Sunday, December 31, 2023

The Duality of Politics as a Reflection of Public Sentiment

Image credit: Dave Whamond [The Week] 


At its best, 

Politics is the response to the mood of the people, 

at its best. 

At its worst, 

Politics is the response to the mood of the people, 

at its worst. 

[Newton Fortuin, 31 December 2023] 

_______________

Example: Obama's politics of Hope vs Trumps politics of Grievance.


 


Friday, September 15, 2023

Media & Other

A philosopher to take note of… 

had the fortune to read some of Newton Fortuin’s work and find it very incisive, imaginative and courageous, given the fact that he has little formal training in the many branches of academic philosophy. 

At the end of the day, people like us are all lovers of wisdom and seekers of truth, so we should help one another, since we are a rare species, almost on the brink of extinction in the present consummerised world…

Scourge is a very original and provocative work. 

WL van der Merwe, Ph.D. Professor:  Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Culture and Metaphysics – Free University of Amsterdam




Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of Donald Trump

Months before the US Election season commences, I think it's an opportune time to reintroduce this book.

Image: Newton Fortuin

In Retrospect: The Importance of Timely Insight: Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of Donald Trump While the digital pages of this book were first crafted in 2007, its relevance has only been accentuated in the unfolding years, culminating in the present moment. Conceived at a time when misinformation on internet platforms was still finding its foothold, the book served as a forewarning about the potential trajectory of such narratives. Little did we anticipate that the ripple effects of these unchecked streams of information would culminate in shaping global political landscapes, most notably evident in the rise of Donald Trump. The crux of this work is not merely an examination of "The Secret" or a political analysis of Trump's ascent, but a deep dive into the collective psyche. It seeks to understand the underlying currents that once enabled authoritarian leaders, such as those during the Third Reich, and how eerily similar patterns continue to shape today's sociopolitical structures. Drawing from Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the unsettling realization emerges that large swathes of the population are more susceptible to grand deceptions than minor distortions. When we unpack this further, the influence of seminal works like Gustave Le Bon's 1896 "The Crowd: The Study of the Popular Mind" becomes apparent, revealing the deep-rooted mechanics of mass manipulation. Today's challenges, however, aren't merely echoes of the past but are amplified versions of them. The digital age, while a boon in numerous respects, has inadvertently supercharged the spread of misinformation. This reality makes the insights of this book even more crucial today. The meteoric rise of Donald Trump, coupled with global populist movements and shifting political tectonics, underscores the dire need for collective introspection. Taking "The Secret" as a case in point, this narrative dissects its unprecedented popularity despite glaring logical chasms. Its allure to the masses serves as a microcosm of larger issues at play, illustrating the ease with which ideas, irrespective of their validity, can dominate collective consciousness. This phenomenon gains gravity when one reflects on the rise of Q-ANON or the incongruities of prosperity Christianity's endorsement of Trump. Our present milieu is fraught with challenges that demand sharp discernment. Misinformation, whether in the realm of spiritual consumerism, political populism, or religious evangelism, seeks to distort our collective perception. As we navigate this tumultuous era, it is our onus to ensure that we don't succumb to narratives that distance us from reality. In sum, this work serves as both a reflection and a call to action, emphasizing that our greatest defense in these trying times is an unwavering commitment to knowledge and critical thinking. In the echoing words of Mark Twain, while history may not repeat itself, its lessons remain perennially pertinent.



Weaving Sunlight and Shadows: My Odyssey Beyond a Murderous Guru's Deathly Vice

 A letter received from a reader of  Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of Donald Trump.

My awakening to the crazy world of self help and recovery from its vice like grip occurred after a quite fantastical and unique experience. One thing I have learned is  that you cannot download anyone else’s ‘system’ or ‘process’ and make it work for you. I think you need to pick through each person’s life experiences for the wool to weave your own tapestry. Certainly with the money, time, energy and hopes invested in other people’s ego creations I could have weaved the Bayeux and then some!!!

What I can say though is that in a bid to understand my abusive childhood and how different I appeared to be from my family I embarked upon a 20 year quest to understand who and what I was. Yes, I fell, hook, line and sinker for the self help and personal development game.

