Reader’s Links for March 9, 2021

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

110 Replies to “Reader’s Links for March 9, 2021”

  1. A rather rough “corona arrest” of 2 women in the park Noorderplantsoen in Groningen, the Netherlands:

    • Comment:
      “The bottom line is the more sequencing done, the more mutations are detected and new variants are named. This makes it particularly difficult to predict the trajectory of cases in the future because some variants are more likely to evade neutralization by antibody from previous infections or vaccines.

      Furthermore, we do not have a clear understanding of the impact of all the mutations detected on infectiousness and transmissibility of the strains. But clearly some mutations have lent an advantage to the virus, and these strains can spread rapidly…”
      …….
      Me: Tiny tinkering in labs around the world will ENSURE the virus retains the advantage.

      • Ongoing Global and Regional Adaptive Evolution of SARS- CoV-2

        Conclusions
        Virus evolution during a pandemic is a fast-moving target, and unavoidably, aspects of this analysis will be outdated by the time of publication. Nevertheless, several trends revealed here appear general and robust.

        Although it is difficult to ascertain positive selection for individual sites, the overall adaptive character of SARS-CoV-2 evolution involving multiple amino acid replacements appears to be beyond reasonable doubt.…

        Importantly, some of the mutations, for which positive selection was inferred, co-occur on multiple occasions and seem to form a robust epistatic network. Most likely, the effect of positive selection is manifested primarily at the level of epistatic interactions.

        Clearly, despite the dramatic reduction of global travel, the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is partly shaped by globalizing factors, including the increased virus fitness conferred by… positively selected substitutions.

        However, we obtained strong evidence of both continuous virus diversification within geographic regions and “speciation,” that is, formation of stable, diverging region-specific variants.

        This ongoing adaptive diversification could substantially prolong the pandemic and the vaccination campaign, in which variant-specific vaccines are likely to be required.

        https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.12.336644v3.full.pdf

      • October paean to Communist Vietnam:
        Vietnam is fighting Covid without pitting economic growth against public health

        {snips}
        Quarantining of individuals who have had contact with infected individuals seems like a good approach, since a number of the exposed may be asymptomatic, but still capable of spreading virus.

        It has been suggested that the central reason for [Viet Nam’s success] is perhaps the way the government has depoliticised the pandemic, treating it purely as a health crisis, allowing for effective governance… [LOL]

        Viet Nam learned from the SARS outbreak in 2003 that there might be more in China than was at first apparent. [They knew China was lying. So did my friend in Japan; as a result, we were fully-toilet papered by early Feb.]

        In Jan. 2020, when Wuhan announced the first death, Viet Nam tightened its border and airport control of Chinese visitors. This wasn’t an easy decision, given that cross-border trade with China accounts for a significant part of the Vietnamese economy. [But they hate the PRC with a purple passion.]

        Preparations for a pandemic were implemented a week before the outbreak was officially a public health emergency of international concern, and more than a month before WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. [Knew the WHO was owned.]

        The government also decided to embrace freedom of information on COVID-19-related matters. Although the Vietnamese media is state owned, featuring ideological control similar to that of China, they are free to report about the pandemic.

        When a member of the central theoretical council of the central committee, the brain of the Communist party of Viet Nam, contracted the virus on a trip to the UK, and risked infecting the minister of planning and investment who was on the same flight as him, his whereabouts were published for contact tracing.… [Niceties like right-to-privacy are sooo silly~]

        https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/20/vietnam-covid-economic-growth-public-health-coronavirus

  2. ‘Ask the Virus’: Pelos Responds to Question About 4th Trillion Dollar COVID Bill

  3. Jen Psaki gives update on when President Biden’s pet cat will arrive and ‘break the internet’

    President Biden’s spokesperson predicted on Tuesday that once the first family brings a cat to the White House as planned, the animal will become an internet sensation.

    “I don’t have any update on the cat,” Jen Psaki told reporters during a daily briefing. “We know that the cat will break the internet, but I don’t have any update on its status.”

    The Bidens expressed their desire to bring a cat to the White House in late November.