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45,434 | This article mentions in passing: I even pointed out how Fox News wasn’t even a news channel. It changed classification in 2018. That one blew a few minds. The article references Fox News T&Cs , which don't seem to say anything about it. Is Fox News classified as something other than a news channel, and if so then what is it, and in what context was this decision made? Edit due to comments I'm aware of the opinion of many people about the trustworthiness of Fox News, but the statement "It changed classification in 2018" seems to suggest something that was both more official and categorical, such as not being in the "news" category in some list somewhere. | In 2015, then CEO, Roger Ailes gave an interview to Hollywood Reporter for their 35 Most Powerful People in New York Media 2015 article: SNL Kagan estimates the channel [Fox News] will earn $2.18 billion this year, the bulk of it from ad revenue and subscriber fees, dwarfing the potential of CNN ($1.16 billion) and MSNBC ($509 million). In fact, Ailes, 74, no longer views those networks as rivals. “We’re competing with TNT and USA and ESPN,” he says. Indeed, in February Fox News was the most-watched network in all of cable in primetime. You brought up the fox news terms and service. In the Description of Company Services and Acceptance of Terms of Use Including Arbitration of Disputes it has the following information: Company furnishes the Company Sites and the Company Services for your personal enjoyment and entertainment. Which would be what is being referenced by the given article. it should be noted by that this particular agreement is only applicable to the following: foxnews.com, foxbusiness.com, foxnation.com, foxnews.mobi, m.foxbusiness.com, the Fox News iOs application, the Fox Business iOs application, the Fox News Andriod application, the Fox Business Android application and any Company branded URL, WAP site and mobile application and other content and services that link to these Terms of Use According to this article : The media regulator Ofcom has ruled that the Fox News programmes
Hannity and Tucker Carlson Tonight breached impartiality rules
covering British broadcasting . Sky pulled Fox News from its platform in Britain in August. It said
the move was for commercial reasons as the channel was attracting only
a small audience. Ofcom said it was publishing the rulings despite Fox News no longer
being broadcast in the UK “to ensure there is a complete compliance
record and to facilitate public understanding of the code”. The regulator has the power to fine broadcasters depending on how
severely they breach the code. However, because Fox News no longer
holds a broadcasting licence it cannot be considered for a fine . It should also be pointed out that in the US a channel does not have to categorize itself as anything to the FCC, so feasibly it is not possible to say whether it intends to be or is a news channel as there is not an entity registered with the FCC as such to compare it to. | {
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45,448 | I saw on Reddit that a site called Sputnik News reported that one-fourth of people named Ali in Sweden have a criminal record. I researched a little bit but couldn't find any other source validating this claim. Is this true? Source: https://sputniknews.com/society/201911111077277162-one-fourth-of-people-named-ali-in-sweden-have-a-criminal-record--report/ Samhällsnytt's search found that nearly a quarter of people named Ali
residing in Sweden have a criminal record. A search in Statistics Sweden revealed that 40,790 people have Ali as
either first name or surname. A search in Lexbase resulted in 9,742
hits, meaning that roughly 24 percent of all Alis in Sweden have a
conviction. Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/tucker_carlson/comments/dzup5e/imagine_my_shock/ | The short answer: the post uses invalid figures to support their claim "roughly 24 percent of all Alis in Sweden have a conviction". Furthermore, they are misrepresenting what their figures actually mean. The first figure is the number of people residing in Sweden who are named "Ali". The source for this figure is the Swedish governmental website Statistics Sweden . They explain what their figures represent: Name statistics are based on information about people registered in the Population Register submitted by the Swedish Tax Agency to Statistics Sweden. The way the population register works in Sweden, anyone who wants to open a bank account, work in a regular job, or get medical treatment will need to register . It is, however, still possible to live in Sweden without being registered. If you enter "Ali" in the Statistics Sweden web-site, you get (as of today) the following results : 14 914 persons have Ali as a main first name First name: 14 896 men have Ali as a main first name A total of 26 115 men have Ali as a first name 18 women have Ali as a main first name A total of 6 474 women have Ali as a first name Last name: 14 675 persons have Ali as last name In order to come up with the figure of people named Ali from the original post (40 790), you have to add the total for men with Ali as any first name (26 115) and the total for people of any gender with Ali as a last name (14 675). Note how the figure quoted in the original post conflates male and female name-bearers. Women who have "Ali" as their second name are excluded, but women with "Ali" as their last name are included. Using this figure to represent "people have Ali as either first name or surname" is therefore incorrect . According to Statistics Sweden, the correct number of that is 47 282 people. The second figure comes from Lexbase, a highly controversial private service that makes use of (or exploits, depending on your personal view) the fact that most official documents need to be available to the public in Sweden. This includes court documents. There are several criticisms of the site, but the one that is perhaps most relevant is that the database contains data of anyone who has been under legal investigation in Sweden, but the outcome of a trial is only visible after users pay a registration fee to Lexbase. The Swedish Wikipedia article explains: Även personer som friats eller vars dom inte vunnit laga kraft ger sökträffar och markeras på kartan. Typ av rättegång framgår inte av kartan, utan allt från trafikförseelser och vårdnadstvister till grov brottslighet indikeras på samma sätt. I resultatlistan från sökningar anges numera måltyp (tvistemål eller brottmål), namn, ålder och nuvarande folkbokföringsadress. Den som kostnadsfritt prenumererar på e-postuppgifter om personer i sitt närområde som förekommer i databasen får dessutom veta deras medborgarskap. Detaljer om rättegången, inklusive rättegångsutfall, framgår av de domstolshandlingar som Lexbase tillhandahåller mot en avgift. Google translation: Even people who have been freed or whose judgments have not gained legal force give search results and are marked on the map. The type of trial does not appear on the map, but everything from traffic offenses and custody disputes to serious crime is indicated in the same way. The result list from searches now specifies the target type (dispute or criminal case), name, age and current census address. Anyone who subscribes to e-mail information about people in their immediate area that is included in the database will also know their citizenship. Details of the trial, including trial results, are set forth in the court documents provided by Lexbase for a fee. This means that being listed in Lexbase is not the same as having a criminal record, at least as far as the term is generally understood . People listed in Lexbase have been in contact with the law for whatever reason, but the charge may have been a trivial neighborhood quarrel just as well as a violent crime, and they may have been acquitted of their charges, or they may have been sentenced – they all will be listed as entries in Lexbase. This means that unless a fee has been paid to Lexbase so that each entry could carefully be checked, the number of people listed in Lexbase does not correspond to the number of convictions . The original post misuses the figure that they claim to have obtained from Lexbase. Note also that the Lexbase search doesn't distinguish between male and female entries – the reported number of entries will be (unlike the Statistics Sweden figure reported in the post) both men and women who have Ali anywhere in their name. Regardless of all this, I couldn't even reproduce the number of entries that the original post reports (9 742 entries in Lexbase). As of today (November 22, 2019), if you enter "ali" as a name in their person search, the database reports 4 961 entries, as the screenshot shows: This is clearly much smaller than the figure reported in the original post. It may be possible that the number retrieved from Lexbase was larger at the time the original author made the post, but given that old entries are not purged from Lexbase, this isn't very probable. So, to wrap this mess up: The conclusion that "roughly 24 percent of all Alis in Sweden have a conviction" is wrong : The number of people called Ali is, according to Statistics Sweden, 47 282 and not 40 790, as the post claims. Their figure approximates the number of men who are named Ali, but it also includes women with Ali in their last name. Entries in Lexbase do not represent people with criminal records, but people who have been involved in legal proceedings. The entries include both men and women. The number of entries in Lexbase for the name Ali is currently 4 961, not 9 742 as the post claims. If you still want to relate the number of entries for the name in Lexbase to the number of people with the name Ali in Sweden, this will give you a value of 10.5%, which is way off the "nearly a quarter" that the post claims. | {
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45,502 | Judea Pearl & Dana Mackenzie (2018) claim in their book The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect : Applicants for asylum must prove that they have fifteen family members in
the Netherlands. This seems like a very high bar for gaining asylum and I'm skeptical that this is true. Briefly googling, I couldn't find any basis. So, is it true? | tl;dr: No. Asylum applicants do not need any relatives in The Netherlands. Asylum is granted (or denied) on basis of having the need for asylum for one person. Family relationships only come into play if relatives of the asylum seeker who do not meet asylum rights status themselves also want to come and live there. In that case one relative is required to be legally in The Netherlands already. Only if a close core family relationship cannot be proven using official documents comes any DNA testing into play, optionally. Further applications of other people, including family members, for immigration or permanent residence can be made but are not regulated by asylum laws and regulations. Something is very wrong with this claim. The Netherlands have one of the strictest laws for asylum in Europe. But the conditions for getting it they list as: Conditions You may be granted a residence permit if you meet one of the following conditions: In your country of origin, you have real reasons to fear persecution because of your race, religion, nationality, political convictions or because you belong to a particular social group. You have real reasons to fear the death penalty or execution, torture or other inhuman or humiliating treatment in your country of origin. You have real reasons to fear that you will be a victim of random violence due to an armed conflict in your country of origin. Your husband/wife, partner, father, mother or minor child has recently received an asylum residence permit in the Netherlands. Asylum seeker Not even Family member of refugee You wish to travel to the Netherlands to live with your family member. mentions anything like having such a large group of relatives already living in the Netherlands. Since many European countries have relatively easy accessibility for asylum compared to real immigration, claiming asylum is often used and even confused with immigration and naturalisation / integration . Immigration to the Netherlands as non-EU citizen is equally difficult, but nowhere near the requirement of proving 15 family members being already there. Civic integration examination: condition for residence permit 'humanitarian non-temporary' and 'permanent stay' If you apply for a permanent residence permit or for a temporary residence permit on non-temporary humanitarian grounds following a 5-year stay with a family member, you must have obtained the civic integration diploma. Conditions There are certain conditions that apply to everyone. In addition, you must meet the following conditions for the permanent residence permit: You have been living in the Netherlands for 5 years or more with a valid residence permit. Unless you fall under an exempt category. The IND looks at the 5 years immediately before you submitted the application. Only the years from the moment you turned 8 years of age count towards the application for a permanent residence permit. In other words, you cannot get a permanent residence permit until the moment you turn 13 and you have lived in the Netherlands since you were 8 years old with a valid residence permit. You have had an uninterrupted 5-year stay in the Netherlands before submitting the application. This means that in those 5 years you have not stayed outside the Netherlands for 6 or more consecutive months, or 3 years in a row for 4 or more consecutive months. You have a valid residence permit the moment you submit the application. This has to be a residence permit for a non-temporary purpose. You are registered in the Municipal Personal Records Database (BRP) in your place of residence (municipality). You do not have to show this. The IND checks if you meet this condition. You have an independent sufficient and sustainable income. You have a civic integration diploma. This shows that you read, write, speak and understand sufficient Dutch. In some cases you do not have to take the civic integration examination. It looks like for all cases — whether personal asylum, family-related asylum, temporary stay, permanent residence, naturalisation — the number of 15 family relatives does not play any role at all. The actual practice in for the current asylum process in The Netherlands regarding their special regulations, that is non-EU harmonised protection status is detailed from the Alien Act ( PDF ) and analysed for it effect and practices by the Justitie, Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst in "The Practises in The Netherlands Concerning the Granting of Non-EU Harmonised Protection Statuses" ( PDF ) The provisions laid down are only codified for immediate family members (nuclear family). But the UNHCR emphasises that Note that no policy has been laid down in Dutch laws and regulations in respect of all other family members, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts. However, all family members of residence permit holders in the Netherlands may submit an application for family reunification by relying on the right to family life, as described in Article 8 ECHR. There are no specific arrangements in law for people who are resettled in the Netherlands. Every asylum-seeker who meets one of the criteria of article 29 of the Aliens Act can receive a temporary residence permit for asylum. After five years, the holder of a temporary residence permit can apply for a permanent residence permit. If the circumstances in the country of origin and in the personal situation have not changed, a permanent residence permit can be granted. ( PDF ) Regarding the use of DNA testing in The Netherlands in matters of asylum or immigration: Can the families of asylum seekers come to the Netherlands? Once an asylum seeker has a residence permit, their spouse or registered partner and their children can come to the Netherlands. The right to family life is protected in international agreements about human rights. Demonstrating a family relationship
Once an asylum seeker has been granted a residence permit they have three months in which to apply for family reunification. Before a partner or family member can join them, documentary evidence of the family relationship must be provided. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) checks the documents. For more information see the conditions for the admission of family members on the IND website. DNA testing of family members If no documentary evidence of a family relationship can be provided, the IND can ask for a DNA test to be carried out. It can also carry out or commission an identification interview to establish that a family relationship exists. This involves interviewing the family member at a embassy or consulate. That is: one relative of a core family must have legal residence status of any kind in The Netherlands for the others of that group to come… (Excluding extra wives in case of plural marriages or bigamy). The application form in English language ( PDF ) There are really only two occasions at all (that I could find) that the magical "number 15" comes up in these documents. Over the age of 15 applicants for permanent residency need to take the integration test . And under "conditions for family reunion" As of 15 years of age you sign a certificate of non-impediment with your application. How this could be conflated into the claim is beyond me. | {
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45,530 | Recently I read on Greenpeace's website, that the production of a 100 kWh battery, as in the Tesla Model S, produces as much CO 2 as driving a regular car for 200,000 km. Source: Tesla car battery production releases as much CO 2 as 8 years of gasoline driving : For every kilowatt hour of storage capacity in the battery generated
emissions of 150 to 200 kilos of carbon dioxide already in the
factory. ( Original Greenpeace link (in German) ) Let's say you are driving a car with 8 L / 100 km.
According to this calculator this would result in 16,000 liters of fuel burnt or 36,960 kg of CO 2 . A 100 kWh battery takes about 20,000 kg of CO 2 to produce. So the math seems to add up. But is the 100 kg to 200kg of CO 2 for 1 kWh battery realistic? Also, isn't this calculation missing the fact that Tesla covers a part of its factory energy with its own solar panels and plans to use 100% renewable energy in the future? | tl;dr: The claimed range is 50% higher than the worst assumptions for battery production, and 500% higher than the best assumptions. But it's not an apples to apples comparison. Carbon emissions from battery production The range of values estimated for emissions from battery production varies widely in the literature: In an answer on Sustainability.SE I cited a 2011 study ( "Life Cycle Environmental Assessment of Lithium-Ion and Nickel Metal Hydride Batteries for Plug-In Hybrid and Battery Electric Vehicles" ) giving the highest estimate I could find. Full-text of that article is no longer available, but I've included the values I cited previously. "Life cycle assessment of lithium-ion batteries for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles -- Critical issues" , provides similar values, based on this figure: "Life Cycle Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles: Implications for Policy" gives a much lower value (in the supplementary material). Commenters pointed out that the report the cited by Greenpeace has been updated , giving a range of values which are even lower. Here's the values from all sources for comparison, showing the broad range: [1] Li-ion (LFP-type): 0.250 kg CO2eq / Wh
[1] Li-ion (NCM-type): 0.200 kg CO2eq / Wh
[3] Li-ion: 0.120 kg CO2eq / Wh
[4] Li-ion (high end): 0.106 kg CO2eq / Wh
[4] Li-ion (low end): 0.061 kg CO2eq / Wh Result for a Tesla Model S Using these values, production of the 100 kWh battery for a Tesla Model S results in emissions of 6,100 to 25,000 kg CO 2 eq . Comparison to ICE vehicle When a liter of gasoline is burned, 2.3 kg of CO 2 are released ( source (PDF) ). Thus production of a Tesla battery equates to burning about 2,700 to 10,900 liters of gasoline. For a "regular car" (mentioned in the question) with fuel efficiency of 8 liters / 100 km, this amount of fuel equates to a driving range of 33,150 to 136,250 km . This is well below the 200,000 km mentioned in the claim. The claim is 47% high for the worst-case battery production emissions, and 503% high in the best case. What the claim (and this analysis) ignores If we give the benefit of the doubt to Greenpeace, they're not really trying to compare EVs to ICEVs. They're pointing out that production of batteries is carbon intensive, and giving a handy reference to understand just how intensive it is. But the comparison, as written, breaks down because of all that it ignores (thanks to the commenters for pointing out all these factors): 8 L / 100 km is arbitrary. Some ICEVs are better/worse. Production of gasoline also results in CO 2 emissions, before it's even in the tank. Production of all components of both ICEVs and EVs result in varying amounts of carbon emissions, and can be recycled at end-of-life to some extent. The electric energy used in battery production could be sourced from renewables -- the cited studies assume an "average" mix, comprising some coal and natural gas. | {
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45,576 | Greta Thunberg tweeted an photo of her sitting on the floor of a train, surrounded by baggage, with the text: Traveling on overcrowded trains through Germany. And I’m finally on my way home! According to the NY Post : A German railway company has taken back an apology they made to Greta Thunberg after they realized the climate activist wasn’t schlepping it on the train’s floor but instead was treated “friendly” in first class. The rail company was responding to an image Thunberg tweeted of herself sitting amid bags and suitcases on the floor of what she called “overcrowded trains through Germany.” This was later rebutted by Greta as follows: Our train from Basel was taken out of traffic. So we sat on the floor on 2 different trains. After Göttingen I got a seat.This is no problem of course and I never said it was. Overcrowded trains is a great sign because it means the demand for train travel is high! Is it true that Greta was chose to sit on the floor of a train because she couldn't find a seat? Was a train from Basel taken out of service around the time of her trip? | German trains (or more specifically, trains run by Deutsche Bahn/DB , which is the only really major train company in Germany and the one that ran Thunberg's train) take on more passengers than available seats. It is possible to place seat reservations in advance in addition to the purchase of your train ticket. If you don't make a reservation, you can still get on board of a train you have a valid ticket for, but if the train is crowded, you may have to stand in the aisle for the duration of your journey. Some people (mostly younger passengers) prefer to sit on the floor to standing, but this is absolutely not compulsory. If a train for which a reservation has been made is cancelled, DB is no longer obliged to guarantee a seat on the replacement train (in fact, this would pose quite a logistical challenge so I can see why they do that). The reservation price can be refunded in these cases, but passengers from the cancelled train may not find a vacant seat on the replacement train. The tweet by Thunberg was posted on December 14, 2019. Indeed, on that day there was a train cancellation on the line between Basel and Hamburg, the line on which Thunberg was travelling. According to the website www.zugfinder.de , which archives German train connections and offers free access to the last 30 days of their database, DB did cancel ICE 78, which was originally scheduled to depart from Basel at 7:06 and arrive at Hamburg at 13:52 ("Zug ist ausgefallen" means "train was cancelled"): So, what apparently happened is this: Thunberg buys a ticket for ICE 78 from Basel to Hamburg (departure 7:06). It is unclear whether she also made a seat reservation for this connection. ICE 78 is cancelled. Thunberg gets on a different connection from Basel to Hamburg. Any seat reservation becomes void at this point. Thunberg can't find a seat on the replacement trains and decides to sit on the floor (in her later tweet , she says that she was on two different trains before she reached Göttingen, which means that she probably changed trains in Mannheim and later in Fulda). Thunberg has someone take a photo of her sitting on the floor en route to Göttingen. Changing trains in Göttingen again, Thunberg finds a seat for the duration of the journey between Göttingen and Hamburg. Later that day, Thunberg posts the photo on Twitter. On Sunday 15, 2019, Deutsche Bahn responds on Twitter , which discloses the train number of Thunberg's train from Göttingen to Hamburg and which contains a snide remark that this part of her journey was indeed in a first class compartment. To anyone who has traveled with Deutsche Bahn, this will sound like a very familiar experience: nothing in this reconstructed chain of events is in any way spectacular, with possibly the exception that DB responds to a post on Twitter. In fact, this is the only thing that is actually kind of noteworthy (as @tim pointed out in a comment). Here's what they posted in their tweet : Liebe #Greta, danke, dass Du uns Eisenbahner im Kampf gegen den Klimawandel unterstützt! Wir haben uns gefreut, dass Du am Samstag mit uns im ICE 74 unterwegs warst. Und das mit 100 Prozent Ökostrom. Noch schöner wäre es gewesen, wenn Du zusätzlich auch berichtet hättest, wie freundlich und kompetent Du von unserem Team an Deinem Sitzplatz in der Ersten Klasse betreut worden bist. "Dear #Greta, thank you for supporting railways in the fight against climate change! We were happy that you traveled with us in the ICE 74 on Saturday. And with electricity from 100 percent renewable sources. It would have been even nicer if you had also reported how friendly and competently you were treated by our team at your seat in first class." (my translation) I can see that this response stirred some public attention, and there's currently a discussion about DB's "passive-aggressive" tone (as @tim called it in his answer) and whether DB violated Thunberg's privacy by disclosing this information. But the fact that she sat on the floor on a German train is really a non-event. | {
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45,591 | The Tsukuba Express Akihabara station has 0.1 kcal markings painted on the steps up from the platform. Is this accurate? Obviously it's going to depend on the person but broadly speaking do you burn approximately 0.1 kcal per step? The top step is 4.0 kcal. Pretty depressing and makes me feel better about taking the escalator. | TL,DR: it's in the right ballpark (but depends on how much you weigh, what you're carrying, how fast you're going, etc.). For the elevation alone (not counting the extra energy spent moving your legs), the energy cost to climb a height h is m * g * h where m is your mass and g ≈ 9.81 m/s 2 is the gravitational acceleration. For a mass of 70 kg (≈ 11 stone, close to the average human weight plus a little extra for what you're carrying), the energy cost is thus 686 J/m = 0.16 kcal/m = 0.05 kcal/ft. 4 kcal would bring you up 23.4 m (80 ft). Even without knowing the exact step size, this is a lot less than the values painted on that staircase. However, keep in mind that this is purely the cost of elevation, and there's an extra cost in moving your legs. The physics is solid for this being a minimum, but you need to experiment with the biology to see how much energy is consumed for purposes other than strictly fighting gravity. An actual study found that the cost of climbing stairs for a 70 kg person was about 0.15 kcal per step, for 20.3 cm (8 in) steps (going at 1.17 step/s), i.e. about 0.74 kcal/m. For comparison, going downstairs costs about one third of that. The steps in that Japanese station are probably somewhat less than 20 cm tall, so 0.1 kcal per step is in the right ballpark. For comparison, a human standing at rest consumes about 125 W , i.e. about 0.03 kcal/s. So it seems that walking downstairs roughly doubles your energy consumption (and walking straight costs very slightly more), and walking upstairs multiplies it by about 5. That second source gives a fairly similar figure (0.16 kcal/s) for climbing stairs (but at a faster pace of almost 2 steps/s), by the way. | {
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45,622 | Quoting from a clearly low-quality journal: In 1917 Alexander Graham Bell wrote. The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect ", and "The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house." Bell went on to also advocate the use of alternate energy sources, such as solar energy. Latake, Pawar, Ranveer (2015), The Greenhouse Effect and Its Impacts on Environment , IJIRCT ( pdf ). It's been quoted in other places: NYFN ; Conservative Stewards ; Recover Out Loud ; PlanB.earth ( pdf ); Earth Network . Different sources give slightly different quotes. I didn't find a definitive source. Question : Did Alexander Graham Bell write "the unchecked burning of fossil fuels would have a sort of greenhouse effect" in 1917 (or words to this effect)? | TL;DR: Alexander Graham Bell was concerned with fossil fuels running out, but not climate change per se. Bell was concerned about the inevitable depletion of fossil fuels — “What shall we do when we have no more coal and oil?” So in a 1917 article for National Geographic Magazine , he urged the development of renewable ethanol fuel from agricultural waste, corn stalks, and saw-mill dust (pg 133). In relation to coal and oil, the worlds annual consumption has become so enormous that we are now actually within measurable distance to the end of supply. [...] We need never fear the exhaustion of our present fuel supplies so long as we can produce an annual crop of alcohol to an extent desired. I cannot find record of his concerning himself with climate change beyond this. However, Bell didn’t coin the term “greenhouse effect.” That appears to have been the English physicist John Henry Poynting in 1909 : But he pays hardly any attention to the "blanketing effect," or, as I prefer to call it, the "greenhouse effect" of the atmosphere. | {
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45,675 | Several news sources (for example, The Odyssey Online and the Toronto Sun in 2016) claim that New York City recognizes 31 distinct genders. On the other hand, an article from the Huffington Post claims that New York City just started offering a third gender on birth certificates in 2019 . This seems inconsistent - how could the city just be getting around to upping the number of genders on birth certificates from two to three if they had already been recognizing 31 different genders since at least 2016? Does New York City actually recognize (or has it ever recognized) 31 distinct genders in law (e.g. via statute, judicial ruling, administrative policy issued pursuant to statutory authority, etc.)? Are reports that New York City recognizes 31 distinct genders simply incorrect? Does New York City recognize different sets of genders for different purposes (e.g. one might be able to register their child for school under a specific gender but not place that gender on the child's birth certificate)? Did New York City recognize 31 distinct genders in 2016, but dropped the number of official genders to three or two by 2019 (explaining why 2019 birth certificates only offer three genders)? | I would like to present the same evidence as DavePhD's answer , but with a different summary of what it indicates. In summary: NYC recognises 3 genders on Birth Certificates (M, F, and X) The number 31 probably comes from a list of gender-related terms which are not "legally recognised genders" There may be contexts where more than 3 options are recognised for "gender", but there is no evidence for a number as high as 31 A possible source for the "31 genders" claim is a leaflet published by the New York City Commission on Human Rights , dated 2015. One page (perhaps intended as one side of a double-sided card) starts with the text: In New York City, it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and gender expression in the workplace, in public spaces, and in housing. It goes on to give definitions of the terms "Gender Identity" and "Gender Expression", as well as listing some specific rights, and tips labelled "Courtesy 101". The second page (perhaps intended as the other side of the card) consists simply of a list of 31 terms, with no title, and in no apparent order: BI-GENDERED • CROSS-DRESSER • DRAG KING • DRAG QUEEN FEMME QUEEN • FEMALE-TO-MALE • FTM • GENDER BENDER GENDERQUEER • MALE-TO-FEMALE • MTF • NON-OP • HIJRA PANGENDER • TRANSEXUAL/TRANSSEXUAL • TRANS PERSON WOMAN • MAN • BUTCH • TWO-SPIRIT • TRANS • AGENDER THIRD SEX • GENDER FLUID • NON-BINARY TRANSGENDER ANDROGYNE • GENDER GIFTED • GENDER BLENDER • FEMME PERSON OF TRANSGENDER EXPERIENCE • ANDROGYNOUS The card does not state that these are "genders", or that they have any officially recognised meaning. Given the context of the card, we can assume they are intended as related to "Gender Identity" and "Gender Expression" in some way, but there is no other indication of why these particular terms were chosen. It's also worth noting that the list includes clear synonyms, such as both "female-to-male" and its abbreviation "FTM"; it would be very surprising to find these recognised as distinct "genders". Similar lists of terms can be found in other publications issued by the same authority, such as New York City Commission on Human Rights Legal Enforcement Guidance on Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression: Local Law No. 3 (2002); N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 8-102(23) which includes a "definitions" section. An introductory paragraph describes the intent of the definitions: These definitions are intended to help people understand the following guidance as well as their rights and responsibilities under the NYCHRL. It includes a definition of "Gender" as an abstract term, rather than a countable one, and definitely doesn't enumerate any possibilities: "Gender" includes actual or perceived sex, gender identity, and gender expression including a person's actual or perceived gender-related self-image, appearance, behavior, expression, or other gender-related characteristic, regardless of the sex assigned to that person at birth. Other sections include examples, such as: Terms associated with gender expression include, but are not limited to, androgynous, butch, female/woman/feminine, femme, gender non-conforming, male/man/masculine, or non-binary. and Terms associated with gender identity include, but are not limited to, agender, bigender, butch, female/woman/feminine, female to male (FTM), femme, gender diverse, gender fluid, gender queer, male/man/masculine, male to female (MTF), man of trans experience, pangender, or woman of trans experience. These lists do not match the idea that "New York City legally recognises 31 different genders" for several reasons: They appear under multiple different terms in a glossary, so clearly are not all alternative types of the same thing. They are nowhere described as "different genders" or even "different gender identities"/"different gender expressions", only "terms associated with..." the concepts being defined. The text repeatedly reminds the reader that these are examples, not exhaustive lists. This is made even more explicit in the introduction: Readers should bear in mind that language evolves, and the best practice is to refer to people with the term(s) they use to self-identify. One claim we could make from this document would therefore be "New York City legally recognises any terms people use to self-identify their gender identity and gender expression". However, it would be wrong to call those terms "different genders", and it would be wrong to give any specific number of possibilities. There is one sentence in the definition of Gender Identity which could be said to "recognise" four distinct categories: A person’s gender identity may be male, female, neither or both, i.e., non-binary or genderqueer. I presume the author used "i.e." where "e.g." would be more appropriate, and "non-binary or genderqueer" are again just examples of things that fit into these categories. It's not clear that these four categories have any specific definition or power in law; for instance, there is no indication that "neither" and "both" should be separate options on forms or identification documents. Again, the context we have to work in is that this is an explanatory guide to the concepts involved. The alternative claim, that New York City legally recognizes exactly 3 genders on birth certificates, is true. A press release date 31st December 2018 announced the new policy: The Health Department today announced that beginning Jan. 1, 2019, New Yorkers can change the gender on their birth certificate to "X" to reflect a non-binary gender identity. This applies both to new birth registrations, and to amendments to existing certificates: People born in New York City can submit a notarized affidavit that attests the gender marker change is to affirm their gender identity. These are processed as "corrections" to the official record using an application form which confirms there are exactly three options: I, [Applicant/Registrant], hereby attest under the penalty of perjury that the request to change the gender marker on my birth certificate no. [___],from [M/F/X] to [M/F/X], is to reflect my true gender identity and is not for any fraudulent purpose. There is no mention in the press release of any fourth, fifth, or thirty-first gender options. | {
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45,686 | According to the Wikipedia page for Language Deprivation Experiments , An experiment allegedly carried out by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century saw young infants raised without human interaction in an attempt to determine if there was a natural language [...] The experiments were recorded by the monk Salimbene di Adam in his Chronicles, who wrote that Frederick encouraged "foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; [...] But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." There are many feral children that survived without social interaction, but I couldn't find any result for children that died from social isolation and not because of abuse. Can social isolation kill babies? | We cannot be sure exactly what happened 7 centuries ago; we only have the one account. However something akin to this experiment did occur, albeit without the controlled conditions. In Romania during Communism thousands of children were consigned to orphanages where they were grossly neglected (warning: the linked article contains distressing details). Many children died under this regime, but we can't tell how much was due to physical versus psychological factors. However many survived despite the neglect. This article in the Guardian reports that the children have specific areas of the brain smaller than children with normal upbringing. In conclusion, it seems that gross psychological neglect has measurable neurological consequences but is not generally fatal, contrary to the report of Salimbene di Adam. | {
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45,696 | This image has been widely shared on Facebook and other social media platforms: Is this a satellite image of Australia, taken recently to show the currently burning bushfires, or is it a computer render to demonstrate the extent? | No , this is not a real satellite image of Australia. This is a heatmap of the areas affected by Australia's brushfires compiled using composite satellite images from NASA between December and January 5th by artist Anthony Hearsey. As explained in a BBC article : It is actually artist Anthony Hearsey's visualisation of one month of data of locations where fire was detected, collected by Nasa's Fire Information for Resource Management System. "The scale is a little exaggerated due to the render's glow, but it is generally true to the info from the Nasa website. Also note that not all the areas are still burning, and this is a compilation," Mr Hearsey wrote on Instagram in response to criticism by viewers that the image was misleading. Anthony has also released a statement after the viral spread of the image: Didn’t realise this would go viral PLEASE READ BELOW. * Regarding False Information. This has occurred NOT because of this post, or my information being inaccurate. It has been Zucc'd because other people have shared this image with the caption "This is a NASA photograph". This image has been flagged as a result. This is a 3D visualisation of the fires in Australia. NOT A PHOTO. Think of this as a graph. This is made from data from NASA’s FIRMS (Satellite data regarding fires) between 05/12/19 - 05/01/20. These are all the areas which have been affected by bushfires. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/… Scale is a little exaggerated due to the render’s glow, but generally true to the info from the NASA website. Also note that NOT all the areas are still burning, and this is a compilation. This image is copyrighted by Anthony Hearsey. Please contact for usage. There is also a Snopes Article for this image. | {
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45,734 | During the January 2020 Democratic debate at 43:27 the moderator asked Bernie why he said that a woman cannot win an election https://youtu.be/Ppm_mqo9Tyc?t=2607 . Bernie responds by denying that he ever said that. However, Warren confirms that he said it. Are there any earlier sources that confirm or deny whether Bernie actually said that? | Did Sanders say that a woman cannot be president or that that women in general lack the abilities? No. While some headlines – including this question's title – claim that, this is not what Warren accused Sanders of : Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win. This is not a claim regarding women's inherent abilities, but a claim about sexism in the US which would prevent women from getting elected as president. CNN gives as sources Warren who was present at the private meeting between her and Sanders, as well as four people who Warren spoke to after the meeting. Sanders denies 1) that he said that women cannot be president (see video from OP ) and 2) that he said that women cannot be elected president: What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016. Conclusion : Warren doesn't claim Sanders said that women can't be president. Warren claims that Sanders said in a private meeting with her that a woman cannot win an election in the US in 2020. Sanders claims he only said that it would be more difficult for a woman to win an election in 2020. As this was said in a private meeting, we cannot know for sure which version is correct. | {
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45,770 | In the below image, which has been circulating on social media, it is implied that the Holocaust was legal in the same way that slavery and segregation were legal. Is this true? Was the Holocaust legal? | According to the Nazis' definition of "legal", it was. According to the Führerprinzip in Nazi Germany, Hitler was above the law by definition. His directives were statutory orders, i.e. law -- even if... Many of them are direct evidence of the commission of war crimes such as the notorious Commando Order. Known directives included Aktion T4 (euthanasia), Nacht und Nebel (condemning political activists and resistance helpers), directive 46 (condemning partisans), and the Severity Order (considering all Jews to be partisans). There is no historic proof that Hitler directly ordered the mass extermination of Jews in writing, but then, he didn't have to. Whatever the Nazi state did was by definition "legal". Because, also according to this principle, lower echelons of the Nazi leadership had complete responsibility over their areas, and answered only to their superiors. Law in Nazi Germany was already wildly antisemitic (e.g. robbing Jews was "legal", and Jews were forced by law to hand over any jewelry of value), and henchmen had wide leeway to "interpret the wishes of the Führer" (which could be verbal, or just inferred) even further. The Volksgerichtshof for example certainly did not follow, and did not have to follow, any kind of due process. The Wannsee Conference , for example, was a meeting of "second-level functionaries" only, but the verdict was clear: Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes. The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival. The question of legality is a tricky one, as can be seen by the discussions of the legality of the Nuremberg trials (can a court penalize people for something that wasn't illegal in their jurisdiction at the time ?) or Befehlsnotstand (can a court penalize people for doing something when refusal to do so would put them in serious harm's way themselves?). But, as the poster / picture / meme quite correctly states, "Legality[1] isn't a guide to morality". And Germany had seen fit (if regrettably late) to prosecute and penalize those who participated in the Holocaust willingly, or at least without putting up much in the way of resistance. Because the laws of Nazi Germany in this regard, and the Holocaust in particular, were so obviously insane and inhuman that the "legality" of the time ceased to be a guide, or even an excuse. This -- that justice has to trump law when the law is evidently and unbearably unjust -- was formulated in 1946 as the Radbruch formula . | {
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45,799 | The following meme has been shared circa Dec 2019 on social media and several blogs : The text reads: China's Carbon Emission Change Since 2000: +208% India's Carbon Emission Change Since 2000: +155% United States's Carbon Emission Change Since 2000: -10% It also shows environmental activist Greta Thunberg pleased by the first two statements, and displeased by the third, implying that she is unreasonably critical of the United States. Are the changes in carbon emissions by these three countries over the past two decades accurate? Secondarily, is it the implied claim that Thunberg is very critical of carbon emissions by the United States but not by China or India true? | The gross emissions numbers are essentially accurate Here's a chart from the U.S. Energy Information Administration : The World Bank and the International Energy Agency have similar values, but EIA's chart covers a longer period than the World Bank's, and is easier to set up than IEA's. All three data sources cover domestic emissions from fossil fuel combustion. The World Bank data also includes cement production. Here are the start, end, and % change numbers for the three nations, using the IEA data (in million metric tons): Country 2000 2017 Change
-----------------------------------------------
China 3,140 9,302 196%
India 885 2,162 144%
United States 5,730 4,761 -17% Here are the same values using U.S. EIA data (in million metric tons): Country 2000 2017 Change
-----------------------------------------------
China 3,523 10,419 196%
India 924 2,312 150%
United States 5,862 5,133 -12% Two other ways of looking at the data give context Per capita emissions in the U.S. are more than double those of India and China From Our World in Data , here are the per capita emissions over the same time period for those three countries: From 2000 to 2017, the US rate decreased by 12%, while China and India both increased (by 167% and 88%, respectively). As of 2017, per capita emissions in the U.S. are 2.3 times higher than those of China, and 8.8 times higher than those of India. Adjusted for trade, U.S. "imports" of emissions are growing, while India and China are net "exporters" Our World in Data also has a detailed analysis of trade-adjusted CO 2 emissions . To calculate consumption-based emissions we need to track which goods are traded across the world, and whenever a good was imported we need to include all CO 2 emissions that were emitted in the production of that good, and vice versa to subtract all CO 2 emissions that were emitted in the production of goods that were exported. Positive values indicate a country "outsources" it's emissions. Negative values mean a country is emitting CO 2 to produce products which are ultimately consumed abroad. Here are trade-adjusted emissions shares from 1990 to 2016 for the same three countries: Some observations for the 2000 to 2016 period: The U.S. is a growing net importer , increasing imports by 3.4 percentage points China is a growing net exporter , increasing exports 2.1 percentage points (though this trend is moving in the opposite direction, towards lower exports, since about 2007) India is a stable net exporter , with the import/export balance changing by less than half a percentage point | {
