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Bullying Disguised as Satire
We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Some of us go without conversing with people in the real world for days or even weeks at a time. Is now the time to be offensive about people’s social media habits? For plenty of TikTok users, their only window into the social world is their phone.
Plenty of people are lonely, and in need of human connections. Social media is a great means by which to have moments of intimacy, to flirt or even just to have a convivial moment with someone else.
If we’re going to behave like bullies then it would make sense to comment on the people who do not wear a mask, and those who do not respect the two meter distance. How about all those people going to bars, restaurants and pubs where there is no respect for the two meter rule?
During a pandemic the behaviour that is harmful to society is that which spreads COVID-19, not instagramming or TikToking, or other. If people are dealing with the solitude of a pandemic by socialising online welcome, and thank them.
Their behaviour will cut the pandemic short, at least in some cases. Solitude is a positive, during a pandemic.
Never forget that just because you’re married, with children, or living in an apartment with others, that this is a reality for everyone. Remember that we’re six months into this pandemic and that some of us have yet to give a hug or even shake the hand of a stranger.
Pandemics are solitary affairs, so give “influencers” the benefit of the doubt.
Springwatch – Some Swiss bees
Spring is finally back and the fun sports are about to start again. Via Ferrata, Rock climbing, hiking and other sports will be possible and we will see what new places I explore. While waiting for the season to start properly I took some time to film bees pollinating a form of apple tree. The images were captured with a Sony PMW-200. This camera records high quality images.
from Mainvision on Vimeo.
This summer I will work on projects and share them.I hope to realise my documentary about via ferrata at last. I have acquired some new skills but need to find people with whom to collaborate with.
The Illusion That The Pandemic Is Over
Switzerland is living under the illusion that the pandemic is over. If you look at the data on the RTS website and other sources of information such as Cotrack – Grafana then the pandemic is over. The number of new cases has gone done so if you look at the metrics then it is over.
There is a good chance that this is an illusion, demonstrated in three ways. The first of these is the number and saturation of hospitals now, with many of them overloaded and in a situation of crisis. The second indicator that things are not fine is the increased mortality for years, at this point. The third indicator is that people with COVID compromised immune systems might have stopped testing positive for COVID but there is a lag between when someone stops testing positive for COVID and when their immune system has fully recovered from the disease, able to combat other illnesses that would otherwise have little or no effect.
They charge for COVID tests. They no longer test sewage for traces of the disease. They tell people that the pandemic is over, and then they provide data that gives this illusion.
Two things bother me about this situation. The first is that I don’t trust that the pandemic is over. If we had frequent tests, and everyone was testing positive then I would trust that the pandemic is over. The second is that by not having data that proves that the pandemic is over I will keep wearing a mask when I am indoors and keeping my distance outside of people in my family, or that I am staying with.
At the start of the pandemic there was a thing that said “the pandemic will be over when we have zero transmission for two weeks”. We are not at that stage yet. We are also at a nine percent positivity rate. That’s four percentage points higher than the five percent required for a situation to be considered under control. In reality I don’t need to be confused. When I see 0 new cases for two weeks, and the test percentage is down to 0 then I can consider removing the mask.
Day 61 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – World Community Grids Pandemic work units.
World Community Grids OpenPandemic work units are now ready. With your laptop or desktop, you can help find a cure for COVID-19.
As a World Community Grid volunteer, you download a secure software program to your computer. And when your computer is not using its full computing power, it will automatically run a simulated experiment in the background which will help predict the effectiveness of a particular chemical compound as a possible treatment for COVID-19.
Research:
OpenPandemics – COVID-19: Project Overview
Downloading and installing the software and creating an account is quick and easy. Once you have done this, and once the application is running your laptop or desktop will help in the effort. It costs us little effort and we can still use the computer as usual.
The idea is not a new one. My laptops and desktops have been contributing to such efforts for decades now. I was introduced to this concept back in the late 90s to early 20th century. My first glimpse of this was the Seti@Home research project back in 2002.
