Tag Archives: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR A VIRUS TO MUTATE.

07 Friday Jan 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., COVID-19, Covid-19 Vaccines.

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( Seven-minute read) 


As we know with the flu, figuring out the mutations of viruses takes years. The Coronavirus is no different, it will and is (as we are seeing) mutating into more versions, that will either be more aggressive or less aggressive strains. image of vaccine vials with COVID-19 labels

Should we be worried?

The word mutates naturally conjures up fears of the unexpected. 

It might be a one in a million chance that a mutation will be advantageous to the virus, however, if you let the virus replicate itself 900,000 times, odds are that an advantageous mutation will occur.

Mutations happen by chance, and the rate at which they occur depends on the virus.

For a virus to become more severe or transmit more easily multiple genes have to mutate and once a vaccine has arrived the virus must adapt to it.

We don’t know what those mutations might be doing.

So before we start reading that birds are falling out of the sky, cows getting mad covid, fish jumping out of the sea and we all becoming Hollywood Zombies variants of mass destruction, let’s look at what we truly know.  

                                   ————

Is social media a spreader of the virus? 

Yes and No. Social media is a double-edged sword.

The COVID-19 pandemic is at a scale that we have never seen in the age of social media. And it’s critical to use social media to understand what kind of information is being shared and what people believe in order to ensure an effective policy.

The problem is that, just as social media has been really effective at sharing positive messages, it is conducive to people sharing rumors and misinformation that can spread easily.

People are increasingly turning to social media to understand the virus, receive updates, and learn what can be done to stay safe.

Social media is used to boost an individual’s self-esteem as many use social media to depict the highlights of their life, completely neglecting to post the negatives.

Some of its benefits include increasing interactions with others, having more accessible information, social support, and having the potential to influence many policies related to health but it is not completely without faults.

At one end of the spectrum are people just being uninformed and sharing incorrect information that they think is correct and helpful.

Toward the other end of the spectrum, people share actively harmful misinformation that is reinforced by their preexisting beliefs.

The end result is that many now and in the future will rely on the Internet, for the latest news and updates in the world and social media has started to evolve into sharing information about important current events. However, the spread of misinformation can easily result in mass hysteria about current events.

Those who, during the pandemic, learned how to use all types of video platform services are more likely to continue doing so even when lockdown restrictions are lifted.

                                ————

What is true is this.

While world economies are shut and open, at the moment we don’t know everything about what’s changed with the delta virus to become the Omicron Varient making it more transmissible and it is now finding ways to get around the immunity that we’re generating in the population through vaccination. 

Quarantines may or may not reduce their ability to spread and in doing so reduce the virus’s ability to mutate, however, if the mutations are not beneficial to the virus they will be eliminated by natural selection and the mechanism of evolution so the virus will adapt their environment. 

                                      ———

Is there a limit to how much a virus can mutate or does it just continue to evolve indefinitely? 

There is a limit but we don’t know what it is, because the possible genetic mutations that the virus could undergo are greater than all the atoms in the visible universe. ( There are 4^135 atoms in the visible universe.) 

Therefore it is not possible to predict what new mutations could emerge. But the rate of mutations is important because the faster a virus mutates, the quicker it changes behavior.

It will not matter which mutations the virus has. It’s not a good virus either way. 

The question then becomes, are those changes significant to us?

                        ———————-

According to the (WHO), the current Pandemic could be over by the end of 2022 if the vaccines were shared equitably.  With the current inequalities that already exist in the world, this is pie in the sky. 

The vaccine prevents disease, but it doesn’t necessarily prevent infection.

It’s the transmission of the virus that has to be stoped. Lifting restrictions and allowing as many people as possible to contract the virus is a recipe for mutations to develop. If we pretend like there’s no pandemic, we’re looking at millions of people dying before 85% of any country achieves herd immunity through natural infection.

The truth is that billions of doses worldwide need to be given before we can start returning to normal life.

We won’t be able to prevent new variants completely but we can reduce the risk by ensuring everyone, everywhere is able to be vaccinated.

How long does immunity last?

We don’t know how the vaccines work in real-time.

The jury is still out on Omicron, as the Virus in whatever variant spreads fast, far, and wide, more than any virus in history, cases have been doubling every two days in some places.

The burnout may take several years. Before it happens, havoc reigns because the virus now circulating almost exclusively among those who are unvaccinated is a potential threat to everyone.  

What is a booster?

Is its composition different than its former doses, or identical?

Currently, we are all being encouraged to get a Booster jab as the original vaccine protection wanes after six months.

There appears to be little information as to what is a booster, what it contains, how long it lasts, should it be the same vaccine as you got in the first place, the same amount, or different. 

The truth is that further work will be required to generate data at three months and one year after people have received their boosters, which will provide insights into their impact on long-term protection and immunological memory.

So we are still facing hurdles in getting people vaccinated, let alone boosted.

Millions of people will receive a different jab when they show up for their third appointment. Does this mean your booster dose may be different from the vaccines you had for your 1st and 2nd doses?

If you are on your first jab or second jab is there a different requirement with the booster?  

Why the AstraZeneca vaccine won’t be offered as a booster jab? 

One thing that can often help break through this roadblock, is proper information on each vaccine.

This is hard to unearth.

The ability for providers to not only address questions and misunderstandings about vaccines is so utterly important for general health, but especially during a pandemic.

As such, more efforts should be made to ensure that we understand that giving Covid booster jabs to people every six months is not “sustainable”   

Apparently, there isn’t a need for a new, variant-specific vaccine – at least not yet. It’s not that the vaccine isn’t as good as you were told, it’s that we’re fighting a different variant of the virus now.

The third dose of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines- Pfizer and Moderna- is identical to its first two doses.

If you get the Moderna booster, you will receive half of the original Moderna dose. Please be sure to confirm this with the person giving you the shot.

Like the flu, with regular vaccinations and antiviral pills (COVID-19 isn’t ever going to go away completely ), it will run out the food sooner.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. 

At the start of the pandemic, a key mantra was that we needed the game changer of antibody data to understand who had been infected and how many were protected.

As we have learned more about this challenging infection, it is time to admit that we really need the T cell data too. More research needs to be done to fully understand the relationship between our T cells and immunity to COVID-19.

Early findings suggest that they may provide us with long-term protection against the disease by genetically engineering the T-cell.  

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. 2022 WILL BE THE YEAR OF DIASTER CAPITALISM.

31 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Digital age., Disaster Capitalism., Disasters., Environment, Extermination., Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Imagination., Inequality., Life., Money in Politics., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Privatization, Purpose of life., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Transition period or Implication period., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Economy., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

When I first started looking at disaster capitalism, it was in the context of warfare and counter-terrorism, now it’s privatized exploitation of  Pandemics and Climate Change. 

During a major crisis, regular people are understandably focused on the everyday challenges of surviving. They rarely can also worry about private industries pushing local policy proposals that might negatively impact their lives never mind cashing in on Pandemics and Climate change.

