News COVID-19 pandemic

[Soheil_Esy]

The polls were based on my years-old speculations about COVID-19, something that I have deleted in the first post of the thread. Anyway, the impact of COVID-19 in North Korea is controversial, and I don't necessarily believe in these tales of Kim Jong Un. See what @Urwumpe commented about this topic:

Why did I mention North Korea? Because it was a typical example among the 2 main types of strategies chosen by the various world leaders facing the COVID pandemic and based on their respective political ideological system:

• Closed society with socialist centralized state economy: such as North Korea that has tried to achieved zero covid cases by imposing an indefinite total closure of its border, thus blocking all possibilities of imported external new strains from entering, such as the Brazilian, South African, British, Indian and French strains.
• Open society with liberal capitalism: such as Sweden that placed all its hope in achieving natural herd immunity, at the cost of higher risk, but still failing to reach the initial estimated 60% required rate.

This is theoretical case for demonstration purpose. Keep in mind that like any real-time crisis such as the Chelyabinsk meteor event, only time will let us know the full real numbers, after several generations at least, that is no earlier than in 80 years!

I could have mentioned Laos instead but with 1 death is not as perfect as an achievement, and while its ruling party is socialist, it is an ASEAN member with open society with liberal capitalism (the Lao People's Democratic Republic is one of the world's only socialist states openly endorsing communism. The only legal political party is the Lao People's Revolutionary Party).

From the quote you posted:

"North Korea insists there have been no coronavirus cases in the country. So why does it keep tightening restrictions, despite the heavy cost?"​

Reply: because if one opens its border, new foreign strains will enter!

You see no contradiction with having achieved zero covid cases and keeping its border closed. On the contrary, it is even a must.

And here the situation for the Year 2 of the pandemic:

Again two type of strategies, based on the respective political ideological system:

• Closed society with socialist centralized state economy: such as North Korea that claimed to have achieved zero covid cases reported as of May 2021, after a full year of total closure of its border, thus preventing any new foreign strains from entering. At the cost of severe economic hardship.
• Open society with liberal capitalism: such as Israel, ranking first at a national level in vaccination rate, that placed all its hope in achieving herd immunity, this time by the massive use of vaccines, but still failing to reach the revised estimated 70% required rate to reach herd immunity, after facing a plateau at ~62%!

Worse still, even a 92% rate of vaccinated people will fail now facing the most contagious new Indian B.1.617 strain! And we are not even talking about the French B.1.616 strain.

https://archive.is/Z8yPF/8a189997b48390e23d8858dc360e8e9ec4fcdeca/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210512233906/https://archive.is/Z8yPF/8a189997b48390e23d8858dc360e8e9ec4fcdeca/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210512233110/https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1392366780828553221 ; https://archive.is/Z8yPF ;
▲ 1. 92% of aviation staff vaccinated—of primary cases: 11 breakthroughs in vaccinated airport staff.

Clearly demonstrating the failure of the herd immunity with open border strategy.

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[Urwumpe]

You ignore something important about the difference between an open society and a dictatorship:

The dictator will lie. Its as sure as gravity. In case of North Korea, the lies are even the foundation of the whole state philosophy and person cult.

An open society with freedom of press can't lie as whole. Individuals can lie. But enough will report, what others don't want to be told and will expose lies. Even lies by the government will fail quickly, because the story will be told. You can not stop the signal. Even in a tight-knit society like Israel, people can report what the government does not want to hear.

Sweden looks bad, because everybody in the world can know it. The health care system is very much transparent by having open data interfaces providing you many real-time statistics about its performance and everybody in the world was able to see, how people died. The government was very transparent about its strategy and assumptions and a parliament inquiry provided a lot of criticism in how these assumptions had been wrong and did not get corrected. They did not find that all assumptions had been bad - Sweden still follows a much different approach as the rest of the Scandinavian countries, but it moved much closer to them, adapting it strategy from the opposite direction. Maybe Sweden will be more right about how to handle COVID-19 in 2021. But sure did not perform anyway good in 2020.

