June 4, Covid cover and the Streisand effect

Police close down part of Victoria Park

This is what they used to be like

Another "June 4" comes around, the 32nd since that infamous massacre on the streets of Tian'anmen, 4th June 1989 (In Chinese: 六四, liu si). J was there. I'd just been there. So it's bright in our memories. But in China it's down the memory hole: no-one under 40 knows it; most under 60 don't. 

They're trying to do the same here in Hong Kong, to the anniversary which has been commemorated since 1989. Every year, but last year, when Covid stopped public gatherings. in a pandemic that doesn't stop giving, the government are using the same excuse this year, in shutting down any commemorations again. That's the "Covid cover".

The Streisand effect is that in shutting it down and sending the cops around town to harass and prosecute anyone trying to organise any activity they're bringing even more notice to the anniversary and even more notice to Beijing's heavy hand. If they'd simply ignored it, let people do whatever it was they wanted to do, I'm going to guess that there'd have been nothing like the coverage. That's the Streisand effect.

It seems like dictators the world over won't or can't learn that lesson. 

Meantime: I'm wondering how long the SCMP will be allowed to run stories like this or editorials like this. I sure don't want that other shoe to drop, but I'm worried. 

ADDED: Remembering June 4 last year

COVID, Ivermectin, and the Crime of the Century: DarkHorse Podcast with Pierre Kory & Bret Weinstein

Click on screenshot to go to video 

You wont' read about this in the MSM. But, as Bret says towards the end, Dr Kory is sitting at the table of "liberals" (in the American sense; ie, of the Left), but "heterodox liberals", not "orthodox mainstream liberals". (He also says "mainstream pseudo-leftism").

It's why one should read and view widely, not just within one's comfort zone.

A clear day at the pool

 

Siena One Club, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong

Zoom in and see Central Hong Kong so clearly. A few days ago, with social distancing rules. You have to take a ticket if there’s too many people, according to our Covid rules. Usually not a long wait. 

It’s a fine pool to do laps or just natter and chatter with mates. Who mostly complain. Except the most recent couple I’ve asked “how’s business” have said “it’s booming". One in retail, one in logistics, one in pleasure-boat trading. The boats... because people can’t go anywhere, are looking for something to get out of the flat.

Same with some restaurants. Some, by no means all, doing pretty good. I saw the other day around 2,800 restaurants have shut down cause Covid. But thousands new ones have opened, especially in less fashionable places. 

Wade on the Lab-Leak Theory of COVID

ADDED: I first started writing about the Lab-Leak Theory in April last year, giving its likelihood a "Big Maybe", and since then noted that it had never been falsified. I've said "denial" is not "debunking". Referring to the denials by the Chinese, which many in the west decided was enough for them. For various reasons. My posts on the Lab-leak hypothesis.

Nicholas Wade is not an alarmist, and not a conspiracy theorist. He is one of the most eminent science journalists in the country, having done stints at Science and the New York Times, and he has released a very long, technical, and (if you’re into that sort of thing) riveting article on Medium weighing the evidence on the origin of COVID-19. Did it emerge naturally from an animal species to infect people in Wuhan, possibly at a wet market? Or did it leak out from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

Where I think it is most convincing is in describing the lack of plausibility of natural emergence:

No one has found the bat population that was the source of SARS2, if indeed it ever infected bats. No intermediate host has presented itself, despite an intensive search by Chinese authorities that included the testing of 80,000 animals. There is no evidence of the virus making multiple independent jumps from its intermediate host to people, as both the SARS1 and MERS viruses did. There is no evidence from hospital surveillance records of the epidemic gathering strength in the population as the virus evolved. There is no explanation of why a natural epidemic should break out in Wuhan and nowhere else. There is no good explanation of how the virus acquired its furin cleavage site, which no other SARS-related beta-coronavirus possesses, nor why the site is composed of human-preferred codons. The natural emergence theory battles a bristling array of implausibilities.

Wade weighed up what kind of evidence we do have about the virus itself, the lab, the safety protocols, and the grants funded by the NIH and NIAD, under Doctors Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci. They, and common sense, all point in one direction: [Here to read on...] [Internet Archive]

RELATED:

• How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory. Donald G. McNeil Jr
• Not so batty. Matt Ridley
• Here’s a look at explaining the Wuhan lab leak theory. New York Times. And: 
• Suddenly talk of the lab-leak theory is everywhere 

Comedy gold: the economics of internet irony | The Spectator

 If you're looking for proof we live in a computer simulation, consider the farcical story of dogecoin. Named after an internet meme about a talking dog, the joke currency was created as a parody of bitcoin. Dogecoin has no practical uses, yet online investors have ploughed billions into it. 'We thought it would just make the viral rounds on social media,' said founder Jackson Palmer. Last week the valuation passed $68 billion — more than Kraft Heinz and Ford. Palmer is now worth several hundred million dollars. Not bad for a Twitter gag. Read on...