Pandemics might be avoidable in the future but what is unavoidable is a Future Climate that stands to send more unprecedented emergencies, inconsistency, and destruction our way.

(Though it’s still feasible to prevent the planet from becoming completely uninhabitable, saying its crunch time is a massive understatement.)

They both provide the very conditions that give rise to disaster capitalism, which is developing more frequently with more companies and wealthy ‘Philanthropists’ seeing both as a growth sector, not to mention Sovernity Wealth Funds which are investing in everything from drinking water to you name it.

Why? 

Because they stand to make substantial financial returns for their beneficiaries and if managed properly could be contributing to sustainable development in a meaningful way. However, a deeper understanding of the drivers and influences of investor organizations is required to mobilize their capital effectively. 

Globally, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are a major source of capital that has the potential to invest for the long term in sectors that desperately need it. While Philanthropists donations usually only represent 0.05% of the billion accumulated.

(A fraction of the spoils of neoliberal tech capitalism, in the name of generosity, do not try to address the problems of wealth inequality which is created by a social and an economic system that allowed those spoils to accrue in the first place. They are small contributions to a large problem that were created by the success of the industry he or she is involved in.)

List of Top 8 World's biggest Philanthropists in 2021                                ————————-

Let’s put a magnifying Glass Philanthrocapitalism.

Philanthropy serves to legitimize capitalism, as well as to extend it further and further into all domains of social, cultural, and political activity.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Their donations are welcome, however, they are not the simple act of generosity they pretend to be. In this greedy world, it is good to see wealthy individuals repaying to help fix problems that their companies have often caused in the first place.

The risk of philanthrocapitalism is a takeover of charity by business interests, such that generosity to others is appropriated into the overarching dominance of the CEO model of society and its corporate institutions.

Today, large organizations can amass significant economic and political power, on a global scale, and essentially, what we are witnessing is the transfer of responsibility for public goods and services from democratic institutions to the wealthy, to be administered by an executive class.

When this happens what we witness is, on one hand, is exploitative of labor practices or corporate malpractice being swept under the carpet while the donator is accruing significant commercial, tax, free publicity, and political benefits.

Democracy is sacrificed on that altar of executive-style empowerment. 

The nature of this apparent charity should be openly questioned from the outset.

Because this reformulation of generosity – in which it is no longer considered incompatible with control and self-interest – is a hallmark of the “CEO society”: A society where the values associated with corporate leadership are applied to all dimensions of human endeavor.

What it does suggest, however, is that when it comes to giving, the CEO approach is one in which there is no apparent incompatibility between being generous, seeking to retain control over what is given, and the expectation of reaping benefits in return.

  What can be done?

As historian Mikkel Thorup explains, philanthrocapitalism rests on the claim that “capitalist mechanisms are superior to all others (especially the state) when it comes to not only creating economic but also human progress, and that the market and market actors are or should be made the prime creators of the good society”.

Now take Climate change which is going to take trillions to combat.

As global warming augments cycles of fire, flood, hurricanes, and viral mutations, we learn to live in anticipation, from emergency to emergency, sometimes even before the deaths have occurred.

Disaster capitalism and philanthrocapitalism will not work to revert the outcomes of Climate Change nor will technology, the unloving God. 

Why? 

Because Capitalism has turns everything including us into a product to be traded, resulting in most of the wealth in the world now owned by 1% of its population. 

Before ( not too long ago ) there were Markets now we have Market Societies thanks to the buying of shares and trading them, complements of the British Indian Company.  So a society that is organized around the principle that companies should not be prevented from making things that kill people must also accept as ‘normal’ that many people will die in large numbers from these things.

 But what makes something a disaster?

Certainly what makes a disaster is when the victim is humanly itself.

From epidemiological forecasters to genetic epidemiologists and computational and zoonosis biologists — are the new oracles upon whose prophecies financial markets rise and fall but the awaiting climate disaster will expose a world characterized by gross inequality that is getting worse and worse, year by year.

From the perspective of disaster capitalism, we might say that what makes COVID-19 a disaster is its arrival in woefully underinsured countries, unhealthy populations.

If we had a healthier population, would COVID-19 be considered a disaster? Possibly or perhaps not. To be sure, the virus is deadly, but like other disasters, the actual arrival of COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing vulnerability in ways that also figure in the calculus of disaster capitalism.

The uneven way the climate crisis will continue to impact certain countries. If private interests are already prepped to engage in disaster capitalism, those devoted to building a better world should be prepared with alternatives.

There is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster.’ There is also no such thing as a natural or certain response. But there is preparedness.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT WITH CAPITALISM IT IS UNABLE TO TACKLE SITUATIONS THAT ARE NOT TRADABLE.

As money materialized from fresh air the essentials for life will be traded – freshwater- energy- food- healthcare – education – data – etc. 

We must arm ourselves with knowledge, and laws that ensure transparency. 

What we have at the moment is the transfer of power to technology which we know sweet fuck all about with no regulations. 

Unrivaled power.

One only has to look at Jeff Bezos, the Bransons, the Mark Zuckerberg’s, Apple, Google, etc.

We all work for one or the other for free while they entertain themselves blasting off to space with friends and worthless actors in giant phallic symbols of power. 

However, the real story will unpack differently long before anyone lives on another planet. It will be how our mental well-being – is impacting every facet of our lives.

The total mortality from COVID-19 on a global scale is as yet unknown, but we have been thinking of it as a disaster for weeks now.

What exactly is the disaster, then?

Pandemics have become a dominant framework through which government and financial resources are mobilized in Global Health.

There’s been a lot of dithering about whether or not COVID-19 is a disaster, meanwhile, inequality is growing, and both corporations and the wealthy find ways to avoid the taxes that the rest of us pay.

There is the virus, and then there is the societal reaction of bringing our entire fiscal and economic infrastructure to a near-complete standstill.

Morbid diseases that persist as chronic forms for years but eventually kill more people to seem less like disasters.

It’s not a moment to sort of sit on the sidelines and hope for the best.

We all appreciate with the current pandemic that some are making hay while the sun shines, at our expense. Unfortunately, there is little point in getting the Jabs, to extend your time on earth if the earth itself is dying and what remains is been turned into trading products.

You’ve got to fight for your vision of for-profit corporate solutions that may succeed in creating company profits but ultimately fail in terms of democracy, fairness, and justice.

Conclusion:  

To address the problems with greed and power create, we must create equality and this can not be done in a Profit-seeking Capitalist way of trading our way out of the pending disasters.  Wall Street will never close.  

So here is an idea that might help.

Non-Trading Capitalism.  

Green non-tradable bonds to be issued online at a global scale, with guaranteed percentage returns, with a yearly prize draw.

Or

Place a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all tradable financial instruments. (see previous posts) 

Either of the above could be implemented with the click of a switch ensuring a perpetual source of disaster non-profitable funding. 