In North Korea, we need satellite images of prison camps and mass graves just for at least estimating how many people lived and died there. Because according to its dictatorship, there are no such prison camps and nobody dies. There are reports of 80000 people in quarantine for pneumonia-like symptoms in 2020 - but none of those had COVID-19 par ordre de muft or even the term COVID-19 used in the quarantine orders. A large number of people got tested for something, which might have been COVID-19. But even they never got told, they just got quarantined depending on the results. Still, the official number of COVID-19 cases in North Korea is zero.

One thing is for sure: We will never know, how many people died in North Korea in 2021. Neither of famine. Nor of a pandemic. Because both never happens in North Korea.

 

[Soheil_Esy]

Check the basement, you'll see and this is very sad that this is the only place where your fellow countrymen can express freely their opinion, that even German members disagree!

---

Meanwhile:

ONLY VACCINES?—What if we dropped all masks/mitigation, and only rely on vaccines? Well, with 70% fully vaccinated, even if vaccines have 97% efficacy against all transmission (they don’t)— we can only stop SARS-CoV-2 1.0 slower strain. Forget B117, P1, and other B1617 strains.

https://archive.is/L6uqC/58b6113d75252ddb7f44c4d8828b26ba7f0516b1/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210514223147/https://archive.is/L6uqC/58b6113d75252ddb7f44c4d8828b26ba7f0516b1/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210514215819/https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1393090966928637952 ; https://archive.is/L6uqC
▲ 1. What if we dropped all masks/mitigation, and only rely on vaccines? We can only stop SARS-CoV-2 1.0 slower strain. Forget B117/P1/B1617. 13 May 2021.

Conclusion

It requires 70% population vaccinated, plus at least 50% vaccine efficacy against transmission, plus wearing masks, plus mitigation measures to hold back current surge!

But no nation has achieved a 70% population's vaccination rate yet, with Seychelles[2] in top position, at only 62%!


The alternative is to close the border for keeping the new strains from entering.

Proof, failing to totally close its border until the end of the pandemic in all other nations, another role model country bites the dust, with Singapore that is returning back to square one, to the lockdown-like conditions it last imposed a year ago, banning dining-in and limiting gatherings to two people, as a rising number of untraceable virus infections pressures one of the most successful places in the world at Covid containment.

https://archive.ph/Viv0v/98d274a6134e141d5d073db688a8a11bde0cf9c5/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210514221124/https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1393078907218370561 ; https://archive.ph/Viv0v
▲ 3. Failing to totally close its border until the end of the pandemic in other nations, Singapore is returning back to square one!

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[Sbb1413]

Check the basement, you'll see and this is very sad that this is the only place where your fellow countrymen can express freely their opinion, that even German members disagree!

This is not a sad thing for me for having only one place where we can express freely our opinion. It is rather good for having no political or religious propaganda in the main forums other than the Basement.

 

[Urwumpe]

This is not a sad thing for me for having only one place where we can express freely our opinion. It is rather good for having no political or religious propaganda in the main forums other than the Basement.

Exactly. First of all, this is house rules. The forum is not a public square, its owned by somebody. Their forum, their rules.

Second, the basement has become so toxic and hateful, that I really don't miss it. If you think you need it, well, your drug. Not mine.

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it"

 

[Urwumpe]

And more so: The current pandemic was very likely preventable according to the independent panel of the WHO:

Main Report & accompanying work - The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response

Following eight months rigorously examining why COVID-19 became a global health and socio-economic crisis, the Independent Panel presents its findings and recommendations for action to curb the COVID-19 pandemic and to ensure that any future infectious disease outbreak does not become a pandemic.

theindependentpanel.org

 

[Challenger007]

Exactly. First of all, this is house rules. The forum is not a public square, its owned by somebody. Their forum, their rules.

Second, the basement has become so toxic and hateful, that I really don't miss it. If you think you need it, well, your drug. Not mine.

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it"

Sometimes such threads of discussion are a place where a person can throw out negativity so as not to break down with relatives. So, there is some benefit in this.

 

[kuddel]

/dev/null should be used for that in my opinion.

 

[Soheil_Esy]

Not a North Korean this time...