With Grid computing, you don’t need to purchase or develop supercomputers. Instead, you rely on a networked cluster of computers to work together to process data. Instead of requesting and waiting for slots to become available on supercomputers scientists have access to thousands of machines to help them work through the data. Every work unit is worked on by at least two or more computers and verified.
World Community Grid has 650,000 individual contributers and 460 organisations helping in the effort. They have contributed to 31 research projects to date. This has resulted in 35 peer reviewed papers.
Over the years my computers have contributed 356 days of computing power. They have generated over a million points for mapping cancer markers. They have contributed to the Microbiome Immunity Project, FightAIDS@Home Phase 2, OpenZika, Outsmart Ebola Together, Genome Comparison, Help Defeat Cancer, Fight Aids@Home, and Smash Childhood Cancer.
Although Folding@Home gave people the power to help in the search to beat COVID-19 sooner I prefer the World Community Grid application because it runs in the background without me hearing the fans running. When you’re using a laptop that you want to keep using for years this is important.
I will leave you with this short video.
See you tomorrow.
The Year-Old Pandemic
Thanks to the incompetence of leadership during this pandemic Switzerland went from a low of 21 cases per day in June 2021 to a high of 3600 or more over Christmas. This is really a shame. For a short period up to the 21st of June Switzerland really looked as if it would end the pandemic.
On the 21st of June the government made a mistake. It reopened society. The rational was that the pandemic would soon end and that slowly we could return to life as normal. Within a week or two the number of new cases started to go up again, but rather than go a step back until the number went back down the government went ahead with the next diminishing of sanctions.
Over time, we could see the number of new cases climb and climb and I really expected to see a peak within two weeks from the 1st of August. It came about three to four weeks later and that’s close to when the second wave was declared. Bad decisions continued to be taken until it was decided that people should have their Christmas and new Year. Two weeks after all the Christmas shenanigans were over tightening came back, and instantly the number of new cases went down.
We’re now a year into the pandemic with little chance of the pandemic ending anytime soon.
As I see it the government has two possible avenues. The first is to vaccinate everyone, but the drawback is that you need vaccines to vaccinate people, so for now this idea is on hold. The second idea, and this was definitely possible in June, and is still being proved by New Zealand, is that you can end the pandemic with proper government directives.
Last week Switzerland finally got down to just 1000 cases per day, which is excellent news, and with a little effort it looks as if the pandemic could end sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately the government decided to reopen society yesterday, so we are now condemned to go through another wave of infections and the end has been blown away by bad policy.
One weakness during this pandemic is that lockdowns and restrictions have been pictures as political rather than scientific. As a result of this people are guided by their emotions rather than their rationality. This irrationality means that people fail to see that the sooner the pandemic ends, the sooner normal life returns.
The more often society reopens, the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer the pandemic lasts, the more businesses will go bankrupt. It makes sense to have a lockdown like we had this time last year, for the pandemic to end, so that life can resume.
There is another cost to the pandemic. Teenagers are unable to have a normal university experience. Add to this that around 36 percent of homes in Switzerland are one person and this is a theoretical 36 percent (I don’t know the actual number of people) who might have gone without a hug, a kiss or a handshake for almost a year by now.
In the 21st century plenty of people live alone, and when you live alone during a pandemic it implies that you do not see many people. In fact the only person you see during the day is the cashier, if you buy food.
Switzerland decided to close petrol stations on Sunday, and my habit of seeing one person in the physical world per day was lost. I sometimes go three to four days at a time without speaking to another human being.
This pandemic is teaching us to live in absolute solitude, for days at a time with no contact, and weeks, months or even seasons without even a handshake or hug.
I don’t watch normal television anymore. If a podcast has someone speaking about relationships I pause or stop listening. I avoid films. I avoid certain topics in podcasts. I listen to very little music.
We’re in a pandemic, and we live in solitude. Normal people think “the pandemic will take two years to resolve, and it isn’t that bad”, but to people in solitude it is that bad. Solitude is fine, as long as it is not made to feel like isolation, and that’s why I changed my media consumption habits. I went to be comfortable in solitude, not distressed in solitude.
With how people behave, and how the government behaves, we are in for a few more months at best. Maybe the summer of 2022 will be less lonely.