More recently,  over the last 10 years I have stuffed myself silly with Law of Attraction (LoA) type teachings that mainly block out anything negative or ‘not of the light’ and thus, have given my power away more or less to anyone with a cheering claim or nice smile.  Then, even worse I started creating courses and taught them to other unsuspecting fools. Cringe worthy stuff called how to be happy and living the attitude of gratitude…(spewing into a bucket).

Yes, I was a spiritual prostitute except that I paid to turn tricks. God, put like that it is embarrassing and hysterical in equal measure.

Then, a catastrophe of epic proportions that turned all of the LOA stuff on its head, inside out and doing somersaults occurred!!!!

It would fill a book and then some and perhaps one day I will come across someone who wants to take it on. Certainly NBC Dateline wanted to make a 2 hour documentary around events that led from my catastrophe….

Well, your wondering what it was, aren’t you? Mmmmmm how to encapsulate the magnitude in a few paragraphs… (deep breath).

Essentially I met a psychopath (probably the physical manifestation of all the repressed and ignored negativity and blocked out critical thinking from the last 10 ‘positive’ years!!!).

I sunk every penny into a series of businesses with him, got into a hellish personal relationship with him that involved every kind of abuse and threats etc, helplessly watched him systematically destroy several other people and then once I had withdrawn from him and the businesses despite what was on the line (everything material I had) – saw him flee the UK leaving a quagmire of 103 serious problems that escalated into near bankruptcy, over 50 threatened court actions, insurance issues, tremendous weight gain and the utter desecration of everything I believed in. I was massively affected – physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually, financially and spiritually.

Essentially ‘I’ ceased to exist. I became a recluse, stayed away from everyone and everything except what I could not possibly avoid, stopped going out, answering the phone, showering, getting dressed. The only respite from the fireball of pain and stress engulfing EVERY facet of my life was the safety net of suicide. I knew I could kill myself.  I longed for absolute annihilation! I didn’t just think it, I investigated the subject, formed a plan and came seconds away from carrying it out several times – stopped only by my love for my cats and who would care for them?

Without a doubt the worst aspect of all of the above was the belief I had created and attracted it. I spent nearly a year on a wild goose chase torturing myself further by trying to work out why and how a lifetime of positive thoughts and actions had created a monster and a monstrous situation that took 2 years hard time to resolve and was so permanently life changing…

There wasn’t any answers other than the LoA was either horse shit or used wrongly could be disastrous.

I stumbled upon your book which helped as it showed all the guru’s in meltdowns of their own, and I started looking at the shadow stuff that was all around me. For 8 months I delighted in oozing out every shred of anger and negative energy that had long been encased in the basement of my psyche until one day I realised that negative energy was not better or worse than its opposite - just different and that both are required for a reasonably happy existence. Duh…

I knew I was in recovery when my critical thinking skills began to creak into action again and I started reading novels (!!!). I have emerged back out into the sunlight but armed with self reliance that life goes up and down and around and around and ‘this too shall pass…’

Having been kicked out of society I feel quite content to potter around doing not very much. I take each moment as it comes. I delight in the joy that flows out of simple things but at the same time when I feel enraged or angry or pissed off I beat up my pouf fee and enjoy that just as much as all the smiling.

I am content to not know who/what is behind everything and to surrender to whatever pulled me through. Forgiveness has and is helping me with all that happened – even the near murderous hatred I feel towards lawyers (laughing). 

Footnote: My former business partner Michael Lane went on to murder a woman in a particularly gruesome way and then tried to run over and kill a transsexual in the dead woman’s car. He is currently in Clark County Detention Centre, Vegas (where else?!) awaiting trial and possible death penalty next year.

Mmmmm not sure any of this would help anyone. There may be a few ears of corn if you pick through… (raucous giggles).

Hope all in your world is dark and light!!!!