French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier called mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants" and leading to deaths from the disease, LifeSite News reported.

https://archive.is/nLLPc/6737d18503a1eede4b3d6b71806c039931507295/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210525123102/https://twitter.com/ians_india/status/1397167726171332609 ; https://archive.is/nLLPc
▲ 1. Mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants". 5:28 AM - 25 May 2021

@Soumya-8974

Fungal infections are found in COVID-19 (Indian variant) patients since May 2020, most of them are black fungus or mucormycosis. White and yellow fungi infection cases are also found in India. I don't know whether the fungal epidemic, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, will depopulate India in some way. I fear that this thread won't have much comment due to its narrow scope, but I find this topic important. Therefore, feel free to comment about mucormycosis in general as well.

Some sources have speculated that the cause of this mucormycosis was due to the use of industrial oxygen, lacking the proper filters found in medical oxygen.

COVID-19 pandemic, will not depopulate India.

Lives have been saved by practising the Janata Curfew. Think about the millions of casualties caused by road traffic, schools and work places in previous years.

The truth is that through social distancing, and by staying, working and studying at home, people have increased their life expectancy by several decades (read centennials)!

Moreover, deaths caused by the flu have also shrinked thanks to wearing masks. At historical levels never seen before. This is how Shri Narendra Modi ji has changed Akhand Bharat!

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[Arvil]

I suppose he’s against vaccines for flu, measles, smallpox, and all the others?

 

[Urwumpe]

I suppose he’s against vaccines for flu, measles, smallpox, and all the others?

Well, he is the scientist who claimed that the virus contains common sequences with the HI-virus and thus must have been created in a laboratory. He was the only scientist to claim so and so far there is no scientist who can tell WHICH sequences that are. Including him.

Also he made some dubious claims about homoepathy and healing AIDS in the past years.

If he is right, there will be no health system in Germany left. All employees there are vaccinated.

 

[Sbb1413]

Not a North Korean this time...

French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier called mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants" and leading to deaths from the disease, LifeSite News reported.

https://archive.is/nLLPc/6737d18503a1eede4b3d6b71806c039931507295/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210525123102/https://twitter.com/ians_india/status/1397167726171332609 ; https://archive.is/nLLPc
▲ 1. Mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants". 5:28 AM - 25 May 2021

As said by @Urwumpe above, he is not a reliable person, since he make dubious claims about homeopathy and HIV/AIDS.

@Soumya-8974

COVID-19 pandemic, will not depopulate India.

Lives have been saved by practising the Janata Curfew. Think about the millions of casualties caused by road traffic, schools and work places in previous years.

The truth is that through social distancing, and by staying, working and studying at home, people have increased their life expectancy by several decades (read centennials)!

Moreover, deaths caused by the flu have also shrinked thanks to wearing masks. At historical levels never seen before. This is how Shri Narendra Modi ji has changed Akhand Bharat!

What we Indians call "Janata Curfew" (curfew for the people) took place at 21–22 March 2020, something that cannot prevent the deadly pandemic. Instead, it was done to impose lockdown in India, which took place from 25 March 2020 to circa November 2020, and was stricter than the curfew. The second and third waves of COVID-19 in India are more dangerous. In 2021, I have seen videos of multiple corpses being burned at once, showing the severity of COVID-19 in India.

I don't express my political opinions about PM Modi here, but I will say that the severity of COVID-19 in India has probably damaged the image of Modi, causing backlash among several federated states of India. West Bengal is a great example of a federated state opposing the policies of Modi. In the West Bengal legislative election in 2021, Trinamool Congress (TMC; the current party of WB) won 200+ seats out of 292, while Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; the current party of India) won about 75 seats out of 292. All the above are said in the neutral point of view.

 

[mahdavi3d]

arstechnica.com: Efficacy of Chinese vaccines is “not high”—officials back 3rd dose

 

[Sbb1413]

Not a North Korean this time...

French virologist and Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier called mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants" and leading to deaths from the disease, LifeSite News reported.

https://archive.is/nLLPc/6737d18503a1eede4b3d6b71806c039931507295/scr.png ; http://web.archive.org/web/20210525123102/https://twitter.com/ians_india/status/1397167726171332609 ; https://archive.is/nLLPc
▲ 1. Mass vaccination against the coronavirus during the pandemic "unthinkable" and a historical blunder that is "creating the variants". 5:28 AM - 25 May 2021

I found in a fact check of this claim that Luc Montagnier was the joint recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of HIV. It has been alleged that Luc is an anti-vaxxer, pro-homeopathy, and he believes that “water has memory”. He is one of the scientists who claim that COVID-19 was manufactured in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

 

[N_Molson]

@Soheil_Esy : People on this forum will tell you I'm really not hostile to socialist ideas. I even often feel a bit like I'm a bit alone on the left wing those days. But...