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45,808 | This idea was discussed in the Washington Times (no longer available at the original site: on archive.org . The article discusses whether SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19) could have been made in a Chinese bio-weapon lab: Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program. ... “ Coronaviruses [particularly SARS] have been studied in the institute and are probably held therein ,” Mr. Shoham said. “SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.” It is not known whether the institute’s coronaviruses are specifically included in China’s biological weapons program but it is possible, he said. Asked whether the new coronavirus may have leaked, Mr. Shoham said: “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but so far there isn’t evidence or indication for such incident .” Was SARS-CoV-2 made in a Chinese lab? The claim still lives on in various forms: Creator Of US BioWeapons Act Says Coronavirus Is A Bio Weapon Or: Yes, the Virus Came from Wuhan 03/17/2020 Two Chinese scholars suggested that the virus came from bats kept in two Wuhan research centers. Their paper was promptly censored, but the CCP should explain to the world what exactly happened there. | Biological and genetic analysis of the virus suggests that the virus evolved naturally, i.e. was not "made in a Chinese lab". However, as Lang Lang's answer notes, it is arguably premature to say whether the virus passed to humans directly from another animal species, or via a (presumably accidental) release of a specimen from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or a related lab. Hypothesis 1 is more parsimonious , and the virus was tied to the wild animal trade via the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market at a fairly early stage (December 10) ( Huang et al. 2020 . However, the earliest confirmed case (December 1) has not been linked to the market ( ibid. ). The information we have is thus inconclusive with respect to Hypothesis 1. Both Hypotheses 1 and 2 are being considered. For context, animal contact is a more common source of outbreaks than lab accidents (think SARS, AIDS, Ebola, etc.). Yet lab outbreaks are not unheard of , either. Most famously, the pandemic flu strain of 1977-78 was found to be the same as that of 1949-50, suggesting it was the result of laboratory infection from a cryogenically preserved sample. | {
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45,835 | In an interview with the former Maryland governor, Martin O’Malley, that appeared in The Guardian there are some notable claims that I haven't heard of till now. For example, this part refers to Bernie Sanders (emphasis mine): Here’s a guy who has been a kind of stalwart of the National Rifle Association, a man who said immigrants steal our jobs right up until he ran for president, a guy who said the sound of John Kennedy’s voice made him nauseous. These claims are supported by some links to other pages on the internet. This article points to Bernie's mixed views on gun control and this Buzzfeed article backs the claim about Kennedy. But Bernie's views about immigrants, at least in the form that is reflected by O'Malley and another Buzzfeed article seem hard to believe. Question : Did Sanders claim that immigrants steal the jobs of American citizens? | A July 2015 interview (at 5:54) was: Ezra Klein : You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ... Bernie Sanders : Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal. Ezra Klein : Really? Bernie Sanders : Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ... Ezra Klein : But it would make ... Bernie Sanders : Excuse me ... Ezra Klein : It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it? Bernie Sanders : It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs. You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids? I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer. 07 June 2007 Bernie Sanders said : I must oppose bringing in hundreds of thousands more workers into the United States who would lower wages and hurt American workers Also Sander's official senate website still says: Sanders had argued that helping unemployed American young people was the least Congress should do in a bill that allows college students from around the world to take jobs that young Americans would otherwise perform . | {
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45,874 | I found some comments by republicans/conservatives who claim she said this*, some indicating it was in regard with Obamacare, but I haven't been able to find any context or primary source. So the question: Did Nancy Pelosi say this? And if yes, when and in what context? *Some examples: here the author says about something else that it's "Kind of like Nancy Pelosi saying we'll have to pass the bill to find out what's in it", or here someone saying that "We also recall the incredibly arrogant statement by then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that ‘we’ll have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.’" | She said a similar sentence , but in a broader context, which results in a different meaning than the misquotation in the question: Imagine an economy where people could follow their aspirations, where they could be entrepreneurial, where they could take risks professionally because personally their families [sic] health care needs are being met. Where they could be self-employed or start a business, not be job-locked in a job because they have health care there, and if they went out on their own it would be unaffordable to them, but especially true, if someone has a child with a pre-existing condition. So when we pass our bill, never again will people be denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. We have to do this in partnership, and I wanted to bring [you] up to date on where we see it from here. The final health care legislation that will soon be passed by Congress will deliver successful reform at the local level. It will offer paid for investments that will improve health care services and coverage for millions more Americans. It will make significant investments in innovation, prevention, wellness and offer robust support for public health infrastructure. It will dramatically expand investments into community health centers. That means a dramatic expansion in the number of patients community health centers can see and ultimately healthier communities. Our bill will significantly reduce uncompensated care for hospitals. You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention–it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it , away from the fog of the controversy. So basically, she was saying that there was so much disinformation going on, and that the actual benefits would be evident in use rather than reflected in sound-bites, that people needed to experience it to realize just how beneficial it was. "The proof is in the pudding," so to say. And it wasn't a matter of having to pass the bill so that the government could see what was in it, but to pass it so that the public can see. She made a follow-up statement in 2012 : “In the fall of the year,” Pelosi said, “the outside groups … were saying ‘it’s about abortion,’ which it never was. ‘It’s about ‘death panels,’’ which it never was. ‘It’s about a job-killer,’ which it creates four million [jobs]. ‘It’s about increasing the deficit’; well, the main reason to pass it was to decrease the deficit.” Her contention was that the Senate “didn’t have a bill.” And until the Senate produced an actual piece of legislation that could be matched up and debated against what was passed by the House, no one truly knew what would be voted on. “So, that’s why I was saying we have to pass a bill, so we can see, so that we can show you, what it is and what it isn’t,” Pelosi continued. “It is none of these things. It’s not going to be any of these things.” | {
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45,878 | Talk show host Glenn Beck said on BlazeTV in February 2020 (at the 33:54 mark of this video ): Kolomoyskyi’s company Burisma was implicated in a money-laundering ring. Hunter Biden then, knowing this, goes to work for him a few weeks later. The State Department then lifts a travel ban because Joe Biden asks for it. And then a few months after that, Vice President Biden and John Kerry lobby for 1.8 billion dollars to be delivered directly into his bank, and that just goes poof. I’m interested in the part in bold. This is a reference to the State Department’s 2015 decision to grant a US Visa to Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, ending an entry ban he had been under for several years. My question is, is Beck right that then-Vice President Joe Biden asked the State Department to do this? | She said a similar sentence , but in a broader context, which results in a different meaning than the misquotation in the question: Imagine an economy where people could follow their aspirations, where they could be entrepreneurial, where they could take risks professionally because personally their families [sic] health care needs are being met. Where they could be self-employed or start a business, not be job-locked in a job because they have health care there, and if they went out on their own it would be unaffordable to them, but especially true, if someone has a child with a pre-existing condition. So when we pass our bill, never again will people be denied coverage because they have a pre-existing condition. We have to do this in partnership, and I wanted to bring [you] up to date on where we see it from here. The final health care legislation that will soon be passed by Congress will deliver successful reform at the local level. It will offer paid for investments that will improve health care services and coverage for millions more Americans. It will make significant investments in innovation, prevention, wellness and offer robust support for public health infrastructure. It will dramatically expand investments into community health centers. That means a dramatic expansion in the number of patients community health centers can see and ultimately healthier communities. Our bill will significantly reduce uncompensated care for hospitals. You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention–it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it , away from the fog of the controversy. So basically, she was saying that there was so much disinformation going on, and that the actual benefits would be evident in use rather than reflected in sound-bites, that people needed to experience it to realize just how beneficial it was. "The proof is in the pudding," so to say. And it wasn't a matter of having to pass the bill so that the government could see what was in it, but to pass it so that the public can see. She made a follow-up statement in 2012 : “In the fall of the year,” Pelosi said, “the outside groups … were saying ‘it’s about abortion,’ which it never was. ‘It’s about ‘death panels,’’ which it never was. ‘It’s about a job-killer,’ which it creates four million [jobs]. ‘It’s about increasing the deficit’; well, the main reason to pass it was to decrease the deficit.” Her contention was that the Senate “didn’t have a bill.” And until the Senate produced an actual piece of legislation that could be matched up and debated against what was passed by the House, no one truly knew what would be voted on. “So, that’s why I was saying we have to pass a bill, so we can see, so that we can show you, what it is and what it isn’t,” Pelosi continued. “It is none of these things. It’s not going to be any of these things.” | {
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45,910 | The idea that Vietnam veterans in the United States were spat on when they returned seems to have taken hold. It's mentioned in the movie First Blood ("Rambo"): Then I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all that vile crap! Who are they to protest me? Who are they to protest me, huh? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about! And songs and in books, but there don't seem to be any first hand accounts of it. In his book The Spitting Image Jerry Lembcke claims that it's a myth and never happened, or at least not in any confirmed incident. Furthermore it states that the peace movement were the veterans' natural allies, rather than likely to spit on them. What is the truth here? | Lembcke has published a number of articles asserting many times that this is a myth, so it is probably helpful to cite another writer on the same subject. Bob Greene, in his book Homecoming (1989), collected many anecdotes of supposed spitting incidents, solicited through a national newspaper column. However, he collected just as many letters from Vietnam veterans insisting that such anecdotes were false and created after the fact for reasons that all veterans knew. Why were such anecdotes popular, and do they appropriately characterize what happened when Vietnam veterans came home? Here is how one historian characterizes the real situation in 1969-73: Eric T. Dean Jr. " The Myth of the Troubled and Scorned Vietnam Veteran ." Journal of American Studies , Vol. 26, No. 1 (Apr., 1992), pp. 59-74 During the height of American participation in the Vietnam War in the
1960s, most accounts of the Vietnam veteran returning from the war zone
presented him as readjusting quite well to civilian life. The New York
Times noted in 1968 that returning servicemen were finding jobs faster
than at any time in the past 10 years... The first American troops to be withdrawn from Vietnam (in 1969) were greeted by a parade in Seattle at which the crowd
yelled "Thank you! Thank you!" and "flags waved, ticker tape showered down on the troopers, and pretty girls pressed red roses into the men's
hands." Despite these warm welcomes, Dean describes that a story of Vietnam veterans as "forgotten" set in very quickly around 1971-73. For example, heroin use by soldiers was seen to indicate despair, although nearly all quit using heroin upon return to the US . This is when most stories of spitting seem to be dated to after the fact, but again, historians including Lembcke, Dean, and others tell us that it was exceedingly rare to find such reports in period archival material, which makes it hard to judge how many such incidents really took place. Dean links the idea of the forgotten, unwanted veteran in need to larger national narratives in which the war itself was seen as unwanted. Many veterans publicly confessed to My Lai-like incidents to provide their assent to a narrative of unwanted war with unwanted veterans. Such a narrative demanded national political response, and Dean continues: [A] national obsession to "welcome home" the Vietvet
developed in the late 1970s, and manifested itself primarily in various
declarations, lavish parades for the Vietnam veterans, and the construction
of the Monument to the Vietnam War Dead in Washington, D.C.
President Carter followed the example of Presidents Nixon and Ford of
honoring the Vietvets by declaring a Vietnam Veterans Week. In
addition, Veterans' Day on 11 November 1979, was dedicated to the
Vietnam veterans, and Congress declared 26 April 1981 to be "Vietnam
Veteran Recognition Day." On 7 May 1985, 25,000 Vietnam veterans marched in a New York City
ticker-tape parade attended by one million people, many of whom held
signs saying: "You're Our Heroes, Vietnam Vets."26 Similar parades
followed in Chicago, Houston, and elsewhere. An oddity associated with
these repeated welcomes and parades was that with each new one, some
veteran would inevitably be quoted as saying that the Vietnam veterans
had never received such recognition before and were "finally being
welcomed home." Dean has also written a book, Shook Over Hell (1997), which aims to demonstrate through comparison of primary sources that Vietnam veterans actually had a much warmer welcome and treatment than Civil War or WW2 veterans. Dean and Lembcke are in agreement that soldiers received a warm welcome. They provide only slightly differing accounts of how the myth of being spat on developed, with Dean attributing it to the narrative of the war being unwinnable, and Lembcke more specifically citing right wing commentators' belief in a stab-in-the-back story of "betrayal at home" (a common myth which continues to be repeated by sources like PragerU on YouTube). Other historians have considered different angles. Myra MacPherson, in Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation (1984), considered the inability of Vietnam veterans to live up to the heroic story of their fathers' experiences in World War II. Tracy Karner, in her article "Fathers, Sons, and Vietnam" ( American Studies 37.1, 1996), analyzes this from a slightly different angle, proposing that the veterans' own self-identity as men was wounded by this inability to live up to the heroic WW2 narrative, and that this often manifested itself in a new narrative of loneliness, meaninglessness, and attempts to prove oneself with dangerous activities and drinking. In fact, this article by Karner is one of the earliest uses of the phrase "toxic masculinity". These accounts are all basically handling essentially the same issue of veterans' experiences and memories failing to find a place in the national narrative of an unwinnable or betrayed war, as opposed to the veterans being literally welcomed home and thanked by their communities upon return from Vietnam. It is hard to prove that no returning veteran was ever once spat on, but the narrative that such anecdotes attempt to reinforce is definitely false and has always been false. | {
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45,925 | This article from Business Insider, and many others, say that President Donald Trump falsely designated himself the "chief law-enforcement officer of the United States" while speaking with reporters on Tuesday. Is that the case ? | No he is not. The White House web-page on the Executive Branch explains: The Attorney General is the head of the DOJ and chief law enforcement officer of the federal government. According to 28 U.S. Code § 503 : The Attorney General is the head of the Department of Justice. Note: The actual claim isn't as strong as the question claims. Trump showed he wasn't sure by prefixing it with "I’m actually, I guess" . His guess, in this case, was wrong. | {
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45,993 | Yesterday a famous Italian singer, Vasco Rossi, posted on Instagram saying that confirmed COVID-19 cases in USA are low because very few people are checked due to the test costing $3,200. (In Italy, the National Healthcare network is testing every person which may have been in contact with an infected and has compatible symptoms.) It roughly translates as: Coronavirus ..which..has arrived in California.. there are few confirmed cases !? ..because tests cost 3,200 dollars (yes you got it right) and of course very few can or will afford to do so. This explains why magically here the emergency is not as serious as ours in Italy
Who knows how many people are already ill or will be ill and CNN and STRUMP won't have to worry about it Think about it people... think! Is it true that in the USA the COVID-19 test costs $3,200? | That would appear to be a total misrepresentation of what happened. USA Today reported on the incident. The person was charged something over $3000 for an emergency room visit, but: That was the total for examination and treatment in the emergency room at a hospital in Florida. It includes tests for 22 other "upper respiratory pathogens." It does not include a test for COVID-19 - the person involved was not tested for the Corona virus. The hospital checked with the Florida Department of Health, and was told it was not necessary to do a COVID-19 test on this particular person. The person involved was diagnosed with the flu. The article does mention that a COVID-19 test in the emergency room could cost some patients up to $1000 - but that is more due to the cost of the emergency room visit than the test itself. The article also quotes a speaker for the New York State Department of Health saying that the state health department pays for COVID-19 tests. I've checked the FactCheck.org article on the incident: All COVID-19 tests in the US are conducted by two agencies: The New York State Department of Public Health, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Neither organization charges for the test. You (and/or your insurance) will have to pay for emergency room services if you go to the ER, but you (or your insurance) won't be billed for the COVID-19 test itself. The proper action if you suspect you have COVID-19 is not to run to the emergency room. According to USAToday, you should call your doctor. The doctor will then contact the public health office in your area for instructions on how to get you tested. If you show up unexpectedly in the ER, then you are just another patient and will be handled (and billed) the same as any other ER patient. COVID-19 testing can (probably) be handled through the ER, but that is not what you should do. | {
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46,004 | Fox News has this article titled "Flu has killed 20K Americans including 136 children so far [as of March 2020] in this [2019-20] flu season, CDC says". The CDC said that so far this season, 34 million people have gotten the flu, and about 20,000 have died. Of those who died as of Feb. 29, 136 were children, the CDC said in its weekly flu report. They link to the CDC's weekly flu report which, for the week ending February 29, 2020, which states (under "Key Points"): CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 34 million flu illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu. Has the seasonal flu already killed 20,000 Americans during this season alone? | Fox News links to the CDC source which says: CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 34 million flu illnesses, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 deaths from flu. By "season" they mean the 2019/2020 season. For data on past seasons, see here . Note the illnesses vs deaths here which gives a mortality rate of 0.05%. The usual mortality rate of influenza (excluding the common cold) is 0.1% . Hospitalization rate for the flu is around 1%. | {
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46,016 | According to the Mayo clinic : "The current recommendations regarding masks are that if you yourself are sick with fever and cough, you can wear a surgical mask to prevent transmission to other people. If you are healthy, there is not thought to be any additional benefit to wearing a mask yourself because the mask is not airtight and does not necessarily prevent breathing in of these viral particles, which are very tiny ," says Dr. Nipunie Rajapakse, a Mayo Clinic infectious diseases specialist. Likewise the CDC mentions that : If you are NOT sick: You do not need to wear a facemask unless you are caring for someone who is sick (and they are not able to wear a facemask). Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers. Is the above true? Does wearing a mask offer any additional protections to a healthy person during the COVID-19 epidemic? Note that I'm primarily interested in academic research on disease transmission rather than statements from health officials, as this Skeptics question is specifically challenging such statements. | A 2009 study Surgical Mask vs N95 Respirator for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Workers: A Randomized Trial showed that a surgical mask is as effective as fit-tested N95 respirator in preventing infection with influenza among nurses. A completely controlled experiment involving no-mask vs mask-worn group exposed to a certain level of infectious agents is almost impossible to conduct because of ethical reasons, unless there are hospitals where not wearing mask when handling patients with respiratory illness is a common practice. | {
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46,044 | The Sun ran an article in Feburary 2020 covering viral social media videos purportedly showing citizens in Wuhan having their apartment doors welded shut during the COVID-19 lockdown. The wording of the article implies (without fully stating) that these actions were performed by agents of the Chinese government to enforce the quarantine on people known or suspected to be infected. Is this an accurate description of the events in the video? | This event happened in late January, but not in Wuhan. The restriction was imposed on the accommodation of someone who had been to Wuhan. It was soon seen by the government as an over-reaction, and the metal bars used to secure the door were removed. China's investigative media XinJing Paper reported on it (Google Translate) Two videos of the door of a suspected Wuhan homecomer were circulated on the Internet, causing concern. On January 30, a reporter from the Beijing News confirmed that the incident occurred in Lianshui County, Huaian City, Jiangsu Province. The reporter confirmed this "door-closing incident" from a person in charge of the propaganda department of the Lianshui County Party Committee, which said that the method was a little overdone in the special period, and the facilities to close the gate had been removed. As far as I know, similar behaviour never happened in Wuhan. | {
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46,056 | I have heard many people claim in private that COVID-19 is not worse than flu and that the reaction is overblown. As a poster-child example of this, I want to analyze the claims made by the German pulmonologist Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg in this video . There are other places ( Wodarg's personal website , interview , online newspaper ) where he repeats and refines his claims but they don't come with English subtitles so I want to focus on the first video. The overarching claim is that there is no evidence that we are seeing unusual deaths due to COVID-19. It is just that we started measuring things we did not do before, and haven't compared them to a baseline of illness and mortality, and have blown the data we have out of proportion. However, this can be broken down into more easily verifiable subclaims: the lab in China identified a novel corona virus in a small sample
of pneumonia patients (<50) of whom there are always plenty in Wuhan
(with 11 million people) and put it into "the virus database" (whatever that is) the German virologist Christian Drosten developed
a test for this virus which was "rushed to market" in China without
proper validation so we don't actually know if it tests what it
should we don't know the baseline for coronaviruses in pneumonia related deaths so we can't establish whether COVID-19 actually increased the
rates: From the cited Glasgow study we would expect around 5-15% of flu season deaths to test positive for a coronavirus in an average flu season in Germany. That would be 3000 deaths which is more than 100x more than the reported COVID-19 death toll in Germany so far just because someone tests positive for SARS-CoV-2 and died of pneumonia does not mean that they died because of SARS-CoV-2. Are these claims true? | I'd like to tackle a few sets of claims/arguments Wodarg makes in the two videos: (Unknown) baseline prevalence of corona virus infections. Excess mortality / "we wouldn't see anything special" Comparison with Swine Flu when Wodarg was public health officer (Unknown) baseline prevalence of CoV The Glasgow paper he refers to did not look at the general population but at patients showing up in medical practices. They were monitoring 3 particular coronaviruses. The 7–15% coronaviruses are presented in an ambiguous way: this is not the prevalence of coronaviruses among the patient population but the relative prevalence, i.e. among those samples where viruses were found. The prevalence among the patient population is only about 1/4 of that since only in ≈ 1/4 of the samples one or more of the monitored viruses were found. So those 3 coronaviruses had a prevalence of ≈ 2–4% among the population that showed up at a medical practice with acute respiratory disease. Update Mar 20 This review on the common cold does cite 3 studies saying 10–15% are caused by coronaviruses, though. Looks as if the claim may be true after all, but the data he showed did not support the claim. He claims that during "flu season" we monitor influenza viruses, but not others. That is only partially correct, as e.g. in Germany the RKI monitors viruses from 5 groups (including influenza and rhinoviruses). Among them were no corona viruses until they started with SARS-CoV-2 in week 8 this year. Website at RKI about monitoring of the flu current (11th week) weekly report In week 11, they had one sample that was positive for SARS-CoV-2 and also for Influenza. Wodarg is right when he says that this year, we have a very mild flu season. Wodarg makes an argument that one would expect increasing prevalence for 'coronaviruses in general population' < 'people who show up in medical practice' < 'people who are in the hospital'. While this may be true, it also has the implied assumption that: either are coronaviruses associated with severe disease (i.e. existing disease helps coronavirus) or coronaviruses are in fact to be taken seriously in the sense that they can make people so sick that they have to go to the hospital. Excess mortality / "we wouldn't see anything special" Wodarg refers to euromomo as a service where we can see whether there's excess mortality, e.g. due to acute respiratory illness. He argues that if we weren't monitoring SARS-CoV-2 now, no-one would realize that there is something unusual (and in the second video, the reporter asks "If we wouldn't test, this would not catch anyones eye?" and he confirms "No, we wouldn't realize it."). Testing bias can distort not only the public uptake of a situation but also statistics, see e.g. lead time bias . But with COVID-19, the direction was the other way round: an outbreak of severe pneumonia happened (so people did notice without testing for the virus), and the cause was not known. Now, Wodarg argues that Wuhan is an important virological center in China. Under these circumstances, unknown cause translates to: it wasn't any of the usual suspects (viruses, bacteria, substances). Then people began to search, and found the virus. And we still see severe pneumonia with outbreaks of this virus, see Italy. I don't think this is the case, though. It is just that SARS-CoV-2 deaths lag behind positive tests. I'd have preferred to work with seasonal mortality data for Italy and Hubei, but I didn't find any, so I use the European data at euromomo. today (Mar 18th) the latest euromomo data is from week 10, i.e. until March 8th, 1.5 weeks ago. In terms SARS-CoV-2 in Europe, in Italy the number of positively tested cases have since increased by a factor of 4.8, in Germany by a factor of almost 11. ( numbers from worldometers ). I took the liberty to add SARS-CoV-2 positive deaths from Italy in blue: in week 10, 325 SARS-CoV-2 positive patients in Italy died. That's just a bit more than half a pixel in the graph (and a bit fewer than the average weekly traffic deaths in Italy according to the EU traffic death statistic). In week 11, the increase should start to be visible. As Wodarg says, this year's flu season was very mild, and the graph shows fewer deaths than usual in this season. (However, we may have to be a bit cautious with this as some other graphs on the web page indicate that numbers may not be complete yet) project the Hubei deaths in orange into the euromomo graph as follows: Hubei has 57 mio inhabitants, euromomo monitors 368 mio. (inhabitant numbers from wikipedia), that is a factor of ≈ 6.4. I counted the deaths using worldometers and the COVID-19 daily deaths by region diagram on Wikipedia , multiplied them by 368/57 to "simulate" the same kind of infection intensity as in Hubei for Europe and drew them on top of the red seasonal average. This "bump" sticks out of the +4z line for substantial excess mortality. The yellow line is when the quarantine in Wuhan/Hubei started. So the mortality bump of the same epidemic as in Hubei happening throughout Europe would have made a noticeable bump (at least unless the epidemic reduces mortality from other causes, such as reduced traffic mortality in quarantine situations), even though it is somewhat smaller than this year's mild flu season. Note though that the death bump is completely behind the quarantine start date – the mode is about 3 weeks later. But this is with severe restrictions. The argument that nothing special is happening and no particular measures are needed is on rather shaky ground. We know that SARS-CoV-2 has an incubation period of about 5 (1 - 14) days during which it is also already contagious. Median time from onset of symptoms to death was found to be 2 weeks (6 - 41 days). Mortality data will thus lag about 3 weeks after infection. In the last 3 weeks, the SARS-CoV-2 positive cases went up by a factor of 100 in Italy, x520 in Germany, and x120 in the US. Note that testing is performed in a population that is at high risk of having contracted SARS-CoV-2. Note that is argumentation doesn't even include any time between death until it appears in the official statistics. If public health officers don't have faster access to the mortality data, using euromomo would mean another 1 1/2 week's delay (3 days for the weekly flu report of RKI). Excess mortality is an important instrument, but it is delayed and therefore IMHO too slow for diseases with the epidemiological characteristics we face here. Wodarg argues that a typical heavy flu season in Germany causes maybe 20000 deaths, and due to the prevalence of coronaviruses (see above) somewhere around 2000–3000 coronavirus deaths in a season would be normal – which is far more than what we see with SARS-CoV-2. As I explained above, the paper actually found prevalences that are only a quarter of what Wodarg claims, so the "threshold death toll" should rather be 500–750 deaths. See update above. Which again, we don't have in Germany. The situation in Italy looks different, though (Wodarg evades answers when the reporter asks about Italy, and what he says is self-contradictory): While Italy has a smaller population than Germany, their annual excess mortality in the flu season is estimated to be in the same magnitude – which, like the SARS-CoV-2 mortality now is attributed to the large proportion of old people . Worldometer right now (Mar 20th) reports >4000 SARS-CoV-2 positive deaths in Italy so far (and there is no indication that this is over in Italy). Comparison with Swine Flu when Wodarg was public health officer Wodarg compares the situation with the pig flu and avian flu when he was working as public health officer where "nothing happened". IMHO he is right when he says that the decisions to curb rights and shut down economy must be taken very seriously and that panic hampers good decision taking. I also agree with him that a positive-feedback loop in media reporting may increase panic and hinder rational decisions. He mentions that the definition of pandemic changed from a disease that causes severe illness spreading over the whole world to a disease spreading over the whole world. However, that point is moot here: SARS-CoV-2 causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (severe pneumonia) so the more restrictive definitions would apply as well. Also the comparison with the flu decisions he faced as public health officer is IMHO not quite as easy as he makes it out: Influenza has a much shorter incubation period of about 2 (1–4) days. This means for the public health decision perspective, that dark count of cases in incubation period is much less of a problem for influenza than for SARS-CoV-2. This does make a huge difference for public health decisions. Also the duration after onset of symptoms is shorter: usually 1 week for the flu, but 2+ weeks for COVID-19. Again, a longer sick period means a heavier burden to the health system: if we have a capacity to care about n people in hospital, with an average stay of 3 weeks, only n/3 cases per week can be taken care of. With 2 weeks in hospital, that's n/2 per week or 50% more. I didn't find statistics on time between onset of symptoms and death for influenza, so I can not comment whether reported mortality rates are better suitable for reacting to flu epidemics due to flu patients dying fast. Update (Mar 19th): I checked euromomo again since it said yesterday that the weekly updates are Thursday around noon. Week 11 also shows considerably lower mortality than expected, but they have a notice about COVID-19 now, including: […] there is always a few weeks of delay in death registration and reporting. Hence, the EuroMOMO mortality figures for the most recent weeks must be interpreted with caution. Therefore, although no increased mortality is currently observed in the EuroMOMO figures, it does not rule out that increased mortality occur in some areas or in some age groups, including mortality related to COVID-19. The per-country graphs are unfortunately barely readable, but as the color changes where they try to correct for delay in reporting of deaths, we can see that actually death notifications from Italy are incomplete for the last 6 weeks or so. What is correction for delay in reporting? Countries have varying deadlines to report/register deaths at the local inhabitant register, these registers may report only so often to the province register -> country -> euromomo). So this may take a while, and unless the deadlines are synchronized (which AFAIK they aren't), this means that death numbers may "trickle in" at euromomo over a number of weeks. Until this is all done, the reported number of deaths will be too low for the last n weeks. If n isn't negligible, we'd expect the last data points to almost always show fewer deaths than normal. However, over time, euromomo can gain experience what percentage of deaths for a particular country are usually reported to them within how many weeks. That allows to apply a preliminary correction under the assumption that the reporting is as usual (which I doubt at the moment e.g. for Italy). For the question here however, the actual correction is not so important since the absolute numbers do not indicate such a correction, and I used this only as an indicator how long it may take until the final curve is available. Update Mar 20: The Wodarg videos meanwhile made it into mainstream media in Germany. Tagesschau Spiegel Zeit/dpa merkur ( Bild cites Wodargs without any comments) (While I don't find all the lines of argumentation compelling, I think they are worth reading.) Update Apr 2 : Euromomo data for week 13 is out: the low after the flu season doesn't go below the expected seasonal average any more. The final downtrend we saw before was thus an indication of reporting delay. We now see that in week 12 + 13 the overal mortality across all ages and all participating countries has been very unusually high, approximately +8z from the seasonal average. A closer inspection of the per-country deviation from the seasonal average shows that e.g. for Italy this peak has a size now like the flu season early 2017 (which, however, went away without lockdown). The excess mortality maps now show high mortality for Italy in week 11 (and very high for week 12 + 13), Spain has also very high excess mortality for week 12 + 13 (Belgium, France, England have also shown up in week 12 or 13). | {
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46,129 | The European Mortality Monitoring Project ( Euromomo ) tracks on a real-time basis, excess number of deaths related to influenza and other possible public health threats across participating European Countries. They published an automatically updated map , which in Week 11, 2020 (i.e. March 9 - March 15) shows Italy as "no excess" in the "z-score". However, there is no shortage of media reports describing a drastic increases in deaths due to COVID-19: Daily Mail, 19 March 2020 The column of 15 army trucks manned by 50 soldiers brought the dead out of the city of Bergamo in Lombardy [...] It came as Italy recorded a record 4,207 infections and 475 new deaths from the virus yesterday, Cemetery in Bergamo can no longer cope with the mounting death toll in the city, where at least 93 have died Al Jazeera, 21 Mar 2020 627 die in a single day in Italy Italy announced 627 more deaths on Friday, the biggest day-to-day increase in the country's four-week epidemic la Republicca, March 18, 2020 as is now known, is that the mortuary in Bergamo has not been able to accommodate the coffin of coronavirus victims for days To relieve the mortuary of the cemetery - with no more space available - it had been necessary in recent days to line up the coffins of the deceased in the church of Ognissanti" Why does this map not match the newspaper reports? | The Economist now has an (April 3) article on this, discussing the death stats from Bergamo specifically. Official death tolls for covid-19 may exclude people who died before they could be tested. They also ignore people who succumbed to other causes, perhaps because hospitals had no room to treat them. The latter group has been large in other disasters. For example, when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, America recorded only 64 deaths. A study later found that the surge in total deaths was close to 3,000. Many occurred in hospitals that lost power. Such analysis is not yet possible for nations battling covid-19. The only European country whose total death rate (as calculated by Euromomo, a research group) had spiked by March 20th was Italy. This estimate is based on a group of cities. Unfortunately, Italy does not break down covid-19 deaths by city, precluding a comparison of covid-19 and total deaths in the same area. However, journalists and scholars have crunched their own numbers. L’Eco di Bergamo , a newspaper, has obtained data from 82 localities in Italy’s Bergamo province. In March these places had 2,420 more deaths than in March 2019. Just 1,140, less than half of the increase, were attributed to covid-19. “The data is the tip of the iceberg,” Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo’s capital, told L’Eco . “Too many victims are not included in the reports because they die at home.” (As a side note: until April 3, French reports didn't even include deaths in nursing homes.) And for the broader context: Comparable figures can be found across Europe. In Spain El País , a newspaper, has published the results of a study by the government’s health research centre, showing that “excess” deaths in the Castile-La Mancha region were double the number attributed to covid-19. Jean-Marc Manach, a French reporter, has found a similar disparity in the department of Haut-Rhin. So yes, using more accurate local statistics, the extra deaths do "pop up" in graphs, even for the present level of uncertainty. And actually EuroMOMO now (April 7) shows excess scores for several more countries: The fact that Italy and Spain are in "the top" z-scores should be self-explanatory by now. Since there's a misleading chart (for all countries) posted in another answer below, here some updates on the total excess figures in EuroMOMO (not by country), compared to previous years/seaons: The downward (post-peak) slope in the last chart for 2020 should be interpreted with caution, for there are extra delays in reports nowadays. Interestingly, on cumulated excess deaths, the data insofar for 2020 is enough to put 2020 above the prior years back to 2016: | {
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46,139 | As mentioned in this question , in France, people need to stay at home, and carry the paper if not. The paper will basically explain why we are briefly outside home and that should avoid us being fined. It has been reported on social media that homeless persons have been caught and fined by the police, but what I read was essentially unidentified pictures, unsourced testimonies, nothing official. Is there reliable or official sources confirming that police also fines homeless persons for not being confined at home? | It is a bit unclear at the moment. But it is certainly not just "fake news". It is an ongoing situation with "his word against his", with the police being one "his", and a not particularly trustworthy one to begin with. It looks much more true than false, without a final verdict being advised right now. There are several human rights and homeless people organisations accusing the police of issuing fines to homeless. In locations like Toulouse, Lyon, Paris Bayonne, Lille, and Bordeaux. While we do see seemingly exact numbers reported in cases like this: This zeal to check and fine can go too far. In Lyon, the country's second most populous urban area, police handed out fines to four homeless men unarmed with certificates, according to the newspaper Le Progrès. The local prefecture is checking. — Don Murray: "Police checks, fines fail to keep all the French at home as Macron has ordered" , CBC.ca, Mar 22, 2020. The Lyon préfecture has said that these fines, if confirmed after an internal investigation, would be “immediately void” due to being “contrary to instructions”, the Lyon local newspaper Le Progrès reported. — Pauline Bock: "Coronavirus: France's homeless 'fined for not staying indoors' during COVID-19 lockdown", euronews, 20/03/2020. On Friday, police in Lyon, south-eastern France, fined dozens of homeless people for loitering on the streets as they tried to enforce a government lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. — "France's Covid-19 lockdown poses conundrum for homeless and migrants" , rfi.fr, 22/03/2020. In any case it seems quite noteworthy that this supposedly 'fake news' comes down through the channel of the national news agency Agence France Press: PARIS (AFP) — French homeless organizations on Friday accused police of issuing fines to rough sleepers for failing to comply with self-isolation requirements under the strict social lockdown to halt the spread of the coronavirus. Without providing numbers, they said fines have been issued to homeless people in the French capital Paris, in Lyon in the east and Bayonne in the southwest. “We request that clear instructions be given… so that these sanctions cease immediately,” Florent Gueguen, head of the FAS federation of homeless organizations told AFP. — AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE: "French Police Fine Homeless People in Coronavirus Lockdown" , March 20, 2020. The real situation seems to be that a few rights organisations accuse the authorities of quite antisocial behaviour towards homeless people. The authorities deny this. But in the French case it is not so much different. Like any other case of for example overly often repeated police brutality or other violations perpetrated by them: French police are also in simple denial of otherwise very obvious facts, like constant overreaching brutality against the yellow vests protesters. Unless an independent investigation comes along, 'the police' is much less trustworthy than their opposition in this "his word against his". Apart from similar incidents reported from elsewhere in France, the Lyon police issued this statement: In a statement, the head of police in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, which includes the city of Lyon, said an internal investigation had concluded that no such fines had been issued. The internal investigation carried out at the request of the Prefect determined that no homeless person had been fined.