Sarah Demellweek


Neo Heresy

 I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion

~~~

[Baruch Spinoza]

To highlight the reality delusion associated with many neo esoteric beliefs I want to recount an incredibly horrific incident.

It concerns an atrocity that occurred just a few miles from my home in which a seven-year-old girl was brutally raped, her throat slit, set alight and left for dead.

In spite of the inhuman savagery the girl suffered, she miraculously survived, though now most certainly having to bear the scars of this unspeakable horror for the rest of her life.

And to add to the depravity of the act, it was perpetrated by a close friend of the girl’s family, someone she knew and most likely trusted unconditionally. Though someone who in a single hour shattered her innocence, and with it most likely diminished the potential of her young life.

However the real tragedy is that this is a far too common occurrence in a society having been the victim of centuries of brutal colonialism, savage slavery and racial oppression. Though now in post-colonial South Africa the former victims of past oppression are sadly brutalizing their own.

When looking at this particular instance of inhumanity logically and you do hold strong esoteric views, then you unavoidably have to come to some rather irrational conclusions about why this girl supposedly must’ve earned or even deserved her fate.

For instance, if you believe in karma and reincarnation, then it must also be your view that what happened to her – as a consequence of your belief – had to be as a result of her past misdeeds. That is in this life but also of her past lives, and that she now must be repaying back some monumental karmic debt.

Or if you believe in personal spirit guides then they in their infinite wisdom must have orchestrated this monstrous event from some or other higher cosmic vantage. Perhaps it is so that the girl had willingly chosen this lifetime to learn her spiritual lessons through pain and indignity.

Or if you subscribe to the views of The Secret, that “You cannot "catch" anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought”, in spouting this profanity you must be of the view that her conscious or unconscious thinking must’ve been responsible for bringing this cruel inhumanity upon herself.

Or if you are of the opinion that “love is all there is, all else is an illusion”, a quote by John Demartini a contributor on The Secret, explain to her that her horror is not really real, but that from a deeper perspective had been an act of love. And furthermore that the actions of the perpetrator were in fact not a vile and monstrous one, but motivated by some or other form of cosmic love which he had unconsciously enacted upon.

If these indeed are your views then my honest opinion is that you are not living in my reality, and particularly not of that girl’s, but rather in a sick delusional fantasy.

Though if you are of the opinion that you are not deluded, then you must be an incredibly cruel and unfeeling person for having had the gall to confidently proclaim that these are your views. What you therefore are implying is that at some supposed more consequential level, this poor girl had not been the innocent victim of human savagery, but at some obscure ‘cosmic’ level had deserved what happened to her.

Such attitudes are very real and unfortunately are significantly increasing with the advent of New Ageism. The real danger in these neo ‘spiritual’ views is that they essentially are escapist. For instance at a talk I gave in Cape Town where I spoke about this very incident, a prominent person in the city’s New Age movement attempted to defend the notion that “love is all there is, all else is an illusion” by indeed rationalizing it from Demartini’s perspective.

In defense of his ideology he intimated that, unless one takes mental heed of the event, it did not really happen at all from one’s individual perspective.

In his argument he literally equated the events of our lives to the fictitious events on a movie screen by indicating that, if a particular event was not captured on film, it then does not exist from the vantage of the movie audience watching the showing of it at all and thus is not a reality for that particular audience.

Quite frankly, this is the most inhuman argument that I have ever heard.

I say this because I always understood from my Judeo-Christian upbringing (not that I’m a Christian or Jew but an Agnostic, if anything) that one’s capacity to become conscious of the suffering and inhumanity around one and then to actively reach out to those ill-fated by circumstance, is the most consequential act of humanity one can ever show.

Moreover, it is imperative we fully acknowledge that the brutality of ‘humans’ are real and omnipresent and cannot be wished away or meditated into spiritual oblivion as is becoming the predominant view.

Rather it is incumbent on us to fully acknowledge that this type of barbarity takes place, being a scourge within humanity that must be bitterly fought against if we indeed are to collectively evolve to a higher level of being.

Newton Fortuin, 2006

[Prologue of Scourge: The Demise of Critical Thinking in the Age of Donald Trump]

________________________

The incident referred to occurred on Guy Fawkes day, 5 November 2006.


Additional Note

