 95% of trans women have not removed their male genitalia). Women and girls don’t like it. Understandably. So where are the trans women to go? Answer: in the men’s room or in gender-neutral places (or ok in women’s room for the 5% who are post-operative, I presume). The answer to the sensitivity of some, can’t be to ignore the sensitivity of many.
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China never bought Australian coking coal, steaming coal, iron ore, lithium, seafood and wines as a favour to Australia. It did it because they needed and wanted these things. The only people they hurt were Chinese. Australia meanwhile quickly pivoted and found other markets. If you look at the historical GDP charts for this period for Australia, as I did a while back, you can hardly see a blip from the Chinese thuggery.
China deserves to suffer for this thuggish act. They still are.
The Study
Cochrane Library: Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. The WebArchive version is here.
Lead author Tom Jefferson comes with impressive resume. He digs deep into data. For example, in 2012 he was lead researcher on a study into oseltamivir (Tamiflu). According to Wikipedia:
In 2012, Jefferson was the lead author of another Cochrane review of this data which concluded that oseltamivir [Tamiflu] did not reduce the number of hospitalizations caused by influenza. Jefferson said that this review also found no evidence that oseltamivir stopped complications from the disease.[6] The review is considered a landmark and is posted on the James Lind Library website[7] which illustrates the development of fair tests of healthcare. [my emphasis]
The critics of the Study: abc News here, Conversations, here, New York Times, here (with critique here and here), The Guardian, here (with critique here). The Washington Post, here (with critique here)
The critics of the critics of the Study: Vinay Prasad* MD, MPH, here, here and here. Kevin Bass, here. Kyle Lamb, here. Paul D. Thacker, here. Rod Liddle, here.
The sum of all the critics of the study is: the study doesn’t show masks don’t work. It shows that there is no evidence that they do. IOW “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, which is taken apart by Dr Prasad in his pieces above, where he says the Cochrane study is simply following the same standards used for the study of all other medicines and non-medical interventions. Masks ought not be treated differently.
Then: “it’s apples and oranges” comparison, a critique by both the Conversations criticism and The Guardian, so seems they’ve cribbed off each other. In any case, it’s a fact that’s acknowledged by the Cochrane study authors themselves. They worked with what data they had. And that data was mixed. In total data from 78 RCTs, 11 of which were post the start of Covid. They acknowledge this is not enough and we need more. A question might be asked: why has the CDC or UK equivalents not done so? Especially in relation to masking by children, on which there’s not a single RCT?
Their criticism seems to be: you’re measuring people as they actually use masks, not how they should be used. Well, exactly. Because how people use masks is how people use masks. You can’t force compliance with some correct way of wearing masks. I know that from here in Hong Kong, where we had a very compliant and obedient population, but after a while masks were below noses and on chins. That’s just the reality. And that’s also the reality of population-wide mandates. People just get sick of them. It’s even the way with doctors and nurses who all say that they never wear the mask the whole day. It’s just too unconformable to be worn non-stop.
(ADDED: quite a while back I thought there might be a difference in how masks work in a laboratory and how the work in the Real World. And it turns out that’s true.)
Agenda: what would be the agenda of people saying “masks don’t work”? What skin in the game do they have?? Shorting mask-making stocks? Whereas C. Raina MacIntyre, lead author of the Conversation piece reveals in her Disclosure statement that she works for a mask manufacturer. Not that I’m saying that may have influenced her views in any way. Just sayin’. To repeat: there can be no agenda for finding against masks, for what’s the gain?
Bottom line: Cochrane Library is the best collection of data on mask effectives that we have to date. It’s the best we know on the available evidence. If you don’t like it, then have other studies go at it. The authors of the Cochrane study suggest this themselves. Even taking into account the critics, the most we can say, the most mask-friendly thing we can say is that the study doesn’t show that they definitely don’t work. At the very best that’s inconclusive. And it’s not the extraordinary evidence we need for the extraordinary demands that are made by mandates. As I said in my letter to the editor, here.
End of the day, mask wearing or not became one remains tribal. If you’re of the mask wearing tribe, you’ll look at the headlines in the critics of the Cochrane study and conclude that masks do work. And if you’re in the anti mask-mandate tribe, you’ll take comfort from the Cocharane study and keep on leaving your face open to the fresh air. And you’d be more right about that. Because you’d be following The Science. As far we know it today. Science might change conclusions. But for now, it’s Cochrane.
And, on this I think I’m done. Till next time. Mask you later!
*Vinay Prasad MD MPH Hematologist Oncologist. Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. www.vinayakkprasad.com
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This year the boats are all enclosed. In the past they were out in the open with cold waves crashing over them and the deck. I doubt we’ll see that again in round-the-world boats. This is the way for racing round the world. Carbon-light, foils, enclosed decks.
These are IMOCA 60 -- International Monohull Offshore Class Association, 60 feet long. They are all the same. So the first there is there winner. Scoring: first gets the most points, last the least (opposite of all the racing we’ve done in IRC boats, where the first gets one point, second two points, etc, and the aim is the least points. In the One-Class format, the aim is the most points).