“Khan killed Jack” | a Jihad poem

 Jack was proud. 

Jack was absorbingly intelligent. 

Jack was fiercely loyal. 

Jack loved music, art, 

eating good food with his family, 

having more than one pint with his mates. 

Oh, and he was devilish handsome

he was

was

Khan was devilish

Khan absorbingly faithful

Khan was fiercely loyal

Khan hated music

the art of the devils, 

not the art of allah

Khan loved halal 

he knew of the jinn

those devils

tell him to kill

the infidels

the devils

the jinn

jinn

The knife

Khans knife

Khans killing knife

cradles warmly in his

devilish hand

smooth like a surah

hot to touch

heat to the head

heat to his faith

in his head

head

I write so my words become a soothing light/ 

I write so I can enter the coldest of hearts/

I write so I can speak to those locked off/

From the world engulfed in the blinding absence of sight/

I write so I can express what I feel is right

'Three reasons China is losing its allure for the foreign business community' | SCMP

Friends in China have told me for quite a while that they're prepped for quick departure, should things worsen: that is, if the anti-foreign sentiment or gets worse. It's been worsening for some time, not just now, with Covid.

Adam Dunnett is head of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and gives us some sobering stats about the rapidly declining number of foreigners in China -- meaning here Mainland China, not we expats in Hong Kong. He thinks this exodus is not good for anyone, as they're of China-literate business people who can be bridges to the West. One of the key changes for the worse, seems to me, is the change in the tax law which put many in the top tax bracket. Dunnett:

China talks big about its internationalisation and openness. It has the foreign capital, brands, technology and trade. What it lacks, crucially, is a significant foreign community.
New census numbers show the foreign population has increased in the past decade, but not by much. The 845,697 of us foreign residents still make up less than 0.1 per cent of the total population, with foreign communities in “international hubs” such as Shanghai and Beijing making up less than 1 per cent of their populations.
By comparison, the foreign populations of Seoul (2.8 per cent), Tokyo (4.2 per cent), New York (23 per cent) and London (37 per cent) show how far China’s internationalisation still has to go. Underscoring the problem further is that the foreign populations in Shanghai and Beijing have dropped 22 per cent and 41 per cent respectively over the decade.
Estimates by the European, American and Canadian chambers of commerce suggest that foreign nationals within their respective business communities have dropped by 30-40 per cent throughout China in the past five years.
China is simply losing its allure in the eyes of its foreign business community, a trend driven by three main factors – economic, political and administrative.

There's more... 

Cummings savages Hancock (and Boris and Ministers and Civil Servants and...)

Beware! 5 hours! Click screenshot to go to vid

Wow, it sure was a humdinger! Dominic Cummings' evidence yesterday 26 May, to Parliament’s Science & Technology Committee looking into "lessons learnt" from how Westminster handled the pandemic.

And one of the lessons, if a cheap shot, is "don't get on the wrong side of Dominic". He was savage on the Health Sec, Matt Hancock: a “liar” who should have been fired for “criminal and disgraceful behaviour”. And on Boris (“unfit for the job”) and on the Civil Service is "not fit for service".

But that's a little unfair. For I thought he gave good testimony. Honest, self-critical and insightful. (not everyone agrees....)

There's plenty of reporting out there, so I won't repeat that. Just in the British press, going left to right: The Guardian, The Independent,, BBC, Daily Mail, The Sun.

Just some of my own observations:

Cummings was very critical of himself for not hitting the "panic button" earlier than 14 May 2020. And gave a credible explanation for why he didn't. There were also other things he said "I got completely wrong". Good on him for that; I believed him.l

Thursday 12 May 2020 was "like Independence Day" in the Oval Office, with Dr Warner (who he'd brought in to look at the science) playing the part of Jeff Goldblum. Apart from the emerging pandemic, they'd been asked by Trump to join the US in bombing Iraq (on that very day!), and by Boris's "girlfriend" to sort out and issue relating to her dog (Dylan?). Wow! This was the day they decided they had to go from Plan A (herd immunity) to Plan B, which was to become the first lockdown a week later. 

He described Boris as having played down the coronavirus -- it was "just another swine flu", according to Boris. Me: we also downplayed it at the time, having gone through the 2002 SARS. We were planning on a trip to Alaska as late as early March. The rest of the world was too. Think Pelosi and De Blasio in the US, taking part in Chinese New Year celebrations, urging people to go out in crowds. So, Boris wasn't alone then. 