...still, I won't trust North Korea. Its a basic tyranny with a ruling family supported by a military elite. Much like feudal Europe after all (though you had the Church that provided basic charity). What I think is that CoVid is really not a priority there, they have their hands full feeding people and keeping basic services more or less online (sanitation,, electricity...).

 

[Sbb1413]

What I think is that CoVid is really not a priority there, they have their hands full feeding people and keeping basic services more or less online (sanitation,, electricity...).

...but no WhatsApp to chat, no Facebook to share stories etc. Only a handful of elites are taking the advantage of the internet in North Korea. IDK whether such a country will survive a pandemic. That's why Pyongyang closed all the borders to prevent any penetration of COVID-19 to keep its country safe.

 

[N_Molson]

IDK whether such a country will survive a pandemic.

Of course it will, that's no question. It survived mass hunger in the 1990's. And hunger, if not treated by eating, has a 100% letality rate.

Only a handful of elites are taking the advantage of the internet in North Korea.

I'm not even sure of that. Kim has sentenced people of his own family to death so... I think even elites are very careful with that. And a 100% North-Korean intranet would be very limited. Because you have to store data on servers. And servers require a lot of electricity, and don't like blackouts at all.

 

[Soheil_Esy]

@Soheil_Esy : People on this forum will tell you I'm really not hostile to socialist ideas. I even often feel a bit like I'm a bit alone on the left wing those days. But...

Socialist and nationalist like Petain, Mussolini, Marie La Peine perhaps...
________________________

arstechnica.com: Efficacy of Chinese vaccines is “not high”—officials back 3rd dose

Is it relevant to discuss vaccines that have all failed as of YEAR 2 of the pandemic?

Again, it would require 70% population vaccinated, plus at least 50% vaccine efficacy against transmission, plus wearing masks, plus mitigation measures to hold back current surge!

But no nation has achieved a 70% population's vaccination rate yet, with Seychelles[2] in top position, at only 62%!


The alternative is to close the border for keeping the new strains from entering.

Proof, failing to totally close the borders until the end of the pandemic in all other nations, a series of previously acclaimed role model countries are now biting the dust one after another, with Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and Vietnam that are returning back to square one, to the lockdown-like conditions!

ASEAN aims to reach herd immunity against COVID-19 in 2022

Update: May, 27/2021 - 11:17

HÀ NỘI — ASEAN member countries are working towards accessing COVID-19 vaccine sources for large-scale immunisation campaigns in a bid to reach herd immunity in 2022, a workshop held online in Hà Nội on Wednesday was told.

https://vietnamnews.vn/society/957974/asean-aims-to-reach-herd-immunity-against-covid-19-in-2022.html
​

Fatal mistake, in seeking the herd immunity through vaccination, and failing to close its borders, Vietnam has allowed the emergence of a mix of the Indian strain (B.1.617.2) and British strain (B.1.1.7), more contagious and that could spread “very fast” in the air.

Vietnam detects hybrid of Covid-19 variants identified in India and Britain

HANOI (REUTERS) - Authorities in Vietnam have detected a new coronavirus variant that is a combination of the Covid-19 variants first found in India and Britain, and spreads quickly by air, the health minister said on Saturday (May 29).

After successfully containing the virus for most of last year, Vietnam is grappling with a spike in infections since late April that accounts for more than half of the total 6,713 registered cases. So far, there have been 47 deaths.

“Vietnam has uncovered a new COVID-19 variant combining characteristics of the two existing variants first found in India and the UK,” Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said, describing it as a hybrid of the two known variants.

“That the new one is an Indian variant with mutations that originally belong to the UK variant is very dangerous,” he told a government meeting.

The South-east Asian country had previously detected seven virus variants: B1222, B1619, D614G, B117 – known as the variant from Britain, B1351, A231 and B16172 – the variant from India.