The current Israel-Gaza conflict underscores the deep-rooted inability of both sides, entrenched in their extreme religious perspectives, to fully recognize and empathize with each other's suffering. This conflict has a history that spans decades, shaped by profound historical, religious, and political complexities. The tragic events of October 7, 2023, where Hamas was responsible for more than a thousand deaths of innocent children and civilians, have deeply traumatized the Israeli population. In response, the IDF's retaliatory strikes have led to the loss of thousands of innocent Palestinian lives and extensive infrastructural damage in Gaza. Actions that are guaranteed to perpetuate and intensity the cycles of violence. This cycle of mutual animosity and mistrust conceals the genuine pain and torment experienced by individuals, regardless of their background or affiliation.

Regrettably, the violence continues unabated, as each faction looks upon the other through a lens of dehumanization, justifying their actions without full recognition of the extensive human cost. This scenario underscores a profound failure of both parties to engage in critical introspection and address their own roles in the crisis. Rather than navigating the situation with discernment and empathy, there's an evident reliance on deep-seated biases and resentments, inhibiting a more nuanced and productive approach to the conflict.



Thursday, June 4, 2020

Racism Is Dumb

After posting the picture below I on a DiNK Gesprekgroep (Think Conversation Group) Facebook forum, received a considerable backlash where the argument generally was that there is not a problem with systemic police victimisation of black people in the US. Moreover, that the #BlackLivesMatters movement is unfounded. Interestingly the person I argued with in the post "Critiquing the “Sweden Model” as a Cure for COVERT-20", was the most vehement protester. 


One such comment referred to a video of Katie Hopkins, a controversial British commentator to which he requested my response. Refer to Katie Hopkins blasted for offensive Black Lives Matter comments by Crystal Palace star for context.

While I don’t want to give credence to her views by posting a link to the video, she essentially asked the following 3 questions:

Q1: Why do black people only protest when there are white people involved?
Q2: What do they want? They give a doesn’t different answers to this question.
Q3: And all of a sudden not caring about social distancing, either you cared before or you didn’t? Maybe there was not problem in the first place?

This was my response:

To provide a video by Katie Hopkins, who’s a known racist, and even is vocally anti-fat people, as a defence does not help any case. That one gives credence to her views is very revealing. That Trump loves her says all you need to know about her.

Nonetheless, to answer one of her questions: Why do black people only protest when there are white people involved?

The fact that there is black on black violence in America is not remarkable. In the US as a whole there are as many white on white gun violence incidences because gun violence is a real problem in the country as a whole. That's simply because: when you happen to have a gun you more likely are going to shoot those who are the closest to you when you happen to have a homicidal moment.  

However, that being said, how would you answer this question: How many instances of white people being killed in a gratuitous or arbitrary manner by police do you know of? Or generally, the number of reported incidences of indefensible killing of white people by the police.

There’s only one answer: hardly any, and if they were, it would be shown on social media by the likes of Hopkins to bolster her case. I challenge you to find a significant number of incidences. I saw an old white man being shoved around by police recently, and that caused quite a ruckus. To deny that there’s a systemic problem in the US with regards to black men being targeted by police (by white and black policemen) is to bury your head in the sand when confronted by reality.

The second, another really stupid question: What do they want? 

In a nutshell, criminal justice reform that treats all people equally under the law. In fact, 75% of the US agrees: 74% of Americans view Floyd's death as an underlying racial injustice problem. Seems pretty emphatic to me. This also answers the first question in the eyes of ¾ of the American public. It was an issue under Obama, and it was an issue before then. This time a white cop felt so entitled that he must’ve been convinced he could snuff the life out of someone for the whole world to see, and believe that he could get away with it, as cops usually do when they kill black people. This time though there was the COVID 19 Pandemic with students at home, masses of people unemployed, and people feeling they had the reason and inclination to do so. Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes 3: there is a time, a season, and a reason… and that time, season, and reason just so happen to be now…

And what about all of a sudden not caring about social distancing?

It seems that after months of lockdown people are fed-up, but moreover, this cause seems to matter to them more than the possibility of getting a virus. I’m sure there’s going to be a spike. It’s all relative. 
