Empty A&E depts in Dublin, Berlin etc. Post films here.

[JackRiddler]

No, of course it fucking doesn't and of course you fucking well know it. You have some fucking cheek, really. Who the fuck do you think you are?

In the present context, I am the guy who asked for and was assigned to be the manager of this site by Jeff Wells, who is still the owner. He's made me into his full substitute, indefinitely. I have shared this function with Elvis. This was announced here and explained a few times, in posts that I'd lay odds you've read.

Stop trolling this thread with your knowing and deliberate flamebaiting and your shamelessly off-topic CNN mindpoison,

You didn't watch the interview with the ER nurse and president of the New York State Nurses Association, did you? I mean, she's probably just a made-up character. Crisis actor. It's totally trolling to imply she might have something to say about the situation at hospitals in New York (a subject of this thread), based on reports she receives from her membership. Not like your hero wandering around outside a hospital in Brooklyn, taking video of empty streets, and narrating to himself without talking to anyone or investigating anything. He's such a courageous sort, to subject himself to the ridicule. But you know what's funny? You were free to post as much of your stuff as you wanted, as one can see by going over your last 20 or 30 posts, as long as you didn't flood the board with new threads, as long as you stopped trashing people for not sharing your premises (or for showing insufficient fervor in the sharing), and as long as you stopped equating this minor board moderation with the Third Reich, global fascist lockdown, etc., and accusing me of being one of THEM.

or I will complain to the RI moderators, who are Elvis, DrVolin and Jeff Wells, as listed at the top of this page.

Elvis is a moderator. The latter two actually are not. Jeff retains mod powers, but he has little interest in the board any more, and hasn't shown up in years. I obviously also have the admin/mod powers, granted by Jeff, but the board software no longer updates the public listings. The software here has sucked for years, and I haven't been able to convince it to get better.

Unanswered Questions, Demanding Answers

Yeah, because your self-created problem with me and this site is just like 9/11.

1. Where is Elvis? He was a good moderator. Seemed like a nice guy too. Tell him we miss him.

Elvis posts here daily. (I wonder what's wrong with you? Honestly.) Anyway, I PMed him and I figure he'll be appearing in this thread soon enough, and let me know if I did anything wrong by banning you from making further posts. Before he got a chance to do it himself.

2. Is DrVolin still moderator? is he even still alive?

Doesn't appear to be, sadly. He hasn't posted here since December 2013. (One can actually see these things by clicking on usernames and checking their most recent posts. To that extent, the software still works. Also, his long-term absence has been mentioned several times, although you may have missed those.)

3. Also. and do please forgive my uppitiness in even inquiring, sir, but where is our absentee landlord, the Invisible Man, Mister Jeff Wells?

It's not a secret that Jeff doesn't hang out here any more. Since you are so deeply interested in these issues, one would think you'd have figured that out from all the talk about it on this board over literally several years. Jeff pretty much lost interest. He graciously still pays the bills for this board. He posts a lot on Facebook, where a few people who are still posting here also regularly see him. I have quoted his posts from FB a few times, and others have also mentioned that he's alive, well, cranky, and not interested in posting on the R.I. board, let alone having to moderate this shit. All this, I doubt you have missed. But anyway...

Is he still alive? If so, why does this institution never hear from him?

1. Yes. 2. He lost interest. It happens. 2a. His most recent message to this institution was in the form of turning the site over to me, since I volunteered, nay demanded, to be that much of a sucker. I expect abuse and tedium of the kind you're serving were among the reasons Jeff lost interest. He held out and kept running this site for many years, in the face of worse than this. I doubt I will tolerate it a fraction as long as he did.

Exactly what is going on here?

As your hashtags imply, it's apparently part of the Global Third Reich that has now targeted you, specifically, by outrageously demanding you show manners on a message board, before banning you from posting here because you didn't. This is a thing that my predecessors in the hapless mod function already had to do with you a couple of times before. It's just like the Third Reich. These things are identical. I'm your personal Hitler. This is all part of the seamless Coronavirus coup, an important element of it long planned by THEM. There is no other interpretation to what has happened here. As you say:

#GlobalFascistLockdown
#DieGedankenSindFrei
#LackmusTest_MathiasBroeckers

And before I finished this and banned him from further posts, MacCruiskeen added:

^^ If straight and verifiable answers are not finally given to those questions soon, we will all know beyond doubt that this place is -- and always has been? -- a sick spook experiment, a smirkingly sadistic timesink and mindfuck that honest people everywhere should be warned against and told to avoid at all costs.

