Mmmh. Tsunami travels at 800km/h. It is about 4500km from Antarctica (not the pole itself, nearest land mass) to Cape Town. Your 6-hour estimate isn’t far off…
On the upside, it seems we’ve had some sensors embedded in that area since 2014. At least some people will know before it hits. Probably not the Hoi Polloi (that is us) though.
Hitting JHB though? The indication is that it will wash up about 6 meters. Which means all your beach front property is toast (and Kayelitsha is probably flooded). Thousands displaced or dead. But unlikely to hit JHB.
Covid… man. That was a sensitive topic. The thing is, a lot of things people said were estimates, based on the best information they had at hand at the time. In the beginning, we didn’t even really know what the R0-value was. We figured it must be about on par with SARS. The models used for the predictions were perfectly accurate (we’ve been doing this a long long time), the assumptions were wrong. We also cannot tell how a virus will mutate. We know that usually, it mutates to become more infectious, but less deadly (because killing your host kinda gets in the way of spreading), and that is essentially what happened.
It was somewhat of a perfect example of how stats gets you. Estimates ranged from 4% to 6% dead, which doesn’t sound like a lot, until you realise that as a fraction of 7 billion people… that’s a massive disaster. Suddenly an infected appendix can kill you… because the hospital is full of people struggling to breathe. Kid falls off a jungle gym, any other year, the orthopedic surgeon will fix him up tomorrow. Not in 2020… and in some cases the parents were blocked access to their child (often allowing just one parent access). It was a disaster… just not in the way we usually think of it.
I really really don’t want to get into it on a public forum, so we can consider this my one and only reply to this topic.
But, the deadliest thing in the pandemic was misinformation, one of our company directors who based on his age was in the prime danger zone, read all kinds of Bill Gates microchip bla bla infertility bla bla misinformation, so when the vaccine was available only to the 65+ crowd initially I pleaded with him to go, he refused saying it would be more dangerous than not taking it, we had a very heated debate (As those were at the time for some reason…)
Sadly he passed away due to a covid infection a few months later, so whenever I heard misinformation floating around it just triggered me beyond all belief because it touched me personally.
Still waiting for my thread police badge (and I sent in the coupon together with the ones for sea-monkeys and spy pen) but I suggest having covid discussions/replies in the bar lounge as the Noord-Transvaal vs WP level enthusiasm for the various sides likely will not serve the forum on the public facing side
Every person is entitled to an opinion after all… You can make your own decisions and choose how you live your life. We get to learn more and more of late about all aspects of this, and a lot of this is not very good.
not sure if this relates to my post (?) but I agree that everyone can hold/express whatever opinion they want and that we learn from one another. I suggested for this specific forum to not have this specific topic discussion in the public facing side - for one, to not chum the water for every bot/troll needing a new space to squat.
The core of my post was that writers who do their research, some of them work in labs, and one lady writer in a military lab, got pandemic novels down pat. In every single post above on, even about how we shall not speak of, authors get it down pat. Even the misinformation on the forums, the internet … all of it, how it starts and how it comes about.
It is freaking scary. Like I said, the only difference was the novel death rate versus the actual death rate, obviously also the type of sickness. Ebola the one that is really bad.
My point was if anyone wants to have a blink into what is possible, read good quality novels.
It is scary when one reads the author’s take on human action/interaction and sees how it relates to real life.
Hence my pondering on a nuclear power station right next to the ocean, close to a faultline, and the poles melting. (that is how novels start)
EDIT: And, some people are not supposed to be allowed to have an opinion. Jip, in novels those people tend to cause immense harm to others. Especially if one thinks of actual history.
Hiding the chips in the Ivermectin was a stroke of Genius though!
I’ve often said that we can all have our own opinion, but we cannot all have our own facts. There’s only one set of those.
Then I discovered that the idea of “truth” is in itself hotly debated. The view I hold to is known as the “correspondence view”. Turns out that’s not the only view either…
The sad truth is there is no more tolerance for non narrative viewpoints, you get cancelled. That one position in a debate, or now it seems in life, is the only correct one, whatever the topic is. Someone (Richard Feynman?) said, in science there is no such thing as consensus, then it is politics.
That is a formula you can always remember. It comes up repeatedly. Ebola has an R0 value (how many people you infect in a population with no resistance) of 2.5. Measles has an R0 value of 15.
But Measles kills 1 in 500. Ebola kills at least 1 in 4.
The thing is, in fiction, in a military lab, whilst tampering with Ebola and other nasty combinations under “we need to create nasties as our enemy can do, to get the vaccine”, then it gets released accidentally out of the lab.
Normally human error or a crazy zealot … not that that can or has ever happened in real life. (sic)
Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction … or whatnot.
No, it’s a bit less nasty than that. Researchers toy with mutations not (only) because they want to weaponise it. They do it to get ahead of the mutations that nature already cooks up on her own. And given the scaries that came from that part of the world, I cannot blame anyone for wanting to get ahead of it. We can debate the so-called lab-leak theory as well (though we probably shouldn’t… hehe), but it is one of those things where I have to say: Even if that turns out to be true (and it is completely plausible), 1) you still need proof, plausibility is not enough, and 2) you have to prove it was malicious and not an accident.
Never assume malice when incompetence suffices.
Edit: Besides, if it was intended as a military weapon of some sort, or a depopulation tool as some alleged… it’s a rather weak one. Hardly made a dent in the population. Pfffft
The level of depraved viciousness into which some humans had already delved, sanctioned at the time, knows no bounds.
Not going down this track to post links as it will open a can of worms that we do not want here. Ever. Trust me.
Suffice it to say I have read about one too many experiments done on humans, and children, by seriously deranged individuals on orders from higher-ups/Govs, sanctioned experiments, believing they were doing the “right” thing.
Did not “look for it”, but upon reading something, one goes and looks it up, that cannot be possible.
Even pictures.
O my.
It HAS resulted in a better understanding of how it all works, and immense medical benefits for generations to come … but not for the people being experimented on, nope, not so much.
Never assume incompetence when malice stares you in the face.
I’m going to add just one link here. It’s from 2018, long before all this.
I read that. I thought… wow… how clever! And then two years later, I had to hear every idiot online tell me this was MUCH too fast too be trustworthy. Sigh… kids… this is why we cannot have nice things.
Some things are better not to have to un-see, or un-think of …
Warning: Just Google like
worst atrocities done under scientific research
or
worst ways to torture people
The depravity of some psychopaths is mind-boggling. Who thinks out stuff like that!!!
What is worse for me, is when sane people become insane and go on a rampage and happily wreak havoc on innocent people, especially women, and children with glee in their eyes, they are “on the right side”.
Scares me shiitless.
So when I think of what can happen in labs, based on what has happened… I don’t bargain on sane people at it all the time.
Then again, sometimes reasonable people in charge authorize insane ideas. Open Pandora’s box … one example of such an action … dropping a nuke on Japan. Look where we are today.
My motto in life: Assume the worst, hope for the best. From a pessimistic optimist.
(that is how novels start)