Holcim has a handy lead at the half-way mark)
Why did Silicon Valley Bank go bust? Because its assets were eroded. Why that? Because it bought US Treasuries. Why that? Because “it’s gilt”, because the government encouraged them to do so — copper-bottomed blue-chip! But which then plunged in value. Why that? Because inflation >> higher interest rates. Higher interest rates >> lower bond price. Because that’s the iron law, the first thing I learned in 1969 in Eco 101, bond prices and interest rates are inversely correlated. Why inflation up? Because US government firehosed cash into the economy 2020-22. Why that? Because lockdowns, coz Covid. People needed money to make up for lost business. Why lockdowns? GOOD question! At the time there were other options, mainly the a great Barrington Declaration. But it was snuffed out because government had its own agenda: lockdowns are the only way. They were not. We knew then, but were ignored and vilified. We still know now.
To blame this on anything other than government mishandling is Silicon Valley BUNK.
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Note the highlight; “No deaths have been directly ascribed to the nuclear accident,...”. [Fukushima]
Some people died in the mad rush to escape the area: a mad rush that turns out was unnecessary. Many more people in Japan have died in the twelve years since the accident... as a result of cold weather... as a result of no heating... as a result of closing down nuclear power stations throughout Japan. Closures that were totally unnecessary, but just panic after the accident.
This is not hindsight. We knew at the time. Yet panic won. Scientists knew Japan didn’t need to close all its nuclear stations. But panic set in. Fukushima proved how safe nuclear power is. The station was built in the seventies, using technology of the slide rule. And it faced a thousand-year tsunami. Yet.. still.. not a single death. But still, panic reigned. It was too good an opportunity for the Greens and the anti-New Clear crowd to make hay out of the accident and to tell us, yet again -- and yet again incorrectly -- “how dangerous nuclear power is”. So dangerous that the worst nuclear power station accident since Chernobyl had zero deaths.
It was even crazier in Germany, for Mad Mutti Merkel to shut down all Germany’s reactors, when not a single one of them faced the dangers of a Tsunami. Crazy. Even now, the Greens in Germany are refusing to allow the existing, clean, safe operating-just-fine, nuclear power stations to stay open, when Germany has a serious energy shortage. These people are mental. That’s it. Mental.
ADDED:
And the chart of safety and cleanliness of New Clear energy. From Our World in Data:
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GG: There is no such expertise in “disinformation”. You can’t be a “disinformation expert”. It’s a scam.
So too is labelling “free speech absolutist” as “far-right bigot”.
FYI: Greenwald is a very left-of-centre figure. I believe has identified as socialist. As a reporter he has been incensed at how his fellow media have dropped the ball over questioning power institutions and the elite. He still does so. For that he’s labelled right wing or even far-right. It’s crazy.
Ruby’s is the perspective of the Australian government, at least the civil servants at the time he was ambassador: generally China bullish. On the other side are the China bearish, at various points of negativity from the “Coming collapse of China” Gordon Chang, to the downbeat “Lei’s Real Talk” to the demography doomsayers like Peter Zeihan. And of course the on-the-ground citizen YouTubers.
Then we have the business folk, here in Hong Kong and those long term resident in China. From these I have a sense of tightening, more anti-foreigner sentiment. Not exactly optimism. They’re still in there, ims one cases because they have to be, in others because they’re handling wealthy Chinese who are ra,img their money out of China. If voting with your Renminbi counts for anything, it’s also bearish.
I don’t buy the “China collapse” narrative. Mainly because forty-plus years in China, I’ve heard that for all that time and all that time China has just got stronger.
But still… Xi Jinping is not an about to be overthrown, but nor is he quite as comfortable in his position as he was pre pandemic. The CCP is not about to be overthrown, but nor is it the behemoth that 100 million members might indicate, because most are members simply for their career, not necuae they are ideologically aligned, a bit like having to be Catholic in a Catholic country — it gets you ahead.
Back to Geoff Raby and his “perspective”. He was Australia’s ambassador to China 2007-2011. I know Geoff from last century. I was at the height of my public service 1990-1995, when my position was ambassador level. I attended innumerable meetings between Australian and Chinese Ministers and most senior officials, many with Geoff. I served three Australian ambassadors over my whole time in the Oz civil service.
One thing the Chinese are very good at is duchessing ambassadors. They treat them so well, with so much respect, they really look after them, call them “old friends” (老朋友) who “understand China” (了解中国) — the China they are presented with, of course! That’s the treatment Geoff Raby has had. It’s no wonder he reports only the good news about China. The only people he meets in China when he visits these days are Chinese officials who let him know the latest good news in how great things are in China. If he didn’t report positive, he would no longer be given access to the “senior officials” he’s so proud of quoting.
He would have been escorted during his most recent visit and if he’d asked not to be they would have followed him anyway and made sure he didn’t speak to any unauthorised folks in the street. Look at his reporting! The Chinese have done a good job! He’s a spokesman for the Communist Party of China. On’ya Geoff!