If anything,  while George Floyd's death was the Spark, COVID-19 the fuel, igniting this movement towards meaningful systemic change.

Again, a really dumb question actually, and underscores her very apparent racial bias. 

More Thoughts to Ponder

The following Stats are useful to consider for denialists that their indeed is a race problem in the US:
Does it sound to you that black lives do matter in the US? Or are these just statistical anomalies? 
Or is it just a racist virus? Or are black kids just murderous from the very first day of their lives, so much so that they take their mothers with them? 
Or are black folks in the US just a dramatically more inferior species?
If you say no to all the above, then can you see why black lives should indeed matter too? 

Just as much as all lives should matter.  

And if your answer is yes? 

It is abundantly clear that your racism does make you incredibly stupid. 

Or perhaps, you are stupid just stupid. Period. 

That your mental faculties are so clouded that you  you cannot see reality for what it is, even if it punches you straight in the face. 

Friday, May 8, 2020

Critiquing the “Sweden Model” as a Cure for COVERT-20

Just having fun with one of the many armchair COVID-19 aficionados out there...

Source: The Economist

A few days ago I came across "THE REAL COVID-19 STORY" on a DiNK Gesprek (THINK Discussion) Facebook forum post below.

Please be patient with me here. You're first going to have to read through the following bit, before the fun starts afterwards. 

Skim through it if you have to get the gist of it, but please don't get too bogged down in the blah, blah, blah... as that would divert from the intended lighthearted intent of this post.    


When reading, please bear in mind what journalist H.L. Mencken once said: 
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong."

____________


THE REAL COVID-19 STORY

Logical and rational people make decisions based on evidence.

However, the main problem in reviewing “evidence”, particularly in complex issues like virology and medicine is differentiating between cause and effect with respect to evidence. It’s not always easy to do.

Let’s take the issue of flattening the curve as an example. The objective of this exercise is clear – it is solely to retard the rate at which the infection progresses in order that the rate at which patients that require intensive care present, do not overwhelm the medical facilities’ ability to deal with the problem. The degree to which the curve needs to be flattened is therefore directly related to the particular state’s medical care capacity and this will differ from country to country and district to district.

The objective of flattening the curve is never about reducing the amount of people that become infected nor is it about reducing the ultimate death rate from the disease except insofar as it ensures that there are no “excess deaths” due to medical care capacity constraints.

In the absence of a vaccine and/or effective treatment, the ultimate outcome in terms of death rate per person infected will converge regardless of whether you advocated hard lockdown or a soft lockdown ala the Swedish model. The Swedes are taking the inevitable deaths upfront and inflicting minimal (but not zero) economic damage. Other countries have adopted hard lockdown which reduces upfront deaths but inflicts serious economic damage (which in itself causes death) and are now faced with the need to find a way to come out of lockdown and deal with multiple future recurring outbreaks and deaths.

On face value therefore, both Sweden and most hard lockdown countries have evidence to show that their strategies worked in terms of keeping infections below hospital capacity (Lombardy in Italy and New York in the USA are notable exceptions). Uninformed commentators however, look at evidence of current deaths per million and claim that this is evidence that the strategies followed by Norway and Denmark for example, are more successful than that of Sweden. This is incorrect as the real measure of success on the score of overall mortality will only be known 12-24 months from now. The fight against Covid19 is a marathon, not a sprint. Claiming success for Norway is the same as claiming success for the 42km marathon runner who passes the 1km mark first. Clearly nonsense, as the guy that’s in 100th place at the 1km mark may well be the guy who has paced himself perfectly and who will cross the 42km finish line in first place. We cannot predict yet who will win the Covid19 marathon. My money is on Sweden because their strategy is evidence and logic based, rather than being based on mass hysteria and a political need to be perceived as taking hard action. However, I also cannot be sure as the end point is still far in the future. What I do know though, is that Sweden has done the least damage to its economy and will therefore suffer the least economically induced deaths.

The hard reality is that in the absence of a vaccine and/or the ability to sustain a permanent hard lockdown, this particular airborne virus will infect around 60% of the population (the precise % is unknown as it is a factor of the contagiousness of the disease).