[alloneword]

Does a CNN interview with the president of the New York State Nurses' Association describing overcrowded hospitals and ERs and overloaded staff count?


https://vimeo.com/user87970289/review/4 ... a6ee081cae

Count as what, exactly?

Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez is describing a health system, already on the verge of collapse due to lack of resources (20,000 bed lost?), down on staff because any 'suspected' cases are on sick leave, now struggling to cope with a surge in the number of people seeking medical attention which is being driven by the fear-porn panic-mongers going maximum overdrive to convince everybody that they're about to die. "WE ARE TERRIFIED, EVERYBODY IS TERRIFIED".

Staff are TERRIFIED that they can't get enough PPE to protect them from infection by any one of the TERRIFIED people flocking into ER rooms convinced that they've contracted a killer plague. If you convince people that they're going to get ill, guess what? They get ill. Same as they get drunk.

Just the physical effects the FEAR itself would be enough to overwhelm under-resourced medical services. Creating a media narrative around those overwhelmed services and it feeds itself.

Here's an illustrative account of one guy's experience: 'It Took Me 3 E.R. Visits to Get a Coronavirus Test in New York'.

Read to the end, the punchline's a zinger. Check the date: 9th March. Now multiply his experience by the number of people in NY that might present with similar symptoms.

[JackRiddler]

Those are good points. That could explain, at least partly, the reports Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez delivers. She does so as someone I'd consider prima facie credible on the matter, even if she's (gasp!) being interviewed on a network we all agree is bad. She makes the point that resources have been cut and strapped recently, but says the immediate extremes are the product of an incipient overload due to covid. That is how she describes it. And it's not "mind-poison" to ask. In any case, I asked if this "counts" for this thread, because she is delivering reports from A&E departments in "etc." (New York), which are NOT empty, but which she says are overcrowded with record numbers. So the question (to Mac) was whether it counts here, on this thread. Also, whether the conclusions of some guy walking down empty streets around a Brooklyn hospital count more than my own experience walking around Brooklyn on the same day.

[Iamwhomiam]

^^^ Also, the cuts she mentioned were a consolidation or concentration of profits by the hospital corporations attained by directing the flow of patients where profits to were greatest.
My sister's liver biopsy was yesterday, btw.

I'm pretty tired now but may stick around and post Cuomo's press conference. He explains the difficulty in obtaining PPE and ventilators. Maybe tomorrow I'll get that post up.

[JackRiddler]

Increasingly I have been seeing reports online testifying to exceptionally high levels of ambulance activity going to and from hospitals around New York City, particularly Brooklyn and Queens, from many real-life and long-time friends. Real humans, trusted people, not the sorts to exaggerate. I do not for a moment believe this is because people imagine higher levels of activity due to the general media panic (though there is much irrationality to the panic). I do not think it is the result of fallout from the "shelter in place" restrictions, people going stir crazy or turning violent (though these effects are likely eventually to become dire, depending on how long this goes on and how bad things get). These reports confirm that hospitals in New York are full, exactly as is being reported otherwise, and that it's because of the contagion. That doesn't in itself tell us which statistical models and projections are correct, how bad the epidemic really is, how much the risk varies among different groups, or whether given measures are justified. It doesn't solve the origin question. But there is no doubt the pandemic is happening and it is not a product of artifactual manipulations or self-delusions, although these are possible in addition (and I expect these are also happening).

.

[Elvis]

In the present contex

I apologize for being away when this happened and I didn't see Jack's PM consultation about it until after he lost patience with Mac.

Opening multiple threads to hammer a point isn't helpful and snapping at people discourages conversation. Is that so unreasonable.

Figuring out this pandemic thing—and nobody has this all figured out—is hard enough. Let's keep our heads.

Now, I don't want to lose MacCruiskeen from this board so I hope some accord can be negotiated.


Moderating RI can be exhausting and time consuming. Please don't make us work harder than necessary.

[liminalOyster]

Shit, did this thread really happen here? Oh well. In the interest of half-assed wink/nod anon for the founder, I will add only that in addition to FB he also maintains another of my most fav social media presences.

[Heaven Swan]

Watch it before YouTube takes it down (like they keep doing to her videos).