Both would create trillions and allow fairness and involvement of us all.

It is perhaps worth remembering that capitalism, like its alternatives, is an adaptation to circumstances. It is not a virtue, not a standard for judgment, not a measure of right or nobility. It’s just another ‘ism’

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: EVOLOUTION AND VIRUS MUTATIONS ARE BOTH ONGOIING PROCESSES.

07 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Coronavirus (COVID-19), COVID-19, Evolution, Viruses., WHAT IS TRUTH

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(Eighteen-minute read)

From the dawn of humanity and throughout history, infectious diseases have shaped human evolution, demography, migrations, and history they have killed well over half of all humans who have ever lived on earth.

Viruses are precursors of life as we know it, they infiltrate every aspect of our natural world. New viruses and strains were discovered in every decade of the second half of the 20th century. Today we don’t even know how many viruses human beings are subject to, even how many inhabit us at this very moment.

As to where viruses came from is not a simple question to answer. The origins of many human pathogens are ancient, extending back over time scales of thousands to millions of years.

It’s unclear how they first evolved but what is clear is viruses are tiny but their impact on life is huge. This is true not just for people, but for all life forms on earth.

It is estimated that there are 10 viruses for every bacterium on Earth.

We humans have been around for about 200.000 years while the Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. You do the maths. 

Strictly speaking, viruses can’t die, for the simple reason that they aren’t alive in the first place. A virus outside a host is a package of genetic material if it does not find a host it goes back to being just a package of dormant genetic material.

Hence, there shouldn’t even be any question about their survival and their effect on evolution. 

Therefore the term “survive” may not be the most appropriate term when it comes to a virus. 

                                —————————–

To us, disease-causing viruses and bacteria may be evildoers — invaders of our bodies — who, if they can be said to have any aim at all, it is to do us harm.

But by shifting our perspective to their scale it reveals that these pathogens are evolving populations of organisms like any other, whose habitat just happens to be the human body. Like other organisms, these germs are shaped by natural selection to live and successfully reproduce.

We view them as pathogens, however, because the resources they use to do this (and which they destroy in the process) are the cells of our own bodies.

Many of the traits that make us feel sick during an infection are actually pathogenic adaptations — characteristics favored by natural selection that help these germs reproduce and spread.

Without legs, wings, fins, or any of the usual means of locomotion, your descendents’ prospects for reaching a new host under their own power are nil.

However, natural selection has provided pathogens with a number of sneaky strategies for making the leap to a new host, including:

  • Droplet transmission — for example, being passed along when one host accidentally sneezes on another. The flu is transmitted this way.
  • Airborne transmission — for example, being exhaled by one host and inhaled by another. Tuberculosis is transmitted this way.
  • Vector transmission — getting picked up by a carrier (the vector — e.g., a mosquito) and carried to a new host. Malaria is transmitted this way.
  • Waterborne transmission — leaving one host (e.g., in feces), infecting the water supply, and being taken up (e.g., in drinking water) by a new host. Cholera is transmitted this way.
  • Sit-and-wait transmission — being able to live outside a host for long periods of time until coming into contact with a new host. Smallpox can survive for years outside of a host!

Some like it warm and damp and others need cold and dry to survive outside a host and any other combination you can think of applies.  They don’t breathe, eat, produce waste, or otherwise. In other, words they do not perform metabolism on their own.

They do need a temperature range to use. If not, they are destroyed but since most viruses are deactivated at temperatures between 165 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit -100 Celsius.

Can they exist in space?  Absolutely. Yes and no. Space is no virus vacation.

Viruses can withstand freezing temperatures 

Viruses are a huge source of selective pressure in the evolution of a species, such as a provirus, a virus that inserts its DNA directly into the chromosomes of the host cell. Rather than just having a separate strand of DNA or RNA floating around in the cell, the provirus adds itself to the host genome and gets replicated with the other genes.

This is the reason the human body reacts to infection by raising its own temperature.

They may be descendants of previously free-living organisms that adapted a parasitic replication strategy. Perhaps they existed before life started and led to the evolution of, cellular life. Whether they did or not is of little consequence as discoveries have continued in the 21st century as new viral diseases such as SARS and Nipah virus and Covid have emerged.

Using the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a model, experts suggested the COVID-19 outbreak will last between 18 and 24 months.

I say that they are totally wrong with 7 billion of us rising the chances of genetic mutations, virus mutations will only increase, exposing us to a different set of infections diseases.

It is becoming more and more apparent that the Covid virus has hijacked the flu virus or vice versa. 

All-in-all a virus needs to keep infecting new hosts or it’ll simply run out of ways to reproduce as biological systems either die or figure out how to kill it.

However, if it kills the host too fast, it can’t effectively reach a new host. If the host figures out how to kill it too fast, same thing.

                                    ——————–

These days as are getting fatter, taller, and perhaps cooler we battle diseases with drugs, and vaccines. 

However it stands to reason because we are not immune to the effects of natural selection and our Biology never standstill with the Earth’s temperature increases, we will have to cool down. (Biology is a science and there are many technologies within its scope. So, technology and biology are not opposed concepts.) One contains the other.

Our average temperature is about 98.6 degrees, above that, we have a fever, below we have hypothermia. 

Our brains can only understand “information technologies”. But the concept of technology goes far beyond that into our evolution. 

Innovative new technologies are already restoring and enhancing human sensory and motor functions like never before, but viruses are not will not be controlled by any technology. 

Viruses are the smallest of all microbes. They are said to be so small that 500 million rhinoviruses (which cause the common cold) could fit onto the head of a pin.

Population concentrations and movement, both animal and human, have been steadily increasing in this century, enhancing transmission of respiratory and enteric viruses and compounding the difficulty of preventing environmental transmission.

This could open the door for the evolution of more virulent strains.

Maybe there are other explanations for diseases and our relationship to nature besides those dictated by the accepted theories of the medical-industrial complex that we have been forced to live under.

Perhaps we should recognize them as the fourth domain of life and not dismiss them, if only because they do in fact reproduce outside their own “bodies.”

The more common RNA viruses—like the coronavirus behind the current pandemic.

DNA outcompeted RNA as a type of informational code. But RNA survives as an essential part of terrestrial biology, as we’re seeing with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-

The emergence of the omicron variant is yet another reminder of the urgency to vaccinate to stop the further spread and evolution of SARS-CoV-2. 

Infectious diseases continue to be a major cause of mortality globally, responsible for between a quarter to a third of all deaths and nearly half of all deaths in people under the age of 45, with most of these in principle avoidable.

We have to let go of the self-serving notion that we can control an inexorable natural process. To date, over 250 million infections have been confirmed globally with over 5 million deaths.  

Approximately five percent of the oxygen we breathe is virally derived.

Think about that the next time you take a deep breath.

The current Covid pandemic is just one in the series of ongoing and never-ending deadly viral assaults. Viruses are key drivers of evolution, all the essential things they do in the world far outweigh the bad things.