I didn't know that Boris was so anti-lockdown as Cummings testified. Since March last year he's seemed very keen to launch lockdowns, but that's not the case, says Dominic, he was always wanting to keep the UK open -- "I should have been like the Mayor in Jaws and kept the beach open"  he says Boris said. 

Vaccines: I'd heard before that vaccines had been developed really quickly, in weeks after discovery of the virus. Cummings confirmed that in the UK they had a vaccine "within hours of getting the DNA of the virus". The delay was due to procedures and protocols not designed for the emergency we faced.

His criticism of the ingrained problems in the Civil Service ring true -- I've had experience of them myself in the Australian Public Service, where for a time I was at senior levels, dealing Ministers and CabSec's.  Oz is actually pretty good, but even there it was difficult to move them off the system of jobs going to the next in line. (We did that in 1990, in a major reshuffle of Austrade, but it was against a strong tide of "this is the way we've always done things". Reform is needed and Cummings' points were powerful and well made. 

Questions the Committee didn't ask:

Was the Swedish model considered? The one neither complete lockdown nor "let the virus rip", but telling people to socially distance, wear masks, etc, protect the vulnerable (elderly) but otherwise get on with it.

What was the influence of the Imperial College of London's modelling by Neil Ferguson? Modelling that has proved wanting, but which many believe had critical influence on the government. 

Why the strict binary? Cummings repeatedly said it was a choice between strict lockdown or having the virus spread unchecked. But there is a wide variety of approaches around the world: just look at the 50 states of the US. There are certainly "lessons to be learned" there, and it's not always -- indeed not often -- the case that the stricter and quicker the lockdown the best the effect. I've written about this often, and done some original analysis: 

• "Are lockdowns effective?" (15 May 20)
• "Did lockdowns reduce Covid deaths" (18 Mar 21)
• "Correlation between lockdown and Covid death rates low-zero" (21 Apr 20)

In short, I think this is Cummings' biggest blind spot. At the beginning he says "I got xxx completely wrong". Why can he not be wrong about this? It's non-binary!

Why was the Barrington Declaration not even mentioned? Protect the vulnerable (targetted protection), urge social distancing and masking, but otherwise let the public get on with it.

Cummings said that had there been no lockdown there would have been: (1) people self-locking down, therefore (2) impact on economy (that Boris had been trying to avoid by not locking down), as well as (3) complete closure of the NHS because of the large number of cases. But I don't get it. He wasn't challenged on that statement, especially the one about the NHS, at any point? Why? Why would there have been a complete close down of the NHS? 

LATER (10:30am GMT): Watching UK Parliament live, Matt Hancock giving his side. It’s clear the government has decided to circle the wagons. It’s fascinating to watch it happening in real time. A master class in how to handle extremely damaging allegations (lying, costing thousands of lives).

China Zoomers Zizzing (aka “lying flat”, 躺平, Tang Ping)

China’s Gen Z, aka Zoomers, born 1995-2010
Shanghai, Bund, looking at Pudong

“Lie flat”. 躺平. 

A growing number of China’s Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2010, are embracing a “laying flat” attitude about work and life as they throw in the towel in the face of tough competition and opt for a simple, frugal and lonely life. Article

The Zoomers version of Wu Wei, the venerable Taoist philosophy of “do nothing”. But in a productive way, Wu Wei, that is. I wrote something about this in re Zhuangzi.

Can’t help thinking it’s the kids of one-child families, since the One Child policy of 1980 raised millions of “princelings”.  Can the poor afford to “Lie Flat”? That’s what my mates in China tell me, anyway. Such as they know. They’re Boomers, ok? 

Also can’t help thinking that these Zoomers rather like some of the Zoomers elsewhere, eg, esp, the US. Deciding not to compete. To chill. To chillax. We used to call it “dropping out”, man. Is it so different?

By the way, the Chinese of “lie flat”, not in the article, is 躺平, or Tang Ping. And the English should be “lie” not “lay” as they have in the article. Lay is transitive. You lay a table. You lie down. 

"Covid lab-leak hypothesis just got a big credibility boost"

Click screenshot to go to video-cast

Another fascinating show from Bret and Heather's Darkhorse podcast. From the show notes: 

In this 80th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we discuss the state of the world through an evolutionary lens. In this episode, we once again discuss the “lab leak” hypothesis for the origins of SARS-CoV2, as this week a letter published in Science has helped it gain yet more credibility in mainstream scientific circles. We then discuss ivermectin, a decades-old drug with a well-established history of efficacy against many human pathogens. What is its mechanism of action? What do Covid case rates in Africa, against a background of on-going prophylactic use of ivermectin for other conditions, suggest about its possible efficacy against Covid? Is it safe for children? Also, what does the FDA require of a new drug or treatment to grant Emergency Use Authorization? Does Merck have an opinion on the matter? How about the media?