The Prefect calls for collective responsibility in order not to relay #FakeNews in this period of national struggle against #Covid_19 https://t.co/ORDJ1IAoNZ — FRANCE 24 with AFP: "French police accused of fining homeless people amid virus lockdown" , 21/03/2020. Specifically, in Lyon the prefect issued this statement and made the local newspaper print the following: No homeless person was fined in Lyon for non-compliance with confinement, said the prefect on Friday evening. The internal investigation carried out at his request established that this information relayed by social workers is erroneous. All the reports drawn up by Public Security were examined and were the subject of specific investigations. According to our information, six of them were marked "homeless". In reality, these are six individuals in violation, checked in particular at Place de la Comédie, in Lyon (1st), Place Gabriel-Péri in Lyon (7th) and in Villeurbanne, who declared that they had no fixed abode. It is a subterfuge regularly used by certain offenders to avoid sanctions. The mention “SDF” therefore appears on the report, but does not reflect the reality of their situation. [Twitter tweet of prefecture follows] "We know the homeless in our districts," explains a Lyonnais police officer. "It is unthinkable that a police officer reproaches SDF for not being confined and assesses a PV that they cannot pay." — CM: "No homeless fined for non-confinement, announces the prefect", Le Progrès, March 20, 2020. But apart from all this overly specific denial in the first instance, things obviously are a bit chaotic in France right now.
But a local police authority now accusing via Twitter – the national press agency, several newspapers, and several homeless charities – of spreading fake news over dozens of incidents, when his own oversight cannot encompass all the other places? While admitting that the internal reports – not covered by the content of the tweet referred to – indeed lists 'six cases', simply declaring them a fraud? Note the logical disparity between 'fined people just falsely claiming to be homeless' and 'local police know their homeless'. It makes little sense on three fronts: that police 'knowing' their SDF still write down these infos into a report, knowing them to be fraudulent. It is clearly not an accurate statement that 'the police just know all their homeless'. And it also doesn't make sense for non-homeless, fined people to alert the charities to their fraudulent plight, seeking help. On the other hand, a plausible speculation might be: if internal police whistleblowers see these 'homeless' fines on the databases and alert the charities… The reality of this anti-social police behaviour is of course quite simply ridiculous: how should a homeless even start to pay a real fine of 135€?
Well, look at these important details: Homeless people were fined in Paris, Lyon and Bayonne, according to the charities. But those who have no place to stay find themselves in a catch-22 situation: they have nowhere to go, but they cannot stay in public places. “We ask for clear advice to be sent to local authorities to immediately stop these sanctions,” Florent Gueguen, the director of France’s Federation of Solidarity (FAS), which includes 800 charities fighting against poverty and homelessness, told the AFP. Maud Bigot, the director of the Lyon branch of the Samu Social, said her team had received a dozen calls in two days from homeless people who had been threatened with a fine for being in the streets. She said she had heard of similar cases in Lille, Bordeaux and Toulouse. — Pauline Bock: "Coronavirus: France's homeless 'fined for not staying indoors' during COVID-19 lockdown" , euronews, 20/03/2020. It is even reported that the gendarmerie issued fines to their own comrades from the regular police out of uniform: Coronavirus. Confinement: have the gendarmes issued a fine? Overzealous gendarmes? Since the beginning of the lockdown, it's... it's the cops who say so. According to a source in the Paris police prefecture, relayed by Le Parisien, the Ministry of the Interior is said to have reframed
the national gendarmerie after some of its officers were fined for not respecting travel restrictions. Place Beauvau denies this, insisting that only general directives were given to the police to facilitate the movement of personnel carrying professional cards. However, the Paris Region daily brandishes opposite a note sent by a head of department of the prefecture's Public Order and Traffic Directorate mentioning this "reframing". No fines, according to the prefecture Incidents were indeed reported to have taken place at the beginning of the confinement in Seine-et-Marne, Essonne and Oise, involving plainclothes policemen going to their place of work. "No one was very aware of the derogatory nature of the measures," explains the police prefecture.
But nobody was charged or fined, according to her. What about these two policemen who were allegedly checked (without being fined) by three gendarmes last Thursday on the A7 at the Lançon-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) tollgate, while they were in uniform and in a professional vehicle, as reported by La Provence? The information is false, replies the national gendarmerie. — "Confinement : les gendarmes ont-ils verbalisé...des policiers?" , Le Progrés, 24-03-2020. Another overly specific denial was issued from the Bayonne prefecture , saying that their " municipal police did not issue fines". That does in no way exclude any other authority issuing fines, like the French Gendarmerie , other official uniformed officers, or any of those just threatening fines. To top it of, it seems that the situation is even exploited by – not fake news, but – "fake cops": Fake policemen are extorting Chinese citizens for wearing face masks in France during the coronavirus outbreak, embassy officials say So we have a chaotic situation, fake cops, real cops who are not really trustworthy, a populace in panic and homeless people being vulnerable and panicked as well. Given their hierarchy of needs it seems quite improbable for them to start lying en masse to diss 'the police' now. It seems also quite improbable for the respected organisations like Samu Social or Fédération des acteurs de la solidarité to just wantonly start spreading intentional lies. That frontier workers within the police did that is quite probable, whether it was against or in line with official instructions. That the higher-ups in the police food chain are not pleased by this obviously bad press is clear and that they just deny whatever when it suits them, independent of any veracity, is a well established fact. And still: Whether there were dozens of fines issued or just threatened, by real cops, of whatever branch, or by 'fake cops', cannot be said with any certainty in any direction. | {
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46,145 | I've seen the below image circulating on Facebook: (source: pressablecdn.com ) They are claiming lions are being used to keep Russians indoors during the Coronavirus pandemic. | No, they didn't I remember the image (not the news headers) from a few years back when a film crew got into trouble for using a (tamed) lion in some filming in Johannesburg. Here is the relevant snopes article backing this up. In fact (at the time the post was circulating) Russia had hardly any restrictions in place, still planning to go ahead with their 75th anniversary V-Day parade Edit To clear up confusion: Russia has now put restrictions in place (speech dated 25th of March). | {
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47,184 | According to Morris Kline , author of Mathematics for the Nonmathematician ( 1967 ): Roman jurists ruled, under the Code of Mathematicians and Evil-Doers, that "to learn the art of geometry and to take part in public exercises, an art as damnable as mathematics, are forbidden." | No. They used a sentence that includes "mathematica" and condemns and forbids it, but they were not using a modern definition of "mathematician", which gives the sentence a very different interpretation. A Latin Dictionary defines "mathematicus" as: măthēmătĭcus […] A. Măthēmătĭcus A mathematician An astrologer (post-Aug.) Also compare Wikipedia:Mathematics#Etymology . As we read in another work of Kline himself: […] astrologers were called mathematicii and astrology was condemned by the Roman emperors. The emperor Diocletian (AD 245–316) distinguished between geometry and mathematics. The former was to be learned and applied in the public service; but the "art of mathematics"—that is, astrology—was damnable and forbidden in its entirety. The "code of mathematics and evil deeds;" the Roman law forbidding astrology, was also applied in Europe during the Middle Ages. — Morris Kline: "Mathematical Thought From Ancient to Modern Times", Vol1, Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, 1990. (p179 in 1972 edition, gBooks ) As can be seen in: The most important provisions of the two codes are found in the title: De maleficis et mathematicis et ceteris similibus, "concerning magicians, astrologers, and all such like. — Cod. Just. IX, 18: Cod Theod. IX, 16. — via Clyde Pharr: "The Interdiction of Magic in Roman Law" , Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 63 (1932), pp. 269-295. For a full Latin version, go here: Wikisource: XVI de maleficis et mathematicis et ceteris similibus For a close translation of the question title: CJ 9.18.2 (AD 294) Artem geometriae discere atque exerceri publice
intersit. Ars autem mathematica damnabilis interdicta est. A more appropriate and well known translation of this snippet reads: Concerning Poisoners, Diviners, and Other Criminals of the same Description It is a matter of public interest to learn and practice the science of geometry, but the art of divination is damnable, and is strictly prohibited. While artem is translated above as 'science' and 'art', it could also be translated as 'fraud' ( trick , wile ). So to better capture the spirit of this juxtaposition, one might even phrase it as To learn and practice the science of geometry is in the public interest.
But the damnable fraud of astrology is forbidden. If the subfield of geometria is then seen as pars pro toto for mathematics, then we have a very Skeptics:SE fitting formula: Exact science is good, superstitious practices not so much. A recent comprehensive translation with annotations renders the passage in context as: Eighteenth Title Sorcerers, Astrologers, and Others Like Them [1] Emperor Antoninus Augustus, It is worse to kill someone with poison than with a sword.
Posted without day or year, [2] Emperors Diocletian and Maximian August! and the Caesars to Tiberius. Learning and practicing the skill of surveyor (ars geomeiriae) shall be (deemed to be) in the public interest* But the despicable skill of astrology (ars mathematica) Is forbidden.
Written August 20, at Sirmium, in the consulship of the Caesars (294). [3] Emperor Constantine Augustus to Maximus, pr. No diviner (haruspex), no priest, no one who customarily performs rituals of this kind shah cross the threshold of another, not even for another reason (than divination), but friendship with such persons, even when of long standing, shall be renounced. Any diviner who visits someone else’s house shall be burned alive, and that person who summons him through persuasion or material inducements shall be exiled to an island after his or her property is confiscated, i* We consider, however, the prosecutor of this offense not as an informer (delator) but as someone instead deserving of a reward. Posted February 1, at Rome, in the consulship of Constantine Augustus, for the fifth time, and Licinius Caesar (319). [4] The same Augustus and Licinius Caesar to Bassus, Praetorian Prefect. pr*
There shall be punishment and vengeance deservedly inflicted by the most severe laws upon the expertise of those who are discovered to be equipped with magic skills, to have meddled with people's health or to have turned chaste minds toward lust. 1. But criminal accusations shall not impede remedies devised for human bodies and nostrums, innocently applied in rural districts, to check concern for heavy downpours of rain falling upon grape-vintages ripe for harvest or their being damaged by the impact of falling hail By such means no one’s safety or reputation is harmed, but their actions bring it about that divine gifts and human efforts are not brought to naught.
Given May 23, at Aquileia, in the consulship of Crispus and Constantine Caesars (321). [5] Emperor Constantius Augustus to the People. No one shall consult a diviner (hampex) or astrologer, nor shall anyone (consult) a soothsayer (hariolus). The depraved profession of augurs and seers shall fell silent, Chaldeans, magicians (magi), and the others, whom the common people call sorcerers (malefici) on account of the enormity of their misdeeds, shall not contrive anything of this sort. Everyone's interest in foretelling the future shall forever cease. For whoever refuses obedience to these commands will endure the death penalty (supplicium capitis), laid low by an avenging sword. Given January 25, at Milan, in the consulship of Constantius Augustus, for the ninth time, and Julian Caesar, for the second time (357). — Bruce W. Frier (ed): "The Codex of Justinian. A New Annotated Translation, with Parallel Latin and Greek Text", Volume 3, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, New York, 2016. pp2335–2337. Other StackExchange posts on Skeptics , History of Science and Mathematics , Latin and Math , related to this question and confirming the above, but offering different angles to look at the problem over time and languages used: Did Augustine of Hippo warn Christians to beware mathematicians? Question on "What St. Augustine didn't say about mathematicians" When and why were mathematics and magic considered synonymous in England Greek astronomy vs astrology Did Galileo Galilei believe in astrology? What was Copernicus trying to mean with 'Mathematics is Written for Mathematicians'? Development of mathematics in Europe between 550-1050 A.D Why does Aristotle write 'astrology' when Plato writes 'astronomy'? Did ars mathematica mean mathematics in classical (and late) Latin? | {
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47,238 | This tweet claims Trump "fired the entire pandemic response team in 2018": Text: Just a reminder: it’s okay to blame the president for how bad things get with COVID-19 because he fired the entire pandemic response team in 2018 . While another tweet suggests that it was merely restructured: Text: Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation's bio defense are false. Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can't stop attacking, even in a crisis. What's the truth? | Although it's not true that Trump himself 'fired the entire pandemic response team', it is true that in April-July of 2018 the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was dissolved, and its staff moved to other departments of the U.S. National Security Council which were not focused on responding to a pandemic. Further, this dissolution was done as part of an NSC restructure performed by John Bolton a few weeks after he was appointed to the position as National Security Advisor by Donald Trump , so if it was not done explicitly at the direction of Trump he at least (presumably) gave Bolton permission to do so. As reported on at the time by the Washington Post (though other similar articles can be found): May 10, 2018 at 1:32 p.m. PDT The top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton. The abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council means no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security. Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack. ... The personnel changes, which Morrison and others characterize as a downgrading of global health security, are part of Bolton’s previously announced plans to streamline the NSC. Two members of Ziemer's team have been merged into a unit in charge of weapons of mass destruction, and another official's position is now part of a unit responsible for international organizations. White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, who had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks, is out completely. He left the day after Bolton took over last month. | {
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47,243 | I recently stumbled across an article from a global warming skeptic stating that the "average surface temperature of Earth" changed from 15°C to 14°C in some scientific literature concerning climate change. From the article Fourteen Is the New Fifteen! : According to the leaders of the global warming doomsday cult, the average surface temperature of Earth is 14 degrees Celsius (57.2 degrees Fahrenheit), but this is a new value which has quietly replaced the original average of 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, I've read enough to be quite sure that global warming is real, yet this article is interesting because it provides a lot of quotes and links to its sources. There might be a reason why this "average temperature" was revisited, but due to my nonexistent knowledge in climatology, I am currently unable to provide a counter-argument to these claims. Can someone with the appropriate knowledge and sources explain why this temperature was changed? | The article quotes a scientific paper as saying: Hansen and colleagues have estimated that Earth's actual average surface air temperature between 1951 and 1980 was approximately 287 K (14 degrees Celsius) (Hansen et al. 2010). The quoted paper Hansen et al. 2010 is confirming a study done back in 1999. For the sake of users who require an absolute global mean temperature, we have estimated the 1951–1980 global mean surface air temperature as 14°C with uncertainty several tenths of a degree Celsius. That value was obtained by using a global climate model [Hansen et al., 2007] to fill in temperatures at grid points without observations, but it is consistent with results of Jones et al. [1999] based on observational data. The review paper of Jones et al. [1999] includes maps of absolute temperature as well as extensive background information on studies of both absolute temperature and surface temperature change. In fact, Jones et al. are confirming an even earlier study from 1970: The climatology indicates that the annual average surface temperature of the world is 14.0°C (14.6°C in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and 13.4°C for the Southern Hemisphere) ... In the Crutcher and Meserve [1970] and Taljaard et al. [1969] atlas climatologies the global average is 14.1°C (NH, 14.9°C; SH, 13.3°C). Jones, P. D., M. New, D. E. Parker, S. Martin, and I. G. Rigor (1999), Surface air temperature and its variations over the last 150 years , Rev. Geophys., 37, 173–199, doi:10.1029/1999RG900002. To conclude, around 1970 it was estimated that the global average surface air temperature was 14.1°C. In 1999 this was adjusted to 14°C and in 2010 it was confirmed as 14°C. The article claims 15°C "was the accepted long-term global average temperature" but provides not a single piece of evidence that this was based on scientific measurements. What the author is quoting is not part of the actual models, but crude estimates used for introductory material or to draw figures in early studies. For example, they quote James E. Hansen making an estimate in the first paragraph of a scientific article, but this is for the purpose of illustrating that the greenhouse effect will add to this rough estimate, not to actually build his model: The mean surface temperature is Ts ~ 288 K. That ~ means "roughly". Actual climate models are not derived from global average temperature, because local average temperatures differ from place to place, even in areas as massive as the northern and southern hemispheres. However, rough estimates of global temperature are sometimes helpful to prove a basic point, for example, that the greenhouse effect is based on a thermodynamic equation that is worth modeling. Just to show how this works, here is how an illustration was created for an early study, " Sensitivity of a Global Climate Model to an Increase of CO2 Concentration in the Atmosphere " (1980), which was and is widely cited. The temperature of this isothermal atmosphere ocean system is chosen to be 280 K. That is to say, for the purposes of making a figure, the authors arbitrarily decided that they would model a system with an average temperature of 6.85°C. This was not based on any data. Of course it is better to make models and figures based on close-to-real-world averages, so the mistake was eventually corrected. | {
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47,265 | A widely-commented upon post on reddit claims that pneumonia deaths in the US have "fallen off a cliff this year": In the conversation I saw several links to CDC data, but they are unclear overviews. The diagram includes a link to the raw data [ csv ] from the CDC's weekly FluView . | CDC's own disclaimer on their combined Covid-19+Pneumonia dataset, which is frankly more relevant than merely the pneumonia one: Data during this period are incomplete because of the lag in time between when the death occurred and when the death certificate is completed, submitted to NCHS and processed for reporting purposes. This delay can range from 1 week to 8 weeks or more, depending on the jurisdiction, age, and cause of death. [...] COVID-19 death counts shown here may differ from other published sources, as data currently are lagged by an average of 1–2 weeks. [...] estimates of completeness for pneumonia deaths may provide context for understanding the lag in reporting for COVID-19 deaths, as it is anticipated that these causes would have similar delays in reporting, processing, and coding. However, it is possible that reporting of COVID-19 mortality may be slower or faster than for other causes of death, and that the delay may change over time. Analyses to better understand and quantify reporting delays for COVID-19 deaths and related causes are underway. And yeah, there are only 2,214 Covid-19 deaths reported by that CDC dataset Whereas on Apr 06, 2020 : the United States as a whole had reached a death toll of more than 10,000, according to the coronavirus resource centre at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. The U.S. has seen 10,335 die from COVID-19 causes, according to the [JHU] tally. So why would you expect the CDC pneumonia stats to be more up-to-date... especially since... the CDC guidance for how to record the cause of death has also evolved : To try and get a more accurate picture of the crisis, the CDC last week issued updated guidance for certifying deaths due to COVID-19 – protocols similar to those in place for pneumonia and influenza. According to the new directions, if a patient has died from pneumonia, for example, but was also tested positive for COVID-19, someone is required to specify whether COVID-19 played a role in the death and whether it was actually the underlying, primary cause of death. Cécile Viboud, a staff scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who specializes in the mortality associated with infectious diseases, said it will likely take years to know the actual death toll of the contagion that has nearly paralyzed much of the nation. In previous research on the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Viboud said she concluded that only 15% of the deaths attributed to the disease were identified in laboratory testing. Instead of trying to suss under which heading the extras deaths might have been recorded, a simpler heuristic [for now] would be to look at the total causes of death and look for a spike; see related/similar question here on Europe and their EuroMOMO metric, where a spike did show up after some weeks, precisely in the regions hit most by Covid-19, debunking similar conspiracy theories that there were no extra deaths in Europe due to Covid-19. I have qualms about the mod leaving this question open, while it's clearly an "unresolved current event" to a good extent, but there you have the official disclaimer(s) for the [CDC] data. Excuse my squiggles below, but besides the fact that incomplete data precludes a serious analysis, what exactly is the claim "fallen off a cliff" in the Reddit image referring to here? That: 2019-20 is below the other years on one or both of the big oval areas? (More "suspicious" in the 2nd black one?) 2019-20 has a different post-peak downward slope than the other years? (Pink arrow) 2019-20 has a substantially different slope just for the last segment/data point (green circle)? Assuming we had the final data in, which of these claim are we supposed to address? If the claim is (per discussion on chat) "the graph looks suspicious", then probably the best rebuttal is applying the exact same (faulty) graphic method to previous years' (incomplete) data, truncated up to March, as was reported back then. This was done by a Twitter user , but he links to the CDC data sources, so hopefully/presumably it's verifiable by others (there aren't any calculations/statics involved, just plotting): Credit should go to @CL for finding this. | {
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47,272 | In a recent controversy it was claimed that “Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they’re cheaters,” [Trump] said. “They go and collect them, they’re fraudulent in many cases, you gotta vote … The mail ballots are corrupt in my opinion.” [...] [Sean Eldridge, the founder of the grassroots community organisation Stand Up America] added: “ Trump himself voted absentee in the last two elections . [...] Although the emphasized claim (about Trump having voted as an "absentee", which I think means by mail) was reproduced in the Guardian, it's still attributed (to Sean Eldridge), so is it verifiable by other means? | +1 to Philipp, but alternatively [isn't that ironic in a question about Trump?], the claim could be true if we count the 2017 NYC mayoral election : Both Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, applied for absentee ballots to vote in the 7 November mayoral election in New York City, where they lived before moving to Washington DC. Ms Trump’s application went off without a hitch, but Mr Trump listed his birthday incorrectly – by an entire month. Less controversially (as far inclusion in this list), in 2018 : president Donald Trump reportedly didn't vote on Tuesday. He did, however, vote in the 2018 midterm elections. Quartz reported he voted early via an absentee ballot for his home state of New York. The president voted "absentee a couple of weeks ago," White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told the outlet on Tuesday. | {
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47,374 | As somewhat unclearly related in the Daily Mail: Dr Keusch, Professor of Medicine and International Health at Boston University's Schools of Medicine and Public Health, stressed that no release of viruses from a high-level lab, such as the one in Wuhan, 'has ever happened'. I think he's referring to the BSL-4 labs. As a quick breakdown/check on lab numbers by safety level; just in the the UK in 2007 there were 600 BLS-3 labs, but only ten BSL-4. Not all of them were operating and there's a safety sub-level for those that can operate at ACDP4--meaning BSL-4 and using pathogens that can infect humans (only 5 of those in the UK then, four of which were in operation); the other were SAPO4 (for animal pathogens). The Wuhan lab Keusch mentions next is BSL-4. So I'm thinking the claim refers only to BSL-4. Examples of BSL-3 breaches include FMD at PIADC --DavePhd's answer-- or SARS from a lab in Beijing, 2004, included in LangLangC's answer. In fact that accident was one of the reasons that China built its first BSL-4, the one in Wuhan, operational at this level since 2018 . So is the claim (still) true for BSL-4 labs (worldwide)? (There were approximately 60 BSL-4 labs in the world, as of 2018.) | Q Has a virus ever escaped a high-level virus lab? Yes, depending on definitions. How deadly pathogens have escaped the lab — over and over again Most appropriate candidates for an inappropriately cherry picking and restrictive reading of the claim in question: the 1977 "red flu" occurring from China or Russia is thought o be most likely a failed experiment in such a lab. Local authorities deny it. the 2007 Foot-and-Mouth disease outbreak in the UK was traced to have come from a designated BSL 4 lab researching the vaccine on a strain from 1967 . Authorities tried to deny this. (But came around eventually: "Virus escape from Pirbright site" ) What is an "escape"? If it is a "lab acquired infection" (LAI), then we need to look at: SARS escaped Beijing lab twice But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. ( nature ) The unacceptable risks of a man-made pandemic
By Lynn C. Klotz, Edward J. Sylvester, August 7, 2012 Human error in high-biocontainment labs: a likely pandemic threat
By Lynn Klotz, February 25, 2019 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom And about British labs it had to be reported that 200 incidents occured in just 5 years. Countless examples exist, but Mr Keusch restricts his definition artificially. He seems to not count any cases of for example labs just putting deadly strains into the post and shipping them ouit of their supposedly secure facilities via mail. In March researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture received a shipment of what they thought was a relatively harmless strain of animal flu from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was, in fact, highly pathogenic H5N1 flu virus. Months later the researchers only began to suspect something was amiss when their experiments yielded results that they didn’t expect and couldn’t explain. The CDC, it turns out, had sent the deadly samples inadvertently. – "CDC Botched Handling of Deadly Flu Virus
The third recent mistake in handling of pathogens is a “wake-up call,” says Centers for Disease Control head", Scientific American, 2014. And why not just post some anthrx, dengue, or plague with whatever packaging or label you want, or whether the receiver wants them or knoiws what to expect? In 2015, the US Army revealed that its chemical and biological defence facility at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah unwittingly shipped live anthrax to seven countries after failing to kill the spores properly. Responding to Freedom of Information requests from the Guardian, the US army said it shipped one batch to a UK lab in 2007, and 13 more to three UK labs in 2009. One of the 2009 batches contained a vial of yet another unsolicited pathogen: live but weakened Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that cause the plague.