Without viruses, life and the planet as we know it would cease to exist. And even if we wanted to, it’s probably impossible to annihilate Covid – a virus.

Finally, there is no proof that alcohol kills the virus but the odd glass of whisky might help.  

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With less active lives ( With people now moving less than ever ) there is a degradation in human strength

We don’t challenge our bones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF DYING FROM OLD AGE OR COVID??

29 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by in Coronavirus (COVID-19), COVID-19, THE ODDS OF DYING FROM COVID, Vaccinations.

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(Three-minute read) 

Life is full of decisions that we make based on risks versus benefits.

In 1970, people had a 28% chance of dying before they turned 50.

By 2010, that risk had been cut in half.

THE ODDS OF DYING FROM COVID ARE DIFFICULT TO ESTIMATE AS IT IS NO LONGER A SEASONAL ILLNESS AND IT DEPENDS ON WHICH STRAIN ONE GETS, WHAT AGE YOU ARE, SEX, ETHNIC GROUP, STANDARD OF CARE, AND WHAT THERE IS PRE-EXISTING MEDICAL CONDITION.   

This means death rates will vary from place to place and at different times.

So far 90.4% of COVID deaths were in people with pre-existing medical conditions.

So what are the odds?

To put this into perspective, using death probability statistics from America…

  • [2.4% COVID Risk Age 80+]
  • 1.1% chance of dying by suicide
  • 1% chance of dying of an opioid overdose
  • 0.9% chance of tripping over and dying
  • 0.9% chance of dying in a motor vehicle crash
  • [0.6% COVID Risk Age 70-79]
  • 0.3% chance of dying in a gun-crime shooting
  • [0.07% COVID Risk Age 50-59]
  • 0.06% chance of dying in a fire
  • 0.04% chance of choking to death
  • [0.02% COVID Risk Age 40-49]
  • 0.01% chance of dying of sunstroke
  • 0.01% chance of dying in an accidental gun discharge
  • [0.007% COVID Risk Age 30-49]
  • 0.007% chance of dying due to electrocution, radiation, extreme temperatures, and pressure
  • [0.002% COVID Risk Age 20-29]
  • 0.001% chance of dying in a cataclysmic storm
  • 0.001% chance of being mauled to death by a dog
  • 0.001% chance of being stung to death by wasps and bees
  • [0.0005% COVID Risk Age 10-19]
  • 0.0007% chance of being killed by lightning
  • [0.0001% COVID Risk Age 5-9]

This begs the questions:

  • Why are they so desperate to VACCINATE everyone for a virus that is approximately as lethal as seasonal flu?
  • Why did they lock down the entirety of the West and destroy our economies?
  • Why have they transformed our societies into totalitarian nightmares?
  • What is the purpose of the new COVID police states?
  • How much planning went into crafting this operation?
  • How much of this is completely fake and scripted?
  • Who is pulling the strings here and what are their end goals?
  • What do they mean by “Build Back Better”?
  • What will the “New Normal” look like?

    It’s not yet clear whether any vaccine is reducing the chance of infection. but unvaccinated people are 14 times at a greater risk of dying from covid-19.

That said, we don’t know what the future will hold with the new variant—that has started spreading across the globe and there isn’t any clear evidence that the booster or the current vaccinations are effective. 

All human comments are appreciated. all like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THE CLIMATE CRISES IS NO LONGER A LOOMING THREAT IT IS ARTFICAL INTELLIGENCE.

29 Saturday May 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Dehumanization., Digital age., Enegery, Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Green Energy., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Purchasing Power., Reality., Renewable Energy., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Eight-minute read) 

We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.

All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.

In the next few months, we will once again witness a gathering of verbal diarrhea in Scotland all promising to go green.

There is no doubting in the last few decades that we humans have achieved advances away beyond what our ancestors would have believed possible. The irony is that to survive we have to become something very different from what we are. 

Many optimists believe that technology can transform society and solve climate change.

To a great extent, this is probably true no more so than in the field of medician. 

Take the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of Penicillin.

Before its discovery, we were dying thirty years early than we do today. 

His discovery was down to an accidental piece of bacteria landing on one of his Petri dishes which took another ten years to develop into a drug to save lives. 

Today with human intelligence and machine learning we can produce drugs in a matter of months.     

The way forward to reducing CO2 emissions is not a by-pass lane it is by using the technologies that already exist.  

It’s time to cut out the verbal and bull shit and make these technologies affordable to all. 

Yes, the world today is in a dire state and a new kind of social and ecological environment needs to be created with green energy the price of which is toppling daily.

Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls, but every problem is solvable if we devote resources to building a just world and not guns.

THE WORLD RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.  

SO IF WE WANT A GREEN FUTURE NON-REPAYABLE GRANTS TO CONVERT FROM FOSSIL FUELS GENERATED ELECTRIC TO ENERGY BY NON-POLLUTING RENEWABLE MATERIALS – WIND – SUN- WATER-  GEOTHERMAL – HYDROGEN. 

SUCH A MOVE WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS AND COULD BE FUNDED BY PLACING A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT HAVE PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE AT THEIR HEART. ( See previous posts) 

                                  _______________________ 

 

We are now presented with two very different futures. 

The last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools – we just need politicians to lead the way.

or

We fail to meet climate mitigation goals.

For certain, either outcome will not be easy or cheap and it is happing faster than we wish to acknowledge.  

The problem is the two outcomes are profoundly interlocked with lots of uncertainty.

HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T JUST DISAPPEAR IT WILL REQUIRE A NEW MEANING OF LIFE.

To recognize that we are entering a new world with opportunities and perspectives is an enormous challenge not because of climate change but because of the current inequalities existing on the Planet.

The choice we are now confronted with is one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.

The question is who is going to pay for the transition.  

New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.

THERE IS LITTLE POINT IN REDUCING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES IF BY THE TIME IT HAS STABILIZED HALF OF THE WORLDS POPULATION HAS BEEN DESTABILIZED OR DISPLACED.

A lack of global emphasis on foreign aid, conflict, and political factors have kept poverty as a driving factor of Inequality.

To adjust to the coming new kind of social and ecological environment, how do we frame either of the above outcomes constructively.

We will have to relearn the world to do so. 

We have to become more aware of the future of our planet and our future and the legacy of the human species to start a serious battle to make up for the damages.

At the moment it is difficult to know the changes in the ecosystems that surround us not to mention the social uncertainty to come.

The fundamental economic problem is related to the issue of scarcity.

Society is mostly dominated by people wishing to consume more goods and services that are available.

One in nine people in the world go hungry each day and suffer from nutritional deficiencies as a result.

Currently, 1 in 9 people lack access to clean water across the world.

The problem is not that we aren’t producing enough food, but rather that people lack access to food. Many people do not have enough money to purchase food and cannot grow their own.

To try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them is impossible unless we address the fundamental problem.

To recognize that scarcity will drive almost everything. 

To recognize a sense of shared humanity. 

To recognize that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.