For those interested in delving as deep as Bret and Heather have gone, there are the links to the Science in the notes. 

I've written many times about the "lab-leak hypothesis", which remains that: a valid hypothesis until it is falsified. The big issue they're pointing to in this podcast is the eminence of the scientists asking for more investigation into the lab-leak hypothesis. "More investigation” should probably be replaced with "some investigation”, as so far pretty much no investigation at all has been done.

Knowing if the coronavirus was or was not a result of a lab leak is important: 

If it was, it means the "gain of function" research being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology ought be stopped. 

If it was not, then the sort of research being done at the WIV needs to be ramped up. 

How we handle the next viral pandemic depends on this. "Denial" is not the same as "debunk" -- as some seem to think when they say it's a conspiracy theory with no merit because it's been "debunked" (because China denied it). It has most certainly not been debunked; indeed is gaining scientific currency. I think the lab leak deniers push this line because it was Trump who first suggested it and, of course, Orange Man Bad. And then the media just went along. It was "debunked" and if you believed it, you were a conspiracy theorist. That stance itself has now been dealt a blow, because....

ADDED: "Covid lab-leak hypothesis just got a big credibility boost", New York Magazine

While there are still some dopey articles that think it’s a good idea to do science by Vox Pop. It is utterly irrelevant what the public “thinks” may be the origin of the virus, especially since, to the extent they’ve been told anything, it’s that it didn’t come from a lab leak. (Yet, even then less than half think it wasn’t a lab leak, despite all that volume of media coverage attempting to discredit it)

Hottest days and hottest months on record

I read today that yesterday's temperature here in Hong Kong was a record since records started being kept in 1848. It was 36.1 at Repulse Bay, though the Observatory site says it was "just" 35. That's 95 degrees in the old currency, so not even a century. Still, it feels hotter cause of the humidity, averaging around mid 70's%. Still, again, that's the highest May temp since 1884, ie, a record. 

This comes after April that also had the highest April temperatures, ever.

Kinda scary. [Article]

PS: I remember our drive from Cape Town to Cairo back in 2011. In Sudan it was mid 40s, I recall regular temperatures of 44C. But it didn't feel even as hot as Hong Kong. Because the humidity was 22%.  [Sudan posts]

Meantime: 21 Ultra Marathon competitors *died* of cold during a race in Gansu.... 21(!). In one race....

ADDED: I’ve just watched all the news channels. There’s a lot about the Italian cable car disaster that killed 14.  Not a peep about the 21 dead in an ultra marathon. I wonder why. 

Of course the main story is the Belarussiian state hijacking of a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius in order to kidnap Roman Protasevich, a young Belarusian reporter they didn’t like. There’s no way Putin didn’t know and approve this “outrageous and illegal” (EU) act.

Li Shu 隶书 “Clerical Script”(aka “Chancery Script”) Book arrives

 

The latest in my collection of calligraphy books

The Li script is one of the earliest standard writing styles in China, dating back to around 300BC. There's plenty more online, like here. It's the latest style I'm studying in my calligraphy efforts. I've done a fair bit of classical Chinese texts in Cao Shu, or grass-cursive script, and in Kai Shu, the traditional or standard script, kind of like copperplate writing, more here.

I'm working on a piece of calligraphy, a classical Chinese saying about turning 70, for a friend who just has. I've decided to do it in several styles. And send all off. It's a fair bit of work. The practice, the practice. Then I've added to the task: by carving my own stone seals. If you've ever seen a Chinese painting or piece of calligraphy, you'll usually see a red mark at the bottom, right or left. Sometimes several of these seals. So, courtesy Mx Amazon, I've got a soapstone carving kit and have done several. It's both easier and more difficult than I thought. Easier in that you can quickly get carving. Harder in that to get something really good is going to be tough. So I'm just calling my efforts "guai zhuang", or "weird seals", an honourable way of carving, kind of free form, kind of devil-may-care.

This is the third of my latest batch of books on different calligraphic styles, put out by the Jiangxi Art Publishing co, in China. They give you various versions of each character as done by famous calligraphers over the ages. These are works of great scholarship. Or at least of great effort. 

Here's a typical page, with the character Gao (高), meaning "high" or "tall", as done by 15 different calligraphers. 

You might call a few of these "guai zi", "weird characters", done
deliberately strangely off, like naive kids' work, like the bottom
left by Wu Weihan

And here's a pic of my study, with the latest batch of calligraphy brushes, ink, papers, carving tools, seals, etc...