– Guardian/Blunders A 2013 Centers for Disease Control report is a significant source of recent data on LAIs (11). The report documents four undetected or unreported LAIs in registered US Select Agent, high-containment BSL-3 labs between 2004 and 2010. An undetected or unreported LAI implies an escape when the infected person leaves the lab. The report identifies an average of 292 registered Select Agent BSL-2, BSL-3, and BSL-4 labs operating over those 7 years, for a total of 292 × 7 = 2,044 lab years. Unfortunately, the study does not break down numbers into BSL-2, BSL-3, and BSL-4 labs or lab years. Thus, the probability of escape for a single year, p1, can only be calculated as 4 LAIs/2,044 lab years = 0.002 or 0.2% per lab per year. This is clearly an underestimate since BSL-2 and BSL-4 labs contribute to the denominator. (The denominator used here, 2,004, equals the number of BSL-2 plus number of BSL-3 plus number of BSL-4 labs. But the denominator in our calculation should be just the number of BSL-3 labs, so the denominator is overestimated and the percent escape is then underestimated. Although requested, the CDC has not supplied us with the number of BSL-3 labs for us to do the exact calculation.) This basic probability is consistent with that for SARS escapes in Asia through LAIs (12) and with all known escapes from BSL-4 labs in the Soviet Union from LAIs and Great Britain from a mechanical failure (13). The risk of a man-made pandemic from a lab escape is not hypothetical. Lab escapes of high-consequence pathogens resulting in transmission beyond lab personnel have occurred (20, 21). The historical record reveals lab-originated outbreaks and deaths due to the causative agents of the 1977 pandemic flu, smallpox escapes in Great Britain, Venezuelan equine encephalitis in 1995, SARS outbreaks after the SARS epidemic, and foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2007. Ironically, these labs were working with pathogens to prevent the very outbreaks that they ultimately caused. – Lynn C. Klotz & Edward J. Sylvester: "The Consequences of a Lab Escape of a Potential Pandemic Pathogen", Front Public Health. 2014; 2: 116.
Published online 2014 Aug 11. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2014.00116, PMCID: PMC4128296, PMID: 25157347 Mr Keusch is quite wrong on this. Or depending on true scotsman fallacy: 'if something escaped, then the lab wasn't secure'. Any focus on viruses alone seems also quite overspecific. Biological Safety Labs should contain all germs — after all, most won't care that much whether they die of a virus or a bacterium. And whether or not a biohazard escapes from a BSL '4' or '3' lab is also quite foggy. It seems like a straw man when it is meant to refer only to 'direct escape from a BSL4 building leading to an epidemic'. If a pathogen is designated to be only handled in BSL4, but then transferred to another lab with even lower security, is that an 'escape' or 'merely serious breach of protocol?' Even if then from that lower security lab we do find environmental transmission? A PR person or lawyer worth his money will spin this as 'no escape from BSL4'. – Bio-Unsafety Level 3: Could the Next Lab Accident Result in a Pandemic?
So-called gain-of-function pathogen research will likely receive closer scrutiny after three U.S. biolab incidents, Scientific American, 2014 And such risks are easily reached: Although the estimates of the probability of accidental escape are relatively low (0.3% risk of release per lab per year 15 ), the increased number of laboratories working on BSL 3 and 4 agents gives rise to estimates projecting an appreciable combined escape risk of potential pandemic pathogens (PPP) in a 10-year window 15 . In addition, for PPP, the relatively small risk of release has to be weighted against the size of the population that could be affected by such an event, the risk of severe or fatal cases and the likelihood of containment before the event could escalate to global proportions. Furthermore, the quantitative analysis of the post-release scenario is complicated by the different social and environmental settings that apply to the more than 1,500 BSL 3 and 4 laboratories around the world 16 . – Stefano Merler, Marco Ajelli, Laura Fumanelli, & Alessandro Vespignani: "Containing the accidental laboratory escape of potential pandemic influenza viruses" , BMC Med. 2013; 11: 252. Published online 2013 Nov 28. doi: 10.1186/1741-7015-11-252 PMCID: PMC4220800, PMID: 24283203 In 2004 the highest level lab in Russia (Vector) where the last remaining smallpox viruses are kept, had a lab worker contract ebola. A Russian scientist working on an Ebola vaccine died last week following a lab accident. On 5 May, Antonina Presnyakova, 46, pricked her hand with a syringe after drawing blood from infected guinea pigs in an ultrasecure biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facility at the Vektor Research Institute of Molecular Biology, a former bioweapons lab near Novosibirsk, Russia. She was hospitalized immediately, says a lab official, developed symptoms 1 week later, and died on 19 May. ( science ) Such an escape is also not unimaginable, even for smallpox, when things just start exploding there, like in 2019 . A nice overview is here:
– Martin Furmanski: "Laboratory Escapes and “Self-fulfilling prophecy” Epidemics", 2014 ( PDF ), short version online, detailing the SARS outbreaks/escapes: Threatened pandemics and laboratory escapes: Self-fulfilling prophecies By Martin Furmanski, March 31, 2014 , complemented with 10 incidents discovered at the nation's biolabs. “Overall, the incident shows that failures — even cascading, compounding, catastrophic failures of BSL-4 biocontainment labs occur,” The Bernhard-Nocht-Institut recorded this: A virologist working in the BSL-4 laboratory pricked herself in the finger during a mouse experiment on 12 March 2009. The syringe contained ZEBOV [Zaire ebolavirus] from culture supernatant that had been concentrated by ultracentrifugation and mixed 1:1 with incomplete Freund’s adjuvant for immunization of mice. The material was injected into the animal before the accident happened. When the laboratory worker tried to recap the needle, it penetrated the cap laterally and subsequently all 3 gloves. The puncture site on the skin was visible, but it did not bleed. The wound was disinfected after leaving the laboratory. … The patient voluntarily agreed on being hospitalized on 13 March. – Stephan Günther et al.: "Management of Accidental Exposure to Ebola Virus in the Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory, Hamburg, Germany", The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 204, Issue suppl_3, November 2011, Pages S785–S790. doi And while USAMRIID only has had Ameri-Anthrax spread over the facility in 2001, the CDC reports that Ebola is such a lazy virus, it really took humans to just carry it to the hunt out of a BSL4: In December, CDC reported that a small amount of material from an experiment that was part of an Ebola virus study was securely transported from a select‐agent‐approved BSL‐4 lab to a select‐agent‐approved BSL‐2 lab and may have contained live virus. The material mistakenly transferred during procedures for this study was on a sealed plate but should not have been moved from the BSL-4 laboratory into the BSL‐2 laboratory. – CDC Releases Report on Recent Lab Incident, 2015 Note the date, as this was after In 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had a string of incidents that marked one of the worst occurrence numbers on record for the organization as three biosafety incidents were reported in a span of just two months. […] A moratorium on the transfer of infectious agents from CDC BSL-3 or BSL-4 laboratories to any other facility was instated pending further investigation of this incident and laboratory transfer practices. – Transfers Leading to Incidents, Lab workers wandering around security zones without protective gear, worker shandling toxins and agents even without being properly trained, disposing biohazard waste without gloves. The USAMRIID people systematically failed to ensure implementation of biosafety and containment procedures commensurate with the risks associated with working with select agents and toxins. The violation specifically observed involved “entity personnel [...] propping open” a door while removing “large amounts of biohazardous waste” from an adjacent room, “[increasing] the risk of contaminated air from [the room] escaping and being drawn into the [redacted]” where the people working “typically do not wear respiratory protection.” storing biohazard waste with unauthorised access enabled, stuff just going "missing" The CDC reports that someone at the lab did not maintain an accurate or current inventory for a toxin. And eventually a 'low risk level'! OBSERVATION 7 Severity level: Low The CDC reports that a building at the Fort Detrick laboratory didn’t have a “sealed surface to facilitate cleaning and decontamination.” This included cracks around a conduit box, cracks in the ceiling, and a crack in the seam above a biological safety cabinet. – Quotes from Diana DiGangi: "Army germ lab shut down by CDC in 2019 had several 'serious' protocol violations that year" , January 22nd 2020 The FMD outbreak in the UK 2007 Failures in bio-containment and bio-security received wide publicity in 2007, including at facilities where awareness and compliance with procedures were thought to be high. One such breach occurred on 3 August at a farm near Pirbright in Surrey, UK, where an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) was discovered. Pirbright houses the Institute of Animal Health (IAH), which uses small quantities of live FMD virus for experimentation, as well as two private biotechnology companies: Merial Animal Health Ltd and Stabilitech Ltd. The Merial facility was producing large quantities of FMD vaccine, while Stabilitech used only small quantities of live FMD virus—comparable to those used by the IAH. […] On 7 August a second farm was infected with FMD. The strain of FMD was identified as an FMD reference strain that had been obtained from the 1967 FMD epidemic in the UK and is commonly used at reference laboratories and in the production of pharmaceuticals, as at the Pirbright site. The strain does not occur naturally.[…] It stated that breaches in bio-security procedures, recent high precipitation in the area and lack of maintenance (i.e. cracked wastewater piping due to tree root ingress) contributed to the release of live FMD virus, which subsequently led to the infection of animals at nearby farms. The bio-security breaches included: the incomplete inactivation of live virus through insufficient chemical effluent filtering; allowing some live virus to reach the public sewer system, and eventually the surrounding soil, through unsealed manholes; the lack of standard operating procedures for handling blockages in effluent drains; and the lack of control over human and vehicle movement in and around the facility premises because construction work was being performed at the time of the outbreak. The dissemination of the FMD virus to neighbouring farms occurred because the soil around the facility was contaminated by the overflowing sewer system and spread by vehicles entering and exiting the area. In 2007 several potential exposures to Coxiella burnetii (the causative agent of Q fever) also occurred at Texas A&M University but were not reported to the CDC, as required by law. – Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: Yearbook 2008, 9. Reducing security threats from chemical and biological materials // the Texas A&M exposure covered at – Jocelyn Kaiser: "Pathogen Work at Texas A&M Suspended" , Jul. 2, 2007; – Lisa Schnirring: "CDC suspends work at Texas A&M biodefense lab" , Filed Under: Avian Influenza (Bird Flu); Bioterrorism; Foot-and-Mouth Disease, 03, 2007. Foot-and-Mouth disease is insofar very interesting, as in the second half of the 20th century 'the labs' were the prime originators of disease outbreaks in Europe. In Germany the procedure making an FMD vaccine up until the 60s was so flawed that infected large animals were slaughtered for getting the 'agent' and then sold! While human consumption meat was 'properly treated to inactivate the virus, animal fodder meat was just not treated, spreading the disease far and wide. That changed only in 1966 as people learned a bit. But from 1970 to 1992 there were further 30 primary infections leading to epidemics. Of these 30 at least 22 and a probable 3 more were caused by the vaccination programme itself. The last of these outbreaks near Hannover in 1988 clearly linked to a vaccination plant. The vaccination practice ended only under economic pressure from the US market, leading to a prohibition on FMD vaccination. (– Karl Strohmaier [former head of Federal Research Institute of Animal Virus Diseases, Tübingen]: "Infektiöse Impfungen. Ein traurig-teures Lehrstück aus der Veterinärmedizin und -verwaltung" , Zeit, 17. Januar 1992. More scientific, but paywalled: Tierärztliche Rundschau "Die Maul- und Klauenseuche - Was ist nach Einstellung der Flächenimpfung zu erwarten?" 1995; 4 parts. ) That is an endemic problem of these sites. As the subheading in the following piece is called "Patterns of Problems": The safety breach at a government lab that may have exposed 84 workers to live anthrax centered on a pivotal lapse in procedure: researchers working with the bacteria waited 24 hours to be sure they had killed the pathogens, half the time required by a new scientific protocol. “At that point, they assumed the material was safe. ” “We know that was a mistake,” said agency spokesman Tom Skinner. “What else, I don’t know.” A week later, scientists in the same lab that prepared the original samples discovered live anthrax growing in lab dishes left in an incubator, kicking off a scramble to contain the exposure. – Sharon Begley, Julie Steenhuysen: "Multiple protocol breaches behind anthrax exposure at U.S. federal labs" , Reuters Health News June 21, 2014. This pattern of systematic neglect leads to astonishing numbers: Safety violations, occupational exposures The report documents 12 losses of select agents, 9 of which were the result of record-keeping errors and 3 that involved mistakenly destroyed materials. No evidence of theft or criminal intent was found, the report said, adding that three anonymous safety and security tips received during the year were all found to be invalid. Of greater concern were 199 instances of potential occupational exposure to pathogens, which resulted in the monitoring of 908 lab workers. Many possible exposures (671) occurred in people working with diagnostic specimens outside of registered labs prior to a sample's identification as a select agent, the FSAP said, adding that no illnesses, deaths, or environmental transmission occurred as a result of the breaches. In the course of routine screening, two federal lab employees were found to have seroconverted to Coxiella burnetii, and one academic worker had evidence of Brucella seroconversion. All three people remain asymptomatic, the report said. Last year, six registered labs were assigned a corrective action plan to amend unsafe work practices and poor recordkeeping. Three labs were placed under suspension because of evidence of poor containment and failing to inactivate biological agents, the FSAP said. Sixteen labs were referred to FBI investigators, who found no evidence of criminal activity. Four labs were referred to federal investigators; two involved repeated select-agent work outside of the registered lab. – Natalie Vestin: "Federal report discloses incidents in high-containment labs" , CIDRAP, Jul 01, 2016. Leading to the conclusion: The director of the CDC, Dr. Thomas Frieden, recently revealed that, in June 2014, CDC laboratory workers improperly handled and stored what turned out to be live anthrax and that earlier in the year, the deadly H5N1 (“bird flu”) influenza virus was inadvertently mixed with a far more benign influenza strain in a CDC laboratory and then shipped to an outside laboratory (3). Senior CDC officials were notified of that event only after the revelation of the anthrax accident. We have now learned that vials of smallpox virus labeled “1954” have been sitting for decades in a U.S. Food and Drug Administration laboratory in a red brick building at the heart of the NIH campus (4)— truly the stuff of science fiction movies. The risks in BSL-4 laboratories today are exponentially greater than those in my father’s laboratory long ago. They are immediate and extend not just to the laboratory workers and their families but also to surrounding communities—and, in the case of smallpox and genetically altered H5N1 influenza virus, the entire globe.
It is time to move past the fear created by the events of September 2001. We should suspend all research at BSL-4 laboratories until a thorough review of the CDC accidents can be completed. For the future, greatly limiting the number of BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories would probably better enable us to ensure their safety. We must contain the terror within. – Deborah Cotton: "Biocontainment Laboratories: Addressing the Terror Within" , 21 October 2014, Annals of Internal Medicine Volume 161 • Number 8. | {
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47,399 | On January 5th 2020, the World Health Organisation published a "Disease Outbreak News" article about a disease that was later to be called COVID-19. It states: Based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigation team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported. They repeated this statement in a tweet on January 14th, 2020 . We now know that human-to-human transmission of the virus behind COVID-19 is common. The WHO is under political attack from President Trump . The BBC investigated the claim - they gave background, but didn't seem to reach a clear conclusion. Was this statement true on January 5th? Was the assessment still accurate on January 14th? | The answer to this is going to opinion based to some extent. The WHO like everyone else was largely dependent on China for information at that point. Here's for example what the ECDC reported/concluded on Jan 17 : In China, 763 close contacts have been identified and monitored. Of these, 644 have completed the observation period, while 119 remain under medical observation. So far, none has tested positive for 2019-nCoV [7,10]. There are some later examples of (quite) insensitive Chinese tests see q on med SE , so Hanlon's razor probably applies here, not only to China but whomever else believed their test results. This info had to be counterbalanced against the clusters observed, from the ECDC report: Among the cases reported, two
small family clusters were identified. In one cluster, all three members of the family had attended the specific Wuhan
market before disease onset. In the other cluster, one member was the spouse of a salesman in the market. The WHO seems to have said something similar about the family clusters being a little troublesome, although seemingly just in a press conference, according to an answer on politics SE : According to the WHO COVID-19 Timeline 's entry for January 14th: Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove noted in a press briefing there had been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus (in the 41 confirmed cases), mainly through family members, and that there was a risk of a possible wider outbreak. Dr. Kerkhove noted that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given our experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. So it was a matter of balancing the overwhelmingly negative tests reported by China with the few epidemiological findings to the contrary. As that press conference suggests, not everyone inside the WHO was equally convinced of how to weigh these somewhat contrary findings coming from China. For comparison, here's what the US CDC was saying (Jan 17) based on the same reports: Chinese authorities additionally report that several hundred health care workers caring for outbreak patients are being monitored and no spread of this virus from patients to health care workers has been seen. They report no sustained spread of this virus in the community, however there are indications that some limited person-to-person spread may have occurred. So you can quibble about wording like "no significant" vs "limited" but it doesn't look like any major health authorities [outside China] could infer the magnitude of the problem at the time. Basically, the WHO, the ECDC and the US CDC were reading the same findings put out by China and coming to fairly similar conclusions in that Jan 14-17 time frame. Very long aside below, but hopefully insightful as to what was going on in China in those crucial days: AP news (April, 15) China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations. That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus. [...] It’s uncertain whether it was local officials who failed to report cases or national officials who failed to record them. It’s also not clear exactly what officials knew at the time in Wuhan, which only opened back up last week with restrictions after its quarantine. [...] Without these internal reports, it took the first case outside China, in Thailand on Jan. 13, to galvanize leaders in Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them. It was only then that they launched a nationwide plan to find cases — distributing CDC-sanctioned test kits, easing the criteria for confirming cases and ordering health officials to screen patients. They also instructed officials in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, to begin temperature checks at transportation hubs and cut down on large public gatherings. And they did it all without telling the public. The documents show that the head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials. A memo states that the teleconference was held to convey instructions on the coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, but does not specify what those instructions were. “The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major public health event,” the memo cites Ma as saying. The National Health Commission is the top medical agency in the country. In a faxed statement, the Commission said it had organized the teleconference because of the case reported in Thailand and the possibility of the virus spreading during New Year travel. It added that China had published information on the outbreak in an “open, transparent, responsible and timely manner,” in accordance with “important instructions” repeatedly issued by President Xi. The documents come from an anonymous source in the medical field who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. The AP confirmed the contents with two other sources in public health familiar with the teleconference. Some of the memo’s contents also appeared in a public notice about the teleconference, stripped of key details and published in February. Under a section titled “sober understanding of the situation,” the memo said that “clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible.” It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the situation had “changed significantly” because of the possible spread of the virus abroad. “With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high,” the memo continued. “All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic.” In the memo, Ma demanded officials unite around Xi and made clear that political considerations and social stability were key priorities during the long lead-up to China’s two biggest political meetings of the year in March. While the documents do not spell out why Chinese leaders waited six days to make their concerns public, the meetings may be one reason. The National Health Commission also distributed a 63-page set of instructions to provincial health officials, obtained by the AP. The instructions ordered health officials nationwide to identify suspected cases, hospitals to open fever clinics, and doctors and nurses to don protective gear. They were marked “internal” — “not to be spread on the internet,” “not to be publicly disclosed.” In public, however, officials continued to downplay the threat, pointing to the 41 cases public at the time. “We have reached the latest understanding that the risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low,” Li Qun, the head of the China CDC’s emergency center, told Chinese state television on Jan. 15. That was the same day Li was appointed leader of a group preparing emergency plans for the level one response, a CDC notice shows. [...] “They may not have said the right thing, but they were doing the right thing,” said Ray Yip, the retired founding head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s office in China. “On the 20th, they sounded the alarm for the whole country, which is not an unreasonable delay.” If health officials raise the alarm prematurely, it can damage their credibility — “like crying wolf” —and cripple their ability to mobilize the public, said Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. [...] [Earlier on, Chinese] officials obstructed medical staff who tried to report such cases. They set tight criteria for confirming cases, where patients not only had to test positive, but samples had to be sent to Beijing and sequenced. They required staff to report to supervisors before sending information higher, Chinese media reports show. And they punished doctors for warning about the disease. As a result, no new cases were reported for almost two weeks from Jan. 5, even as officials gathered in Wuhan for Hubei province’s two biggest political meetings of the year, internal China CDC bulletins confirm. During this period, teams of experts dispatched to Wuhan by Beijing said they failed to find clear signs of danger and human-to-human transmission. [...] The second [Beijing] expert team, dispatched on Jan. 8, similarly failed to unearth any clear signs of human-to-human transmission. Yet during their stay, more than half a dozen doctors and nurses had already fallen ill with the virus, a retrospective China CDC study published in the New England Journal of Medicine would later show. The teams looked for patients with severe pneumonia, missing those with milder symptoms. They also narrowed the search to those who had visited the seafood market — which was in retrospect a mistake, said Cowling, the Hong Kong epidemiologist, who flew to Beijing to review the cases in late January. [...] “I always suspected it was human-to-human transmissible,” said Wang Guangfa, the leader of the second expert team, in a Mar. 15 post on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. He fell ill with the virus soon after returning to Beijing on Jan. 16. When the Thai case was reported, health authorities finally drew up an internal plan to systematically identify, isolate, test, and treat all cases of the new coronavirus nationwide. Wuhan’s case count began to climb immediately — four on Jan. 17, then 17 the next day and 136 the day after. Across the country, dozens of cases began to surface, in some cases among patients who were infected earlier but had not yet been tested. In Zhejiang, for example, a man hospitalized on Jan. 4 was only isolated on Jan. 17 and confirmed positive on Jan. 21. Shenzhen, where Yuen had earlier found six people who tested positive, finally recorded its first confirmed case on Jan. 19. The Wuhan Union Hospital, one of the city’s best, held an emergency meeting on Jan. 18, instructing staff to adopt stringent isolation — still before Xi’s public warning. A health expert told AP that on Jan. 19, she toured a hospital built after the SARS outbreak, where medical workers had furiously prepared an entire building with hundreds of beds for pneumonia patients. “Everybody in the country in the infectious disease field knew something was going on,” she said, declining to be named to avoid disrupting sensitive government consultations. “They were anticipating it.” So yeah, as the WHO (and US CDC, ECDC) was/were repeating what China had said a few days prior, the Chinese authorities were themselves waking up to the true extent of the problem and gearing up the response... while not quite revealing it in public until the 20th or so. | {
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47,420 | The image below seems to be circulating on Facebook along with a text To give you an idea of the times we are living in, Twitter has been
flooded with hundreds of new accounts today. All have the NHS tag and a picture of a Nurse or doctor. All are
praising of the government and tweeting how they have lots of PPE and
stories otherwise are fake news. One problem. They are all commercial bot accounts. Take any of the
profile pictures and image search and you’ll find some poor Healthcare
worker who’s picture has been stolen. Like Mia the nurse who is now
‘NHS Susan, ‘ the Boris loving bot account. (The DHSC mentioned in the image would be the Department of Health and Social Care.) The "WestHertsNHS" respond here: https://twitter.com/WestHertsNHS/status/1252323058100178945 and seems to confirm a fake account has been taken down. The rest of the thread seems inconclusive. I've no idea how to investigate the truth of the assertions; presumably it's as easy for anyone wanting to discredit the government to set up fake twitter bots supportive of government policy - and then cry foul play - as it is for the government to actually use fake twitter bots if they wanted too. Can SE skeptics shine any more light on this? | The answer to this is going to opinion based to some extent. The WHO like everyone else was largely dependent on China for information at that point. Here's for example what the ECDC reported/concluded on Jan 17 : In China, 763 close contacts have been identified and monitored. Of these, 644 have completed the observation period, while 119 remain under medical observation. So far, none has tested positive for 2019-nCoV [7,10]. There are some later examples of (quite) insensitive Chinese tests see q on med SE , so Hanlon's razor probably applies here, not only to China but whomever else believed their test results. This info had to be counterbalanced against the clusters observed, from the ECDC report: Among the cases reported, two
small family clusters were identified. In one cluster, all three members of the family had attended the specific Wuhan
market before disease onset. In the other cluster, one member was the spouse of a salesman in the market. The WHO seems to have said something similar about the family clusters being a little troublesome, although seemingly just in a press conference, according to an answer on politics SE : According to the WHO COVID-19 Timeline 's entry for January 14th: Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove noted in a press briefing there had been limited human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus (in the 41 confirmed cases), mainly through family members, and that there was a risk of a possible wider outbreak. Dr. Kerkhove noted that human-to-human transmission would not be surprising given our experience with SARS, MERS and other respiratory pathogens. So it was a matter of balancing the overwhelmingly negative tests reported by China with the few epidemiological findings to the contrary. As that press conference suggests, not everyone inside the WHO was equally convinced of how to weigh these somewhat contrary findings coming from China. For comparison, here's what the US CDC was saying (Jan 17) based on the same reports: Chinese authorities additionally report that several hundred health care workers caring for outbreak patients are being monitored and no spread of this virus from patients to health care workers has been seen. They report no sustained spread of this virus in the community, however there are indications that some limited person-to-person spread may have occurred. So you can quibble about wording like "no significant" vs "limited" but it doesn't look like any major health authorities [outside China] could infer the magnitude of the problem at the time. Basically, the WHO, the ECDC and the US CDC were reading the same findings put out by China and coming to fairly similar conclusions in that Jan 14-17 time frame. Very long aside below, but hopefully insightful as to what was going on in China in those crucial days: AP news (April, 15) China didn’t warn public of likely pandemic for 6 key days In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations. That delay from Jan. 14 to Jan. 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus. [...] It’s uncertain whether it was local officials who failed to report cases or national officials who failed to record them. It’s also not clear exactly what officials knew at the time in Wuhan, which only opened back up last week with restrictions after its quarantine. [...] Without these internal reports, it took the first case outside China, in Thailand on Jan. 13, to galvanize leaders in Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them. It was only then that they launched a nationwide plan to find cases — distributing CDC-sanctioned test kits, easing the criteria for confirming cases and ordering health officials to screen patients. They also instructed officials in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, to begin temperature checks at transportation hubs and cut down on large public gatherings. And they did it all without telling the public. The documents show that the head of China’s National Health Commission, Ma Xiaowei, laid out a grim assessment of the situation on Jan. 14 in a confidential teleconference with provincial health officials. A memo states that the teleconference was held to convey instructions on the coronavirus from President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, but does not specify what those instructions were. “The epidemic situation is still severe and complex, the most severe challenge since SARS in 2003, and is likely to develop into a major public health event,” the memo cites Ma as saying. The National Health Commission is the top medical agency in the country. In a faxed statement, the Commission said it had organized the teleconference because of the case reported in Thailand and the possibility of the virus spreading during New Year travel. It added that China had published information on the outbreak in an “open, transparent, responsible and timely manner,” in accordance with “important instructions” repeatedly issued by President Xi. The documents come from an anonymous source in the medical field who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. The AP confirmed the contents with two other sources in public health familiar with the teleconference. Some of the memo’s contents also appeared in a public notice about the teleconference, stripped of key details and published in February. Under a section titled “sober understanding of the situation,” the memo said that “clustered cases suggest that human-to-human transmission is possible.” It singled out the case in Thailand, saying that the situation had “changed significantly” because of the possible spread of the virus abroad. “With the coming of the Spring Festival, many people will be traveling, and the risk of transmission and spread is high,” the memo continued. “All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic.” In the memo, Ma demanded officials unite around Xi and made clear that political considerations and social stability were key priorities during the long lead-up to China’s two biggest political meetings of the year in March. While the documents do not spell out why Chinese leaders waited six days to make their concerns public, the meetings may be one reason. The National Health Commission also distributed a 63-page set of instructions to provincial health officials, obtained by the AP. The instructions ordered health officials nationwide to identify suspected cases, hospitals to open fever clinics, and doctors and nurses to don protective gear. They were marked “internal” — “not to be spread on the internet,” “not to be publicly disclosed.” In public, however, officials continued to downplay the threat, pointing to the 41 cases public at the time. “We have reached the latest understanding that the risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low,” Li Qun, the head of the China CDC’s emergency center, told Chinese state television on Jan. 15. That was the same day Li was appointed leader of a group preparing emergency plans for the level one response, a CDC notice shows. [...] “They may not have said the right thing, but they were doing the right thing,” said Ray Yip, the retired founding head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s office in China. “On the 20th, they sounded the alarm for the whole country, which is not an unreasonable delay.” If health officials raise the alarm prematurely, it can damage their credibility — “like crying wolf” —and cripple their ability to mobilize the public, said Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong. [...] [Earlier on, Chinese] officials obstructed medical staff who tried to report such cases. They set tight criteria for confirming cases, where patients not only had to test positive, but samples had to be sent to Beijing and sequenced. They required staff to report to supervisors before sending information higher, Chinese media reports show. And they punished doctors for warning about the disease. As a result, no new cases were reported for almost two weeks from Jan. 5, even as officials gathered in Wuhan for Hubei province’s two biggest political meetings of the year, internal China CDC bulletins confirm. During this period, teams of experts dispatched to Wuhan by Beijing said they failed to find clear signs of danger and human-to-human transmission. [...] The second [Beijing] expert team, dispatched on Jan. 8, similarly failed to unearth any clear signs of human-to-human transmission. Yet during their stay, more than half a dozen doctors and nurses had already fallen ill with the virus, a retrospective China CDC study published in the New England Journal of Medicine would later show. The teams looked for patients with severe pneumonia, missing those with milder symptoms. They also narrowed the search to those who had visited the seafood market — which was in retrospect a mistake, said Cowling, the Hong Kong epidemiologist, who flew to Beijing to review the cases in late January. [...] “I always suspected it was human-to-human transmissible,” said Wang Guangfa, the leader of the second expert team, in a Mar. 15 post on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform. He fell ill with the virus soon after returning to Beijing on Jan. 16. When the Thai case was reported, health authorities finally drew up an internal plan to systematically identify, isolate, test, and treat all cases of the new coronavirus nationwide. Wuhan’s case count began to climb immediately — four on Jan. 17, then 17 the next day and 136 the day after. Across the country, dozens of cases began to surface, in some cases among patients who were infected earlier but had not yet been tested. In Zhejiang, for example, a man hospitalized on Jan. 4 was only isolated on Jan. 17 and confirmed positive on Jan. 21. Shenzhen, where Yuen had earlier found six people who tested positive, finally recorded its first confirmed case on Jan. 19. The Wuhan Union Hospital, one of the city’s best, held an emergency meeting on Jan. 18, instructing staff to adopt stringent isolation — still before Xi’s public warning. A health expert told AP that on Jan. 19, she toured a hospital built after the SARS outbreak, where medical workers had furiously prepared an entire building with hundreds of beds for pneumonia patients. “Everybody in the country in the infectious disease field knew something was going on,” she said, declining to be named to avoid disrupting sensitive government consultations. “They were anticipating it.” So yeah, as the WHO (and US CDC, ECDC) was/were repeating what China had said a few days prior, the Chinese authorities were themselves waking up to the true extent of the problem and gearing up the response... while not quite revealing it in public until the 20th or so. | {
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47,488 | The Pentagon recently released videos of UFOs taken by Navy pilots. According to this Guardian article , The Pentagon on Monday [27 April 2020] released three declassified videos that show US Navy pilots encountering what appear to be unidentified flying objects. (...) The videos had been “circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017”, the statement [from the Pentagon] said, adding that “the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’”. The video has been circulating since a little bit more than 10 years, and there are active groups of people whose hobby or job is to analyze this kind of video and try to identify the object. For example, the GEIPAN is an organization depending on the French National Agency that collects and analyzes testimonies of UFOs. After 10 years, is the object in the video still unidentified? | The difficulty with the question is "What does it mean to be identified?" These video were declassified in 2017 (they were already public), and explanations for them were quickly identified . The FLIR video is most likely a distant plane. [...] The GIMBAL video is also probably of a plane. [...] The GO-FAST video probably shows a balloon. [...] But that doesn't mean that the Navy will publish an official finding on the objects. These three videos are not as interesting as they seem and they have quite plausible explanations. The Navy probably arrived at similar conclusions - that these are simply unidentified aircraft, drones, or balloons - but because of the default operational secrecy regulations nobody can talk about it. And that opened the door to all this speculation. That is, even if reasonable explanations are found doesn't mean that such explanations will be published by the Navy and/or that they will be accepted by the adherents to the belief that aliens visit the Earth in spaceships. | {
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47,530 | According to this webpage , Madame de Sévigné wrote the following letter to her daughter (Madame de Grignan). Surtout, ma chère enfant, ne venez point à Paris ! Plus personne ne sort de peur de voir ce fléau s’abattre sur nous, il se propage comme un feu de bois sec. Le roi et Mazarin nous confinent tous dans nos appartements. Monsieur Vatel, qui reçoit ses charges de marée, pourvoie à nos repas qu'il nous fait livrer, Cela m’attriste, je me réjouissais d’aller assister aux prochaines représentations d’une comédie de Monsieur Corneille "Le Menteur", dont on dit le plus grand bien. Nous nous ennuyons un peu et je ne peux plus vous narrer les dernières intrigues à la Cour, ni les dernières tenues à la mode. Heureusement, je vois discrètement ma chère amie, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, nous nous régalons avec les Fables de Monsieur de La Fontaine, dont celle, très à propos, « Les animaux malades de la peste » ! « Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tous étaient frappés ». Je vous envoie deux drôles de masques ; c’est la grand'mode. tout le monde en porte à Versailles. C’est un joli air de propreté, qui empêche de se contaminer, Je vous embrasse, ma bonne, ainsi que Pauline. which Google Translate translates as: Above all, my dear child, do not come to Paris! No one goes out for fear of seeing this plague fall on us, it spreads like a fire in dry wood. The king and Mazarin confine us all in our apartments. Mr. Vatel, who receives his tide loads, provides our meals which he has delivered to us, It saddens me, I was excited to attend the upcoming performances of a comedy by Monsieur Corneille "The Liar", of which they say the best things.