To recognize that is not just climate change that treating the world but artificial intelligence and the way we are using it.

Using only the interaction of its embedded sensors, computer programming, and algorithms in the human environment and ecosystem — is becoming a reality that cannot be ignored anymore.

Because building autonomous weapons systems are one thing but using them in algorithmic warfare with other nations and against other humans is another.

They will in no uncertain terms alter the very fundamentals of security and the future of humanity and peace.

As global temperatures continue to rise, technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale with the weaponizing of artificial intelligence both military-wise and as a social tool. 

The Weaponization Of Artificial Intelligence

The development of autonomous weapons system (AWS) is progressing rapidly, and this increase in the weaponization of artificial intelligence seems to have become a highly destabilizing development. It brings complex security challenges for not only each nation’s decision-makers but also for the future of humanity.

There are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.

 AI algorithms must be built to align with the overarching goals of humans.

As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised.

Look at what is happing in China with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression.

Unless you choose to live remotely and never plan to interact with the modern world, your life will be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence.

The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our society will have far-reaching economic, legal, political, and regulatory implications that we need to be discussing and preparing for.

Sure, it can transform our lives for the better.

In fact, people have gotten used to depending on AI for almost everything and can’t imagine not having these technological advancements as part of their life. Because many processes and applications are getting automated, people are getting addicted to these kinds of inventions which can be an issue for future generations to come.

Societies will face further challenges in directing and investing in technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying it or intruding on basic human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information.

  • In the future, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence will play an even more fundamental role in content creation that will affect our wallets, health, safety, and lives.

The mistake we are making is to think that this situation is the only future. 

That it is impossible to regulate AI because of the rate of AI change entails. 

This is not true as it is possible to Audit all AI technology and algorithms to ensure that comply with human values and to make their programs totally transparent. 

Why is the above urgent?

Because combined with climate change we are faced with and a transactional wealth of a new currency of unknowable value called personal data inequality will ravage the planet we all live in and on.    

These are not some science fiction movie scenarios the current Pandemic is revealing a much more tragic and fragile world that requires more than trust. 

The United Nations (UN) currently lists 22 “Global Issues”. 

These correspond with the most important issues of our time and are known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Here is a few of them. 

FOOD SECURITY.

HEALTH ISSUES.

EDUCATION.

GENDER EQUALITY.

AFRICA.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/ POLLUTION. 

OCEAN CONSERVATION.

WATER SCARCITY.

GLOBAL ISSUES THAT REQUIRE POLICY SOLUTIONS.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.

Artificial intelligence is not on the list. 

Because the biggest challenge facing the planet needs every solution possible including technology like artificial intelligence (AI). 

But AI is not a silver bullet it can only unlock new insights, pinpointing those responsible for it.

The current environmental issues pose so many problems to industry and society that not enough action has been taken to stop turning Climate change into a product. 

My goal in this blog is not to convince people climate change is real, or that AI is destroying society it’s to get people who do believe that climate change is real and that Algorithms for profit’s sake are plundering the world to do more to affect change.

What can be done by any of us against the might of Capitalism that will have any effect? 

There is only one weapon available to us all and that is our buying power.  

 If we use our collective buying power you will then see not just governments but global corporations change their tune from profit to sustainability.     

We decide whether we want to look at the world in one way or another, always making tradeoffs.

As Harvey Sacks observed.

” If only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed” 

” But the best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has whatever organization it already has”  

All are under threat because all are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace and are yet to be quantified.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS; DOES DEMOCRACY DEPEND UPON SOME PEOPLE BEING NON-CONFORMISTS?

15 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Covid - Passports., Covid-19 Vaccines., Post-Covid-19, Privatization

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(Six-minute read) 

THANKS TO TRACK AN TRACE millions of bits of information about each of us circulate through the internet, but our freedom and democracy don’t seem to have been substantially impacted as yet. 

We might still feel free to do as we please but will the introduction of Covid-19 passports turn us all into Dalits? ( Better known as Untouchables)

These people in the Hindu religion face discrimination and even violence from members of higher castes, or traditional social classes, particularly in terms of access to jobs, education, and marriage partners.

The concept of vaccine passports is no longer theoretical.

The premise for such passports (whether digital or otherwise) will indicate whether individuals have received A COVID-19 VACCINATION OR BEEN TESTED RECENTLY.

Are those that are not vaccinated to be marked with a yellow star.

There are also many privacy concerns to be addressed with vaccine passports that will result in benefits been distributed unequally, not removing them but perpetuating them.

We all know that data in the form of knowledge is the manner born to the digital age of algorithms.  

These days we are constantly asked by pop-ups to agree to the website’s privacy policy – us of one’s data and so on in order to personalize your experience and share your data. ( We value your privacy offers a choice – I accept or change consent – manage your choices) 

Why is this happening? 

Because the General Data Protection Regulations ( GDPR) have come into force with fines up to 20 million Euros.

How can such a privacy policy be legal?

They claim to value my privacy and I can review what they mean by that in the policy. However, at the same time, they do not commit to keeping it like that and might not “value my privacy” at any later point in time.

Now think this further.

If this clause is in fact legal, we could set up a website with a volatile privacy policy. That would be a privacy policy that changes on every visit to the website.

As an example, on the first visit, we happily tell the visitor that we do not collect any information, do not use personal information, and of course, also do not sell any kinds of data to advertising networks. However, as soon as the visitor accepted this policy (of course they are privacy-aware and read the policy), it will suddenly change to the opposite. The visitor will never be informed or even asked for consent again.

Clearly, we all place some value on privacy, but why?

We’ve seen how we use privacy as a commodity, if we can give out some of our private information and receive a bargain at the store then we call that a fair trade. 

If we use our privacy as a commodity, then we ought to think about how much we should ask for in return for our privacy. In setting that price, it would be a good idea to think about what sort of value our privacy has.

What if the situation with Covid Passports becomes considerable direr – Stigmatised for life – Contaminated from birth.

Democracy is a social good, and privacy is instrumental to that social good but we ought to think about how much we should ask for in return for our privacy. 

                                  ———————–

The non-conformist can take unpopular stances on government policy that might shine a light on issues that others hadn’t thought of. They’re the ones who get meaningful conversations going in public.

Now most of us are perfectly happy for our lives to be an open book even if there is a price to be paid.  

In setting that price, with the arrival of Covid-19 passports it would be a good idea to think about what sort of value our privacy has.

The argument for Covid -19 passports draws on the concept that people who are being watched will behave differently than people who aren’t being watched.

We don’t do things when we think it’s possible that someone is watching.

Security cameras serve this function even when they aren’t being monitored because the possibility of being watched is often enough to alter our behavior.

There is more at stake here than our preference to maintain sole control of our information. Privacy also serves as a social good.

We can use privacy to delineate our relationships with other people and we can make use of our private information in order to get those things that we want and need.

Now, it might seem like our loss of privacy is necessary to save lives but the flu kills around 650.000 of us a year. 