The second hard reality is that in the absence of effective treatment or drugs for people getting sick with the disease, the % of the population that will die is dictated by the IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) which is not yet known, but preliminary research puts it at somewhere between 0.1 and 0.3%, with some research suggesting 0.6%. It’s definitely not the 2-3% numbers bandied about by uninformed commentators who confuse CFR (Case Fatality Rate) with IFR.

Nothing we can do, short of an effective treatment drug or vaccine or permanent lockdown, can stop 60% people getting infected and the IFR deaths occurring. The average citizen doesn’t understand this though and politicians don’t seem to either. The reality is that we will have to learn to live with this virus and the good thing is that the human body has evolved to become a remarkable machine in achieving exactly this. We live in symbiosis with a multitude of microorganisms both within and around our bodies and our immune system (at least in the average healthy person) is remarkably efficient at adapting to new threats. That’s also evidenced by the low death rates by Covid19 which is a brand-new virus that our bodies have not encountered before.

We need to put aside hysteria, deal with the real facts and evidence we have, and move towards regaining some form or normality. The new normal will be different to the old normal and we will be obliged to protect those whose immunity is compromised. However, the rest of society must get on with life. Children must go back to school and people must go back to work. We must all strive to live a healthier life and protect and build up our immune systems, because there is one thing we can know for sure - there will be future pandemics coming our way and we cannot hide from them.  
____________  

This seems like a reasonable argument if you don’t dig any deeper because it’s generally very well written and lots of disparate ideas are intelligently (although not logically) woven together. And if you were not reading it critically, you’d think it was a pretty decent perspective.

This is just as recent misinformation such as Plandemic seems reasonable, if you don't challenge it by digging deeper and employing your critical thinking . 

Here’s my critique as an example of such an exercise. And you're more than welcome to be critical of my criticism if you think it's deserved. Note that it was modified somewhat for dramatic effect.  

____________  

COVERT-20: A Tale of TRUE Fruits

Your argument is devoid of facts, logic and rationality. I don’t have the whole day to waste so let me state the most obvious.

Firstly, you’re attempting to compare apples with pineapples as if they’re the same kind of fruit. And then after by biting in each concluding that you like the apple more because the pineapple tastes leathery and spikes your mouth. In doing so completely disregarding that it is best to truly get to know the nature of the fruit only once it's peeled.

Let’s say Sweden is the apple in this tale. Yes you can compare Sweden and Norway because they are both apples for the purposes of analogy (a Granny Smith and Pink Lady for argument's sake).

And yes the death toll is significantly worse in Sweden and the economy is currently better. And yes, they made an informed logical decision in this regard, and I would argue it could pay off for them in the long run. Economically that is.

But that’s only because the Swedes are the Swedes. As Carl Bildt, a former PM, indicated in a CNN interview, the Swedes are already naturally socially distant. And with small modifications in behaviour, have the discipline to pull it off without any major measures.

What about countries who adopted strong early measures,  and are now are good to go? Prime example being New Zealand where the virus had essentially been eliminated in very short time. And despite a significant drain on the economy, and infrastructure that does not remotely compare, South Africa is not doing badly on the death and infection front (and therefore one can legitimately argue that the lockdown is too severe, though there’s some complexity here and is an argument for a post of it's own).

On the other hand, what about the UK? The pineapple in the argument, let’s say. Because they were late at implementing measures, arguing for the herd immunity argument Johnson made, they now are experiencing a massive death tol.

That is with an eventual very restrictive lockdown.

Now what would’ve happened had they not?

Estimations are that a few hundred thousand would’ve died given the rapid exponential growth of COVID-19, had they not done so. Notwithstanding these eventual measures, because they were late to respond Britain who is now per capita the worst case is exactly where they are because they employed your underlying logical assumptions.

The USA is now relaxing social distancing and the forecast is that the death rate would exceed 3,000 in three weeks, and that 200,000 would be dead by August according to a John Hopkins projection if America opens up now.

Notably the common thread between the three countries with the worst outcomes are that they are run by populists: the USA, Britain, and Italy. In this case I would say the USA, particularly because of Trump, the banana – or should that rather be, paw paw (specifically the orangeier version, otherwise known as a papaya) – in the basket.


Another illogical argument is the way you made irrational inferences from the “flattening the curve” model.

