The rise of printing in Europe(c1450) changed the control of information, such that within a relatively short time, the power of those in control (church and monarchy) was under severe threat and eventually collapsed leading to the rise of the modern world.

However, printing also created a delusional phase where, for example, because people started printing on the subject, it became widely believed that there was a problem with witches. This is analogous to the present situation whereby a fairly common virus has been turned by delusion into the insane belief that it is an end of world killer plague.

The witch delusion heralded in an age of revolution which led to the widespread end of monarchy in a series of sometimes very bloody revolutions.  Thus it seems possible that we might to some degree be able to start to predict this internet revolution. My assumptions are as follows:

1. Printing in Europe invented 1450
2. First leader to send emails in 1976
3. The witch crisis hits a peak in 1650
4. The covid delusion is 2020
5. The age of revolution is 1650-1800

On this basis, we can see the internet revolution is occurring a lot faster than the printing revolution.

Relative speed = (1650 – 1450)/(2020-1976) = 4.5x

From this, taking 1976 as the start of the internet revolution and 1450 that of the printing revolution(s) we can work out the age of internet revolution will be approximately:

2020 – 2053AD

Of course, that is assuming that the covid delusion, is the one and only delusion. Another scenario, is that the covid delusion, is simply the first of a whole series of delusional episode, which then makes the internet revolution(s) a more extended period.

Trump the warm up act

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We are now heading rapidly toward the end of the covid scandal and so I was wondering whether those who had killed so many people through the lockup, the denial of medical treatment & their obsession with a (profitable) vaccine would ever acknowledge their guilt.

The nearest historical even I can think of is the delusion and hysteria that occurred when books started being printed about witches. That led to mass hysteria witch 🙂 led to the loss of many lives. Eventually, some people realised it was hysteria (which is the good news), but what happened after?

The best indication I have found is the aftermath of the Salem witch trials:

Aftermath of the Salem Trials

After the prisoners awaiting trial on charges of practicing witchcraft were granted amnesty (pardoned) in 1693, the accusers and judges showed hardly any remorse for executing twenty people and causing others to languish in jails. Instead they placed the blame on the “trickery of Satan,” thus freeing themselves from any sense of guilt. Jurors and townspeople also managed to maintain a clear conscience by claiming that, after all, many victims had confessed to their “crimes” and that the Salem, Massachusetts, community had been tricked by the devil. Yet families who had lost loved ones and property during the trials were expected to go on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Their attempts to regain social standing and receive financial compensation through formal legal channels took several years.

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Over the weekend, it became increasingly obvious from the total lack of comment on twitter about any protests, that they are now 100% blocking certain subjects, people and indeed, in some cases I have been left wondering if they are changing the tweets or even totally replacing them with more acceptable propaganda. I presume the same is happening across most social media.

We all know that almost everything now being done is illegal under human rights and that this autumn is about as normal as we can get because covid is not a particularly dangerous bug now and fewer people are dying than we normally get at the peak of the winter.

Fortunately, when government resorts to censorship, it only shows to the public, that it knows it cannot win the argument.

This post is trying to explain the main features of the epidemic as shown in the following curve (and the contrast between deaths in countries with lockup and not)

• As the log vs. time curve shows, the epidemic either is increasing or decreasing in straight lines, meaning exponential increase/decrease and these DO NOT RESPOND AT ALL to policy changes
• That the only other significant feature that can respond to policy is the turning point
• That countries that locked up like the UK, Spain, Peru have a MUCH HIGHER death rate than countries who do not lockup.
• That there was an (apparent) second wave

Bizarrely the problem here is not the lack of effect of policy – because it’s very easy to explain why masks didn’t work, or why anti-social policies like distancing had no effect (people ignored them), the problem is explain, BOTH how policy had no effect on the rate of spread of the virus, but also massively increased deaths.

I set out in “Lockups kill” a plausible explanation of why lockups tend to increase deaths in that they increase the fraction of social contact which is with vulnerable people who are far far more likely to die. But that requires that policy has an effect on how the virus spreads, whereas, the straight lines, which do not change as policy changes, appear to show that policy has no effect.

This obviously needed some kind of explanation.

Possibilities

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In Lessons from Lockup I have summarised what we should learn from the insane government response that killed so many people and so wrecked our economy. Unfortunately, except for saying “it should never happen again”, and “those responsible should rot in jail”, there is not a lot we can benefit from now, as hopefully, it will be a long time before anyone is so stupid again.

We are now at a position, where the “second wave” is peaking with almost no appearance as excess deaths, meaning that this is a pretty normal autumn in terms of infectious diseases. As such, the emergency is over, the human rights acts now take precedence over any silly covid legislation, and we can legally go about our normal business ignoring the huffing and puffing of politicians.

But, the question now, is should we, as a society, now just say “it’s over everyone just return to normal”. Because I don’t think it may be that easy. The problems are: Continue reading →

We are now at a stage, where more and more people are accepting that the second “wave” is amounting to not much at all as it barely registers as any excess deaths. And with multiple signs of it peaking, those who look at the data are no longer scared. But what now?

Lockups increase covid deaths

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Sweden with a very mild form of reduced social interaction, got community immunity over the summer at a death rate equivalent to 40,000 deaths in the UK. This is significantly lower than the death rate in the UK, and in addition, it is clear that either the UK was still a significant distance from community immunity or some new epidemic mistaken for covid has occurred. Either way, locking up society caused greater deaths, but how.

It is tempting to blame the higher UK death rate on the appalling behaviour of our politicians in that they callously sent infected patients from hospital into care homes and thereby almost deliberately spread the virus. However, reports suggest that similar behaviour occurred in Sweden such that they also had a lot of infections in care homes.

Thus, the main difference between the UK and Sweden appears to be that the UK had a very draconian, human-rights infringing lockup, whereas Sweden did not.

The conventional wisdom is that lockups save lives, because it appears that by stopping the virus spreading, that people will not get infected. But unfortunately, due to the non-homogenous nature of society, there is no single R number such that the concept of “R number suppression” is totally worthless. Instead, R number suppression, doesn’t act in the way it is believed to had to reduce the death rate, but the evidence shows it increases it. Continue reading →