More good news? Citizen reporters go & do what the media won't






edited for punctuation error

[Heaven Swan]

I'm in New York. Yes I hear the ambulances and I don't doubt that CV is real, but I can't help but wonder if there is some serious exaggeration going on. I saw the coverage in the New York Times about Elmhurst hospital with the long lines and the refrigerated truck outside and the situation seemed serious.

Yesterday I happened to walk by a hospital in upper Manhattan, one of the Columbia chain. I went into the emergency room entrance. It was empty except for 3 people waiting, only one of which looked like he might have been actively sick. I asked a woman at a desk where a friend could get a test and she referred me to a website. Then when I got home I saw the Dana Ashlie video I posted above.

I've been researching this ever since the reporting on the outbreak started. There is quite a bit of credible data and testimony, including by highly respected Italian and German doctors and scientists, that conflicts with the "official story." The Italian doctor/scientist Stefano Montanari is an interesting one to look into.

I would craft some posts about all this but I'm not sure how much energy I want to put into this site since the censorship here seems to be stifling any real discussion and debate.

The suffocating of debate seems almost trivial in comparison to the lockdown and epidemic situation we're all living under but I see that Woko Haram is still active here. That annoying form of censorship, and a general tendency to snipe and verbally abuse is creating a climate too inhospitable for my tastes.

[Sounder]

Wow! Great to hear from you Heaven Swan. "Woko Harem', that's a good one. Thing is, if ones interest is truth or rationality, you should expect the push back to get rather nasty and rude. People depend on their fictions of righteousness to get through the day, especially given that what woke folk advocate for is damaging to the folk they claim to speak for.

I would craft some posts about all this but I'm not sure how much energy I want to put into this site since the censorship here seems to be stifling any real discussion and debate.

It's not really censorship so much as an illustration of the influence of social conformity. These advocates will always have the upper hand simply because conformists have the numbers, maybe someday this will change but I won't hold my breath waiting.

[JackRiddler]

Why hello, Snowflakes! Heaven Swan, you have about 614 posts. Sounder, you have 3950. When have either of you been "censored" to date? When has material you post been changed or deleted, whether by WRex, Elvis, me or others? This looks like you want to preemptively taint as "censorship" the possibility that your posts might be subject to criticism or analysis, or rejection, or worst of all, no one even noticing. It's a victim pose.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Off-topic for a moment to briefly opine that - while I can understand JR's actions against aspects of Mac's approach [snipes at others, multiple thread postings, etc], i do hope he was given nothing more than an imposed temporary 'pause' from posting here, rather than a full, permanent ban? He may be salty at times -- and at times, that saltiness may be warranted -- but i think many agree he's a needed voice here.

---------------------------------------


There are a number of concerning issues here: the true extent of this 'pandemic' (the extent testing and symptoms are being conflated with cold/flu, which in turn greatly enhance the likelihood of substantial false positive results, along with death tallies that are likely not isolating 'Covid-19' as the primary cause of death, etc.), the duration of these imposed lockdown measures and accompanying devastation to economies, particularly blue-collar and service economies, which unfortunately will have long-lasting effects well beyond the extent of the crisis itself, and of course the hysterical and exaggerated blares of most media channels. The last bit underscores the usefulness of 'on the ground' citizen reporting, however flawed or subjective it may be at times, as a critical cross-check against the imposed hysteria.

The imposed lockdown is not sustainable for much longer (there are already not enough fingers available to plug the holes sprouting from this leaky dam)

[Sounder]

I'm always impressed by your ability Jack, to blow past any points being made to re-frame things into some random Mcguffin.

The censorship is of Mac, not HS or I, who appears ATM to be more correct in his general assessment than many others.

As to the playing 'victims' charge, as was pointed out; 'you should expect the push back to get rather nasty and rude. People depend on their fictions of righteousness to get through the day, especially given that what woke folk advocate for is damaging to the folk they claim to speak for.'

That's not playing a victim, rather it's a low key plea to stop getting your jollies by turning people into victims. Your rudeness suggests more about your own insecurities than it says about the shallowness of my input or opinions, (as you look down from your ivory tower)

While I'm at it, how long is Mac banned for? I ask because in the past when people were banned the term was indicated. Although I also don't recall how, why or if SLAD and AD got banned. (And would not support either one getting banned, just controlled. Clearly this can be done.)

[norton ash]

Woke? Censorship? Please. I also hope that Mac's only on pause, but the way he went after Riddler was pretty unhinged. Anyway, let the argument between conformists and heroes continue.

[JackRiddler]

.