Painting on the all is by Yu Chen. The one above the filing cabinet by
Ding Yan-yong, the one by the window by Zhong Biao. Chairs and
tables Chinese. Outside is our bamboo garden. So, all-up, pretty much Chinese

China getting old before it gets rich?

So demographers say. Implications: will not overtake the US total GDP, let alone GDP per person. Less GDP = less able to project military? Or at least = having to stretch more. Also = less bragging rights!

This trend is still little known or recognised. Good on SMH for doing so. 

/Snip:

Demography, it’s said, is destiny. Now that China has published its first national census in a decade, what’s its destiny to be? It’s a bit awkward, actually, for President Xi Jinping’s vaunted “China Dream”. Because he has promised “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” when the official statistics show it is on the way to becoming one of the fastest ageing countries on earth.

We alreadyknew that China was heading for a population collapse. That’s why Xi dumped the One Child Policy in 2015. The advent of the Two Child Policy did have the desired effect. The number of births surged. But only for one year. [More…]

Israel Ironies: "In one tunnel, out the other"

Hamas won election for a 4-year term... 16 years ago.  They cancelled
recently scheduled elections because they thought they'd lose.
It's Hamas that's the problem. They've ruined Gaza

ADDED (21/5): You can be left wing and pro-Israel, anti-Hamas. As shown in Discussion: The Israel v Palestine Crisis, by Jerry Coyne. Much discussion, mostly people of the left.

And there are Palestinians who don't much like Hamas: "Hamas, not Israel, is to blame for the latest bloodshed" by Bassem Eid

And then there's "What's the real reason so many people hate Israel?" 

I was listening to ABC Radio Canberra this morning, the midday news bulletin, talking about the rockets and bombs in Gaza, and Tel Aviv. To give them their due, they were trying to be even-handed, dear old Auntie. They had the requisite number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli bombs, and of course these are tragic; how could they not be? Even as we find they are children killed by collapsing tunnels: tunnels Hamas has spent the last decades building -- instead of, say, schools and hospitals -- to hide and move the rockets they rain down on Israel.... 

The report noted that Biden was pressing Israel to "scale back" towards a cease-fire. No mention that Biden had not demanded the same restraint from Hamas, but there you have it, that's par for this course. 

Then for balance, the ABC turned to some young Israelis who pointed out that Hamas always wants a cease-fire, after a week or so of shooting rockets at Israeli civilians. They welcome a cease-fire because they want to re-arm. Good point, and well made by these young Israelis; though no doubt there will be some who will lambast them for "smearing" Hamas with false accusations. Still, there is indeed a pattern there. 

The ironic bit? The very next story was how the US had just sent a representative to a meeting on the "Iran deal". That is, how to revive it after Trump pulled the US out of it. And what's part of the renewed deal? The US removing sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions involve a lot of money. And where does that money go? To buying rockets, to ship them to Gaza, so they can find another excuse to funnel them through the tunnels and loose them on Israeli citizens.

Please do let us recall that that aim of Hamas is the complete destruction of Israel. Not co-existence, not a two-state solution, not "land for peace", none of that nonsense. Nothing but complete destruction of Israel is their aim ("from the River to the Sea"). And, by the way, killing as many Jews as possible along the way (check out the Hamas Charter, Ch7). That's why they target rockets at civilian centres, whey they deliberately aim at civilians and why they deliberately aim to kill children.  Hamas have said this openly: that they get their rockets from Iran. Great, isn't it? Cease-fire, to load up with more Iranian rockets. 

Israel then reacts to the rockets -- entirely in self-defence --  and the world is in shock. How dare Israel? (sometimes, more sinisterly, "how dare the Jews?"). Bibi remains unmoved, the wily fox. He's got domestic political concerns, of course. But while he remains the boss, he must try to protect his citizens. How can he not? Which the IDF does by trying to destroy infrastructure, avoiding civilian deaths as much as possible. 

So, it's surely an irony, is it not, that we have pressure for peace, or at lest a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. While at the same time, the same Biden people, are engaged in giving more money to Iran, the main provider of the very missiles that Hamas use to break cease fire after cease fire.  

ADDED: I've seen in various Palestinian-leaning places, sneering reference to Israel "defending" its citizens. As if that's somehow illegitimate, somehow wrong, somehow just "the jews" making excuses. This so nasty, so ill-intentioned, but it's also very effective, as it gives that side of the fence the right tone and the right rebuttal to wield against those of us who take the Israeli side. It's the equivalent to a "talking point". Oh, yeah, that "self defence" thing?! Of course, you'd say that, you oppressor...