Mr Long said Vietnam would soon publish genome data of the newly identified variant, which he said was more transmissible than the previously known types.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/vietnam-detects-hybrid-of-covid-19-variant-identified-in-india-and-uk
​

Knowing perfectly well how futile this "open border" strategy is, North Korean scientists have already been prepared for the worst case scenario: the COVID Phase III by next year, known as the Zombie Apocalypse.

Doctor warns new COVID-19 variant could emerge during Tokyo Olympics

May 27 (UPI) -- The Tokyo Olympics could generate a new strain of the novel coronavirus and endanger the lives of athletes and the local population, according to a Japanese physician Thursday.

Naoto Ueyama, the head of Japan Doctors' Union, said at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan press conference the Summer Games could be the site of new infections, contradicting earlier claims made by members of the International Olympic Committee.

Ueyama said vaccines and virus testing would not prevent variants from spreading during the Olympics.

With "so many mutant varieties coming into one place one city," there is an "opportunity for different strains to merge or fuse" to create a dangerous new variant, Ueyama said.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2021/05/27/Japan-Tokyo-Olympics-new-variant-warn/2001622133688/
​

Consequently North Korea that has the best track record in COVID-19 prevention so far will not participate in the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asian Cup China 2023.

This means that the pandemic will not be over by mid-July 2023, according to the North Korean experts' prediction, while Soheil has hypothesized that the pandemic era would even last over two decades.

How could the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic be held with visitors? It will only be followed from afar by watching television.

AFC confirms North Korea's decision to pull out of World Cup qualifiers
North Korea 15:05 May 16, 2021

SEOUL, May 16 (Yonhap) -- The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) confirmed Sunday that North Korea has withdrawn from Asian qualifiers for the 2022 Qatar World Cup.

"The AFC has today confirmed the withdrawal of the DPR Korea Football Association from the Asian Qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asian Cup China 2023," the association said on its website.

Earlier this month, the Korea Football Association (KFA) said its North Korean counterpart, known as the DPR Korea Football Association, had sent an official document to the AFC to express its intention not to participate in the second round of World Cup qualifiers to be hosted by South Korea next month.

The North reportedly cited fears of coronavirus infection among the reasons for its withdrawal.

The AFC then said it would try to convince Pyongyang to reconsider its decision, but the attempt appears to have been unsuccessful.

South Korea, which was scheduled to host North Korea, Turkmenistan, Lebanon and Sri Lanka in Group H matches, will play only three games as a result.

The AFC said it will announce further details on the standings in Group H.

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20210516002200325?section=nk/nk
​

Worse still, many "open border" strategy nations are now removing the mask wearing regulations such as France and the U.S., wrongly thinking that vaccines alone have secured the herd immunity!

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[Sbb1413]

Socialist and nationalist like Petain, Mussolini, Marie La Peine perhaps...

I don't know about Petain or Marie La Peine, but Mussolini and Hitler weren't "socialist". They were "anti-socialist", since both of them fought "against" the Soviet Union in WWII. Hitler did so 129 years after Napoléon (1941).

Consequently North Korea that has the best track record in COVID-19 prevention so far will not participate in the 2021 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 and AFC Asian Cup China 2023.

The "Tokyo Summer Olympics" of 2021 is officially called "2020 Summer Olympics" despite the event didn't take place in 2020. I think "2020" in "2020 Summer Olympics" refers to the 2020s Olympiad (a four-year period between two years the Olympic games are generally held) instead of the year 2020. If that's the case, "2018" in "2018 Winter Olympics" refers to the 2018s Olympiad instead of the year 2018.

 

[Urwumpe]

I don't know about Petain or Marie La Peine, but Mussolini and Hitler weren't "socialist". They were "anti-socialist", since both of them fought "against" the Soviet Union in WWII. Hitler did so 129 years after Napoléon (1941).

Especially its common and old neonazi white washing to suggest, that nationalsocialism means national socialists and thus had been left. The first such claims had been as old as the end of WW2. The true reason how the name for a fascist agenda came up in Germany is simply, that they wanted to oppose socialism, especially its internationalism, by offering a nationalist alternative. Which had some anti-capitalist ideas (especially against jews), but rejected 99% of what socialism was about. The red line of national socialism is antisemitism and xenophobia.