Quite right LesPhelps. It seems odd to me that supplements are recommended instead of making sure you get the right nutrients from real food. In some cases it may be desireable to temporarily add some nutrients until you get the mix right but supplements, generally, are unsustainable.
New Zealand has rather poor volcanic soil. Supplements might not be a bad idea. Or just import food from somewhere else that has good soil. Of course that isn’t too sustainable.
https://wondermins.co.nz/minerals-lacking-nz/
https://www.abouthealth.co.nz/blog/post/new-zealand-soil-deficiencies.html
This one is particularly good.
https://www.healthyfood.com/advice/how-to-avoid-nzs-top-dietary-deficiencies/
Certainly a catchy title. I think it needs some further definition though.
What is government?
Who are us?
What is failing?
Government is nothing more than a Cosa Nostra. The US government was created by rich white guys for rich white guys to be run by rich white guys. The US constitution did not include women, African slaves, nor the first nation people. It centralized power in a single entity rather than a loose confederation of individual states, as created under the Articles of Confederation.
Who are us? LOL This government of rich white guys is as George Carlin has shown is a big club and you aint in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIS7F_tkvuM
The government is not failing the bankers and Wall Street ( Wall Street was a slave market at one time), large corporations, hedge funds and a slew of “connected” white collar criminals. The illusion of an “us” only exists for a few reasons, war, and taxes. Voting is the biggest illusion of all.
So what is failing? Nothing absolutely nothing. Are people dying? Sure. Are people losing jobs and businesses? Sure. Does the government care? LOL. This government sent millions of jobs overseas. Thanks to supposed free trade and trade agreements the US can not make and supply its citizens with PPE. It cannot produce Hydrogen Peroxide. It cannot produce hand sanitizer. We have breweries being repurposed to make hand sanitizer. We have a cottage industry making masks. This is only an embarrassment if you think the government is your friend. This is an embarrassment if you think you believe this is a government of the people, by the people for the people. It AINT.
As has been stated in these videos "you are on your own. " The good news is people are now waking up thanks to this pandemic. As stated in the Crash Course the next 20 years will be very different from the previous 20 years. The rich white guys are stealing everything they can get their hands on and putting in place technology to control the expected fallout.
Here is Oxiris Barbot telling New Yorkers to party on. This is a government official in charge of protecting the health of 10 million people. How this woman still has a job paying $228,141 a year is a question that demands an answer from the victims of her incompetence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4lmPMG4wtg
Think of it this way the people in government sat next to you in high school.
YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN
It is good that the effectiveness of HCQ and zinc in treating Covid-19 is being more widely recognized. But this somewhat self-congratulatory paper is wrong–they are not the first.
As far as I can tell Dr. Zelenko was the first to start treating lots of US patients with HCQ and zinc. For his troubles, he got labeled as a “star of the right wing” by the New York Times and other left-leaning media. Here is one example:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-nyt-coronavirus-vladimir-zelenko-hydroxychloroquine-cure-20200402-s4rwdsfi5ncx7oyxoiwgmoml7y-story.html
You can Google “Zelenko” or “Zelenko protocol” to get more details, especially of his early work using HCQ and zinc (back in February)…but he was the first and should be acknowledged as such. To get you started, here is what I think is his most recent interview.
https://techstartups.com/2020/04/21/dr-vladimir-zelenko-now-treated-1450-coronavirus-patients-2-deaths-using-hydroxychloroquine-99-99-success-rate-latest-video-interview/
Bruce
Thanks JWhite!
Ontario and Quebec have been the hardest hit provinces, so I can well imagine that, after the initial burst of applications, response from the bureaucracy would have slowed down. Also, as the implications of the rescue became obvious, someone was obviously doing some sums in the background and trying to place some rational limits. Whether they were actually rational is always open to question, of course - as Chris says, these people are mostly managers.
“Information regarding… participation in the program”, since the program has to do with the aid going to wage subsidies for employees, might actually amount to positive PR. Public shaming would be really really unusual - no one is likely to consider participation in this program as a shameful act anyway, so that sounds to me more like a miscellaneous standard cya by some lawyer.