To tackle coronavirus vaccine hesitancy in Hong Kong, lift the mask mandate

My letter to South China Morning Post was published this morning. There are plenty of others saying the same thing. If we believe the vaccines are effective, in both stopping you getting Covid and stopping you transmitting the virus (and they are), then vaccinated people should be allowed to get out and about as they wish, including international travel to anywhere that will accept them. If unvaccinated people feel at risk: go get the vaccine, it's free and easy. Or mask up. But don't stop others, who are protected from catching and transmitting, from getting on with life. That's the simple message.

But our government is too supine, and folds in front of every effort to frustrate the encouragement of vaccinations. Trying to mandate vaccinations for those wanting to renew their contracts is labelled "discriminatory" and the government folds. Instead of suggesting, say, that both the employer and the employee should be vaccinated for renewal of contract to be valid. 

The fact remains: vaccinations are the only way out of this; so the more that get vaccinated the better. However it happens and whatever incentive it takes (like a lottery!).

The text, from online link here:

Covid-19 vaccinations in Hong Kong are free, convenient, easy to book in an efficiently run system, and extremely effective. So why don’t people get vaccinated?

There are a variety of reasons. Concerns over vaccine safety and side effects are the fault of governments around the world pausing vaccinations for infinitesimal side-effect risks on the principle of an “abundance of caution”, rather than taking a “balance of risk” approach, while the media carried scare reports of deaths after vaccination, which exaggerated their occurrence. It didn’t help that French President Emmanuel Macron early on threw shade at the AstraZeneca vaccine, irresponsibly and incorrectly. All this led to understandable hesitancy.

Yet the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccines are overwhelmingly positive, as the experience of highly vaccinated countries is showing. Everyone ought to be lining up to get their jabs.

Our family is fully vaccinated, and we confirm the experience of writers to these pages that the process is simple, friendly and efficient. There is really no excuse for not getting the jabs, but many remain “hesitant”.

One way to improve uptake is to make life more convenient for those of us who are vaccinated (and to stare down those who cry “discrimination” at any attempt to encourage uptake). For example, the government could do away with the mask mandate entirely. Those of us who are vaccinated don’t have to worry – the risk is not zero, but is extremely small.

Those who are unvaccinated have a simple choice: get vaccinated! It’s free, easy and effective. Or take the risk. Wear a mask if you wish. But do not expect those of us who are vaccinated to keep wearing masks because you refuse a simple and effective vaccination. Why should we who have done the right thing have to keep considering those who refuse to do the same? This move could boost our vaccination rate.

The world has vaccinated 1.4 billion people. It’s high time hesitant Hongkongers get the jabs.

Peter Forsythe, Discovery Bay

RELATED: Government hesitancy about pushing vaccinations is costing Hong Kong. Mike Rowse

The impossible particle

 

A cosmic ray research facility on the Tibetan Plateau has detected the brightest yet of a type of light particle so strong that no law of physics can explain it.… The Chinese experiment, which discovered more than a dozen photons, could help dispel scepticism over oh-my-God particles’ existence.

First the Impossible Burger*. Now the Impossible Particle. Aka “the Oh-my-God”  particle.

I don’t understand why these don’t get the same attention as the discovery of the Higgs Boson (aka the “God particle”). After all, we’re talking about things that confound the known laws of physics, here.

Maybe it’s because it’s China. And from a facility on the Tibetan plateau. The bit in Sichuan. But that itself may be “problematic”. Anyway, I don’t get it.

Read on…

China’s Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory 
Which discovered the new type light particle 

*ADDED: I’ve had Impossible Burgers, the vegetarian burger. It’s delicious. But: (1) they’re twice the price of the same-size burger made with minced beef. More importantly: (2) they have a load of salt and way higher carbs than the meat equivalent.  In sum: they are worse for your wallet and your body than a proper home-made meat burger.  (By “proper” I mean ethically raised and ethically processed meat, no added salt or other nonsense additives. Just some choooed onion; and otherwise keep it simple).

This may seem a stretch from cosmic rays, bit not so much. One of the reasons I was eating the non-meat burger was because I know we have to get off meat production to reduce greenhouse gases (livestock and agriculture produce about a quarter of CO2 emissions). But it turns out they’re not that good for you, and also not so carbon friendly cause they’re still razing forests to plant soya. The long term in that one has to be laboratory made meat. So we can save the planet for no one sapiens to be able to discover more God and Oh-my-God particles. 

