If you think you’re going around the twist at home now, be thankful (for maybe the first time in your life) that you don’t live in sunny California, with its lovely weather and scenery and friendly bears wandering around the place: “Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next […]
Several health experts have proposed a “herd immunity” strategy for managing the coronavirus pandemic. This would involve allowing the virus to spread in a controlled way so as to achieve population immunity — even though this may expose vulnerable members of the community to an increased risk of infection. While Australia has managed so far […]
Over the next few years the working-age population will decline dramatically The demographic winter continues in East Asia. As well as Japan, the other democratic, Western-leaning allies in the region are all facing similar issues: very low fertility rates, low or negative natural population growth and rapidly ageing populations. China is also grappling with these problems, […]
Chinese propaganda has launched an international offensive of fake news to counter “enormous evidence” that the virus came from a Wuhan laboratory. On March 17, 2020, Bitter Winter told the story of how a paper on the virus responsible for COVID-19 by two respected Chinese scientists, Dr. Botao Xiao from South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, and Dr. […]
There’s no doubt that most soldiers then and now are scared during the heat of battle, and rightly so as the survival instinct kicks in, but I think it highly likely that our modern aversion to intense suffering and death at any and all costs would render most of us useless on the battlefield.
Both countries and companies have taken advantage of the misery of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdowns, the loneliness and the misery of millions to burnish their image. China has donated masks and ventilators; companies have offered free stuff like online yoga lessons, audiobooks, museum tours, movies and software. Great PR! But the most audacious offering […]
This film is definitely guilty of railing against the mainstream narrative, much like the viral video of two California doctors calling for the lockdown to be lifted. That too was removed.
The Financial Times has reported that an assessment of mortality statistics shows that deaths from the coronavirus could be 60% higher then is currently being reported. The FT says that it analysed mortality statistics across 14 countries to compare the number of deaths in excess of normal levels with the number of covid-19 deaths reported. It […]
Back in the far-off days of pre-lockdown the mantra that was repeated to us in order to secure our compliance in one of the biggest voluntary surrenders of civil liberties in history was “flatten the curve”. The idea behind it was that we need to ensure that the infection spreads more slowly than it would […]
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the best and the worst in us; it has also shone a light on our contradictions. Coming up with a vaccine may be the solution; but that’s still several months away, too long to wait out in a lockdown as many countries have been for almost two months now, with […]
America’s a great country, but sometimes you really do wonder what’s going on: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tells @MarthaRaddatz his statewide order mandating face masks be worn in stores went "too far." "It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far. People were not going to accept the government telling them […]
A transgender man working for The Guardian has failed in his attempt to be described as the father of his child on the birth certificate. Freddy McConnell, 34, was born female but started to live as a man about 10 years ago. He began taking testosterone in 2013 and had a double mastectomy in 2014. His passport […]