If Raby were writing for an academic journal he’d have to give a “statement on conflict of interests” setting this out. As it is, writing as Op-Ed, all is fine, just go right along with carrying water for the communist party and you’ll be lionised in the comments.
Basil and his best mate Marcus |
In the end he couldn’t get up, couldn’t walk. All he did all day was sleep for 20 hours and bark for four. We loved him and it was sad and tearful to bid him goodbye. Our local vets were so kind and caring and compassionate. Dr J, Nurse M. There were tears and fond farewells.
Life... and death. Death... and life.
They were desperate for him to fail when he bought Twitter, because he made "free speech" his touchstone. Daily they mocked him as advertisers deserted — at their urging and at their demonisations. Now they are coming back: I saw Louis Vuitton back yesterday.
Quite extraordinary to see the Left swivel on a dime, in an instant, about how they felt of Musk. He was a hero of the environment, beloved of the Left because he was fighting climate change with Tesla and batteries and Solar City, and Spacex and stuff. Then — snap! — he is a villain because he wants free speech at Twitter….
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Looks like her husband, Philip Bowring, doesn’t want anything to do with her…
The husband of former Hong Kong opposition lawmaker Claudia Mo Man-ching has said he did not endorse an appeal by more than 50 British politicians to the UK government to press authorities in the Asian financial hub for her release so she could visit him in hospital.
Philip Bowring, in a note released by the family on Sunday, said he left intensive care three weeks ago and had been discharged from hospital. More …
Since its inception in 1921, China’s Communist Party has lurched between ultra-left radicalism and pragmatism, bringing about alternating tragedies and triumphs.
In the first 30 years of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong’s erroneous emphasis on ideology and class struggle, fanned by ultra-leftist nationalism, produced catastrophic consequences.
In the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping ended the disastrous Cultural Revolution and adopted an open-door policy, which put China on the track of reform and opening up, and which paved the way for its economic lift-off.
Mindful of the devastating results of policies such as the Great Leap Forward and Anti-Rightist Campaign, Deng repeatedly warned that the party should primarily guard against ultra-leftist tendencies, even as it should be vigilant against turning to the right. Wary of the constant debate of socialism vs capitalism over the use of foreign technology and the development of the private economy, he came up with the phrase bu zheng lun(let’s dispense with theoretical debate), to focus the party’s attention on growing the economy. More …
I’m sitting here on a bench by the Promenade along the seafront of our Siena Park in Discovery Bay, Hong Kong. I’m in the middle of my daily bike ride around these forty acres. It’s 21 degrees C and just 55% humidity, dry for us.
I’m looking due East, toward Victoria Harbour — yes, it’s still called “Victoria”, bless Beijing — and past the harbour, past the Peak, past Central, past Kowloon, to the South China Sea. I think of the history this harbour has seen. Stolen by the Brits in the Opium Wars, wars fought to keep Chinese addicted. Taken by the Royal Navy as the only deep water port along this East China coast. Wondering why the Chinese had ignored deep water for so long and thinking must have done so because their boats were shallow draft junks and sampans. Coastal vessels. Didn’t need deep water. The British had ocean-going craft with much deeper draft. So they were obsessed with deep water. Is that the reason?
A fresh easterly is blowing, off that South China Sea, brushing by Hong Kong island, bringing us clear air, fresh, clean, Covid-free.
People wander by at a regular clip, not a swarm but a regular pass-by, doing what Italians call a passeggiata. Walking. Wandering. Strolling. Enjoying the late winter sun. Some jogging. Most are Chinese, of them about 80/20 Cantonese local vs Mandarin mainlanders. The foreigners, expats, speak Italian, Spanish, French and English. Sometimes Russian. Many have kids and dogs. Many have bikes and scooters.
Friends sometime pass by. And sit for a chat. Sometimes come home to our place for a cuppa. The Koel, a cuckoo, calls his plaintive cry, prepping for his annual act of perfidy.
Most folks are not wearing masks, maybe 90% not. Of the few that are, all are Chinese. Outdoors, in a fresh easterly….
I rang my mother, Mutti, just now, but it was 6:55 pm there in Oz, she was about to sit down and watch the news on the ABC, and asked me to ring back in an hour. It’s entirely possible to live a happy and productive life watching only “Auntie” ABC in Australia, for news. Or only the BBC in the UK, or only MSNBC in America. Mutti is rising 102 and proof of it. But you’ll not know a lot of what’s going on, the stuff that MSM have decided is not good for you to know. Cause you might vote for the wrong person. Again, entirely possible to do that and be happy doing so. And ending with this observation is rather like ending on a conspiracy theory. Yes. Still, I’d rather know a fuller picture. You can never know it all; who can? Just a bit more informed than Auntie and the Beens might have you know.
And I think of son John, over at the UCLA Law School who’s getting ready to go to the Vis Moot in Vienna, as rhe UCLA team of five. 300 teams.More at Wikipedia. Quite a big deal, but he didn’t say anything about it: we learned by accident. Weird.
Time to give Mutti a ring. Time to enjoy the passing passeggiata folk. Time to enjoy the warm late-day sun. Free vitamin D.
It’s a very lovely scene here.
TTFN.