We are bored a bit and I can no longer tell you about the latest court intrigues, or the latest fashionable outfits. Fortunately, I discreetly see my dear friend, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, we are enjoying the Fables of Monsieur de La Fontaine, including very aptly "The animals sick of the plague"! "Not all of them died, but all were struck." I send you two funny masks; this is the great fashion. Everyone wears them in Versailles. It’s a nice air of cleanliness, which prevents contamination. I kiss you, my dear, as well as Pauline. The punctuation is incorrect, which makes me feel like the original letter might be different. Also, the letter is strangely similar to the lockdown measures in response to Covid-19 today. Is the letter real? Is the entire letter as written originally? | It's hard to prove a negative, but here are some points against its authenticity: This 12-volume edition of Madame de Sévigné's letters doesn't have any letter dated 30 April 1687 (the date given in the link). My French isn't so good, but I didn't immediately see any mention of plague in the letters around that date. This shorter, searchable edition doesn't have any letter of that date either. The only hit for the word "fléau" is in a letter of 19 May 1676, and it appears to be in reference to a plague affecting the region where her daughter lives. The only hits for the name Vatel are from two letters of 24 and 26 April, 1671, telling of a butler named Vatel (without the honorific Monsieur) who had recently died. The only prominent person named Mazarin associated with French royalty seems to have been Cardinal Jules Mazarin , chief minister to two kings of France - but he died in 1661, and so could not have been keeping people in their apartments in 1687. I couldn't find any mention of any other notable person by that name. The date in the link is given as "Jeudi, le 30ème d'avril de 1687" (Thursday, 30th of April 1687). But 30 April 1687 was a Wednesday . (This is in the Gregorian calendar, which France had been using since 1582 ; and anyway, in the Julian calendar it would have been Saturday.) The other "dropped names" seem to be consistent as to dates. Le Menteur was a real play by Corneille, first performed in 1644. "The Animals Sick of the Plague" was a real fable by La Fontaine; it seems to have been in Book VII of his Fables, which according to Wikipedia was published in 1678. Madame de La Fayette lived from 1634 to 1693 and was indeed a friend of Madame de Sévigné. | {
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47,582 | From CNN Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, laid out "10 plain truths" about Covid-19 on Wednesday as he spoke at a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the pandemic response. [...] "Even now with deaths decreasing substantially, there are twice as many deaths from Covid-19 in New York City as there are on a usual day from all other causes combined ," Frieden said. Without getting into in-depth debates about how correctly those deaths are attributed to Covid-19, is what Frieden says correct, as far as the death statistics that have been recorded? There's no doubt excess mortality in NYC, as there is in similarly badly hit areas e.g. in Italy , but is the twice as many deaths attributed to Covid-19 as all other causes combined (at other times) true for NYC? | According to the New York Times , weekly deaths peaked around 7,000 in late March, whereas the average death rate was around 1,000. Reported COVID deaths for the period March 11-May 2 were around 18,000, whereas total deaths were around 23,000, 297% above normal. And, as can be seen from the chart, deaths still remain around 3,000. | {
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47,693 | George Biddell Airy was an English mathematician. He was Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881 According to the Bessler Wheel web-site (a site dedicated to investigationg perpetual motion machines, Airy wrote the paper titled On certain Conditions under which a Perpetual Motion is possible , published in Cambridge Philosophical Transactions, December 14, 1829. They provide scans of the paper: It is well known that perpetual motion is not possible with
any Laws of force with which we are acquainted. The impossibility depends on the integrability per se of the expression Xdx + Ydy + Zdz : and as in all the forces of which we have
an accurate knowledge this expression is a complete differential,
it follows that perpetual motion is incompatible with those forces. But it is here supposed that, the law of the force being
given, the magnitude of the force acting at any instant depends on the
position, at that instant, of the body on which it acts.
If however the magnitude of the force should depend not on
the position of the body at the instant of the force's. action, but
on its position at some time preceding that action, the theorem
that we have stated would no longer be true. It might happen
that, every time that the body returned to the same position, its
velocity would be less than at the preceding time: in this case
the body's motion would ultimately be destroyed. On the contrary it might happen, that the body's velocity in any position I am skeptical that this was originally written by Airy because of its impenetrable style and it is apparently nonsense. Was this paper written by Airy? | The claim that George Biddell Airy wrote a paper titled “On certain Conditions under which Perpetual Motion is possible” which was published in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society is true. The full text of the (short) paper can be read on Google Books . The claim that this is a “rigorous mathematical proof of the theoretical possibility of perpetual motion” is a stretch. Airy's paper is an investigation into a mathematical model. Airy does not claim that perpetual motion is physically possible. He merely investigates under what conditions one particular mathematical model would lead to a situation where a “machine might move with uniform velocity, and might at the same time do work : which is commonly understood to be the meaning of the term perpetual motion ”. Note that this isn't exactly what perpetual motion means in modern terms: perpetual motion is about creating energy. Airy's definition only takes some forms of energy into account (kinetic energy in the motion of the machine, and the “work” performed by the machine, but not necessarily, for example, electromagnetic forces). Airy analyses a physical system and states that it obeys a certain mathematical equation. He analyses the possible solutions and concludes that, under a certain assumption (“on the supposition that g is small”) I shall only remark that if c√e be less than π , the arc of vibration increases continually. Airy does not claim that it is physically possible for c√e to be less than π and that this would be compatible with the assumption that g is small. Furthermore, even if the arc of vibration increases continually, this might not be perpetual motion. It is possible that the analysis was missing some of the forces through which energy can be transferred. Airy does not clearly state whether he believes that the analysis of forces is complete. | {
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47,707 | This was spurred from a recent related question. I started looking into whether male chicks are ground up. It makes sense that they are, but I'm having a hard time finding conclusive evidence. Many egg farming operations macerate the male chicks. This is a seemingly innocuous word that literally means the male chicks get ground up alive. Sentient Media: Egg Farming France on Tuesday promised to outlaw the grisly practice of grinding up male chicks as soon as they’ve hatched, becoming the latest country to take a stand against an industry-wide procedure known as culling. Washington Post: France says its poultry industry will stop shredding male chicks alive by 2022 How are agriculture industry standards, especially in industrialized countries, found? What is a source of good authority that basically says or shows statistically the number of farms that cull male chicks? (I found a few research papers, but they were blocked by paywalls.) Also, I realize the question title says 'most' while the first quote says 'many'. Although, just briefly looking into the egg/chick industry, I found that most animals are intensively farmed (otherwise known as factory farmed). Deductively, I take this to mean "most" is valid enough. | The early to mid 1900s saw the division of chickens into breeds that produced lots of eggs versus breeds that produced lots of tasty meat. Males of the first type (egg layers) obviously don't lay eggs, and they don't grow large enough to produce lots of tasty meat. It costs factory farmers much, much more in terms of feed and real estate to raise those subpar male chicks to a stage where they can yield even a small amount of substandard meat than it does to simply get rid of them shortly after they hatch (and their sex is determined). So they get rid of them. The specific mechanism used varies with country, but the end result is the same: male chicks of the egg-laying breeds do not live long after hatching. The European Union recommends that gassing young male chicks is the most humane approach while the US recommends instantaneous crushing young male chicks is the most humane approach. There are moves afoot to sex the fertile eggs of egg-laying chicken breeds before the eggs hatch and destroy the male-containing eggs before they hatch, but it is arguable whether this is a difference that makes any difference. The eggs that contain male embryos will still be destroyed. | {
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47,722 | I stumbled upon this website: https://unnwo.org/ . The United Nations New World Order Project is a global, high-level initiative founded in 2008 to advance a new economic paradigm, a new political order, and more broadly, a new world order for humankind, which achieves the UN’s Global Goals for Sustainable Development by 2030, and the happiness, well-being, and freedom of all life on Earth by 2050. It appears to be branded like a United Nations web-site, but the contents sound a bit like conspiracy fodder . The first time the Wayback Machine crawled it was in 2018 (its copyright is from 2009-2020, supposedly), but it hasn't been taken down in these two years, so my doubts remain. Is this website affiliated with the United Nations? | According to a press briefing published on the official un.org , the website is not associated with the UN: **Unaffiliated Website And just to note that over the weekend, I’ve been receiving a lot of questions from different journalists about a website for a something called the United Nations New World Order project. I just want to state and say this very clearly that this project and website is in no way sanctioned by the United Nations. | {
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47,727 | Donald Trump, citing Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade, made a claim in the following tweet “I don’t see any indication that there were any white supremest groups mixing in. This is an ANTIFA Organization. It seems that the first time we saw it in a major way was Occupy Wall Street. It’s the same mindset.”
@kilmeade @foxandfriends
TRUE! Given the widespread media coverage of the protests, including video documentation and multiple group organizations joining in, were white supremacist groups at protest sites? | According to the NY Times : Members of hate groups or far-right organizations filmed themselves, sometimes heavily armed or waving extremist symbols, at demonstrations in at least 20 cities in recent days, from Boston to Buffalo to Richmond, Va., to Dallas to Salem, Ore. Note that this is evidence that they were "at the protest sites" but not much else. Intentions to incite civil war are widely documented online, but I'm not seeing strong evidence that they are directly involved in anything like looting or property damage. | {
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47,745 | Derek Chauvin had 17 complaints on record when he killed George Floyd. I have seen many articles, including this NYT article , which use this statistic as evidence that the whole department is corrupt. I don't discount that possibility, but it seems likely to me that every police officer, good or bad, would have many complaints. Every criminal they bust has a strong motive to file a complaint; there is a chance that the complaint will stick and will lead to them being acquitted. So is the number of complaints a good measure of how abusive a police officer or department is? I'm not saying Chauvin is innocent, just taking issue with NYT's extrapolation about the complaint numbers. | The association between the complaints against an officer and the bad behaviour of an officer is complicated, but, yes, there is a relationship. Lersch, K. M. (2002). Are Citizen Complaints Just Another Measure of Officer Productivity? An Analysis of Citizen Complaints and Officer Activity Measures . Police Practice and Research, 3(2), 135–147. doi:10.1080/15614260290033639 This study looked at the productivity of officers - e.g. how many traffic citations, arrests for felonies, arrests for misdemeanors, made per day, and compared it to the number of complaints. They found a statistically significant correlation, but it was a weak one.* So, being "hungry" to seek out crime and criminals (as one high ranking officer they interviewed put it) may lead to slightly more complaints. They also found young and inexperienced officers were more likely to get complaints. *) According to Table II in the article, the total number of complaints was found to be positively correlated at a p < 0.01 two-tailed significance level with the mean number of felony arrests ( Pearson correlation coefficient r = 0.327), misdemeanor arrests ( r = 0.239), traffic citations ( r = 0.178) and offense reports ( r = 0.179), and at a p < 0.05 level with the mean number of field interview reports ( r = 0.128), juvenile status arrests ( r = 0.152) and no-report incidents ( r = 0.142). Rozema, Kyle, and Max Schanzenbach. 2019. Good Cop, Bad Cop: Using Civilian Allegations to Predict Police Misconduct. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 11 (2): 225-68. This looked to see whether the number of allegations against officers was predictive of the number of lawsuits in which the officers were named and the amount the lawsuits paid out in damages We find a strong relationship between allegations and
future civil rights litigation, especially for the very worst officers.
The worst 1 percent of officers, as measured by civilian allegations,
generate almost 5 times the number of payouts and over 4 times the
total damage payouts in civil rights litigation. So, it seems the number of allegations against an officer is a reasonable measure, but not a perfect measure, that the department will one day be successfully sued because of the officer's behaviour. I note, with frustration, that the original NYT article gave very little to compare the number "17" against. I could see nothing in the article that would tell the reader whether 17 was a very high number, that should have alerted the appropriate authorities that there was a problem, or actually a very low number compared to officers with similar experience, or something in between. | {
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47,747 | There is a popular Youtube video, Priest Debunks Common Catholic Myths , in which Casey Cole, a Catholic and Franciscan, "debunks" the idea that the church wrongly tried Galileo. The Church certainly held a trial against Calilio and stripped him of his teaching faculties. That happened. But not because it didn't like science - it was because Galileo didn't. The issue with Galileo was that he was teaching in schools what he could not yet prove, the very antithesis of scientific enquiry. Does the above claim have any merit? I guess this can be broken down into two questions: Did Galileo teach scientific theories which were not yet proven? Was this the nature of the crime for which Galileo was charged? I doubt these claims very much, especially the second one. | The association between the complaints against an officer and the bad behaviour of an officer is complicated, but, yes, there is a relationship. Lersch, K. M. (2002). Are Citizen Complaints Just Another Measure of Officer Productivity? An Analysis of Citizen Complaints and Officer Activity Measures . Police Practice and Research, 3(2), 135–147. doi:10.1080/15614260290033639 This study looked at the productivity of officers - e.g. how many traffic citations, arrests for felonies, arrests for misdemeanors, made per day, and compared it to the number of complaints. They found a statistically significant correlation, but it was a weak one.* So, being "hungry" to seek out crime and criminals (as one high ranking officer they interviewed put it) may lead to slightly more complaints. They also found young and inexperienced officers were more likely to get complaints. *) According to Table II in the article, the total number of complaints was found to be positively correlated at a p < 0.01 two-tailed significance level with the mean number of felony arrests ( Pearson correlation coefficient r = 0.327), misdemeanor arrests ( r = 0.239), traffic citations ( r = 0.178) and offense reports ( r = 0.179), and at a p < 0.05 level with the mean number of field interview reports ( r = 0.128), juvenile status arrests ( r = 0.152) and no-report incidents ( r = 0.142). Rozema, Kyle, and Max Schanzenbach. 2019. Good Cop, Bad Cop: Using Civilian Allegations to Predict Police Misconduct. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 11 (2): 225-68. This looked to see whether the number of allegations against officers was predictive of the number of lawsuits in which the officers were named and the amount the lawsuits paid out in damages We find a strong relationship between allegations and
future civil rights litigation, especially for the very worst officers.
The worst 1 percent of officers, as measured by civilian allegations,
generate almost 5 times the number of payouts and over 4 times the
total damage payouts in civil rights litigation. So, it seems the number of allegations against an officer is a reasonable measure, but not a perfect measure, that the department will one day be successfully sued because of the officer's behaviour. I note, with frustration, that the original NYT article gave very little to compare the number "17" against. I could see nothing in the article that would tell the reader whether 17 was a very high number, that should have alerted the appropriate authorities that there was a problem, or actually a very low number compared to officers with similar experience, or something in between. | {
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47,752 | trumptweet : So pathetic to watch the Fake News Lamestream Media playing down the gravity and depravity of the Radical Left, looters and thugs, ripping up our Liberal Democrat run (only) cities. It is almost like they are all working together? Not being an American, I am unsure what "Liberal Democrat run cities" are. I will guess those having a Democrat mayor, but am willing to be corrected. Irrespective of your politics and whether you call them protests or riots, are there currently "large street gatherings" only in Democrat run (only) cities? [Update] I have found These are all the cities where protests and riots have erupted over George Floyd’s death , but don't know whether all/any of them are "Liberal Democrat run cities". | No. Cities are generally democrat-leaning - 35 with democratic mayors vs 13 republican in the 50 largest cities . But cities with republican mayors also had protests which resulted in property damage. An incomplete list of examples: Looters smash windows, rob stores in downtown San Diego : "Business owners Monday will assess the damages done by looters who broke into downtown San Diego stores after police broke up a protest ostensibly held to seek justice for George Floyd [...] Police used tear gas and flash-bang grenades against protesters and issued an unlawful assembly order in the area of Broadway, downtown, due to escalating violence." Jacksonville police monitoring ‘hot spots’ across town after riots : "rioters [...] clashed with police downtown" George Floyd death: The cities where people are protesting and rioting : "Peaceful protests in Oklahoma City on Sunday turned violent, as officials declared a state of emergency due to violence downtown." Governor addresses riots and coronavirus concerns : "Governor Pete Ricketts discussed the weekend protests and riots in Lincoln and Omaha " Local officials in Florida brace for violence : "After a rash of rioting Saturday in Miami " | {
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47,753 | There are dozens of articles out there like this one which states that Trump ordered the use of tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters so he could do a photoshoot. However I recently read that reporter Neal Augenstein (whom I am otherwise unfamiliar with) send out a series of tweets that read: First on WTOP: U.S. Park Police is explaining its decision-making in clearing Lafayette Square, at least 20 minutes before DC's 7p curfew, on night 4 of protests. A source says tear gas was never used -- instead smoke cannisters were deployed, which don't have an uncomfortable irritant in them. And, the source says Park Police didn't know President Trump would be walking across the park several minutes later. Park Police say the reason the crowd was disbursed [sic] with smoke cannisters is that at that moment, officers were being pelted with water bottles. Another factor was that protesters had climbed on top of the structure at the north end of Lafayette Square that had been burned the day before. Obviously, this is Park Police's side of the story. I'll be checking with @wtop reporters who were on the scene last night, to plug-in what they observed with what Park Police are telling me. Park Police will be releasing a statement later today. Obviously folks in the White House will be asked today about the President's walk across Lafayette Square to St. John's Episcopal Church. But, my Park Police source says the agency made its decision to use smoke cannisters at that moment because of what was being thrown at officers, not because President Trump planned to make an unannounced walk to the church. Park Police will be releasing a statement later today. We will keep asking questions. In theory it's possible another agency used tear gas, in addition to Park Police using smoke cannisters, but my source was on the scene, got a dose of smoke, but didn't feel the irritants of tear gas. Clearly, the phrase "tear gas" has been used widely in the reporting and I'm continuing to try to learn who used what. Will keep you in the loop. Trump also tweeted : Media Falsely Claimed Violent Riots Were Peaceful And That Tear Gas Was Used Against Rioters So what I got out of this is that the gas being used was just smoke and not gas and that it was not Trump that gave the order, but someone else. Is this correct? | I think there are three issues here: 1) Was 'tear gas' used? 2) Who ordered the attack? 3) Why did they order it? Was 'tear gas' used? According to the Parks Police smoke canisters and pepper balls were used (see also here ) (more specifically, OC gas 1 was used). At least the CDC considers those among the umbrella term 'tear gas' (while the Park Police does not). Who ordered it? I don't think anyone claims that Trump personally ordered the attack on protesters. Instead it has been reported that it was ordered by William Barr : Two federal law enforcement officials told the newspaper that Barr and other officials made the decision late Sunday or early Monday to extend the perimeter around Lafayette Square [...] Barr found the perimeter had not yet been extended Monday afternoon and ordered law enforcement officials to complete the extension Why did they order it? The internal motivations of people are not really on-topic here. But the claim by the Park Police that the attack was a response to bricks and 'caustic liquids' being thrown is disputed by multiple media outlets who witnessed the event, by the mayor and district attorney , and by the fact that the decision to clear the park was made beforehand. [1] The link is geo-restricted. This is a tweet by the author of the article. The full article is archived as well. | {
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47,754 | According to Granta - Violence in Blue , One-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police. Is this true? | To a reasonable approximation this appears to be true, provided we restrict ourselves to deliberate killings, although one quarter may be a more accurate figure . The total number of murders in the US for 2018 is 15,498, according to the FBI , and this roughly agrees with data from other sources. The US Department of Justice says that approximately 80% of murder victims know their killers, meaning that around 3100 people were murdered by strangers. Recent statistics for police killings are harder to come by, but various sources indicate a rate of around 1100 for the years 2015 and 2016, and no indication that this would have changed significantly in 2018. Statista gives 967 people shot to death by police in 2018, but excludes those killed in other ways (George Floyd would not be included). It includes all killings, not just murders. Taking 1100 police killings and 3100 people murdered by strangers, then we can conclude that the number of people killed by the police is about one third of the number of people murdered by strangers. We are neglecting here any people killed by strangers that are not murders, such as gun or vehicle accidents or self-defense killings. This is not exactly the claim being made, but it is probably where the figure comes from. A better calculation would be to consider not just the number of stranger murders but also the number of justifiable homicides (e.g. self-defense killings). The police killings already include justifiable homicides, and there are around 300 justifiable homicides by private citizens a year giving us about 4600 deliberate killings by strangers, of which just under one quarter were killed by police. Note that most police killings are considered justified, which means that far less than a quarter of people murdered by strangers were murdered by police. For comparison the same calculation for the UK gives a figure of about 1 in 200. | {
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47,809 | In Last Week Tonight of June 8th, 2020, John Oliver mentions that 1 in 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by the police.
At 5:05 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4cea5oObY I have tracked the source to Edwards, Lee & Esposito, 2019, "Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex", PNAS, https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 This numbers seems surprisingly high, but I am not well equipped to assess the validity of the method used in the research cited above. Is this statistic in line with reality? | The statement by John Oliver that "1 in 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by the police" is supported by research of the highest calibre. There is a peer reviewed paper in one of the most reputable journals in the world, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that states exactly that. We use data on police-involved deaths to estimate how the risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States varies across social groups. We estimate the lifetime and age-specific risks of being killed by police by race and sex. We also provide estimates of the proportion of all deaths accounted for by police use of force. Risk is highest for black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the life course. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. I am aware that the study was mentioned in the question. That does not change its quality or reliability. | {
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47,821 | Today on Twitter, Trump has made a claim that a 75-year old man previously filmed being pushed and falling to the pavement by police might be an ANTIFA provocateur . Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment.
@OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up? Several news sources have carried the story, but thus far the only source cited for the theory is OANN - which seems to show the man waving a cellphone-like device at the police . Setting the man's affiliation with any groups aside - is there any credible supporting evidence that the man was attempting to instigate a confrontation, or that he was planning to 'set up' the police force? | As the other answer states, the source of the initial claim can be traced back as follows: Trump's Twitter, which he wrote after a segment of "@OANN I watched"... That OANN segment cites.. An anonymous blog post at " Conservative Treehouse ", which itself cites... An anonymous YouTube video " Martin Gugino Attempting A Drive-By-NFC-Hack To Obtain Personal Information From The Buffalo Police " and anonymous Twitter thread The video shows Martin Gugino holding his phone below eyeline and facing it towards the faces of the police. Police have not described this cell phone activity as a provocation. The Twitter thread is incoherent. It describes how an IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) number might be captured by standing outside a home and given to the police to help them obtain a warrant. This has nothing to do with waving a phone at police. According to the EFF , cell phone signals can only be tracked by cell towers, or by a "technically sophisticated organization" capable of simulating a cell tower, which would require at the very least a $30,000 device much larger than the cell phone the man was holding. The video claims something even stranger, that he is capturing the phone's NFC (near-field communication) signal. This is a chip inside modern credit cards and cell phones used for touch-to-pay. The police have not claimed that this man was reading NFC data, and the phone would have to be much closer to obtain such data. Even if such data was captured through a hitherto unknown NFC spy app, it would be the equivalent of the police officer's credit card , not any secret police information. Both of these technical allegations lack the supporting evidence to be the most plausible theory. The Occam's Razor explanation is that Martin Gugino was pointing his phone at the police because he was filming them ; furthermore that the police knocked him over and that he was admitted to the hospital in critical condition, where he remains as of June 11, 2020. (update) On June 12, 2020 it was announced that Gugino is conscious but has sustained permanent brain damage . | {
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47,850 | Fact Slides has a slide that claims: A single human male produces enough sperm in two weeks to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet. It sources a book of random facts Is it true? | Theoretically that is rough-ballpark-correct. But that is assuming that you would need only one sperm per woman, which is unrealistic. Using the... erm... "normal" way, not every sperm finds its way to the ovum, if there is a (fertile) ovum to be found. That is why males produce so many of them. It's a shotgun approach by evolution; the most mobile, healthiest sperm has the highest chance to "get there" first. In-vitro fertilization does not have a 100% "hit rate" either; actually quite far from it. Then there is the issue of how many woman on earth are fertile in the first place, and getting a number of those would include a lot of guesswork as well. Which reduces the question to a more theoretical, "how long does an average male take to produce as many sperms as there are women on Earth" . We have somewhere between 7 and 8 billion people on earth, so very roughly speaking 4 billion women. (For a more detailed cracking down on that number, check fyrepenguin's answer .) How many sperms a man produces per day is of course also just a ballpark figure. Two sources I found ad hoc : 290 million per day 1500 per second (amounting to 129.6 million per day) So for 4 billion sperms, that would be 13.8 to 30.9 days, given these numbers. | {
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47,874 | The following extract is from Tristan Needham's Visual Complex Analysis, Even in 1770 the situation was still sufficiently confused that it was possible for so great a mathematician as Euler to mistakenly argue that √-2 √-3 = √6. I found this to be a bit far fetched. A simple Google search doesn't return anything. Is this claim true? | Euler did write this, but it was not a mistake! Euler's statement was correct under his own definition of the notation that he was using. I looked at the PDF version of Elements of Algebra linked to in SCappella's answer . Reading Section I, Chapter XIII, I found that Euler wrote that most numbers have two square roots, which matches the definition of the phrase "square root" used by today's mathematicians [1] . He also wrote that the square root sign √ denotes both square roots, which does not match the definition of √ used by today's mathematicians [2] , but which is not actually incorrect. Here's what he wrote: We have before observed, that the square root of
any number has always two values, one positive and the
other negative; that √4, for example, is both +2 and
-2, and that, in general, we may take -√a as well as
+√a for the square root of a. This remark applies also
to imaginary numbers; the square root of -a is both
+√-a and -√-a; but we must not confound the
signs + and -, which are before the radical sign √, with
the sign which comes after it. (Actually, the above does contain an error. Euler claims that every number has two square roots; in fact, every number has two square roots except for 0, which only has one square root, which is 0. Source at [3] .) Negative numbers have two square roots, one of which has positive imaginary component and the other of which has negative imaginary component. Nowadays, mathematicians use √ to mean only one or the other according to some rule [2] , but we can see that to Euler, it would have meant either square root. In particular, Euler considered √6 to mean either the positive or the negative square root of 6. So, in Euler's notation, the equation (√-2)(√-3) = √6 meant "either square root of -2 times either square root of -3 is a square root of 6", which is completely true [4] . Some of today's mathematicians would interpret (√-2)(√-3) = √6 as being meaningless, because they decline to give the expression √-2 and the expression √-3 any definition at all [5] . I think other mathematicians would interpret it as meaning "the square root of -2 with positive imaginary component ( i √2), times the square root of -3 with positive imaginary component ( i √3), is the positive square root of 6", which is a false statement [6] —but which is also a misreading of what Euler wrote. References and proofs: [1]: Weisstein, Eric W. " Square Root ." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. "A square root of x is a number r such that r^2=x." [2]: Ibid. "The principal square root of a [complex] number z is denoted √z [...]." The source does not include a definition of "the principal square root", but does make it clear that it is a function, meaning that it has only one value. [3]: Ibid. "Any nonzero complex number z also has two square roots." [4]: Proof: Suppose that x is a square root of -2 and y is a square root of -3. Then, by the definition of a square root, x 2 = -2 and y 2 = -3. As a consequence, ( xy ) 2 = x 2 y 2 = (-2) (-3) = 6. This means, by the definition of a square root, that xy is a square root of 6. [5]: Denis Nardin 's comment on this answer: "[I]n all my (admittedly short) career as a mathematician I never encountered a definition of $\sqrt{-2}$: in general it is considered an ill posed symbol (sort of like $0/0$, if you want)." [6]: I wasn't able to find a source for the definition of the principal square root of a negative number. However, it would be extraordinarily strange to define √-2 and √-3 as anything besides i √2 and i √3, respectively. (The only alternative would be to define √-2 as - i √2 or to define √-3 as - i √3, which would be inconsistent with the definition of √-1 as i rather than - i .) We have, thus, (√-2)(√-3) = ( i √2)( i √3) = i 2 (√2)(√3) = -(√2)(√3) = -√6, which is negative, whereas √6 is positive. | {
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47,885 | This quote appeared on my Facebook feed. It was attributed to Margaret Sanger who founded the organization that later became Planned Parenthood. "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it" Did Margaret Sanger say or write this? It was a pro-life anti-Left post. | Indeed she did. The full quote comes from her 1920 book Woman and the New Race , and is as follows: The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. The quote isn't about abortion - Sanger was actually opposed to abortion, except in cases where it would save the woman's life - but about ensuring you don't have more children than you can afford to look after comfortably. Sanger's autobiography includes the following leaflet that she distributed ahead of the opening of her first birth control clinic: MOTHERS! Can you afford to have a large family? Do you not want any more children? If not, why do you have them? DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT As the original claim attempts to draw a link between Sanger's views and the modern-day Planned Parenthood, it should be noted that Planned Parenthood now disavow a number of Sanger's views. | {
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47,906 | Today, I saw a tweet with an image that claims to contain the answer of Neil Armstrong to a teacher that was skeptical of the moon landing (see below). Of course it's not the image of a real letter, that's not the point. It's about the content. What made me suspicious is the phrase "Or you could get on the net and find …" . There's no date, the letter could be from a time when the Internet did exist but the whole "feeling" of the letter makes me think it was written a few years after Apollo 11, at the latest. So either the phrase is a saying I as a non-native speaker am not aware of, or it does refer to the Internet which would make this even more suspicious to me. I tried finding the letter online elsewhere but only ended up finding the same tweet again. So, did Neil Armstrong write such a letter to a teacher? | The Twitter thread gives an explicit source for this letter, 'A Reluctant Icon: Letters to Neil Armstrong'. by James R. Hansen. This book exists, from Purdue University Press, ISBN 9781557539694 The publisher's blurb says: Artfully curated by James R. Hansen, A Reluctant Icon: Letters to Neil Armstrong is a companion volume to Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters to the First Man from All Mankind, collecting hundreds more letters Armstrong received after first stepping on the moon until his death in 2012. I also found an extract online here which includes the notice: The majority of the letters featured in this volume are from the Neil A. Armstrong papers in the Barron Hilton Flight and Space Exploration Archives, Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. This is expanded on in the preface, which discusses the editor's previous work writing an authorised biography of Armstrong, and how Armstrong's papers were subsequently donated to Purdue University (where Armstrong studied) and form the basis of these two volumes. This is corroborated by a quick online search, e.g. a letter to the New York Times and Fox News . The table of contents lists an entire chapter on "Quacks, conspiracy theorists, and UFOlogists" spanning pages 55 to 106. | {
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47,917 | Facebook recently removed an advert for Donald Trump's re-election campaign that prominently featured an image of an inverted red triangle. Nazi Germany used an almost identical symbol to label communists and other political opponents, and the advert was thus deemed to contain a "hate symbol", in violation of Facebook's policies. In response, Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh claimed the symbol was used not for its Nazi connotations, but because the Antifa movement (which the advert strongly criticised) uses the symbol: The inverted red triangle is a symbol used by antifa, so it was included in an ad about antifa. I recognise that this may be a difficult question to answer, due to the nebulous nature of Antifa and the possibility of false flag accounts muddying the waters. However, I do believe it's possible that some Antifa members, aware of the symbol's historic meaning, have co-opted it. Are there any documented instances of Antifa members using an inverted red triangle as an identifying symbol? | It can be found in that context. But it is surely not the most recognisable symbol for Antifa in the US. The usual historical explanation first: 'Antifa' means primarily 'anti-fascist', a thing the US was proud to be, officially – not that long ago. ( src1 D-Day , src2 Operaion Bagration second source needed for accuracy. Click on smallest pictures throughout answer for larger versions.) As the campaigner tried to explain on twitter with a more elaborate version of downward 'red triangle', it is found occasionally in an antifa-context: Design details: Inverted red triangle, anti-fascist symbol, with the word ANTIFA
Tags: social rights, anti racism, anti nazi, human rights, inverted red triangle, freedom, antifa, rights, justice, anti nazis, anti-fascist triangle, equality, anti racist, No Trump, antifascist, against right, against fascism, socialism, red triangle, anti-fascist movement, peace, communism, demonstration, social justice, movement – Spreadshirt: Posters "Antifa" by Jevaz archived . Note that this vendor/designer claims to be from Spain and seems to also promote anti-fascism and feminism on his shirts. This would make uploading this just in response to allegations against the campaign quite an elaborate cover-up. But it's also claimed that the designer joined only two weeks ago , without further proof on dating this occurrence. This is said one may be online solely in response to these news. This uncertainty in the timeline would be the weakest point of this answer — and it is almost the weakest point of the response from the campaign as sole evidence for prior use. The designer of this particular image is himself on Twitter and had this to say for dating the particularly 'quoted by campaign' design: Hi. It's a design I recently created to market on a print sales platform. The inverted red triangle that is creating so much controversy is an anti-fascist symbol that has its origin in the way concentration camp prisoners are marked. 2:36 am · 19 Jun 2020 [my emphasis, LLC] Since Twitter is an unreliable platform, from his account: Yesterday a Trump affiliated account used my #Antifa design with a red triangle inverted and I was accused of being in the service of Trump's campaign, nothing more far be it from my intention that to seem affiliated with Trump or to offend the #Antifa movement. Today is a symbol used by many #antifascist groups and politicians although it seems that in the USA it is not yet very widespread. But apparently the Spanish designer Jevaz used the red triangle design element in this context at least as early as May 21, promoting it on Twitter. (Design 'Feminista' with text: "I think therefore I'm anti-fascist"). And in fact the German version of this Spreadshirt store has customer reviews for this design and designer from as early as 12. Januar 2018 Sehr schönes Shirt mit tollem Motiv, fällt allerdings etwas zu eng aus, vor allem an den Ärmeln. Daher empfehle ich eine Größe mehr zu bestellen. Although it is not the only use of that symbol anyway, most often 'documented prior art': A shirt design matching the ad campaign would then be — CafePress: Red Triangle Gifts But the actual product page seems to experience a few difficulties right now. However, there are more of those, elsewhere, and definitely prior to the campaign: – Antifascist Red Triangles (antifa left symbol) Sticker
Designed by reydefine To claim like the campaign that this would be the symbol, or even a really common one – in the US – seems to not have been true. This changed obviously in a reverse-Streisand now. In Europe, this is different. The red triangle as such was used in May First strikes in Paris in 1890 and has become a symbol of resistance to far right ideas, especially in Belgium. Like so: – Triangle rouge, Les Territoires de la Mémoire It is also the logo of the Ras l'front network in France. (WP: Triangle rouge ). The description for that network then reads as follows: The purpose of this organisation was to create and stimulate a "movement of resistance and vigilance" against "fascism". It was aimed at citizens, associations, trade unions and political parties in order to combat the National Front, its allies and parties considered to be defending the same ideas. This network wants to be independent, both politically and financially [ref. necessary]. It is composed of autonomous collectives, and thus acts locally. (WP) Such symbol usage as used for an antifa conference in 2018 Amsterdam: For the local antifa group in Utrecht , notice that all others seem to prefer different symbols , and the now often mentioned Vrije Bond (Free Union) : Or another conference, in 2015 Munich: – Antifant: Podiumsdiskussion zu Antifa und Organisierung 29. Oktober 2015 And perhaps the best known usage of this symbolism, if not the prior origin of using this symbol, again, before the Nazis used this for prisoners: – Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (El Lissitzky): "Клином красным бей белых!” ("Klinom krasnym bey belykh! — Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge " This was then used as inspiration in 2017 after Charlottesville: – Shama Rangwala: "Links in the Wake of Charlottesville" In the UK Anti-Fascist Action seems to have used this, uploaded in 2016: Badges that reads ” Anti Fascist Action” As part of our office clear-out, volunteers found a huge cache of campaigning postcards and badges mainly from the 1980s and some even earlier. Sometimes it's said on Twitter this would be an isolated occurrence that should not be used as evidence in this debate. Isolated, it is perhaps not so much, as the following image was uploaded under the name of 'Antifa-Keil' (Antifa wedge): – "Leo Trotzki über Faschismus" , Der Funke, 25.01.2017 This wedge is even part of that paper's logo. A book from 1980 uses the following cover: — Wolfgang Abendroth, Walter Kreck, Reinhard Opitz & Max Oppenheimer: "Wie Faschismus entsteht - und verhindert wird. Materialien vom Antifaschistischen Kongreß Mannheim", Röderberg, 1980. Also in London we could see this version of red triangle as used in 2015: – Anti-Fascist Network: "Update on anti-fascist mobilisations this Saturday" , 1.7.2015. That still doesn't make any triangle the most widely used and most recognisable symbol of/for 'Antifa'. That would look like a bit more in line of those found in this picture: – Gregg Re: "Portland, Oregon, pulls out of FBI terrorism task force, following San Francisco's lead" , Fox News, February 13, 2019. Antifa isn't a closely organised single group. There is no central structure. As such the single groups may choose any branding for themselves they like best. 'Two flags', '3 arrows', perhaps a 'fist, smashing things', 'hammer and sickle', even a 'swastika, but struck out'. That makes describing any of these antifa groups via one symbol quite complicated. — Eva Steibl: "Antifaschistischer Spaziergang" , uploaded November 14, 2018. The East-German Kommittee der Antifaschistischen Widerstandskämpfer used this: — Pin Triángulo Rojo - Condición Nuevo