I won't be re-answering questions that have already been answered above. You can read the posts on this thread and on the Operator Kos thread. It's clear enough why Mac is suspended, also clear that material he posted and claims about the world weren't the reason. Flooding and his treatment of others here was. There is another old thread for talking about your moderation concerns, by the way, and an announcement coming.

---

Meanwhile, this here was supposedly about a subject. How big is the thing going on? How full are the hospitals in given places?

Like HS, I, too, I "can't help but wonder if there is some serious exaggeration going on" regarding the extent of the pandemic, especially in the statistical measures and claims of projected impact.

Projected is an important concept here. How fast is the doubling time, how high will it go, how much preparation will be enough? These are all to be determined, vary by place greatly, and are subject to artifactual factors (including unintentional ones).

Currently or sometimes empty facilities in places where there are no big claims of high case loads tell us nothing. The question is what will they look like at the claimed peak of cases? Currently empty reserve facilities, just set up, do not yet indicate anything. We want reserves, right? If they don't all get used up, that's good, no? (I hope there isn't too much disappointment if the numbers turn out to be on the low end of the predicted ranges.) And outside the facilities? During a pandemic lockdown, it's hard to tell what empty streets or quiet corners are supposed to indicate.

Can exaggeration (and manipulation) only happen in one direction? Let's have a look-see at this video.

Watch it before YouTube takes it down (like they keep doing to her videos).

More good news? Citizen reporters go & do what the media won't

Mixed bag!

Good discovery of use of stock footage of hospital rooms by the corporate media. Same footage, apparently from Italy, is shown also by another network when talking about New York, days later. It's not identified as footage from either, per se. So their excuse might be that it's illustrative footage ("b-roll") that they don't have current footage, perhaps that they didn't notice. They didn't bother to look. It's lazy and unethical and casts doubt on them generally -- always important to do, though maybe less so here -- though it doesn't in itself refute specific claims they state, which in this case are lightly rewritten repetitions of official reports.

Now, how about those citizen reporters? (CRs) What are they doing to get to the real story?

In the first minute of this video, the CR asks questions of an ambulance EMT while pointing his cell phone at him from 20 feet away. -- Hey, guy at that ambulance there! How many Covid cases you been seeing? -- The EMT figures a couple, doesn't really know. This in-depth encounter lasts like 20, 30 seconds. Does it need be said EMTs don't diagnose Covid, or test for it, or process anyone, once they have brought a patient in? What is this minor pestering of a guy on his break supposed to show?

There's a lot of this as it goes on -- here is a CR making fun of hospital drivers for sitting in their cars looking at phones, "they're probably watching Netflix," ha ha hilarious. Again, it's like a few seconds. How is this evidence of anything?

We see TV media pictures of long lines outside Elmhurst Hospital waiting for tests. A day later, at an unspecified time of day, a CR shoots the same place with no line at all. What is that evidence of? Nothing. Why is the video maker (the host, I mean) narrating as if it is a smoking gun?

Around 2:30, a CR walks into what is obviously the Elmhurst Hospital lobby. This is exactly the part of the building one would expect to be empty during mass quarantine measures. It is NOT the ER room. It is the lobby. Remember, hospitals currently allow no visitors. And what do we see in this lobby? My god, there is almost no one there! Just a couple of cops! Astonishing! (Mission accomplished! All it took was a couple of seconds. Phew, let's run home and upload this so the world can know.)

Is this, like, a test of whether the viewer is clinically awake?

Then we have footage from the other video, already posted above: the fellow wandering around the outside of a hospital in Brooklyn and pretending his footage of empty streets is evidence of low numbers of sick people inside, or sick at other facilities. Or something ominous.

Let's jump directly to a couple of small towns in Kentucky. Totally comparable, right? (There are currently 600 cases claimed for the state.) A guy films himself outside a couple of hospitals, fleetingly -- we're talking seconds for each snippet -- and claims nothing's going on there, so there must not be such a big pandemic. Done! Run and upload!

Oh, god, the Irish one. Another hit-and-run technique. If it even merits that name. Run into a space that is empty. Speak dramatically in a harsh voice about how it's empty, so there is therefore no reason for this space, it's all tehater. Nothing must be going on. I can't.

We've seen how this works. Put an idea into the world, it never dies. This stuff may still be recycled as the real deal in videos 20 years from now.

Thing is, much about the larger claims may be true.

But what people think constitutes evidence is a different matter, and it's a problem not just with the corporate media.

.