Neil Ferguson on Covid, Lockdown and Authoritarianism

Click image to go to the video

I do like the sayings and writings of professor Niall Ferguson. He's a good populariser, an approachable public intellectual. This is a good review of the errors made in handling the pandemic, the predictable, and the predicted. The big one being: we knew early on this was a disease that killed the elderly. Why didn't we focus on protecting them? Instead we went into full-on panic mode and shut down everyone. Ferguson calls this the "pandemic of the mind". [BTW, his wife they talk about without naming, is the redoubtable Ayaan Hirsi Ali]

Both the Triggernometry lads, Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, and the prof himself, go off-piste when they talk about China, about which they appear to know very little: only what they've read, nothing from on the ground, or from knowledgable sources. I wrote a comment: 

Good sensible talk. But.... Re China and pandemic responses (@30:00 et seq): FF and KK (and prof NF): you all need to study up on the place, preferable with a visit post-pandemic. I live now in HK, have lived, studied and worked in China, have friends and relatives there.

It's not at all the dystopia you imagine, of robot-citizens doing exactly what Beijing tells them. Pre-Covid it's been as lively a place as London in the swinging sixites. (really!). It's easy (and right) to hate on China (on Beijing, really) for its many faults and crimes, and I've done so on a blog for many years -- treatment of Uygurs, censorhip, etc -- but at an individual level it's basically a free country. Even the Neighbourhood Committees are no longer as sinister as NF makes them seem, or as they were when I was ensnared by them in the 1970s. They were, and remain, critical to pandemic control, a bit like Neighbourhood Watch only better, more systematic, more focused -- they do more than just crime watch, and in this case were the front line in implementing pandemic control measures. See here. 

Beijing -- hated as it is, including by me -- didn't foist their handling of Covid on any other country. They simply said "this is what we've done"; I remember, in January 2020, watching it day-by-day very closely and I *remember*. They shut down whole provinces. Hundreds of millions of people. Set up their own "Nightingale hospitals" in less than a week. But they never said "you ought do this too". There's no dispute it's been successful. Today they hold county-level officials accountable. If they don't keep the virus under control, they're fired. Do we see this level of accountability elsewhere?

I'm no China fan-boy or China apologist, no matter how much it may seem so. It's just that I don't like hearing less than fully-informed opinions, even when they're espoused by the Triggernometry lads, who I've been following for years (and dearly love!)

What’s happening with COVID-19 in China? Are they getting vaccinated? Why do we never hear about cases in China on the news?

From here

It's a question occurs to me too from time to time. And when it does, I ring a friend or colleague living in China -- we can't go there in person as the borders remain closed. 

These living-in-China folks confirm what's said by Hua Liu at Quora. Things are back to normal in China, have been for some time. Even better than "normal": pent up demand for buying and travel has led to splurges jumps in both -- May Day holiday travel this year was 120% of last year's and retail sales are also sharply up.

And yet we hear nothing of it in the west -- at least not in the MSM, the likes of CNN, BBC, DW, NYT, WaPo. Perhaps Hua Liu is right: it's down to China doing so well that other governments are embarrassed. I

Certainly if the situation is indeed as it appears to be, China has handled the virus better than any other country, full stop.

We can continue to hate on China for good reasons: their treatment of the Uygurs (and I've been banging on about that here for years), for censorship, for lack of speech, Xi Jinping the dictator, no democracy and so on. But credit where it's due: having mishandled the virus in the early days (who didn't?) and criminally hidden data and info (right up to today, restricting international investigations into the origin of the virus), it has since hardly put a foot wrong, at least in terms of control and prevent. Extensive testing in the early days, and now rapid deployment of vaccines, with continued testing and tracing, have had remarkable effects. 

The pictures at Hua Liu's post tell the story.

Bias disclosure: Quora tends to be rather pro-China. So bear that in mind. That said, most of the contributors have deep experience and knowledge of China. And there are those, especially in the comments, who are critical of China. Given the amount of negative news on China in the MSM -- almost all anti-China these day, even post-Trump -- it's useful, surely, to have something on the other side of the story, especially if it's well informed. 

Japanese director went deep into one of the poorest area in China丨Beyond the Mountain

Click above to go to video

Into south-western Sichuan. A province of over 80 million. Check out the steps, at 70-degree angle, and heaven help if you slip, it's all the way to the bottom....

An interesting doco. This, mind, is one of the poorest areas of China. Watch through at least to the part where we see the new apartments of the villagers, at a cost of $450 per family member. They're not too bad! Especially versus the awful climb up the hill that they used to have to do a couple of times a day -- and some oldies still do. The climb, the steps, are frightening. 