El triángulo rojo invertido fue el símbolo que el régimen nazi usó para marca a los presos comunistas. Su uso es un homenaje al antifascismo. Pin metálico de gran calidad, pensado para coleccionistas. Medidas: 1cm The only antifa group that I know that clearly does use the 'inverted red triangle' as their symbol is the VVN Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten : We see a red triangle used by the communist antifascists before there was a nazi concentration camp. We see that triangle used by nazis on their political prisoners. We also see some smaller groups using these concentration camp triangles for their own purposes after the nazis, like exactly the same with 'gay rights' groups sometimes using the pink triangle. The biggest and most organised antifa group in Germany does use the red triangle, officially in strict perpendicular orientation and in remembrance of the nazi-use. That means that technically, the Trump campaigners have a grain of truth to work with. That it evidently failed so spectacularly is precisely because in the US the red triangle is not as common as it is in Europe and when most people do not recognise the symbol. Notabene: 'Antifa in the US' in the sense of ' Antifaschistische Aktion ' from Germany or the later and much broader antifa movement are a lot of only broadly similar things, lumped together. It seems obvious that in the US 'antifa' as self-designation in that precise sequence of letters only applies to a more militant faction of 'the left'. This is decidedly not the case in Europe. While probably a lot of those groups can also be counted towards 'militancy', many, like the French or Belgian examples, and the German VVN example are not. The VVN being a registered club proper with actual membership and for a long time a tax-exempt charity. While the above example images are evidence for 'claim is true' for the very wide international field of 'antifas', in the wider emaing of antifascists, including the militant ones, I simply failed to locate a single example image that's clearly for 'claim is true for the antifa (US)' or 'antifascists in the US', just variations like that one against the Ku-Klux-Klan hood, which was not an emblem for any 'antifa' directly. Commentary: Murtaugh is apparently on record with: “But it is ironic that it took a Trump ad to force the media to implicitly concede that Antifa is a hate group,” Snopes doesn't get it right there: It's not that facebook said 'antifa be a hate-group' (whatever regurgitating news made of it), offical facebook said that 'the nazis' are the hate-group that used that symbol (for prisoners)… Whether facebook is correct or not, Murtaugh twists these words as if he really doesn't understand? Their 'rules' (which they enforce quite arbitrarily): It's said that 'you may use a hate-symbol' in a context to say 'this is bad' and 'analyse/discuss it'. Just not without any of such context or 'this is great'… “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.” Notice that it's 'the group' that's banned, then 'the symbol they used', not 'the symbol as such'. In effect, Facebook says: the group 'Nazi-Germany' is the hate-group — and that Nazi-Germany used that symbol to identify prisoners', and that that kind of usage requires 'condemnig, according to their rules.' This is now going full circle to the start of this answer. The real irony is that eg the VVN (victims of nazism, not 'a hate-goup') usage would fall foul of these 'rules' as formulated, most of the time, as they use their symbol without always 'discussing it'… | {
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47,927 | "Sadly, protesters interfered with supporters, even blocking access to
the metal detectors, which prevented people from entering the rally,"
Tim Murtaugh, the campaign's communications director, said in a
statement. Source Is there any proof of this statement? If true, it might explain the low turnout, when Trump claimed that 1,000,000 had requested tickets. Does anyone know where said metal detectors were located? I might expect them to be at the entrance to the arena, but that would not explain how So few people turned up that a speech the US president was meant to
give to an outside "overflow" stage before the main event for those
who could not get in was cancelled at the last minute. | Other than assertions to that effect by the Trump Administration, there is no evidence of this. However there is very strong evidence that it did not happen. There are a fair amount of pictures of the outside of the BOK Center during the time in question. They pretty much all show just a small crowd. As a bit of background, I'm a Tulsan who has attended multiple events at the BOK in the past. In every instance, the metal detectors were just inside the main doors. However, it appears that for this event they were expecting a large enough crowd that a cordon of barricades was erected around the area, with the entrance controlled by metal detectors and a temperature taking station. Here are a couple of pictures of that station, taken by Tulsa World reporter Samantha Vicent, and posted on Twitter : This one pretty clearly shows there wasn't really any line at all for the metal detectors. Here's another that she confirmed was taken from outside the cordon looking toward the detector station (she was not allowed in due to carrying a backpack). There is no line or protestors visible for quite a distance. Here's a cap of some on-the-ground reporting from David Weigel of the Washington Post stating that protestors were remarkable mostly by their absence , and protestors were in fact being kept very far away : Here's another picture and story showing that a couple arriving late had no trouble whatsoever getting in. Weigel also posted a video here showing the outdoor "overflow" stage, and a smallish glob of red-hatted folks lined up to enter (the big glass building is the BOK). Here's another showing people entering , with nowhere near the kind of line the routing barriers seemed to be anticipating. So there was no big backup of frustrated prospective attendees hoping to get in. Multiple journalists working the event reported that latecomers had no trouble whatsoever walking up and getting in. There is also no sign whatsoever of any protestors or anyone being disruptive in any way. Another good thing to look at would be arrest records at the event. It turns out there was one protestor arrested for obstructing the rally. One. Here's her story : Buck put on her black “I Can’t Breathe” shirt and walked to the
barricade near the BOK, where she said security let her through. She
said she didn’t make it far, though, as Trump campaign folks quickly
swarmed her. “I was surrounded and was told I could not go any further and that I
was trespassing on a private event and I wasn’t wanted there,” Buck
said. “And I said, ‘This is my town; this is my city. I’m a citizen of
the United States of America.’ “And I was just praying as people were looking at me. And I realized
they were going to arrest me.” Buck said she kept reiterating that she had a ticket but that Trump’s
campaign people wanted her to walk out. She said she sat down on the
ground because she wasn’t going to walk away. To be clear, Buck had made it in past the metal detectors, and was arrested for "obstruction" (which seemed to involve sitting down) inside the cordon. Given the fact that there was only one arrest, and how little action it took on her part to get surrounded and arrested, any claim that there were in fact large numbers of other protestors who made it as far as the entrance metal detectors and were not surrounded and arrested, or reported on, seems incredibly unlikely. Finally, the main person making this claim in the first place, Brad Parscale, has now completely changed his story, and as of this writing is claiming it was actually the Tulsa Police who kept Trump supporters away . Whatever the merits of that claim may be, it is pretty clearly a different and incompatible claim. In an interview, Mr. Parscale said the empty arena was not his fault,
and that local law enforcement in Tulsa had overreacted, making it
difficult for supporters to gain entry. He claimed to have thousands
of emails from supporters who tried to get into the Bank of Oklahoma
Center and were turned away, but he did not share those messages or
names of supporters. | {
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47,933 | In a TED interview , Elon Musk stated: People are mistaken when they think that technology just automatically improves. It does not automatically improve. It only improves if a lot of people work very hard to make it better, and actually it will, I think, by itself degrade, actually.
You look at great civilizations like Ancient Egypt, and they were able to make the pyramids, and they forgot how to do that. And then the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts. They forgot how to do it. It makes sense that if people stop focusing on some goal, the knowledge of how it is achieved will become lost or at least uncommon. And the ancient Egyptians did stop building pyramids at some point; given the speculation about construction techniques , it's fair to say that those methods were lost after a certain time. My question is about the Roman aqueducts . The Wikipedia article on this topic says: During the Renaissance, the standing remains of the city's massive masonry aqueducts inspired architects, engineers and their patrons; Pope Nicholas V renovated the main channels of the Roman Aqua Virgo in 1453. Many aqueducts in Rome's former empire were kept in good repair. The 15th-century rebuilding of an aqueduct at Segovia in Spain shows advances on the Pont du Gard by using fewer arches of greater height, and so greater economy in its use of the raw materials. The skill in building aqueducts was not lost , especially of the smaller, more modest channels used to supply water wheels. Was the knowledge of how aqueducts were made actually lost at some point in that part of the world? I'm not sure if it was lost and then reinvented during the Renaissance, or if there was continuity in the passing of the knowledge. | The Romans built the aqueducts -- as well as bridges, piers, and colossal buildings -- out of concrete. Stone and brick were usually just exterior casings for the concrete structural core. And the secret of super-durable Roman concrete was indeed lost for centuries. Modern concrete uses a paste mixture of water and Portland cement (a fine powder made from limestone & clay) to bind together sand and/or small stones. However, it degrades within decades. Roman concrete used a mix of volcanic ash and lime for their cement - a fact rediscovered only recently. This mixture is stronger than modern cement and lasts much longer. In addition, the source of the volcanic ash matters to the performance of the concrete. So does the environment in which the concrete is used. In the case of concrete piers, the secrets of Roman concrete durability is all about seawater interacting with the ash. Volcanic ash commonly contains a silicate mineral called phillipsite, which contains aluminum. Concrete containing this mineral, when immersed in seawater, becomes more alkaline, and this in turn appears to cause microscopic aluminium tobermorite crystals - a rare mineral - to grow from the phillipsite. The aluminum crystals flex under stress and wave action instead of cracking. And the longer the concrete sits under seawater, the more of this aluminum there is to resist stress and make the concrete stronger. The same process also self-heals small cracks before they become large. See this Nature article for more information - https://www.nature.com/news/seawater-is-the-secret-to-long-lasting-roman-concrete-1.22231 . For freshwater aqueduct construction, the concrete chemistry is less clear. We know from Roman repair records that aqueduct repairs were made with concrete and then water was allowed to return to the pipeline before the concrete cured, which implies it cured under water. Modern concrete made with Portland cement can also cure under water, but if too much water enters the cement, it will be weakened. This was not the case with Roman concrete. Perhaps the use of volcanic ash made the concrete sufficiently more durable than Portland cement for aqueduct use, even in the absence of seawater? If anyone can point to some research on this point, I'd love to hear more. | {
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47,951 | A friend of mine just forwarded me a screenshot of the following May 20, 2020 (now-deleted) tweet purportedly from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , whose nickname and Twitter handle is AOC. It's vital that Governors maintain restrictions on businesses until after the November Elections because economic recovery will help Trump be re-elected. A few business closures or job losses is a small price to pay to be free from his presidency. #KeepUsClosed I've attached the screenshot of the tweet. For some reason, I think this is fake. My feeling is further compounded by the fact that I Googled a chunk of the quote and the only thing that came up was someone's comment on a Yahoo News article. Can anyone provide confirmation on this, in one direction or the other? | Polititweet.com has no references to any tweet matching the screenshot from 20 May 2020, nor any tweets from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez that mention the hashtag #KeepUsClosed. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter account is archived (alongside the archives of a number of other politicians) on PolitiTweet , a website that describes itself on its homepage PolitiTweet helps keep the powerful accountable by monitoring celebrities, politicians, and public figures for silent retractions and deleted tweets. The archive of her page from around 20 May shows only two tweets on the day, both re-tweets of @Nightline. RT @Nightline: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on whether or not enough has been done to help protect essential workers - those most vulnerab… RT @Nightline: An exclusive interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC. Her take on the pandemic’s impact on African-American and La… A search of the hashtag #KeepUsClosed on Polititweet returns 0 results. Furthermore, it is extremely trivial to edit tweets using basic developer tools to make any public figure say whatever you want. | {
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47,961 | At the Tulsa rally of June 20th, Donald Trump defended his apparent difficulty tilting a glass of water with his right hand by saying his arm was tired from saluting 600 times. “They said you couldn’t lift your hand up to your mouth with water,” Trump said, conveying what he says his wife had told him. “I said, I just saluted 600 times, like this!” - Washington Post I've seen numerous reports about the water glass event (as well as his gingerly walk down the ramp) but could find nothing about how many times he had to salute during the event. I did find several sources that listed the number of graduating cadets at approximately 1100 . Did Trump need to salute each cadet? If not, did he salute anywhere close to 600 times before the water glass event ? Edited to add: There are a lot of comments questioning why I asked this question. The reason I'm asking is not to denigrate Trump. The reason is that it appears to me, as a physician, to indicate a medical problem (remember that saying about a hammer and a nail). The inability to descend an incline leading with the right leg is the same. Both indicate a lack of trust in the right wrist/leg respectively, whatever the reason for this lack of trust. Saluting involves mostly the proximal muscles of the arm; it's a "gross motor skill". Rotating the glass and drinking without spilling requires a lot more neurologically. And no, it's not normal to do this to avoid a spill on clothing. Most people would extend the neck to do this, or use the left hand to move the clothes closer to the body. But, as I said, hammer/nail. I believe it's ok to worry about the health and well-being of a person in power over the country I live in. And it's equally ok to want to understand if his statement was a joke, an explanation, or a lie. I'm not his doctor; I'm not diagnosing. But medically, it was a bit concerning. That's all. | Trump only did a significant number of motions (salutes, etc.) with his arms after taking a drink of water, not before. As per the full video, mentioned by Nate Eldredge from PBS NewsHour , Trump salutes 3 times, claps 4 times, and shakes hands 1 time prior to his speech, during which the contentious drink of water is taken. I will take at face value the number of salutes that CNN mentions, since he does appear to salute to each graduate as they approach, so it is not wrong for him to say that he saluted 600 times that day. It is patently false to claim that the reason he used a second hand to drink the glass of water was due to saluting 600 times, however. If anyone feels the need to count for themselves, Trump enters the field here , does his first salute here , and begins the speech here , while the salutes come after the speech. | {
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47,963 | According to the New York Post: Oregon county issues face mask order that exempts non-white people Lincoln County, Oregon, has exempted non-white people from a new order requiring that face coverings be worn in public https://nypost.com/2020/06/23/oregon-county-issues-face-mask-order-exempting-non-white-people/ Does Oregon county actually have race-specific health orders? (EDIT: Replaced "laws" with "orders" reflecting the verbage of the original claim.) | Lincoln county has published this statement : In this Directive there were several exceptions identified recognizing that not everyone could or should wear a face covering: ... People of color who have heightened concerns about racial profiling and harassment due to wearing face coverings in public. So yes, they most certainly did. | {
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47,977 | Published in The Hill on May 25, 2020, an opinion piece by Scott W. Atlas, John R. Birge, Ralph L. Keeney, and Alexander Lipton claims that as of the time of writing, in the United States, COVID-19 was responsible for 800,000 lost years of life, but the lockdown had been responsible for 1.5 million lost years of life. Considering only the losses of life from missed health care and unemployment due solely to the lockdown policy, we conservatively estimate that the national lockdown is responsible for at least 700,000 lost years of life every month, or about 1.5 million so far — already far surpassing the COVID-19 total. I would like to note, to ensure clarity, that this is about lost years of life, not lost lives. For example, an 80-year-old and a 20-year-old dying, each count as one lost life, but obviously the 20-year-old had more years of life ahead of them that was “lost”. | Probably yes The authors did a great job of citing sources and, except for underestimating COVID-19 years lost, the math largely checks out. The obvious caveat is these figures are extrapolations; historical trends may not hold during the pandemic. For example, the correlation between unemployment and death may be weaker if more healthy, emotionally stable people are added to the unemployment ranks. Or perhaps the opposite: the correlation is even stronger since more households are losing all income sources. There is also a question of how long conditions must last to actually produces their statistical effects. However, three months into quarantine with the end seemingly far off, that objection seems less significant. Important: The quoted claim does not necessarily mean the net effect of quarantine is harmful. It simply compares negative effects of quarantine to negative effects of quarantined COVID-19. It does not consider lives saved by quarantine. That would be a separate claim and would require different analysis (which frankly, would be difficult, since it would be based on less common statistics...not to mention the unknowable possibility that quarantine might eventually fail). Despite not answering "the ultimate question" of the optimal quarantine level, the claim as quoted is scoped and its contents still offer relevant data points for that larger discussion. Years lost due to unemployment deaths One portion of this effect is through unemployment, which leads to an average increase in mortality of at least 60 percent. That translates into 7,200 lives lost per month among the 36 million newly unemployed Americans Assuming these deaths occur proportionally across the ages of current U.S. mortality data, and equally among men and women, this amounts to more than 200,000 lost years of life for each month of the economic shutdown. Unemployment From mid-March to late May (when article was published), 39 million people in the US had filed for unemployment, though Forbes believed unemployment to be significantly higher than the number of claims. Unemployment mortality The article cites a 1994 study for the 60% mortality rate. A 1998 study finds a 30% increase in mortality (60% increase in accidental or violent death). A 2014 Scottish study found 85% and 50% increase for men and women respectively. A 2003 Swedish study found a 50% increase. The estimates vary. However, even reducing 60% to 40% increase is insufficient to alter the conclusion. Deaths The U.S. mortality rate is 0.86% according to the CDC . For a population of 36 million, an additional 0.52% mortality would produce 187,000 additional deaths per year, or 15,600 per month. The authors calculated half that many, probably by looking at the working-age mortality rate. Mortality scales approximately linearly from 0.07% for 15-24 to 0.89% for 55-64 ( CDC ). Assuming workers are distributed evenly across that, we approximately half the number, yielding a result only a little higher than the article's 7,200. For workers aged 20 to 64, the lost years according to life expectancy is 20 to 59. For 7,200 deaths per month, that is 144,000 to 425,000 years lost per month. The authors stated an assumption of proportional spread, but even 5:1 weighting toward older workers still produces their 200,000 years per month. Years lost due to reduced health care Emergency stroke evaluations are down 40 percent. Of the 650,000 cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in the United States, an estimated half are missing their treatments. Of the 150,000 new cancer cases typically discovered each month in the U.S., most...are not being diagnosed, and two-thirds to three-fourths of routine cancer screenings are not happening...Nearly 85 percent fewer living-donor transplants are occurring...In addition, more than half of childhood vaccinations are not being performed, setting up the potential of a massive future health disaster. The implications of treatment delays...result in 8,000 U.S. deaths per month of the shutdown, or about 120,000 years of remaining life. Missed strokes contribute an additional loss of 100,000 years of life for each month; late cancer diagnoses lose 250,000 years of remaining life for each month; missing living-donor transplants, another 5,000 years of life per month — and, if even 10 percent of vaccinations are not done, the result is an additional 24,000 years of life lost each month. These unintended consequences of missed health care amount to more than 500,000 lost years of life per month, not including all the other known skipped care. Health It cites the following sources as evidence, and this gets pretty technical. I spot checked cancer, the largest source, and found agreement. If anyone looks at the others please share. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/930374 https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/preventinfections/providers.htm https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2020/04/01/Cancer-patient-care-disrupted-by-COVID-19-pandemic/7251585762174/ https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/cancer_2020.htm https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(20)30265-5/fulltext https://www.docwirenews.com/docwire-pick/hem-onc-picks/report-medical-tests-including-cancer-screenings-have-rapidly-declined-since-covid-19-pandemic-hit-u-s https://unos.org/covid/ https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-03-coronavirus-parents-kids-vaccinations-unicef.html https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/effect-of-wait-times-on-mortality-in-canada.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5839705/ https://www.canaryfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/EarlyDetectionFactSheet.pdf https://unos.org/data/transplant-trends/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779444/ Years lost due to COVID In comparison, COVID-19 fatalities have fallen disproportionately on the elderly, particularly in nursing homes, and those with co-morbidities. Based on the expected remaining lifetimes of these COVID-19 patients, and given that 40 percent of deaths are in nursing homes, the disease has been responsible for 800,000 lost years of life so far. Death share by age On June 19, the CDC reported the proportions of deaths by age. Combining this with life expediencies , <30 (51-79 years remaining) - 0% 30-39 (41-50 years remaining) - 1% 40-49 (32-41 years remaining) - 3% 50-59 (24-31 years remaining) - 8% 60-69 (16-23 years remaining) - 17% 70-79 (10-15 years remaining) - 25% >79 (0-10 years remaining) - 46% So there are 9-16 years lost per death. Note this does not take into account pre-existing conditions which have disproportionately many COVID-19 deaths and also lower life expectancy (so the real number of years lost is likely lower). Deaths Through May 23, there had been 97,000 confirmed deaths in the U.S. from COVID, yielding 873,000-1,520,000 years lost. This is significantly more than the 800,000 that article stated. I initially used life expectancy from birth (79) to do the calculation and had a number similar to theirs; perhaps they made the same mistake. Or perhaps they somehow accounted for the pre-existing conditions. Or used less recent death totals. Conclusion Quarantine unemployment - Article: 200,000 yrs/month Check: 285,000 yrs/month Quarantine healthcare - Article: 500,000 yrs/month Check: 500,000 yrs/month Total quarantine over 2+ months - Article: 1,500,000 yrs/month Check: 1,680,000 COVID-19 - Article: 800,000 yrs Check: 1,230,000 yrs As the authors note, the quarantine deaths include only unemployment and healthcare; there are several other factors (e.g. reduced income but not unemployment causing substance abuse) that are not counted in that total that could bolster their argument. In summary, the COVID-19 figure there is compelling evidence that there were more lost years from economic shutdown than from COVID-19, though the authors appear to underestimate COVID-19 years lost. Note: You cited the article as claiming 700,000 lost years from COVID-19; it actually claimed there were 800,000. EDIT 1: Moved disclaimer about claim scope to top, as suggested by @IMSoP. EDIT 2: Used actuarial tables for life expectancy, as suggested by @NuclearWang. | {
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48,031 | Multiple reputable news organizations have been reporting on a study suggesting the 2020 "Black Lives Matter protests" did not contribute to the increase of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have even suggested that it may have slowed down the spread of the coronavirus. For example: Despite warnings from public health officials, new research suggests Black Lives Matter protests across the country have not led to a jump in coronavirus cases. -- CNN Black Lives Matter protests did not cause an uptick in covid-19 cases [Headline] -- The Economist Black Lives Matter protests may have slowed overall spread of coronavirus in Denver and other cities, new study finds [Headline] While the protests brought thousands of people together, they likely caused many more to stay home, a research team including a University of Colorado Denver professor concluded [Subtext] -- The Colorado Sun Most protesters have not been following recommendations of the CDC like social distancing and many were found not wearing masks. For reference, the CDC states masks are to protect other people from the virus if you are a carrier; so any amount of protesters not wearing masks would put the rest at risk of catching it. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also suggested the recent spike in coronavirus cases might be coming from the protests Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti now admits protests in the city DID lead to a spike in coronavirus cases after he previously insisted there was no link [Headline] He confirmed LA County health officials believe recent demonstrations have contributed to a spike in COVID-19 cases in the city [Subtext] -- Daily Mail Did the 2020 "Black Lives Matter protests" contribute to the spike of coronavirus cases? | Not peer reviewed The researchers from the University of Denver currently have their paper titled Black lives matter protests, social distancing and COVID-19 posted online as an NBER Working Paper. This means the paper HAS NOT gone through peer review and carries the same scientific weight as a blog. To reiterate, while this work may be valid, it has not been cross-examined and the media SHOULD NOT have picked it up and sensationalized it! The authors conjecture that the number of COVID-19 cases may have gone down due to people wishing to avoid the protests For example, other individuals who did not wish to
participate in the protests, perhaps due to fear of violence from police clashes or general unrest,
may have chosen to avoid public spaces while protests were underway. This could have an
offsetting effect, increasing social distancing behavior in other parts of the population. The net
effect, on both social distancing and on the spread of COVID-19 is thus an empirical question,
and the focus of this study. Of concern to myself is that the protests are ongoing to which the authors point out One concern regarding the lack of any strong effects for COVID-19 case growth is that
the post-protest sample period might not be sufficiently long enough as of yet to detect a
resurgence or increase in the infection rates. While this is a possibility, we also note that our
sample includes at least 21 days of data following the early protests that took place in 154 cities
(during the first five days following George Floyd’s death), at least 18 days of data following
protests in 242 cities, and at least 16 days of data for 257 cities that experienced protests (during
the first week following George Floyd’s death). The author use a 21 day lag-time as their window of safety for evaluating if a city sees a rise in cases. They offer literature sources using this criteria. This does not make it valid, but, it appears to be the norm - insomuch as COVID-19 has norms. In the body of the results/discussion the authors say that their findings show, with 95% confidence, that mass protest cities did not see a rise in COVID-19. However, in their conclusion they say Likewise, while it
is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who
attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than three weeks
following protest onset. In most cases, the estimated longer-run effect (post-21 days) was
negative, though not statistically distinguishable from zero So I am a bit confused. Are the 21 day results passing or not passing the hypothesis test that there is no rise in COVID-19 due to mass protests. They cannot conclude that COVID-19 decreased from the protests if the confidence interval contains 0. In fact, if it even contains 0.0000001, they cannot conclude that it didn't cause a rise in covid-19. Edit: I previously made it sound like the paper was loaded with unsubstantiated jargon, and this is not accurate, as was pointed out in the comments. My opinion is that there are several areas that need tightening up. Conclusions Overall I will say that the work appears for the most part well written and of an academic level. This manuscript has potential but I believe the peer review process is required before I take it seriously. Good reviewers will make them substantiate all discussions involving statistics and will hopefully make their conclusions exactly match their discussion. Also, reviewers will go over their statistical methods to ensure they are acceptable. It is unfortunately the case that given a desired outcome, there is a way of evaluating the data to get that outcome. Reviewers will ensure this has not been done. I am not qualified to grade their metrics and choices. Finally, the peer review process should take time. It is fine for the authors to publish a working manuscript, I do it myself, but it is absolutely not okay for the media to propagate it before it has been peer reviewed! If this is the case scientists can just start publishing things on blogs. | {
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48,099 | I came across this video on BitChute purporting to test the CO 2 levels of what appears to be a KN95 (a Non-NIOSH Approved Respirator) whilst the mask is in use. The video shows a device displaying CO 2 levels rising, next to an image depicting symptoms of given CO 2 PPM (parts per million) levels. The PPM list appears to be legitimate, so does the real-time recording, however I also know that surgeons and medical professionals have worn masks for hours with no adverse effects. Do these facemasks cause CO 2 poisoning? | This is the meter used in the video: Note that the sensor is situated at the top, pointing upward. When the person in the video breathes out, the exhaled air will be directed into the sensor, but when the person inhales air will flow around the sensor with no strong tendency to enter it. This creates a strong bias for measuring exhaled air vs inhaled air, and likely measurements would not be radically different if the same experiment were conducted with no mask present. More unbiased: In one small study published in Respiratory Physiology and
Neurobiology, twenty subjects wearing surgical masks walked on
treadmills for one hour . Scientists measured their blood oxygen and
carbon dioxide concentrations, respiratory and heart rates, and core
temperatures. After that hour, the scientists found no significant
change in these measurements . With N95 masks, it’s a slightly different story. There is some
evidence that these masks, which tend to fit more tightly over the
wearers face, can decrease oxygen levels and increase carbon dioxide
levels. A small study of ten healthcare workers found that the oxygen
and carbon dioxide concentrations within N95 masks fell below
workplace standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration. Still, when the scientists compared the subjects’
blood oxygen levels after one hour on the treadmill in an N95 mask
versus an hour without, they found no difference. Another study
published in the American Journal of Infection Control found similar
results with pregnant study subjects — after an hour of walking in N95
masks, the blood oxygen levels of pregnant women and non-pregnant
women alike hadn’t changed. The masks also had no apparent effect on
the fetuses, whose heart rate didn’t change throughout the study. Source | {
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48,250 | I was sent this recent Food For Thought YouTube video . It contains a number of wild claims about vaccinations. In particular, it contains snippets of edited, unsourced footage of Bill Gates saying: one final way that's new and is promising is called the RNA vaccine. With RNA and DNA instead of putting that shape in, you put instructions in the code to make that shape. The text description states: Bill Gates caught on video admitting vaccine will CHANGE our DNA FOREVER. Whether or not the Bill Gates was accurately quoted in context, can an RNA vaccine permanently change the recipients DNA? | Later in that video the claim is specified a bit more, mentioning that mRNA with CRISPR/Cas will modify our genetic code. You can edit DNA with CRISPR , but that is not what is in an mRNA vaccine. The mRNA in an mRNA vaccine alone cannot edit DNA. In the CRISPR gene editing method the actual act of cutting the DNA to edit it is performed by Cas9, which is an enzyme, not RNA. The quote by Bill Gates doesn't have anything to do with modifying the human genome. It explains the basic mechanism of mRNA vaccines. In a classic vaccine you use an inactivated virus, or just one protein of the virus. In mRNA vaccines you use mRNA that encodes a virus protein, which is read by your cells and that protein is produced for a short time . The code for creating that protein is never incorporated into your DNA, mRNA is read directly by the cells and protein is produced from it. Your cells are constantly producing mRNA similar to the one in an mRNA vaccine (just encoding different proteins). You have to constantly produce new mRNA because mRNA is temporary; eventually mRNA is degraded and recycled. For an mRNA vaccine, no new mRNA is produced besides what is injected. mRNA produced naturally in a cell doesn't modify your DNA, and neither would an mRNA vaccine. | {
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48,300 | The Claim Scott Adams recently made the claim that the majority of doctors in the USA support the use of hydroxychloroquine. Normally a cartoonist's podcast would not be a notable source for a claim, so it is worth reviewing the background. Context and background There is clearly a great deal of controversy over the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for treating COVID-19. And mainstream media seem to side with the view that its effectiveness has not be demonstrated and therefore promoting it is unsafe. Hence they tend to push back when Trump or his supporters promote it. Some claim this is a political conspiracy designed purely to hurt Trump. In a recent CNN interview with Peter Navarro (Trump's trade advisor) this scenario played out in a fairly typical way (reported by The Hill here ): In the combative Wednesday interview, Navarro continued to push the drug as a coronavirus treatment, dismissing contradictory comments made by the nation’s top public health expert and White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci. “Tony is a great guy. There's just disagreements on things like, for
example, hydroxychloroquine. He has a strong point of view. There's as
many doctors on the other side,” Navarro said on CNN’s “OutFront,”
referring to Fauci. “But there aren’t,” Burnett responded. “Peter, first of all, on a basic level, you're an economist, not a
scientist,” she added. ... Navarro responded by referencing a video posted by Scott Adams, the
cartoonist behind Dilbert, that attacks CNN over its coverage of the
anti-malaria drug as a coronavirus treatment. “He did a beautiful video on Twitter, and the thesis of the video is
that CNN might be killing thousands because of the way they’ve treated
that. I’ll let Scott Adams be my defense on this,” Navarro said. Since the video has been referenced in a major news outlet by a very senior government official as a key plank in his support for the use of HCQ, it is worth questioning the key claim in the video. The audio of the Scott Adams podcast is here . The Adams Argument Scott Adams' argument in the podcast claims the mainstream media are conspiring to suppress evidence to hurt Trump. His argument is that many if not most doctors agree with Trump's position. He claims around 1:30 in the podcast that many doctors worldwide support its use (all quotes my manual transcription): I would guess that maybe fifty thousand doctors around the world are using it on themselves or prescribing it. He builds on this argument the idea that Trump's views on HCQ are entirely consistent with the views of the majority of doctors: It is completely true that Trump's opinion on HCQ matches exactly most doctors' in the USA. More specifically at around 4:25 he claims that "perhaps 90%" either use it or support its use: I don't know if it is 100% and I won't make that claim, but it's probably 90%. He clarifies by excluding academic medical experts (like epidemiologists) from his claim as he seems to think they are institutionally biased. So his claim appears to be about "front-line" doctors only. His entire argument is founded on this claim. Including the idea that media suppression of evidence that HCQ works could be costing tens of thousands of lives. I don't think Skeptics.SE is a good place to assess whether there is a conspiracy theory by the mainstream media to hurt Trump, but a simple factual claim like the foundation of Adams' analysis is a good fit here. Do the majority of US doctors support the use of HCQ for treating covid-19? Clarification notes on dates The Navarro interview took place on August 5 and quoted the Adams podcast which was done on July 30. We should presume that their claims are intended to reflect the situation on those dates. I would presume that, early in the pandemic, most doctors would support testing any drug where there might be a reasonable hypothesis of benefit. So results reporting medical opinion in answers need to take into account when the opinion was surveyed. Also note that the issue of whether we know HCQ works is addressed in other questions here, notably Is hydroxychloroquine + zinc + antibiotics an effective treatment for COVID-19? and Is hydroxychloroquine proven to reduce the need for hospitalization for Covid-19? . | The only way to settle this is to find and cite a study or survey that supports or refutes the claim that "the majority of doctors in the USA support the use of hydroxychloroquine against COVID 19." I found an article "USA Today" from 18 June, 2020 which quotes a survey that (among other things) asked doctors around the world which treatment they thought was most effective against COVID 19. USA Today says that 51 percent of US doctors chose "nothing" (meaning "no treatment" rather than "didn't choose anything") out of the list of possible treatments in the survey question. That was the highest percentage for any of the treatments on the list. Hydroxychloroquine was on the list, and scored 37 percent for doctors all over the world - USA Today didn't give the hydroxychloroquine results for just the US. That knocks hydroxychloroquine out of the majority position in the US. 51 percent is just barely definable as "majority," and hydroxychloroquine didn't get it. This survey from Sermo seems to be the basis of the USA Today article. From page 4: Quoted as text: Treatments & Efficacy: 3 most commonly prescribed treatments amongst COVID-19 treaters are 56% analgesics, 41% Azithromycin, and 33% Hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine usage amongst COVID-19 treaters is 72% in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in Mexico, 28% in France, 23% in US, 17% in Germany, 16% in Canada, 13% in UK and 7% in Japan. Hydroxychloroquine was overall chosen as the most effective therapy from a list of 15 options (37% of COVID-19 treaters). 75% in Spain, 53% Italy, 44% in China, 43% in Brazil, 29% in France, 23% in US and 13% in UK. The two most common treatment regimens for Hydroxychloroquine were: (38%) 400mg twice daily on day one; 400 mg daily for 5 days. (26%) 400mg twice daily on day one; 200mg twice daily for 4 days. Outside the US, Hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the US it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients. Globally, 19% of physicians prescribed or have seen Hydroxychloroquine prophylactically used for high risk patients, and 8% for low risk patients. That says that only 23 percent of US doctors picked hydroxychloroquine as the most effective treatment, and that 23 percent of the US doctors use hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID 19. That's a far cry from "majority." To finish it off, Sermo reports that the use of hydroxychloroquine is dropping. The rate of use was higher before 11 June, and was still dropping. That pretty well disposes of "majority of US doctors recommend the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID 19." Given how quickly things change in respect to COVID 19, the situation might have changed since Sermo conducted the survey. If anyone knows of a newer or better survey, I'm all ears. | {
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48,306 | There is an article, that has been circulating the past two days, entitled: Is There a Pandemic? In the abstract the author gives her method: However, only 32 weeks have elapsed in 2020. For each previous year, 52 weeks have already elapsed. How then can we compare deaths from all causes in 2020 to previous years? In this paper, I divide total deaths by number of weeks to arrive at number of deaths per week for each of the last 21 years, January 1, 2000 through August 8, 2020. And comes to the conclusion: The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists total deaths for many previous years. The CDC also provides number of deaths from all causes in 2020. On examination of the data for the first two decades of the 21st century in this paper, it is seen that the 2020 weekly total death rate in the US is the lowest in a decade, and second lowest in the 21st century so far. It seems that she also posted a tweet , that has now been removed(?). Her rhetoric seems to be all quite anti-masks , anti-social distancing , etc; she really misses living in a free country , as well. Seems like someone is really trying to push a narrative but I'm not sure that there's any real substance to it. Ideas? | It appears that the study by Colleen Huber , NMD, a Naturopathic Medical Doctor, cited in the OP is incomplete, and was subsequently withdrawn on 13 August, 2020. The NYT article, 13 August 2020, appears to sharply contradict the doctor's study and conclusions. The True Coronavirus Toll in the U.S. Has Already Surpassed 200,000 Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus.