One thing however remains constant throughout this pandemic and the history of the world. 

WE ALL HAVE TO DIE SOMETIME. SADLY STATISTICALLY YOU ARE STILL YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY IS IT THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO KILL A VIRUS?

04 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., COVID-19, Covid-19 Vaccines., Unanswered Questions., Viruses.

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(Twelve-minute read) 

 

Humans have been killing for thousands and thousands of years. Not just each other but almost every living thing, so why are we unable to kill viruses?

First, to kill a virus we must know what we are trying to kill.

Bacteria are not the most abundant microbes that live in and on our bodies.

That award goes to viruses.

If you think you don’t have viruses, think again.

To put it simply, when it comes to where viruses live in the human body, figuring out where they don’t live is a far better question than asking where they do.

It has been estimated that there are over 380 trillion viruses inhabiting us, a community is collectively known as the human virome.

Here’s where viruses come in.

They’ve already figured out how to kill bacteria. It’s all they live for.

Viruses are the most common biological entities on Earth.

Experts estimate there are around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them, and if they were all lined up they would stretch from one side of the galaxy to the other.

So it’s clear that there’s a war being fought on our body surfaces every minute of every day, and we haven’t a clue who’s winning or what the consequences of this war might be.

The name Virus is from a Latin word meaning “slimy liquid” or “poison.”

They are microorganisms smaller than a bacterium that cannot grow or reproduce apart from a living cell.

They are not plants, animals, or prokaryotic bacteria (single-cell organisms without defined nuclei), and they are generally placed in their own kingdom.

In fact, viruses should not even be considered organisms, in the strictest sense, because they are not free-living—i.e., they cannot reproduce and carry on metabolic processes without a host cell.

Viruses must rely on a host for energy production, reproduction, and survival. It can remain inside the host for extended periods of time without causing any apparent changes in the host cell.

Viruses are quintessential parasites. They derive energy, as well as all other metabolic functions, from the host cell.

Most viruses vary in diameter from 20 nanometres (nm; 0.0000008 inches) to 250–400 nm; the largest, however, measure about 500 nm in diameter and are about 700–1,000 nm in length.

It is still traditional to divide viruses into three categories: those that infect animals, plants, or bacteria.

Antibiotics are not effective against viruses because viruses are entirely devoid of the machinery for life processes.

If you want to learn more follow the link below.  

                          https://www.britannica.com/science/virus

                                               —————————–

The resilience of viruses is what has made them such a menace throughout history remaining to this day the biggest and minuscule threats to humanity.

They don’t have to play by the same rules that living things play by.

They don’t really do anything — they’re effectively inert until they come into contact with a host cell, existing like freeloading zombies — not quite dead, yet certainly not alive.

“Viruses can be present in many locations – they can lurk in people, they can lurk in materials that are stored in freezers, they can lurk in wildlife and domestic animals – it’s really impossible to say if a virus has gone extinct.

It appears they take advantage of our bodies because our bodies are governed by our brains, which are unable to remember if they fought with a particular virus or not. So they mutate and hoodwink the immune system because our immune system is out of commission.  

So the only way to drive a virus to extinction is to eliminate it in the wild, which is an impossible task.

Regardless of whether there is a single person or animal not infected anywhere on the planet, we have to live with the virus. 

                                       —————————–

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was reported in 1977.

Measles, smallpox, anthrax, and tuberculosis were all gifts from our farmed animals.

In 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradicated. Currently, there is no evidence of naturally occurring smallpox transmission anywhere in the world.

Although a worldwide immunization program eradicated smallpox disease decades ago, small quantities of smallpox virus officially still exist in two research laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, and Russia.

But what occurs at the end of a virus’s existence is only just starting to gather interest.

Why do some viruses disappear? And what happens to them?

In a nutshell, we get lucky. 

Sars was driven to extinction by a combination of sophisticated contact-tracing and the quirks of the virus itself. Other than Sars, only two other viruses have ever been driven to extinction on purpose – smallpox, and rinderpest, which affects cattle.

The war against these two viruses was won using vaccines, which are also set to eliminate polio – cases have decreased by 99% since the 1980s – and possibly eventually measles, though recently these efforts have been set back by war, the anti-vaxxer movement.

With Covid-19 the virus can’t break into just any cell in the body. Instead, one of its proteins will bind to another protein. Once the invasion takes place, the cell, in essence, is transformed into a factory that churns out hundreds and hundreds of copies of the virus making it difficult to distinguish a healthy cell from an infected one.

.  Viruses pick up errors in their genetic code as they spread, so in some cases it is possible to simply wait them out (Credit: Reuters)

We are left with speeding up viral evolution artificially with drugs that could bring some benefits.

At the heart of the plan is the biology of “RNA viruses” – a group that includes many of humanity’s most intractable pathogens, including HIV, the flu, coronaviruses, and Ebola. Their genetic material is made of RNA as opposed to DNA, which means that when they hijack their host’s machinery to copy themselves, they don’t include a “proofreading” step where they check for mistakes.

But this staggering rate of mutation is a double-edged sword.

Above a certain rate, mutations become harmful, leading to virus strains that are burdened with genetic faults that hinder their spread.

This is usually thought of as a bad thing for humans, because these mutations mean that there’s an extraordinary amount of genetic diversity among RNA viruses, allowing them to evolve rapidly – so any vaccines or drugs that target them quickly become obsolete.

However eventually, this could lead to their extinction or ours.

In the meantime, one remedy for this Catch 22 is to make a conscious effort to remind ourselves about the world before vaccines.

Here are a few to remember. 

Smallpox – HIV – Influenza – Rofavirus – Marburg – Measles – Ebola – Rabies – Hib – Hantavirus – Dengue – Sars-Cov – Sars- Coc2 – Mers -Cov – Swine Flu – Avian Flue – Whooping Cough – Mumps – Chickenpox – Diptheria – Rubella.  (Cancer is neither a bacteria nor a virus however it is known that some viruses lead to cancer or help to kill cancer.) 

The 1918 flu pandemic, which infected a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million. This strain of influenza has gone extinct along with every flu virus that existed in humans until about 120 years ago. However, every few decades, a new type of flu will evolve quietly accumulating mutations that were useless or even actively harmful to its own survival. 

In the meantime, please can we learn two obvious lessons?

First, let’s stop bringing wild animals into markets alive (if at all): viruses do not survive long in dead bodies, even if not refrigerated. It’s a cruel practice anyway.

And second, let’s keep our distance from bats. As long as there are bats, there will be zoonotic viruses. Definitely don’t eat them.

Your missions down the research rabbit hole might’ve even led you to other novel ways of killing germs: namely,  Steam and ultraviolet (UV) light.

I would say any claim that they do is false.

As for their ability to kill COVID-19, your guess is as good as anyone.

To kill a virus one must break its out shell, without harming the healthy cells around it.