Proving that you’ve lost a portion of your normal income for a given month sounds like one of the ways of limiting the damage to the overall budget. Real Estate agents and others with sporadic income streams are usually prepared for dry periods. I checked with some local agents here in BC and it’s not worrying them. If the following month was good, they can apply for help on that basis. Surprisingly, though, people are still out there buying houses.
Around here, landscapers and other self-employed are often still working, as they can do so safely, but that may not be the case back east.
Although I’m grateful that the govt is doing as much as they are to help, I’m also glad there are some criteria or the final debt will be even worse. BC is about to start “opening up” a bit, as our curve has really flattened, and I think the way they are proposing to do it is really intelligent. They are suggesting guidelines for safe operation, that the business must post for potential customers to assess for themselves whether what is being done makes them feel safe enough to patronize that business. That way, it’s between the business and their customers, not a bunch of top-down rules with official enforcement. I’ll be really interested to see how it works. They’ll close things down again if the curve goes up past what the health system can manage.
I’m sorry your friends/relatives have had a hard time with it. As I said before, I’ve just heard good things, so it may depend on the bureaucrat they hit. These are chaotic times, and nobody’s doing a perfect job.
Hi vshelford – thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions.
Re: the Small Business Wage Subsidy program, I don’t quite see how the reference to a public list of applicants could act as a ‘cya’ statement, and I can’t think of a good reason why the names should be publicly displayed, but the possibility of this happening may of course prevent some employers, and especially professionals, from applying for it. It seems shameful that such a statement has been included, especially when the small business aid program(s) did not provide for assistance for the small business owners themselves (I’m not sure if this has changed at this point).
In any case, I’m happy that things have gone smoothly for your friends out in B.C, and that your curve has flattened – that’s certainly what we want to hear!
The US gubmint turned down an off to buy 1.7 million masks a week from a Texas based company on January 22. This is a crime against humanity. This is a crime against every Amerikaan. How many people died because of this including Health Care workers.
Somebody needs to fry for this shit
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/07/coronavirus-whistleblower-hhs-n95-ppe/
Great idea to make a list of actionable intelligence! Don’t forget Elderberry syrup and vitamin C and perhaps zinc on that list (for the listeners of Chris who haven’t put it on there already).
I also agree that - like you said - “once a million people are infected, ‘contact tracing’ and widespread testing of everyone is not a viable strategy. The trace and test policy only works when the number of infected people is small relative to the population as a whole.”
If more than a million people are infected, then “contact tracing” I think there is a real danger that it will become an excuse which an increasingly authoritarian government can use to suppress dissident voices in it’s population. (Mind you, authoritarian overreach isn’t limited to either Democratic or Republican governments. I would argue that it’s more like a class warfare which the 0,001% CRONY-capitalist revolving-door billionaire or multi-multi-millionaire class is waging against everyone else.)
Pro tip: when the number of infected in the population exceeds a million, every time you hear “contact tracing” you can substitute “Big Brother omnipresent surveillance” in its place:
https://www.corbettreport.com/stop-calling-it-contact-tracing-propagandawatch/
Spiro Skouras is a very good interviewer and cutting edge for what’s going in big picture.
If you have time also check out some of his other work. He’s super credible IMO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgQNmMih-vc
The concept of having to answer a ton of questions about where you went, and who you saw, and - perhaps - being required to run a particular phone app in order to run around “outside” - does seem a trifle overdone.
Here’s the thing. Iceland lets everyone who tests positive just quarantine at home. Nobody is subjected to cross-examination. They are trusted to do the right thing. As a result, nobody fears getting tested.
Alternatively, if you require everyone to confess to everything they ever did, and everyone they saw, and everywhere they went - do you imagine people will want to be tested? Knowing what that will expose all of their contacts to?
People will hide from testing.
The whole approach is counter-productive. It is is exactly what the CCP does. “We will impose this regime upon everyone because we know best.” Natural human response: everyone tries to avoid being tested. Who wants to subject their contacts to that sort of scrutiny?
Compare with the Iceland model - we trust the people to do the right thing. Once infected, most people will inform their contacts on their own. Nobody fears getting tested.