As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic. […] Weekly deaths above normal in each state The charts below show how much higher than usual weekly deaths have been in each state. States with the most recent peaks — the week when they saw the most excess deaths during the pandemic — appear first. For each state, weeks in which data may be incomplete are excluded. The US city with the highest peak of COVID-19 mortality is New York City. As seen below, the number of deaths was 7.7x above that of the average weekly death rate on April 5. On the same day, excluding the city of NY, the death toll in the state of New York was 2.4 times higher than average. It is clear from the tweets and the number of papers published on PrimaryDoctor.Org that the author of the now-withdrawn paper, Colleen Huber, NMD, is a fierce opponent to social distancing and the wearing of masks . In a paper entitled, Proof: Lockdowns Did Not Reduce Deaths , published in June 16, 2020, Doctor Huber argued [emphasis in bold , mine] States without lockdown , herein “free states,” have had a lower percentage than states with lockdown , herein “locked states,” of total deaths from all causes in these weeks in 2020 , compared to the same weeks for each of the states in the years 2017 to 2019. […] Lockdowns were imposed by many jurisdictions for the stated purpose of limiting movement, activities and commerce of individuals and businesses, for the goal of limiting COVID-19 incidence and mortality. It was widely hoped this would work. However, outside of the US, it was found that mortality actually increased steeply closely following lockdowns. (3) Also, it was found that in Europe, “no lives were saved” by lockdown. (4) In an early analysis in the US also, it was not found that lives were saved by shutdown. (5) Those last two analyses were relatively early, 4/24 and 4/26/20 respectively, before it was clear that COVID-19 incidence, hospitalizations and deaths had peaked. The same doctor also tweeted this missive earlier today. No, fascists Biden and Harris: You cannot mandate #masks. They have been proven to be a health hazard, and you cannot mandate a health hazard.
Here's the proof: Masks are neither effective nor safe: A summary of the science From that tweet alone, it would suggest that the doctor's paper and the analysis of the data is one of confirmation bias. However, to her credit, the paper is no longer viewable, as researchers pointed out that she had missed certain data on the CDC website. “My paper may have to be revised, and my revised paper will appear here when ready.” Further references: Are deaths of patients with, but not because of, COVID-19 recorded as COVID-19 deaths in the USA? As of May 2020, are there twice as many deaths from Covid-19 in New York City as there are on a usual day from all other causes combined? | {
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48,333 | I was reading Stuart Stevens' interview on Politico , and came across this claim: more Americans have died from a disease [referring to Covid-19] in the last four months than have ever died of anything in America Mutatis mutandis , is that true, or just something he threw out on the spur of the moment? I doubt that "than have ever died of anything in America" is the case, so let's adjust it and confine it to any given 4 month period. I am scratching my head and trying to come up with other major mass killers: cancer wars "Spanish" flu traffic accidents heart disease guns violence I don't imagine that any of those killed as many in 4 months (the qualification is mine). If we allow that qualification, which I believe can be fairly implied, is he correct? | No, but it's close, ranking between #4 and #6 depending on how you count. As of August 20, 2020, the US death toll from COVID-19 is roughly 175,000 (source: the New York Times, the CDC, and Worldometers all agree to within about 2%). The death toll started rising in late March, for a duration of slightly over five months, not the four months mentioned in the question. Compare that to other death tolls (all numbers rounded to the nearest thousand): American Civil War, total military deaths: 593,000, including disease, over four years . World War II: 419,000 total, including civilian deaths, over four years . American Civil War, Union deaths: 335,000 total, including disease, over four years . 1918 flu pandemic, second wave: 292,000 over four months . Heart disease (#1 cause of ongoing deaths): 270,000 per five months in 2017 . Cancer (#2 cause of ongoing deaths): 250,000 per five months in 2017 . COVID-19 is here right now, at 175,000 deaths. <From here on down, only some causes of death have been listed> World War I: 117,000 total, including disease, over roughly a year and a half . Accidental injuries (#3 cause of ongoing deaths): 71,000 per five months in 2017 . Influenza: 61,000 in the 2017-2018 flu season, the worst in the past decade . Vietnam War: 58,000 total, over roughly nine years . American Civil War, Overland Campaign: 12,000 over two months . Sorted by percent of the population killed, using the population numbers from the nearest census. The relative rankings of some things change, but COVID-19 remains in the #6 spot American Civil War, total military: 1.8% American Civil War, Union military: 1.5% World War II: 0.32% 1918 flu pandemic, second wave: 0.28% Heart disease, five-month average in 2017: 0.082% Cancer, five-month average in 2017: 0.076% COVID-19, March 1-August 21: 0.054% <From here on down, only some causes of death have been listed> American Civil War, Overland Campaign: 0.038% Vietnam War: 0.028% Accidental injuries, five-month average in 2017: 0.022% Influenza, 2017-2018 season: 0.018% COVID-19 isn't the biggest killer of Americans in history, but it's well up there. Compared to other disease outbreaks, it's ahead of everything except the 1918 flu pandemic. Compared to non-contagious causes of death, it's ahead of everything except heart disease and cancer. And compared to mass-casualty events such as wars, it's ahead of everything except World War II and the American Civil War -- and it's ahead of any five-month slice of either of those wars. More people dying from COVID-19 won't change the relative ordering, barring a disastrous third wave -- the COVID-19 rate is currently lower than that for cancer or heart disease (so it won't pass them), the COVID-19 total is already ahead of the annual total for accidents (so it can't fall behind it), and the 1918 pandemic is far enough ahead of COVID-19 that it isn't likely to be surpassed, particularly as a percentage of population killed. | {
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48,348 | A new Facebook claim about Epstein has been making the rounds - this one talking about Trump's past relationship with Epstein. There are a number of claims about the relationship between Trump and Epstein here, but I want to focus on this one in particular. "Trump later banned Epstein from the club because he found out Epstein made passes at the 14 yr old daughter of another member, and in 2002 he publicly outed Epstein as a pedophile ." I've been searching for news articles regarding this, but the only thing that seems to come close is a Washington Post article about Epstein and Trump having a row over Palm Beach property in 2004. Did Trump come forward in 2002 to oust Epstein, before his official indictment began in 2005, as this image macro claims? | Trump probably did not "come forward in 2002 to oust [ sic; or out? ] Epstein". But the statement in the image is vague enough that it's not clear what it even means. It seems possible that it is referring to the following quote, mentioned in your linked article, which has become pretty infamous: In a 2002 interview , he gave no indication of concern, telling New York magazine that Epstein “enjoys his social life.” “ It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side ,” Trump said. Given what we now know, I can see someone describing this as "publicly out[ing] Epstein as a pedophile". But that seems like a stretch when the quotation is considered in the context of Trump's apparently positive attitude towards Epstein in this interview. Here is the context as given in Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery , by Landon Thomas Jr., October 28, 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Who knows what Trump was thinking here, but it doesn't seem very plausible to interpret this as an attempt by Trump to make Epstein publicly known as a pedophile, considering that he calls Epstein a "terrific guy" and compares his taste in women to Trump's own. | {
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48,351 | In a recent episode of The Michael Brooks Show , they claim that Hillary Clinton introduced only a single bill as senator: Do you guys know the one bill that Hillary Clinton introduced into the senate in her brief time as the senator from New York? Do you know what it was? The one bill? [...] It was an anti-flag burning bill. Is this the only bill she introduced into the Senate? | False Summary: She did sponsor a bill to restrict flag burning, though she technically wasn't the one who introduced it. But she also sponsored and/or introduced many other bills during her eight years in the Senate, possibly up to several hundred of them. It is true that Clinton was a sponsor of the Flag Protection Act of 2005 ( S. 1911, 109th Congress , which would have made it a crime to damage or destroy a flag "with the primary purpose and intent to incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace, and under circumstances in which the person knows that it is reasonably likely to produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace", or to "intentionally threaten or intimidate any person or group of persons" by burning a US flag. She was not the one to actually introduce the bill; it was introduced by Utah Senator Robert Bennett, "for himself and Mrs. Clinton". The bill died in committee and never received a floor vote. (Thanks to Oddthinking for pointing out this bill.) But it is certainly not true that this was the only bill that she introduced. The independent non-partisan site govtrack.us has an option to search for bills for which she was a primary sponsor , and it lists 417 of them. If you click the text of each bill, there is a heading showing which Senator formally introduced it. The first several I checked were introduced either by her alone, or by her on behalf of herself and one or more other Senators. The list might also include some bills introduced by other Senators on her behalf, as was the case for the Flag Protection Act; I am not sure of the precise criteria used by govtrack. That count does not include a further 1,950 bills of which she was a co-sponsor , which she would not have introduced herself. If we narrow it down to bills introduced by her that were actually enacted into law, either by themselves, or as the corresponding bill from the House of Representatives, or as amendments to other bills, we have the following list: S. 3625 (110th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 245 North Main Street in New City, New York, as the “Kenneth Peter Zebrowski Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton (for herself and Mr. Schumer). S. 3317 (110th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 101 West Main Street in Waterville, New York, as the “Corporal John P. Sigsbee Post Office”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton. S. 1148 (110th): Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial Commemoration Commission Act of 2007. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton (for herself, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Leahy, and Mr. Sanders). S. 993 (110th): Pediatric Research Improvement Act. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton (for herself and Mr. Dodd). S. 3847 (109th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 110 Cooper Street in Babylon, New York, as the “Jacob Samuel Fletcher Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton. S. 3716 (109th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 100 Pitcher Street in Utica, New York, as the “Captain George A. Wood Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton. S. 3613 (109th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2951 New York Highway 43 in Averill Park, New York, as the “Major George Quamo Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton. S. 2722 (109th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 170 East Main Street in Patchogue, New York, as the “Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton (for herself and Mr. Schumer). S. 2376 (109th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 80 Killian Road in Massapequa, New York, as the “Gerard A. Fiorenza Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton (for herself and Mr. Schumer). S. 272 (109th): Caribbean National Forest Act of 2005. Introduced by Mrs. Clinton (for herself and Mr. Schumer). S. 1425 (108th): A bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to reauthorize the New York City Watershed Protection Program. Introduced by Mrs. CLINTON. S. 1241 (108th): Kate Mullany National Historic Site Act. Introduced by Mrs. CLINTON (for herself and Mr. SCHUMER). S. 2918 (107th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 380 Main Street in Farmingdale, New York, as the “Peter J. Ganci, Jr. Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. CLINTON (for herself and Mr. SCHUMER). S. 1892 (107th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 375 Carlls Path in Deer Park, New York, as the “Raymond M. Downey Post Office Building”. Introduced by Mrs. CLINTON (for herself and Mr. SCHUMER) . S. 584 (107th): A bill to designate the United States courthouse located at 40 Centre Street in New York, New York, as the “Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse”. Introduced by Mrs. CLINTON (for herself, Mr. WELLSTONE, and Mr. DODD). (It should be noted that the President throughout Clinton's service in the Senate was Republican George W. Bush, so that most major legislation enacted into law would have been introduced by Republicans. I suspect this accounts for the relatively trivial nature of the bills on this list.) | {
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48,409 | This Twitter post by James Woods claims that the Black Lives Matter movement has raised over 1 billion dollars but has not yet performed any neighborhood cleanup, college funding, student economic support, food aid, or housing services. Are these claims accurate? | So first of all, there is no central BLM organisation collecting donations. There are local organisations, some named BLM (or some variation thereof) and some which existed prior to BLM and support their cause and collect money using the name or slogan BLM. There is one central organisation which organises 16 local chapters in North America. However, there are plenty of BLM chapters unaffiliated with this organisation. For a US example, the BLM Austin organisation is unaffiliated with the umbrella organisation. There are also BLM organisations in countries such as the UK , Australia , and Germany which are independent. The specific purposes of different BLM organisations differ, but they are typically not a charity aimed at providing scholarships, providing food, or providing housing. The movement is about protesting police brutality and overpolicing aimed at Black communities, but specific chapters may have different ways of going about this. Money collected as part of the BLM movement has gone to things like bail funds, political campaigns, the ACLU. and Black-led charities such as Color of Change. Each of those organisations have done different things with their money. For this reason, it's impossible to say how much money they have raised in total. That specific photo and those buses are not affiliated with any BLM organisation. They belong to the Toronto Raptors NBA team who repainted their buses in support of BLM in July. Here is the source of the image , which has circulated widely with various different captions falsely implying that they were purchased with BLM funds. | {
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48,443 | There is a quote/image circulating Facebook (please don't get me started on the source), quoting Einstein: Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth I would like to avoid getting into the validity of the quote in the context its been used, rather I don't believe that Einstein did in fact say that quote to begin with. (I have found the quote on Good Reads, but it's not cited ). Did Einstein say "Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth"? If so, where/when? | The Ultimate Quotable Einstein has this quote: Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of the truth. To Swiss teacher Jost Winteler, with whom he boarded while attending school in Aarau, complaining about a professor who would accept no criticism, July 8, 1901. CPAE, Vol. 1 Doc 115 This is very close to what you have in the question. The difference in wording may be due to translation. | {
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48,450 | Daily Mail just posted an article entitled: Donald Trump has been nominated for 2021 Nobel Peace Prize following deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates . The article mentions that, President Donald Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, just weeks after helping to broker peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. It looks like only the tabloid papers/news that are publishing this information at the moment, so it doesn't really seem to carry much weight. Has Trump really been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? | Reputable media outlets like the Jerusalem Post , DW , or The Independent have also picked up the story, with an attribution to Fox News which broke the story: EXCLUSIVE: Just weeks after helping to broker peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), President Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination submitted by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, lauded Trump for his efforts toward resolving protracted conflicts worldwide. This isn't Trump's first nomination either. The same politician — Christian Tybring-Gjedde of the right-wing Progress Party — nominated Trump in 2019 as well . Nominations can be created by a large number of people, among them "members of national assemblies and national governments" and "University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors". | {
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48,481 | This news article came out about evidence tied to the possibility of life on Venus . The crux of the evidence is the detection of phosphine. The claim is that we only know of two ways to make this compound. Artificially with chemistry, or by anaerobic bacteria. Recently, phosphine has been examined the same way* and found to be a good biomarker for the same reasons. On Earth, phosphine (PH 3 ) is only made by humans artificially, or by anaerobic bacteria, generally in rotting corpses. Finding it in an alien atmosphere at relatively high levels would be a decent indicator (though not proof) of biological processes. While Dr. Plait does a good job of putting adequate skepticism in his article, more "popular" media outlets may not be as cautious, or leave the caveats until much later in their article ( such as this People Magazine article that doesn't mention any caveats until much later in the article which many people may not read ). Even Popular Mechanics seems to be less cautions than other outlets . The CNN headline outright says " signifies life has been detected " in the headline. So, are the two methods of producing this chemical overstated? Or is this actually some compelling evidence? | TL;DR The claimed detection of phosphine is not conclusive evidence of life on Venus; it simply indicates that there are unknown chemical pathways on the planet that are producing it. While these may be biological in nature, they also may not be. Therefore, the discovery might be evidence of life on Venus. Recent work has cast serious doubt on all of this, however. Recently, Snellen et al. 2020 performed a reanalysis of the ALMA data used by Greaves et al. They found that by performing the same procedure involving a 12th-order polynomial on other spectral features near the claimed phosphine line at 267 GHz, they were able to produce five other false positives at statistically significant signal-to-noise ratios. The 267 GHz feature is then only found at an SNR of 2, which is not statistically significant. All of the astronomers I've talked to are now a bit skeptical of the initial claim. Assuming Snellen et al. are correct, then there may indeed be no discovery at all. I'm going to keep the remainder of this answer, however, because ideally further follow-up observations can lend credence to the ALMA/JCMT results or cast even further doubts on the claim. What the article claims I should start by noting that the article doesn't make bold claims about life on Venus. As the author, Phil Plait, writes early in the post, [L]et's not jump to conclusions. The scientists involved certainly haven't. They're careful to say that what they've found is consistent with the presence of life in the Venusian atmosphere, but they don't come right out and state that it is the product of bacterial belches. Which is prudent; it may yet be from some as-yet-unknown non-biological chemistry going on there. In his Twitter summary of the article, Plait says So please don't run around saying scientists have found life on Venus. They have found evidence of something that could have been produced by life, but also may not have. We don't know. I've found that he tends to be rather cautious in his writing. Other articles, while largely responsibly written, had some not-so-conservative headlines: Did Scientists Just Find Life on Venus? Here's How to Interpret the Phosphine Discovery Venus Might Host Life, New Discovery Suggests Is there alien life on Venus? Scientists detect traces of phosphine gas that could be coming from MICROBES in clouds swirling high in the planet's atmosphere None of the articles I've read today claim that the observations constitute a discovery of life, but some writers and more cautious than others. Plait is, as usual, one of those. Therefore, we have to be careful about what the article is claiming - namely, that the phosphine may be evidence of life. That much is certainly true. Ways to make phosphine There are certainly abiotic processes that might be able to produce phosphine on Venus. While there may only be two known pathways to produce it on Earth, there are certainly other options for other environments. For example, we've known for half a century that phosphine exists on Jupiter (see Larson et al. 1977 ), where extreme conditions not found on Earth or Venus allow for its production and subsequent transport to the atmosphere through convection. Therefore, we don't totally understand phosphine, because it's difficult to replicate the possible pathways in labs on Earth. The paper the group published ( Greaves et al. 2020 ) lists quite a few known pathways that could lead to phosphine on the surface or atmosphere of Venus: Production by lightning (too low by 7 orders of magnitude) Production by meteorites (too low by 8 orders of magnitude) A large-scale impact (no such evidence exists) Subsurface chemical reactions (oxygen fugacity is way too high) Photochemical production (too low by 5 orders of magnitude) Chemical reactions in the atmosphere or surface ("too energetically costly") A second, substantially longer, paper is undergoing peer review (Bains et al. 2020, listed in the first paper as reference #35). A preprint of it has now been posted on arXiv . These rates take into account the fact that phosphine can also be destroyed by a number of mechanisms, some of which are discussed by Sousa-Silva et al. 2020 : Reactions with O, H, and OH radicals Destruction by ultraviolet radiation, the dominant pathway in some environments, via the reaction PH 3 + hν -> PH 2 + H. These destruction mechanisms are what imply that there must be some source continuously producing phosphine. Here's the thing: The fact that we've exhausted all known production pathways for phosphine does not conclusively show that there is life on Venus, and that it is responsible for producing the gas. Rather, it indicates that there is some chemical process happening on Venus that we don't fully understand. It might be biotic and it might be abiotic. Indeed, Greaves et al. write in their conclusion that Even if confirmed, we emphasize that the detection of PH 3 is not robust evidence for life, only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry. . . . To further discriminate between unknown photochemical and/or geological processes as the source of Venusian PH 3 , or to determine whether there is life in the clouds of Venus, substantial modelling and experimentation will be important. Could it be something else? A final thing to keep in mind is that this question implicitly assumes that the spectral line is, in fact, phosphine - and I made the same assumption in my answer. Assuming that the methodology is sound (which may not be true - see the TL;DR), it seems like a decent assumption to make, for a couple of reasons, which Greaves et al. list: The same line was detected by two telescopes, JCMT and ALMA. Different data processing methods yield the same result. No other features appear to overlap in that range. There are no other reasonable lines that could be responsible (sulfur dioxide was considered and found to be only a minor contaminant). There are other bands that could be searched for phosphine emission; Sousa-Silva et al. note that infrared wavelengths might be promising, as phosphine has strong emission in the 2.7-3.6, 4.0-4.8, and 7.8-11.5 micron bands. The group notes that a carbon-dioxide dominated atmosphere may complicate things, but certainly the transition Greaves et al. found, PH 3 (1->0), was observable. Biosignatures are complicated All of that said, a single detection of a biosignature doesn't necessarily mean that there's life. A good example of this is Martian methane , whose presence, levels and variation have been debated for decades. Folks may remember that a few years ago, Curiosity detected seasonal variations in methane ( Webster et al. 2018 ). While the production mechanism was likely abiotic, it was noted that methane may be a biosignature . At the same time, methane detection on Mars has historically not been unambiguous, and there are many possible abiotic production pathways. An even better example might be the case of carbon monoxide on Titan, discovered in the early 1980s (see Lutz et al. 1983 ). For a long time, it was unclear how it could have arisen abiotically (or, well, biotically). We didn't have a solution until the late 2000s, when it became clear that geysers on Enceladus could be providing the necessary oxygen atoms (see also Horst et al. 2008 for a discussion of the resulting chemistry). I admit that the Martian methane case is not an excellent analog because there are plenty of other pathways capable of adequately producing it, whereas all known abiotic pathways of phosphine production on Venus may have been ruled out as the primary source, but still. Follow-up observations would be nice. | {
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48,500 | One of the core beliefs of QAnon is that some people are addicted to adrenochrome that can only be obtained by drinking the blood of frightened victims. Sean Morgan , author of a QAnon FAQ, talks about Adrenochrome, but admits there is no hard evidence. There is a theory that the cabal frightens victims during abuse rituals and drinks the blood with increased adrenaline in it. It is an addictive drug. RissFlex , a QAnon proponent claims (25 seconds in): As we know, the Deep state is heavily addicted to adrenochrome and human trafficking [...] To me this sounds like raving nonsense. Is there a drug called adrenochrome that is addictive and only (or most easily) obtained by drinking blood? | You can just buy adrenochrome, e.g. here from Sigma-Aldrich . It's somewhat expensive for a relatively simple chemical, but not as expensive as it would have to be if the only way to acquire it would be by extracting it from the blood of frightened humans. It can be synthesized by oxidizing epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), which is available pretty cheaply in bulk. Wikipedia mentions a synthesis using silver oxide , and I found another paper describing a different route . This is not a very complicated molecule, so there is no reason to believe that synthesizing it would not be feasible. I couldn't find much useful research on adrenochrome, the only studies seem to be from ~1950/1960, and I'm not sure I'd trust them very far. In a review from 2002 about the adrenochrome hypothesis of schizophrenia they describe the results of one of the older studies: Their reported results were that, all eight subjects given 30mg of adrenochrome developed a psychotic reaction, which they characterized as a toxic psychosis of the Bonhoeffer type in five and as schizophreniform in three. That doesn't say anything about it being addictive, but something that can induce psychotic reactions that reliably at higher doses doesn't seem like something you want to take recreationally. Though as people obviously still use drugs recreationally that can have similar dangerous side effects, I can't exclude this even though there are also no "positive" effects described that might lead people to take a substance like this. It also does not seem clear whether blood actually contains adrenochrome: Hoffer (1957) published a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry claiming to have detected adrenochrome in normal human blood. Six months later Szara et al. (1958) reported in the same journal that they could not detect adrenochrome in normal human blood. So, if you really wanted to consume a substance that triggers psychotic episodes, it would still be far less risky to just buy it from Sigma than to kidnap people and drink their blood (if there is even adrenochrome in their blood). | {
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48,505 | The claim from this site : It’s been said that the average American carries around between 5-20
extra pounds of poop in their intestines. It's hard to believe it's true. Is there a medical evidence that proves this claim? Losing 20 lbs (9 kg) by just flushing the intestines seems like a hoax. | No. According to the chapter "Carbohydrate Metabolism in the Colon" in Human Colonic Bacteria (1995) : The large intestine contains about 220 g wet weight of contents (range circa 60–900 g), 35 g dry weight Authors of the chapter are Philip D. Marsh, Ph.D. and Michael J. Hudson, B.Sc. Department of Pathogenicity PHLS Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research Porton Down, England. (Converting to pounds that is 0.5 lbs. average and 2 lbs. maximum) According to Comparison of fermentation reactions in different regions of the human colon Journal of Applied Bacteriology 1992, 72, 57-64. Gut contents were obtained from two sudden-death victims...The wet weight of colonic contents, in subjects 1 and 2 respectively, were: caecum, 71.9 and 18.2 g; ascending colon, 86.5 and 11.9 g; transverse colon, 125.7 and 25.3 g; descending colon, 3.68 and 126.9 g and sigmoid/rectum, 56.6 and 6.1 g. Total wet weights of colonic contents were 344.4 and 188.4 g. | {
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48,541 | John Ellis claims that water has a "hydrogen bond angle" ranging from 104° to 114°, and that his patented distillation machines can produce water with a permanent hydrogen bond angle above 113°. Does water at standard temperature and pressure have a stable "hydrogen bond angle?" And can that angle be permanently modified to the range between 113-114°? | The linked site mentions that this has been validated by the USPTO. Not true. John Ellis has a few patents on distillers that do not mention hydrogen bonds (from USPTO patent search site with search string IN/"Ellis, Jr; John C" PAT. NO.