Nither shaking or steaming or sticking your head in a microwave will kill a virus.

Make no mistake about it; the viruses that have evolved with us for so many years are not only part of our past but will play a significant role in the future of human health.

Get Vaccinated. 

 

The fight against Ebola in Africa has been complicated by the fact the virus continues to circulate in wild animals (Credit: Reuters)

 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK. SHOULD WE AGREED TO COVID PASSPORTS?

26 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, Covid. Passports/ Digital ID.

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(Seven-minute read) 

 


COVID LIKE THE FLU IS A VIRUS IT MUTATES IT DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE, UNLIKE PASSPORTS WHICH ARE DISCRIMINATORY.

They should be fought against “tooth and nail.

They will become a backdoor to the rules yet to be made up, mutating into a wider digital identity scheme with the data more than likely to flow to third-parties with varying degrees of repurposing trustworthiness.

Even with the most privacy-preserving technology, the expectation is that health data will be viewed by different actors, from healthcare settings, employers, clients, police, and pubs to insurance companies, who may have different levels of experience and trustworthiness in handling personal data. 

For those without a passport, they will constitute a denial of liberties that others are being granted.

Such a program could potentially bring about invidious discrimination against racial and ethnic groups and stigma against an uninfected individual fracturing the solidarity of societies so the introduction of a vaccine passport or any such document that would deem someone “immune” goes beyond just the obvious challenge of logistics.

Why?

By replicating existing inequities, the use of immunity passports would exacerbate the harm inflicted by COVID-19 on already vulnerable populations.

The choice is not between returning to a normal life versus issuing immunity passports. Instead, the choice is between periodic lockdowns, attempting to emerge from lockdowns with immunity passports, and attempting to emerge from lockdowns without immunity passports.

First, a strong presumption should be in favor of preserving people’s free movement if at all feasible.

Passports or Digital IDs will eventually be weaponized creating coercive and stigmatizing work environments and are more likely to compound than redress…structural disadvantages and…social stigmatization.

In either form they will create a perverse incentive for individuals to seek out infection or choose to fraudulently acquire passports permitting immune individuals to exercise more freedoms than those who are not immune would undermine the message that we are “all in this together”

Although we recognize the deep existing inequalities in all countries and the ways in which COVID-19 has increased the hardships for the worst off they will turn the population into products to be are traced and tracked with employees risking losing their jobs if they don’t get vaccinated.

The advantages accruing to those with immunity (and immunity passports) would persist into the future. 

                                           —————————-

Faced with a deep economic recession/ depression governments around the world are considering the use of immunity passports to allow a degree of normality to return.

It is unethical to require someone to avoid contact with others if they pose no or minimal risk of spreading the virus. I acted in the belief that I was immune.

Some have claimed that “the whole point of immunity passports is to control movement”.  However, this claim is a gross mischaracterization: the point of immunity passports is to facilitate movement when it is safe to do so.

The root of the concern for many is the unknown degree to which past infection confers future immunity. Until it is understood whether or not people can be reinfected with the disease, and how long any immunity lasts, the move to issuing covid passport is premature.

For certificates or any form of passport to work internationally, they must be recognized by countries around the world.

COVID jabs certificates are readily available to creative forgers to copy.

Individuals who are immune to SARS-CoV-2 are expected to be at a vastly reduced risk of getting and transmitting the virus, and so removing their civil liberties would be unjustified.

The main argument for their issue is that it is unethical to restrict freedom unless there is a real risk to other people.

We have the technology to decide who is not a risk, we should use it.

Whether immunity passports should be used to reliably identify immune individuals it would be better to look for solutions to the inequitable distribution of resources and to tackle the upstream causes of inequality.

This same reasoning should be applied to immunity passports.

Furthermore, as some have highlighted, the advantages of COVID-19 immunity might not entrench existing inequalities in the way often assumed. We might wish to certify only those who are unlikely to transmit the virus.

The U.K., now shut out of the E.U. thanks to Brexit, is considering its own brand of immunity proof that would allow vaccinated people to go to restaurants, pubs, and—if other countries allow—the airport.

The safety-first mentality could spread into almost every area of modern life. When it does, there’s no telling where it will lead – this is murky territory that will develop into an app.

Everyone’s vaccination status is already being logged centrally by the National Immunisation Vaccination System using their NHS number. This information could be easily linked with an app.

Will, there use be legal or illegal?

That’s the crucial, still unanswered question.

Unless such discrimination is ruled out under the law, we can expect more of it.

The moral quandary is the same: Is vaccine ID a harmless tool that creates a safer society — or a sudden expansion of a surveillance state?

God forbid if I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am. I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: LETS TRY AND CLEAR UP THE INFORMATION ABOUT THE VARIOUS VACCINES AGAINST COVID-19

29 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by in COVID-19, Covid-19 Vaccines., Uncategorized

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(Three-minute read) 



“You’re well within your right to know which vaccine you’re taking.

In this post, I am addressing the moral case for taking or not taking the Jab and I am no science or Medical guru. 

Everyone has a choice.   

When you get vaccinated, you should receive a card or printout telling you which COVID-19 vaccine you received, the date, and where you received it. You’ll also get a fact sheet listing the vaccine’s risks and benefits.

At the moment there are:  

Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine- USA.

Pfizer’s vaccine – USA

Novavax -USA

and AstraZeneca. – Uk

CanSino – China.

Others in trial.   Valneva, GSK/Sanofi Pasteur, Janssen.

Vaccines and drugs often take years to go through trials and development before gaining approval and being used to treat patients. So with vaccines ready to be delivered within months of Covid-19’s emergence, it’s fair to ask how we can be sure they’re safe.

Could issues present themselves years down the line? No one knows. 100 percent safety can never be guaranteed. 

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses within 28 days. These vaccines don’t contain live viruses and will not give you COVID-19.

They are mRNA vaccines that use a strip of genetic material called mRNA. Once the mRNA enters a cell, it triggers the cell to build copies of the spike proteins. The immune system learns to recognize these spike proteins through the production of antibodies that block the virus from entering healthy cells. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work this way.

The Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at super-cold temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius, while the Moderna vaccine must be stored at -2 degrees Celsius and must be used within 12 hours once it reaches room temperature.

The Pfizer vaccine is approved for individuals 16 and older.

The Moderna’s has been approved for patients 18 and older.

The AstraZenecaViral vector vaccines rely on another virus, called an adenovirus.

There is nothing in either vaccine that could affect anyone’s genetic makeup.“There is no evidence at all that they have any effect on fertility

For many diseases, immunity acquired naturally often lasts longer than immunity from a vaccine. But that means you have to suffer, and survive, the disease,”  So what is called herd immunity might well be achievable but at the cost of millions more deaths and suffering.   

To debunked myth that has with the help of social media morphed into a conspiracy theory after Bill Gates suggested creating a digital certificate of vaccine records.

There is no microchip and no tracking device of any kind in either vaccine.