The model’s two graphs shows a mathematical area under the curve that theoretically shows the same number of patients. But it’s employed to do exactly that, compare apples with apples to simplify the theoretical argument, basically the “Epidemiology for Dummies” version. To take this literally, as you indicated that would eventually result in the same amount of deaths, is like saying ceteris paribus as they do economics, i.e. all other things being equal, in order to make sense of complex systems.

One can say it’s the apple pie (sprint) versus apple cider (marathon) analogy, albeit the exact same number of apples were used.  

Unlike your assertion that they will reach the same conclusion (i.e. a marathon vs a sprint), flattening the curve is ultimately about lowering the overall death rate. 

Indeed, the argument should be reversed. The sprint being about rushing to open up at all costs, resulting in a deadly peak because hospital capacity is overwhelmed. This though can play out over many months, with an eventual very high death rate. 

The marathon is in fact about mitigation measures to flatten the curve. This requires a longer term view, but which can be considerably shortened if earlier mitigation measures are enacted. Again, New Zealand being the prime example. 

The assertion that we generally get the same amount of deaths in the long run whether we flatten the curve or not – "the ultimate outcome in terms of death rate per person infected will converge regardless of a hard or soft lock-down (as per Sweden)" – is blatantly incorrect for a multitude of obvious reasons. Clearly you are confusing overall death tole with death rate, the former being a factor of death rate times infectivity. 


It is not virulance which you were alluding to. In fact it's virulance, that you actually become very sick when the virus inhabits your body, is clearly not the case with COVID-19. But this very low virulance is actually what makes it deadly to the overall population as it increases the R-0 – it's overall infectivity – because of asymptomatic spread

If it is not obvious to you, please read my tedious footnote below. [i]


And you were implying that it’s a generally mild virus and that it’s not so deadly? 

Are you referring to the one Boris had? If you're wondering who I'm referring to, he's the head of the pineapple factory. 


Now, to your reference to the impact on the economy?

Do I really have to go down there other than to say this. The fear of omnipresent death and knowing that there’s a mostly undetectable deadly disease on the prowl – like a covert (as opposed to COVID, get it?) KGB assassin – generally does not promote healthy economic activity.

That’s unless you’re a cool Swede (just kidding if there happen to be any Swedes reading this response).



Oh, and a last one before I go.

Yes, there will be lots of deadly viruses and diseases out there in the future that you need to prepare for, the flue for instance. But when do you suppose the next once-in-a-hundred-year plague would befall us in your estimation?

Just curious. 

____________  


His personal post went abuzz with how much of a genius he is. Clearly his followers were greatly impressed with his writing acumen. 

However, besides the general logical floors of the argument, be generally weary of anyone who claims they are giving “THE REAL...” from their narrow perspective, let alone “THE REAL COVID STORY”.  

And I also wonder who the “uninformed commentators” are?

As irony wild would have it, this particular informed expert happen to be a very well educated gooseberry farmer. 


Met ander woorde, ‘n APPELliefie boer. 

Note that I’m generally not such a prickly pear as I was in my retort, but the arrogance of this guy really got under my skin. 

Unlike in this case, I’m usually thicker skinned.

More like a pineapple, but without the pines, I suppose.  

And no, a pineapple minus pines, doth not an pineapple maketh.

En net ingeval jy gewonder het, nee, 'n appeliefie boer is nie net maar 'n gewone appel boer met 'n groot liefde vir appels nie😊 

[If you are interested in a transcript of the subsequent FaceBook discussion go to  this link for pdf download]




The reality is that the death rate varies from around 2% as in South Africa, to as high as 15%. This though is dependent on the number being tested, but in Europe this is generally accurate. That's notwithstanding asymptomatic spreaders which are generally not tested. This adds to the overall infectivity of COVID-19, and therefore also to it's deadliness and scariness as it unknowingly lurks in society. 

This death rate for most countries that are not Sweden, is causally linked to the ability of the hospital system to cope with patients, and therefore to give quality treatment. Even Italy and UK with the best hospital systems in the world, largely crumbled. And this is with very strong lockdown measures in place. 

If they had started with social distancing a week or two earlier, they could've stretched the effects over a longer period, with significantly less consequent deaths. That’s let alone that treatment methodologies improve with time, which will significantly lower the overall death rate as well. Let alone a vaccine or other definitive cure which could stop the disease potentially dead in its tracks.