That doesn't matter. You consume their content, and buy their goods. In fact, those two things have increased massively over the past year.
736 karma · joined May 10, 2018
>Dynastically wealthy families wield a great deal of political power, and use it to further their interests.
I've been saying this pretty much since the start of lockdowns and restrictions. For the past year, we have essentially legislated the transfer of more power and wealth to those already wealthy and powerful. When the dust starts to settle, it will become clearer just how much has changed, and maybe the theoretical questions of "was this worth it"? will become more practical.
Or maybe, without social media to promote those very officially-approved opinions, we would have used our vast and deep social IRL network to discuss and reason, and would have come to that conclusion anyway.
I strongly believe that the various world governments' policies of lockdown, social isolation, and mask wearing would not have worked 50 years ago, because we were too connected.
Facebook's mission statement.
I would argue that it feels like it works, for 99% of people. I strongly believe that "social media" is a low-quality and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social interaction and bonding.
Or allowing them to catch colds, which are coronaviruses 20% of the time.
It also completely ignores (as does everyone else) the 700lb gorilla in the room - the embedded energy content of all of the computing equipment, from the video camera used to film content, to the networking equipment and data centre servers, to the final device used to consume that content. Manufacturing semiconductors is an incredibly energy-intensive (as well as very resource-intensive) process, and product lifecycles are ever-shortening.
Until environmental legislation pays any attention to the huge CO2 costs of the vast quantitites of consumer goods we import, I'm not going to worry too much about cows farting.
Also - I find it incredible that the effectiveness against viral infection of putting a piece of cloth over your face is favourably compared to the effectiveness of a vaccine.
Obviously, growing water-intensive produce in the desert does not help the situation.
50% more doctors, and 3x the number of beds - I'd call that a whole lot better.
It's not deniable that the NHS is "cheaper", and I have not tried to do so. I am saying that the quality of care is not sufficient, and may even be less efficient than other (more expensive) healthcare systems.
Edit: The Euro Health Consumer Index puts UK healthcare at 16th out of 35, putting it below all of the "tier one" countries in the EU. You certainly can't argue that the NHS is providing comparable healthcare to countries like France and Germany, for a lower price.
As for the "Wales can only spend what Westminster gives them" argument - the Barnett formula assumes that the average taxable income to the government per head is the same across the UK. As this is not true, it actually results in relatively more tax revenue going to the nations (like Wales) than the taxes those nations raise, per capita (yes, I know you can make arguments about which expenses the central government defines as "local" and "national" spending, etc etc). Welsh Labour has squandered huge amounts of this money. If anything, I am in support of each nation only having access to the tax revenue that it generates, as that would very starkly show just how under-performing the Welsh economy is (and I say this because I want it to be better. Knowing what the problem is is the first step to fixing it.).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/28/nhs-manager-allo...
Edit: and to your "don't vote Tory" point - as I've already said, I live in a place (Wales) where the Labour party has controlled the Welsh NHS for decades, and we enjoy about the worst healthcare in Europe.
How many other countries justified their Covid lockdowns with statements like "we need to protect our healthcare service"?? Our healthcare service is to protect us.
I live in Wales, where the Labour party has been in power at all levels of government for decades, and the Welsh NHS is practically non-functional.
Personally, I think an ordered transition to something like every other European country has (a mix of very basic public healthcare and various levels of private healthcare) is the best way forwards.
>Whereas the vaccinated person never becomes an asymptomatic carrier in the first place.
I'd like to see which studies those are.
"A reduction in infections" is also not the same as "the vaccinated never become asymptomatic carriers".
Many different measures have been implemented, you can't possibly pick one of them and say that particular one has had a definite impact on a certain thing.
At least where I live, the way that Covid deaths were recorded over the winter left plenty of leeway for those dying "with Covid" to have just died of the flu (to be specific, if a patient had symptoms or evidence of a viral respiratory disease being the cause of death, then all that was needed was a "clinical picture of Covid" to make it a Covid death).
It's disturbing how much the suppression of Covid "wrong-think" over the last year has resulted in useful results and information only very slowly coming out (and generally, in the process, giving a feeling of vindication to the conspiracy theorists).
I have always been, and continue to be, against the idea that "this is such a novel emergency we just need to ignore all the processes that we know and trust". If anything, in those times, when we don't know what is going on, those principles are exactly the type of things we should stick to. I strongly believe it would have done us better over the past year.
If I had enthusiastically queued up to get vaccinated as soon as I was able where I live, I would have received a treatment (AstraZenica vaccine) that has since been withdrawn from my age group. Tell me how my caution has not been justified.
Just for fun - what governments have followed the "most obvious path"? There aren't many left, of the supposed golden list everyone liked to promote last year. Vietnam - apparently a fine example of what happens when we "all just wear a mask" - after months with deaths oddly flatlined at 35, they are now experiencing a dramatic rise in cases over the past few weeks. South Korea - has now been experiencing increases in deaths and cases over the last few months. The stats for Australia look good, but they continue to live under draconian measures, and have gained a reputation for allowing the rich and famous (including sports players) to publicly flout the rules. It's a similar story in New Zealand, and those last two countries also enjoy unique geographical and demographic situations not shared by many others (remote, sparsely-populated island nations).
As for coal - Germany accounts for 45% of all coal consumed in the EU, so Mr. Diess can look much closer to home. Secondly - it's meaningless anyway, until the very energy-intensive materials that comprise an EV are not made in Asian countries that burn an astronomical amount of coal to power their industries.