It’s almost hard to deny this stuff because it’s so stupid or strange that even

to repeat it gives it credibility. 

 

Unfortunately, it’s too early for anyone to knows whether any of the vaccines

will actually affect the virus spread with a new mutation or whether

symptomless vaccine takers could still infect others.

 

Everyone wants to see the back of Covid-19.

The truth at the moment is that there is a carnival of wild claims, distortions,

and flat-out lies about whichever jab you happen to get.

 

The pharmaceutical companies that developed these vaccines did so

against their own  Data.

We don’t know how long vaccine-induced immunity is going to last.

Will we all have to carry either a digital health card or some other government Pass?

More than likely. 

If we need a booster jab does it have to be the same vaccine or anyone of the others? 

What would happen if you had one on each? 

In the end, we have to hope that there are no unseen consequences from any of the available vaccines. 

Should you take a jab?

The vaccines’ effectiveness isn’t dependent on the scientists alone. It’s also dependent on us. So, what should we do and why? Here’s why I am going to get vaccinated.

Vaccines are something we do for each other as much as ourselves.

It depends on a personal basis on what value you place on your life but with society-wide consequences.

As much as viruses are scourges and will always be here, vaccines are our friends. Before the measles vaccine, that disease killed millions of kids every year. About that gift horse, we should not be looking at. 

It will show what we’re made of.

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THERE IS ANOTHER VIRUS CALLED MISINFORMATION.

25 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., COVID-19, Digital age., Facebook, Fake News., Google, How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., MISINFORMATION., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Social Media, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., Viruses., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THERE IS ANOTHER VIRUS CALLED MISINFORMATION.

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(FUNDAMENTAL FIFTEEN MINUTE READ. TO CHANGING THE DIRECTION THE WORLD IS GOING IN) 

This virus has no vaccine against it, it extracts data about our behaviors and using it to manipulate us. It flourishes on social media that preys on the most primal parts of your brain.

You sign up to it with the terms and conditions when you get online with Twitter or Facebook, Google, and more.

Companies like Facebook and Google have corporate goals and interests that are backing us into an untenable social framework, where these monopolies own and operate the Internet, outside societal influences, and democratic control, extracting data on a massive scale.

They own your content in precise ways, and they have precise aims for your content.

As well, and, most of the time, treating our private lives as raw material for their profit.  

Their algorithms are engineered to amplify the most extreme, angry, toxic, content with the intent to maximize data extraction thereby creating a huge societal asymmetry of knowledge and power – a whole new dimension of inequality. 

WE ARE LEARNING THE HARD ABOUT THEIR DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS – the election of Donald Trump, the Arab Spring, Promoting Popularism, false news on everything, from climate change to covid-19.  

WITH THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IT IS INTOLERABLE TO ALLOW MISFORMATION TO BE SPREAD WILLY NILLY WITHOUT VERIFICATION OF THE TRUTH.

  This commercial surveillance has to stop because the boundaries between the virtual and the real world are melting. 

We the people should have the right to decide what becomes of data and what remains private. What data is sharable and what purpose data should be used for. 

WHY?

BECAUSE OUR PUBLIC DISCOURSE RULED BY SOCIAL MEDIA IS BEING RULED BY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR PROFIT.

If we don’t in the not so distant future you will see algorithms with self-awareness or worse still self-aware robots.

Instead of massive concentrations of data to manipulate our commercial and political behavior, data becomes a critical resource for people and society to ensure we remove inequalities in society.

There is no room tweaking any of this to get us where we need to go.

Let’s not delve into whether social media are a boon or bane for society. Instead, let’s appropriate social media and use it as an extension of ourselves to reach out to others, and not as a replacement for our physical offline relationships…

Unfortunately, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens and it is too late to regulate or pass laws governing the use of Algorithms. Only the threat of the very large fines will get these platforms and the people behind to concentrate on this in an appropriate way.

Because the formulaic quality of social media is well suited to the banter it appears these days that you’re only as relevant as your last tweet.

WE NEED A FUNDAMENTAL WORLD RESET WITH AI TO TETHER INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY NOT INEQUALITY.   

                                         ———————–

Facebook is basically an advertising company; they exist to make money, like all companies.

Even though Facebook has joined WHO and UNIFC to supply accurate information about covid-19 vaccines misinformation still finds a way on to social media where it combined to make a whirlpool of misinformation.

For example. A post like this.

10 years from now you will hear commercials that say ” if you took the Covid-19 vaccine between 2020-2021 you may be entitled to compensation”

                                      ———————–

 

The world is experiencing dramatic events that are leaving their mark not only on our society and our economy but on each and every one of us.

On the plus side of Ai technology, machine-learning algorithms are helping researchers understand the virus, identify the regions of the world with the highest contagion rates, and forecast the capacity needs of national health systems, with the aim—among others—of minimizing fatalities in the COVID-19 pandemic.

These algorithms can identify patterns of concentration, contagion rates, hidden similarities among cases, and, in general, allow for the aggregation of valuable knowledge that provides a more accurate global picture of the pandemic. More importantly, such algorithms can be used to protect communities that might be more vulnerable. For example, if an elder-care facility is located in an area with a high concentration of contagion, it should receive special attention to prevent unnecessary fatalities.

Prediction algorithms, together with fine-grained simulations can be used to forecast the evolution of the crisis.

For all these outcomes to be reliable, an important precondition is the trustworthiness of the data used with the algorithms.

                                       ——————–

Social media is run by algorithms, programs that spit out the things you see online, working in the background to come up with the things you see.

The interest of the corporation is fueling the content that you’re seeing.

However, when we are talking about algorithms on the internet or social media, you’re talking about people’s data going into a system and reworked preferences that come from that data input coming out. So you’re seeing the same sorts of things again and again when you’re expressing your preferences online.

So clicking on Google, YouTube, Twitter, the Facebook which are reinforcement systems based on existing preferences is about giving anthropomorphic agency to something that really doesn’t make decisions in the same way that we do.

Are they giving us beneficial moments, or making actual choices for us? 

The question is if algorithms just show us what we want, can they push us in different directions. 

Think about it in terms of what the algorithm wants and how it’s treating us by personifying the algorithm.

To sum up. 

They are inescapable and encrypted in individuals’ online lives constantly, ‘making autocratic decisions…to produce a single output and agonistic in influencing individuals becoming a key site of power in the contemporary mediascape with the ability to, ‘shape social and cultural formations.  

To date, we as individuals have granted algorithms the, ‘almost unimaginable power to determine what we see, where we spend, how we perceive.

Their power seems to be located in the mechanics of the algorithm.

However, it is in the hands of the individual to modify their opinions and perspectives to what has been put in order for them.

Every algorithm falls under a certain class.

Basically, they are-

1)      Brute force.

2)      Divide and conquer.

3)      Decrease and conquer.

4)      Dynamic programming.

5)      Greedy algorithm.

6)      Transform and conquer.

7)      Backtracking algorithm.

 

 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.