In a high tech “enforced contact tracing” regime, I will leave my phone at home. A phone is a liability in such an environment. It is a witness for the prosecution - for whatever they want to prosecute you for.
[Note: in Xinjiang, you cannot do this - you must have the CCP app on your phone, and you must have it with you at all times. It is your “leash” they use to monitor you. Once “they” start to require you to carry a phone or face “consequences” - you will be in a de-facto Xinjiang-like environment.]
Lastly - if we have 10 people infected, then it makes sense. Once we have millions of infected people, it just makes no sense at all. It seems like a structure put in place for something else entirely. Especially if the tech companies put it into place.
Perhaps, having worked in tech for many years, I am a skeptic. 
Dave,
I am also very skeptical, having worked for in a call center contracted to Sprint for over 3 years. I think there would be a huge amount of people shifting back to flip-phones, me included. Not only the intrusiveness, 1984 style, but with all of that data, it would be a surefire target for hackers and nefarious third-party vendors, ie Facebook’s fiasco with Cambridge Analytica. I for instance work somewhere where it would be impossible, due to the large number of customers, to account for everyone I came into contact with. If fact, anyone who worked there…
Linda
I don’t think that the total number of infections is the critical thing, rather the number of daily infections relative to the contact tracing capability. We have a very good contact tracing ability in New Zealand. Yes, we only have a few new infections per day but have the ability to trace thousands of contacts each day and we’re a very small country.
Contact tracing is a vital part of trying to ensure that any infections don’t spread too far. Relying on individuals to trace and tell their own contacts is just too weak of a strategy and likely to fail.
That might be fine for NZ. Here it will spell the introduction of the police state they all long for.
So you don’t agree, Susan and Dave, that Chris’s step 3 (rigorous contact tracing) should be part of the gold standard pandemic approach?
sofistek-
It is pretty obvious that - at some point - contact tracing becomes pointless. The question for debate is, what is that point?
If the US has 320 million people, and 160 million are infected, is contact tracing useful?
No. It would just be wasted effort. Would you agree?
If, in a 320 million population, only 3 people have it, is contact tracing useful? Of course it is. It is extremely useful.
It is the middle ground that is up for debate. How many “likely infected” does it take for contact tracing to be more time and trouble and economic expense than it is worth?
You tell me.
I expect that in some areas, with few cases, it will be a great idea. In other areas - say NYC - it will be mostly useless. Certainly NYC doesn’t seem to care about it at this point.
I can definitely see providing advice to people who test positive on what they should tell people in their household (since that’s how - mostly - people get infected) but beyond that, once the numbers get too large, I mean - what are you gonna do? With 5000 new cases a day, will you put out a bulletin that says “30 new positives were using the (A-C-E) subway line yesterday”? Every day you’ll be saying this. Useful? Not so much. Information overload. Why would you waste the man-hours to do this?
Take a look at the advice given by NYC Health department. They do not even recommend getting tested unless you are really super sick. (So much for “treat early”). Maybe this is why they have so many people dying.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-symptoms-chronic-health-risks.page If you are sick, assume you have COVID-19. You do not need to seek testing at this time. Not getting tested protects health care workers and saves essential medical supplies that are in short supply, such as testing materials, masks and gloves.NYC does not seem to be doing contact tracing right now. That's because - they have too many cases for it to be useful. My guess. "Don't bother getting tested. We don't care about you unless you are really super sick."
I would add to DaveF’s excellent comment above, that when aerosols (which can float in an airspace for hours) is a transmission route that exposure is too hard to define.
One infected visits Starbucks one time, say, 7:00 am Tuesday morning, means that everyone who visited Starbucks between 7:00 am and Noon that Tuesday has been “exposed.”
Should these 50-100 people be called and asked to stay home for 14 days?
Dave Barbot is an idiot way over her head. If the NYC health dept is recommending not to get tested unless “super” sick then she should be taken out and shot. Even most idiots know (at least by now) you have to treat a virus early.
NYC DOH: “Don’t get tested unless you’re super sick.”
NY Pharmacy Board: “No HCQ without a positive test.”
And of course, once you get a test after you become super sick, you have to wait 3-4 days for results. Your window of significant HCQ usefulness is closed or nearly closed by then.