I've been to Sichuan several times, mainly to the big cities, Chengdu the capital and Chongqing when it was still part of Sichuan -- it's now a municipality reporting direct to Beijing, a bit like Washington DC, or Canberra. My first trip was in 1976 and I remember to this day my first taste, in Chengdu, of Dandan Mian 担担面 (aka Dan Dan Noodles) from a street stall. They were and remain... magic. I have a secret recipe for the soupy sauce, which makes the best DanDanMian in Southern China, or at least the best in Hong Kong. 

I've always enjoyed trips to Sichuan. It's quite a place, and out west gets very wild and mountainous, explorers’ country. 

I've always thought "Sichuan" (四川) meant "four rivers", since, well, "si" (四) means "four" and "chuan" (川) means "river" (you can even see the rivers in the ideograph 川). And it's what I was taught when I went there as a student in 1976. Silly me: going back to refresh my memory on the names of the four rivers, I find that there's an alternative explanation about the origin of the name "Sichuan". This alternative has a much more complex origin and is made up of multiple sources. 

But I don't know. To assume the much more complex etymology on the basis of one book by one scholar seems to be stretching it a bit. I'm going to use Occam's Razor here and go with the simpler explanation being the one. So, for me at least, it continues to be "Four Rivers". The rivers, btw, are Jialing, Jinsha, Min and Tuo.

‘ We really need an inquiry into how Sage forced Britain into lockdown’ | Fraser Nelson

As I’ve been saying for over a year now. The data show no correlation between the stringency of lockdown (as measured worldwide by an Oxford university tracker) and Covid outcomes, whether total cases or deaths per million. Similarly in the United States where the 50:states are run almost half half by Republican and Democratic governors, where the former tended to less stringent and the latter to more stringent measures (aka NPIs or Non Pharmaceutical Interventions), there are no correlations. In the UK, as Nelson points our, three studies have shown that cases had peaked before lockdown measures (NPIs) were introduced.  

This most certainly needs an enquiry. And soon  

The article is here, but as it’s of public interest, I copy it below the fold with thanks to the Telegraph:

The Case Against Bitcoin

This week's cyberattack on Colonial Mutual demanded ransom
payment in Bitcoin

Michael W. Green, Peter Thiel’s former portfolio manager, says that the crypto narrative is built on half-truths and a nonchalance about the security provided by the nation-state

I've never quite got Bitcoin and I doubt J does, so we don't have any investment in it. Are we the silly ones for missing out, or the wise ones for not buying today’s tulips? 

The other day I took notice when Charlie Munger said Bitcoin is a "threat to our civilisation". Charley is one half of Charlie and Warren, as in Warren Buffet, my long-time hero, guiding hands of the behemoth Berkshire Hathaway and so I paid attention. 

Then just a few days ago, Elon Musk stopped Tesla taking Bitcoin as payment, mainly because of its environmental damage -- apparently it takes a huge amount of electricity to create, which I did not know.

So, here is, courtesy Bari Weiss and her Substack, giving Michael Green space to argue the anti-Bitcoin argument. Peter Thiel, by they way, was the co-founder of PayPal with Musk, another fascinating story. 

I found this piece by Green interesting and powerful. Very much worth a read. [Here is the Wayback link]

Points 2 and 3 struck a chord with me. The US is rightly excoriated for its international misadventures, many illegal, many of which have killed thousands. Thinking Vietnam, South America, Iraq, Afghanistan. But, as Green says "imagine the counterfactual" (his emphasis). Without America, the world would be poorer. And Russia, Iran and China are not replacements we should want. /Snip:

2. I am not an apologist for American hegemony and all the behaviors it has enabled. But imagine the counterfactual. Over the course of the 20th century, the relative standard of living of those who lived under the protective umbrella of Pax Americana exploded relative to those living under the competing Soviet or Chinese systems. While techno-optimists will suggest that the counterfactual is utopian, the evidence on the ground is far darker. I would encourage a read of the work of Radigan Carter, a pseudonymous (and disenchanted) U.S. special forces operative who has written eloquently on the subject, and has argued that a world without U.S. leadership is a world even he would be afraid of. (Radigan is uncertain about crypto and holds a small allocation.)

3. China, Iran and Russia are playing the dominant role in the world of cryptocurrency. In the last week of April, mining pools based in China accounted for roughly 90% of the processing power (“hash rate”) in the Bitcoin network. Roughly three weeks ago, a power outage in the Xinjiang region of China resulted in a plunge in global Bitcoin processing. Bitcoin mining — the process of record keeping for the “immutable” chain of record on which the Bitcoin network depends — is dominated by entities in countries with the stated objective to harm the interests of the United States. Bitcoin proponents continuously assure us that this is “just about to change,” but the data has not shifted in a meaningful manner in the last five years. This is not a decentralized system. It is centralized in the countries that seek our destruction. [Read on...]