Title
6,409,888
Method and apparatus for water degasification and distillation
5,203,970
Method for water degasification and distillation
4,612,090
Water degasification and distillation apparatus
4,420,374
Water degasification and distillation apparatus
4,339,307
Distillation apparatus Another search at google/patents "hydrogen bond angle and distiller ininventor:Ellis" produced 39 hits none of which were about this inventor. He does have a pending application US 2020/0095136 that makes a claim about changing the angle of hydrogen bonds. Contrary to the implication on the linked web site within the question, this is not a granted application. In fact it received a rejection 7/6/2020. It is non-final rejection but it does argue in one of the several grounds of rejection: Claims 1-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112
(pre-AIA), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the enablement
requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not
described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled
in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly
connected, to make and/or use the invention. The claimed limitation in claims 1 and 9 that ”water flowing out of the condensing channel has a hydrogen bond angle of greater than
110°”; and in claims 8 and 13 that it is from 113° to about 114° isn't
enabled for one having ordinary skill in the art. The equilibrium
hydrogen bond angle of water is generally understood in the art
as being 104.48°; see abstract of Hoy et al. The following factors,
from in re Wands, lead the conclusion of the undue experimentation
required to show how the invention was not enabled at the time the
invention was made: The translation is that it can't possibly work unless the inventor presents a lot more proof. It is out of the ordinary that an examiner essentially says an application violates known physics other than perpetual motion cases. I think this is the Hoy paper . | {
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48,621 | An article on Reason , and the associated video , claim that the severity of the recent forest fires are largely due to environmental regulations that prevent good forest management, along with an insistence on putting out small fires that would have cleared the undergrowth. Quotes from the article: California warmed 3 degrees over the past 50 years, but that's not the main cause of California's fires, no matter how often politicians and the media say it is. But for years, governments and environmentalists put out every small fire they could, while also fighting logging. For years, [politicians] and environmentalists increased the risk of big fires by opposing the thinning of forests. The town of Berry Creek, California, tried to get permits to legally clear their forest. For two years, regulators delayed approval. This year, fire destroyed the town. I'm aware of this question which says that government fire-suppression efforts are largely responsible for the amount of fuel in the forests, but I want to know if it was the environmental movement that was responsible for this, and if other environmental policies, especially tree protection in general, were also significant contributors to the severity of the fires. | Are environmentalists responsible for Californian forest fires? No. It was environmentalists (by which I mean people who professionally study forest ecology or environmental science) who have tried to convince the various agencies responsible for suppressing forest fires that forest fires are not necessarily bad but are instead a natural part of the West's ecology. From its inception, the US National Park System and the US Forest Service held a view that all forest fires are bad. By 1935, this was codified as the 10 a.m. policy, which stated that every fire should be suppressed by 10 a.m. the day following its initial report . It was responsible environmentalist organizations such as The Nature Conservancy who argued against this absolutist point of view and convinced the Forest Service to allow some controlled burns. What is responsible for California's forest fires is a mix of Climate change, which has made for longer fire seasons, and longer bouts of hot and dry weather. A nonaggressive adoption of controlled burns by the Forest Service in California. The Forest Service in Florida has aggressively begun using controlled burns. A lot of people moving from the cities and suburbs to the US wildland-urban interface who then argued against controlled burns in their back yards . The people who own million dollar homes (and sometimes, second homes) in Sky Ranch area of Salinas California aren't environmentalists so much as NIMBYs. Finally, some environmental groups such as Los Padres ForestWatch who vigorously oppose logging and tend to also oppose controlled burns and forest management, sometimes with lawsuits . The cited lawsuit was a collaboration between a mountain community that feared controlled burns, Los Padres ForestWatch, and Earth Island Institute. | {
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49,708 | This image has been widely shared. It has appeared on my Facebook wall after a recent event in Australia where a sacred tree was chopped down to make way for a new road. It was offered as an example of how it could have been preserved. (For clarity: no one is saying this is an Australian scene. I am just showing that it was presented to me as real.) I found hundreds and hundreds of shares on Google, but here are some examples: ReckonTalk Twitter This looks completely fake to me. The lack of road signs and fences, and the likelihood of a driver wiping out that tree, all make me suspect that this is a digital artwork being represented as a photograph. Is this an authentic photo? | Fake / Illustration. (I know this answer does not cite sources , but it's so obvious that requiring to find the "original artist" to expose it as a fake would be an undue complication.) Community Wiki answer. Feel free to add more boxes to the image... Green and purple boxes: Repeating ground pattern Red boxes: Repeating rock or bush pattern Yellow boxes: Inconsistent shadows (cars throw 45 degree shadows, tree throws mid-day shadow, horse/donkey has no shadow at all) Yellow boxes: Tree and animal shown from the side, cars from a higher angle Blue boxes: Distortion of the street (lanes get far too narrow in the bend, especially the far lane) | {
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49,721 | Refer to a blog post by Malaysia's ex Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad: Macron is not showing that he is civilised. He is very primitive in blaming the religion of Islam and Muslims for the killing of the
insulting school teacher. It is not in keeping with the teachings of
Islam. But irrespective of the religion professed, angry people kill. The French in the course of their history has killed millions of people. Many were Muslims. Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large the Muslims
have not applied the “eye for an eye” law. Muslims don’t. The French
shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect
other people’s feelings. I take these two paragraphs to mean that French killed millions of Muslims . Such remarks, of course, cause huge uproar around the world . My question is, did French really kill millions of Muslims? *(Nitpickers might want to argue that this was not Mahathir's original meaning as he only said killed millions of people. Many were Muslims. , but I would suggest that those who intend to argue along those lines read the two paragraphs in their entirety, if the French didn't kill millions of their brethren then Muslims certainly have no right to kill millions of French people in return) | It is hard to define where "the history of France" actually started. There was the realm of Francia since 481, the Kingdom of France since 987, experiments with different forms of republicanism and authoritarianism since 1789 until France finally arrived at its current form as a presidential democracy in 1958. So when one talks about "The French over the course of their history" then they might be referring to a timespan anywhere between 60 and 1500 years, depending on what narrative they want to push. But if you are looking for historic atrocities committed by any European superpower (which isn't Germany ), then a good place to start looking is usually the Colonial era . During that era, most European countries sailed all around the world to "civilize" less developed regions, which usually involved brutally murdering any locals who didn't want to be "civilized". The French were pretty active during that period. The French colonial Empire conquered most of West-Africa, which had (and still has) quite a large Muslim population. And as with any "colonization", those conquests were often very bloody. France only renounced their claims on most of these countries in the 20th century. Particularly notable is the French conquest of Algeria in 1832 where (depending on who does the estimation) between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Algerians lost their lives during the initial conquest. It is not clear how many Algerian Muslims were victims of crimes against humanity under French rule, as estimates vary widely depending on the political agenda of who makes the estimation. But some sources like Turkish government controlled news estimate several millions. Algeria did not gain independence from France until 1962, and only after fighting another war for it where the military and civilian casualties again went into the hundreds of thousands. So if Mahathir Mohammad referred to the colonial history of France, then his claim might indeed be true. In what way French people of today should be held responsible for things which happened during colonialism is a matter of debate. | {
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49,733 | Source (one of many). At a rally in Michigan on Friday (Oct 30th, 2020), President Trump repeated an
extraordinary and unfounded claim that American doctors were
profiteering from coronavirus deaths. “You know our doctors get more money if somebody dies from Covid." Can anyone explain what Mr. Trump is claiming here, and whether it is factual? | Can anyone explain what trump is claiming here ... What Trump was claiming is something that has been claimed multiple times since the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic: That doctors and hospitals are inflating the number of coronavirus hospital admissions and deaths because Medicare pays more if coronavirus is listed as one of the causes of the hospitalization or death. ... and whether it is factual? This is true. Medicare does indeed pay hospitals more if coronavirus is listed as a cause for hospitalization or as a cause of death. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services authorized a Medicare add-on payment of 20% for both rural and urban inpatient hospital COVID-19 patients . The rationale for this 20% add-on payment is simple. COVID-19 can be significantly more difficult to treat than are other diseases, and this costs money. Another reason is that COVID-19 is pandemic. At some point, the trade-off between false positives and false negatives (it is impossible to reduce both) favors false positives. The question then is whether physicians are inflating numbers regarding COVID-19 infections so as to profit from this add-on. The American Medical Association is very clear on this : At a time when physicians and other health care providers are providing care to a record number of COVID-19 patients amidst a third wave, there is misinformation about how patients are counted. Let's be clear physicians are not inflating the number of COVID-19 patients. Research published in JAMA and in CDC reports indicate that the US had significantly more deaths in 2020 than in previous years (excess deaths). Physicians and patients are making remarkable sacrifices and we continue urging all to wear a mask, physically distance and wash your hands to reduce suffering, illness and death. If anything, the number of COVID-19 deaths is undercounted rather than overcounted. There have been a significant number of excess deaths in the US since January 26, 2020. This is an undeniable fact. About two thirds of this excess mortality rate has been attributed to COVID-19. The other third includes people who may not have had COVID-19 but were afraid of going to a hospital for fear of contracting COVID-19. It almost certainly also includes people who had contracted COVID-19 but who died from one of the many comorbidities that in conjunction with COVID-19 infection make the disease so deadly. Addendum, from comments One of my specialties is failure detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR), but on rockets rather than people. The problem of false negatives versus false positives is first nature to me. It apparently is not to others. As comments tend to disappear at this site, I'll quote two of @Accumulation's comments, verbatim: Suppose, for each case, we assign a number from 0 to 100. A larger number means we're more sure that it's COVID. At what number should we classify it as COVID? If we classify everything with score of 10 or greater as COVID, then we'll catch most COVID cases, (i.e. low false negative) although occasionally there will be a case that has a score lower than 10 even though it actually is COVID. However, there will be a lot of cases that aren't COVID that are being classified as COVID (i.e. high false positive). If we require a case to have a score of at least 90, then there are going to be a lot of cases that actually are COVID that aren't classified as COVID (high false negative), but most cases that are classified as COVID are going to actually be COVID (low false positive). Raising the threshold decreases false positive, but increases false negative. It's impossible to eliminate false positives without having a lot of false negatives, and vice versa. Since the consequences of a false negative are worse than a false positive, we should err on the side of the latter. | {
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49,762 | As I live in Germany, I am trying to follow the local Covid-19 situation with attention. The other day I saw a source (Financial Times) I was not following being shared on twitter. I noticed that it was reporting significantly different numbers from sources I am following (Die Zeit), hence this question. In my search for an answer I came across the plots from Ourworldindata that I am adding to this question for comparison. Source 1: Financial Times (click for larger version) One can extract the following data points from this plot: 190.9 new cases every 1,000,000 people on average for the week ending on November 2nd 165.2 on November 3rd (a possibly incomplete number) The Financial Times indicates the following as their source of the data: Financial Times analysis of data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Covid Tracking Project, the UK Government coronavirus dashboard and the Spanish Ministry of Health.
Data updated November 4 2020 11.58am GMT. Interactive version: ft.com/covid19 Source 2: Ourworldindata (click for larger version) One can extract the following data points from this plot: 198.76 new cases every 1,000,000 people on average for the week ending on November 5th 189.44 on November 3rd 182.72 on November 2nd The source is cited as: Data published by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) at https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/download-todays-data-geographic-distribution-covid-19-cases-worldwide The ECDC in turn gives the following source for Germany's data : https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/478220a4c454480e823b17327b2bf1d4 This page is titled: Robert Koch-Institut: COVID-19-Dashboard Auswertungen basierend auf den aus den Gesundheitsämtern gemäß IfSG übermittelten Meldedaten i.e.: Evaluations based on the reporting data transmitted from the health authorities in accordance with IfSG Source 3: Die Zeit One can extract the following data points from the website: 140.8 new cases every 100,000 people on average for the week ending on November 5th 136.4 on November 3rd 132.7 on November 2nd The source is cited as (translation in parenthesis in italics): Quelle: Kreis- und Landesbehörden, RKI, eigene Berechnungen. ( Source: District and state authorities, RKI, own calculations. ) And additional notes are provided for "bestätigteNeuinfektionen in den letzten 7 Tagen" ( confirmed new infections in the last 7 days ) and "bestätigteFälle seit Beginn der Pandemie" ( confirmed cases since the pandemic began ): Die Anzahl der positiven Tests, die in den vergangenen sieben Tagen gemeldet wurden. Weitere Informationen unter der Infoschaltfläche »Bestätigte Fälle«. Bei so vielen Menschen fiel ein Test auf das Virus Sars-CoV-2 positiv aus. Wer sich angesteckt hat, aber nicht getestet wurde, wird nicht gezählt. Da nicht jeder überhaupt Symptome verspürt und nicht jeder Verdachtsfall getestet wird, liegt die Dunkelziffer wahrscheinlich höher. i.e.: The number of positive tests reported in the past seven days. Further information under the information button »Confirmed cases«. The number of people tested positive for the Sars-CoV-2 virus. Those who are infected but not tested are not counted. Since not everyone feels symptoms at all and not every suspected case is tested, the number of unreported cases is probably higher. Now my question: How is it possible that the same data (from RKI) leads to wildly different normalized numbers?
Why does the FT and Ourworldindata report ~190 cases per million per week, while Die Zeit reports ~140 per 100,000 per week? Isn't that almost a factor of 10x? Even accounting for delays in updating the charts and/or interpolations/extrapolations, I don't see how that is a reasonable difference. | As mentioned in a comment by Mad Scientist: Ourworldindata reports around 200 cases per 1 million inhabitants per day where this number is the average over the last 7 days. DieZeit reports around 140 cases per 100.000 inhabitants in total over the last 7 days. With rounding these two incidence rates match up exactly. | {
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49,767 | During a press conference around 6:30pm in Washington DC today on 5th of November 2020, President Trump stated that the election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats. I have transcribed the quote with some context here: In Georgia a pipe burst in a far-away location, totally unrelated to
the location of what was happening, and they stopped counting for 4
hours. And a lot of things happened. The election apparatus in Georgia
is run by Democrats. This was at roughly 28:10 of this video posted by Right Side Broadcasting Network . What is the basis for this claim? | Unclear what the basis for Trump’s claim is. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who runs Georgia's Elections Division, is a Republican, as is the state’s governor. Republican Brad Raffensperger wins runoff for Georgia secretary of state (Dec. 4, 2018) Raffensperger said he would continue Gov.-elect Brian Kemp's practice
of strictly enforcing ID laws and pruning election rolls of inactive
voters. Addendum: Some of the other answers assert without evidence that the local election administrators in Georgia must be Democrats because urban areas where most of the votes are cast lean Democratic. (There is some cognitive dissonance in suggesting that the partisan tilt of a region is unfairly due to elected officials you assume are of one party because you're certain of the partisan tilt of the region.) Georgia elections are run under rules approved by the Republican-led legislature and overseen by a Republican-led elections board. Georgia's largest counties and apparently most, if not all, of the others have elections boards comprised of two Republican appointees, two Democrat appointees, and a non-partisan chairperson appointed by the county's executive committee. (Some boards are one of each party and three county-level appointees.) A detailed analysis of the county appointees might show a tilt one way or the other, but offhand this is hardly consistent with being "the election apparatus in Georgia is run by Democrats." | {
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49,782 | Benford's Law is a statistical rule that says that the distribution of digits in real-world numerical datasets tends to follow a specific pattern. It is often used to test whether an election is legitimate or phoney, by comparing the frequency of digits in candidates' vote counts to the expected pattern. For example, it was used in establishing electoral fraud in the 2009 Iranian election. I recently came across several right-wing sources that claim President-elect Joe Biden's vote counts in the 2020 election violate Benford's Law. Examples include the website "The Red Elephants" and this r/donaldtrump thread . The "Red Elephants" article makes several other claims of fraud, but I would like to restrict this question to the digit frequency analysis. Normally I would immediately dismiss something like this as a baseless partisan conspiracy theory, but the claims should be testable using public records and statistical analysis. Quote: According to some analysts, Biden’s Vote Tallies Violate Benford’s Law, as all of the other candidates’ tallies follow Benford’s law across the country, except for Biden’s when he gets in a tight race. Biden pretty clearly fails an accepted test for catching election fraud, used by the State Department and forensic accountants. Analysts ran the data with Allegheny using the Mebane 2nd digit test with Trump vs Biden. The difference was significant. It just doesn’t work. Biden’s is fishy, many significant deviations. In Trump’s there were only 2 deviations but neither are significant at the 5% level. The X-asis is the digit in question, the Y-axis is the % of observations with that digit. Here are a few of several relevant images from the article: First digit frequencies in Chicago Second digit frequencies in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania | This answer only addresses the second charts. I'll let Mathematician Matt Parker address Benford's Law . I can confirm [the result is] actually exactly what you'd expect, that's not out of order... And secondly Benford's Law is not a good test for election fraud. And I quote [from Benford's Law and the Detection of Election Law (2011) ] "Benford's Law is problematic at best as a forensic tool when applied to elections". To the graphs, the vertical scales are different. Narrow vertical scales make changes look larger. While wide vertical scales smooth out changes. Biden's graph is using a more narrow scale than Trump's. I put them all together in one graph with the same scale and they don't look so different anymore. I haven't verified the data from the original graph is correct. I had to eyeball the numbers from the graphs. It is suspicious because someone had to choose to use different vertical axes for each graph. It looks like a case straight out of How To Lie With Statistics . | {
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49,788 | There have been many claims that votes were received from dead voters in the 2020 US presidentil election. For example, @AndySwan tweeted : Joe Biden was so inspiring that all the 90+ year olds in Pennsylvania registered to vote this year, setting a huge record! He follows up with examples of voters apparently born in the 1850s: Were there a large number of votes received from registered voters that were suspiciously old? Related question: Does this video prove that a provably dead person in Michigan voted by absentee ballot? | First, the graphs In the charts posted, the blue line shows the proportion of 90's registered to vote. The orange bars show the actual number of 90's registered to vote. Although the two graphs are scaled the same as each other, they use a different scale on the left as on the right, and the data compiler has fixed the scales so that on the "Democrat counties" (top) graph the blue line is above the bars, and on the "Other counties" (bottom) graph, the blue line is below the bars. This gives the false impression that the Democrats somehow have "dead people" voting. This is false also for other reasons: The graphs do not show how many people actually voted . Each graph shows essentially the same data but presented differently. There is no data for any other age group to compare with. The graphs below are redrawn so that data are separated back to different graphs, and now like is compared with like. They show that there were more 90+ people registered to vote in "Other" counties, but that the proportion per 100,000 population is more in "Democrat" counties, in other words the density of 90+ voters is greater in "Democrat" counties. They say nothing about any discrepancy between the number of registered voters and the number of votes cast. They reveal nothing about a supposed Democratic plot, as there is a large increase in voters from all counties. Second, the table of voters The data can be seen in the public records of Pennsylvania at https://data.pa.gov/Government-Efficiency-Citizen-Engagement/2020-General-Election-Mail-Ballot-Requests-Departm/mcba-yywm/ The table in the question showing just 11 voters born before 1900 is exactly the same as the 11 voter registrations shown in the Pa. data table, when ordered by DOB. So here is the source. The table is headed 2020 General Election Mail Ballot Requests and the column headings support that. The second column (not shown by OP) is Applicant party designation which reveals that of the 11 records selected 3 were Republican and 8 were Democrat. This suggests the reason for them may have nothing to do with fraud attributable to any party. There is also a group of records dated 1/1/1800, again with a variety of party designations. The reason for these is clearly administrative: the web page states that 1/1/1800 is used as a placeholder for privacy reasons. Considering how few registered voters there are who are unreasonably old, the reason is far more likely to be clerical than fraudulent. The data is about mail-in votes . It is well known that the number of mail-in votes has increased dramatically this year due to covid-19, and it is also known that Republicans were dissuaded from voting by mail. Here is one report from npr dated August 2020. So this is where the apparent big increase comes from: mail-in registrations. Although the graphs are for the over-90s, I expect that there is an increase across all age ranges in 2020. Back to the question: Were a large number of votes from suspiciously old Pennsylvanians received in the 2020 US presidential election? Since the evidence to support that claim shows only age 90+ voting registrations, the presumption is that the data is presented to make it seem that way. Just 11 records out of about 3 million is not a 'suspiciously large number'. | {
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49,831 | A recent News story reports a wedding party finding torn-apart ballots, the majority of which are marked for President Trump. While the majority of the sites that I've found this story on are pro-Trump sites, I'm not seeing anything suspicious in the articles themselves, or the video that the majority of these articles have included. Are these legitimate ballots, the majority of which have been cast for Trump, that have been thrown out? It is already noted in the video that such ballots wouldn't change Oklahoma's results - since Oklahoma is deep red - so this question is only asking about the validity of the torn-up ballots. | According to the Oklahoma State Election Board ( via Twitter ): This video is from pct 469 / subpct 457 in Tulsa County. These are clearly "spoiled ballots" where the voter mistakenly marked more than one option in a race. Spoiled ballots are returned to the precinct clerk and destroyed, then the voter is issued a new ballot. They use screenshots from the video to highlight this point. Here are some of the examples they show - they annotated the video to circle the part of the ballot that shows it is "spoiled": They also referenced the relevant statute : "Should a voter spoil any ballot in an effort to vote the same, the voter shall... return it to the clerk. The clerk shall destroy the ballot in the presence of the voter and shall issue the voter another ballot..." And they show a redacted photo of the spoiled ballot affadavit for that polling location, with signatures of 11 voters who had spoiled ballots: | {
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49,844 | Donald Trump has tweeted “REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE. DATA
ANALYSIS FINDS 221,000 PENNSYLVANIA VOTES SWITCHED FROM PRESIDENT
TRUMP TO BIDEN. 941,000 TRUMP VOTES DELETED. STATES USING DOMINION
VOTING SYSTEMS SWITCHED 435,000 VOTES FROM TRUMP TO BIDEN.”
@ChanelRion @OANN Twitter has marked the tweet "This claim about election fraud is disputed" Is there evidence that voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems miscounted millions of votes for Trump? | TL;DR : this claim is based on updates in the real-time election night data reported by news outlets, not the official vote counts reported by states and counties. There are discrepancies in the news outlet's data feed in the vote counts for all candidates, not only Trump's vote counts, and in many states, not only those using Dominion. In a similar instance, this kind of discrepancy has been attributed to a data entry error (by people working for the news/media feed, not by election officials!) Here is a video of the claim he is referencing (via OAN). The claim is: According to an unaudited analysis of data from Edison Research, states using Dominion voting systems may have switched 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden. Another 2.7 million Trump votes appear to have been deleted by Dominion. OAN cites the work of an "unaudited" data analysis by an unnamed author. Here is the "data analysis" that they are citing. The claim is based on the New York Times' election site. The New York Times uses Edison Research's data feed for this site, but they don't make the full Edison Research feed available. However, some of the data underlying the tables and graphs on their Election site is made available (unofficially) in machine-readable format. This data is aggregated by the New York Times, and possibly processed in other ways, not a direct feed from Edison Research. The data used here is the time-series data that shows the reported vote share of each candidate and the number of votes counted in a state over time, as shown on the New York Times Election website. The claim is based on anomalies like this one in the NYT data: In this example, we can see that the total number of votes increased by only 54, yet the vote share changed from 0.566 to 0.42, to 0.56 to 0.4266. The implication is that: As of that "187" entry shown above, the vote is approximately 1689209 Trump to 1253477 Biden, In the "188" entry, after a 54-vote update, the vote is approximately 1671332 Trump to 1271406 Biden. Somehow, the update has "removed" votes from Trump (who has fewer votes than before the update) and "given" them to Biden (who has more "new" votes than the change in the total number of votes). ("Approximately" because of rounding.) The author of the claim wrote a script to find all such instances of votes "switching" from Trump to Biden (or to Jorgensen). They found instances of "switching" in states that use Dominion voting systems, and in states that use other systems, or where it's not known what voting system is used. They noted some states that use Dominion voting systems where they did not have any instances of this "switching". While the original "data analysis" only counted votes "switched" from Trump to Biden, it does occur the other way around (i.e. there are updates in which Biden "loses" votes). (When users pointed this out in the original forum thread e.g.: "I was looking through Wisconsin the other day trying to catch fraud and in fact Biden lost significantly more votes than Trump did in that state.", they were dismissed with responses like "Cope harder, Biden boy" and "Get out shill"). And, there are also instances of vote counts decreasing in the Edison feed for downballot candidates . Incidentally, OAN (and Trump, who referred to the OAN report), misrepresented the part about "lost" or "deleted" votes. The "data analysis" counts "lost votes" any time "the total amount of votes counted decreased" from one update to the next, but unlike OAN and Trump, it doesn't say those are "Trump votes". The entire claim is based on data that is not official election data ! Here's some more information about how Edison Research collects the data for the data feed used by New York Times and other sites on Election Night: There are "reporters at county elections offices who call results" into the Edison phone center They use "data feeds provided by some states and counties" They have people who "scour state and county websites for results" to enter into the system They have people who monitor "results sent from counties, cities, and towns via email or fax" They have people ("chasers") who monitor other news sources for results not yet in the Edison system. In summary: they have many, many, people, manually entering data as fast as they can into an online system, with great potential for error. In fact, we already know of one major error that affected their Election 2020 feed. AP has a similar process for reporting the vote on election night. A similar vote "switching" anomaly that was reported to the county that was allegedly affected, was attributed to an error in the AP election night feed: Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson is pushing back against claims of vote tampering in Rock County during the Nov. 3 election. A Nov. 9 article published by The Gateway Pundit, a conservative news and opinion website, claims that a source in Rock County observed vote totals being changed from President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden, citing roughly 10,000 votes that were allegedly changed in Election Night reporting. The article shows screenshots of Rock County results that were part of Fox News election night reporting, which were submitted by the anonymous source. The article does not include figures from the Rock County election website. “It looks like the news outlet reported incorrect information,” Tollefson said. “That’s not the county’s website and we’re trying to figure out where the information came from and where the discrepancy came from.” | {
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49,848 | Christie's is a famous auction house. In their press release and marketing material, Christie's Voyage to Another World: The Victor Martrin-Malburet Photograph Collection , you can find the following claims Lot 345, The only photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon , July 16-24,1969. BUZZ ALDRIN [APOLLO 11]. Estimate: £30,000-50,000 They go on to repeat that claim in the text, These rare pictures lay uncelebrated for decades, such as the first photograph of Earthrise, the only photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon and incredible panoramas taken by each of the 12 astronauts who walked on the Moon. Of all the photos taken on the moon, is there only one with Neil Armstrong? Is he in the periphery of another, or are there other photos of Neil? Or, is this claim true? Christie's claim is that this picture is the only picture of Neil Armstrong on the moon, | Here's another photo of Neil Armstrong on the Moon: Half resolution version of the original as released by NASA due to file size limits here at SE He's resting inside the LEM after his and Buzz Aldrin's historic moonwalk. He appears to be both elated and exhausted after making history in a way no other person ever has. The LEM is still parked on the Moon's surface. Just as a pilot sitting in an airplane on a taxiway is said to be "sitting on the tarmac" while awaiting takeoff, Armstrong is "sitting on the Moon" inside the LEM. Here's a cropped and exposure corrected version released by NASA: One-quarter resolution of the original released by NASA due to size limits here at SE Here's a single frame from a 16mm timelapse movie that was taken by Buzz Aldrin from inside the LEM at the beginning of Armstrong's moonwalk before Aldrin also emerged from the LEM and joined Neil outside. This is a frame grab from the television camera mounted on one of the LEM's lander legs that beamed a live signal back to Earth as Armstrong descended the ladder before setting foot on the moon for the first time in human history: There's at least one other photo that shows a silhouette of Armstrong's helmet and part of his right shoulder in the deep shadow under the LEM in the far corner of a photo taken by Aldrin to document an equipment bay on the LEM's landing stage. And of course, here's what is probably the most recognizable photograph in the history of the human race: One can see a reflection of Neil Armstrong, along with parts of the LEM and some of the other scientific items they've placed on the Moon's surface around the LEM at Tranquility Base, taking Buzz Aldrin's photo on the front of Colonel Aldrin's face shield. But that's neither here nor there. The photo described by Christie's as "The only photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon" has been referred to in this way since 1987. The fuller description of the photo was "the only 70mm full body photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon." 70mm describes the film format size used by the customized version of the Hasselblad 500C cameras used on the Apollo 11 moonwalk. When anyone familiar with the history of the Apollo program hears the expression "the only photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon" they know exactly which photograph is being referenced. The very limited number of other photos of Neil Armstrong taken during his EVA on the Moon's surface are either reflections off of other objects, video or movie frame grabs, or captures of small parts of his spacesuit in deep shadows that would not be identifiable at all except for the fact that the only other human being (and space suit, occupied or otherwise) within range of the camera's resolution limits was the photographer, Buzz Aldrin. Until 1987, when it was conclusively established that the photo Christie's describes as The Only Photo of Neil Armstrong on the Moon contains a full bodied image of Neil Armstrong, he often stated unequivocally that none of the photos taken during his EVA on the Moon's surface were of himself. The well-known photo he took of Buzz Aldrin had been publicly released for almost two decades at that time. This demonstrates that Neil Armstrong himself did not consider the photo he took of Buzz Aldrin that included a small reflection of himself while taking the photo to be a photo of Neil Armstrong. So is this photo the only photograph that contains an image of Neil Armstrong on the surface of the Moon? Not really. But it is the singular photograph that has been titled for over thirty years as: "The Only Photograph of Neil Armstrong on the Moon" | {
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49,907 | This biography of Einstein ( "Einstein's Bovine Dreams" by João Magueijo, in E = Einstein — His Life, His Thought And His Influence on Our Culture , ISBN 978-1-4027-3787-9 ) asserts that, and narrates the dream in astonishing detail. The only chance of it being true is a direct testimony of Einstein himself, but I haven't found it. | According to an article in Nature reviewing Magueijo's earlier book, the story is fictional: Faster Than the Speed of Light is a lively book that captures the excitement and frustrations of doing real-world science. Magueijo relates interestingly how his VSL proposal might possibly be a way out of some major puzzles facing cosmology, which he explains well. There are irritating passages, however, where he makes extended use of a metaphor involving farmers and cows in explaining relativity theory. Magueijo states that this is based on a dream that Einstein had as a boy — a fictional invention that displays such a cavalier attitude to historical truth as to call into question his other historical claims (and for the record, it was Richard Tolman, not Yakov Zeldovich, who first investigated the thermodynamics of bouncing universes). | {
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49,924 | In my experience, when stores in Bulgaria sell raw chicken legs in packaging, they are always the left leg. One explanation I have heard is that the left leg is inferior, because it is the site of injections: Bulgarian news site, Flagman has a 2012 article [Bulgarian]. (Rough translation): Foreigners are giving us the chicken legs which are injected.
Left chicken legs are widely imported in Bulgaria because the
well-known fast-growing hormones are injected right into them. The right legs are reserved for the "rich" western countries, the Telegraph writes. The foreigners threw away the inflated lefties, but the wasteful
practice reached the ears of our businessmen, who immediately arranged
regular imports for insignificant sums. The hormones that chickens are stuffed with in the form of feed
mixtures are female. It turns out that the so-called growth hormones,
or female hormones, collide en masse in chicken meat. There is
currently no product on the market that is not injected with hormones,
water and saline solutions. Thus, in just 40 days, the egg turns into a fatty broiler. Consumption
of such meat, however, is not recommended for children and
adolescents, as their immune system is incomplete and can not break
down hormones. In this way, the boys' bodies are crammed with more
female hormones. I found multiple similar resources that are quoted in many places however I did not find the cited article in Telegraph. I find this hard to believe; whole chickens are also sold and both legs look the same. (An unreferenced 2010 answer in Answers.com claims the left leg is tenderer because the chicken scratches with its right leg, but this isn't a notable claim.) Are either of these theories true? If not, why do we see only left chicken legs in chicken leg packages? | This claim raises so many questions! It is one of funnier claims on the site. First, does Bulgaria imports chickens? After all, if they grew all their own, this claim wouldn't be true. Poultry World says yes. Bulgaria’s poultry imports are dominated by broiler meat, while export revenues come mainly from duck products. [...] Broiler meat imports accounted for 94% of total poultry meat imports and grew over 10% in volume. Frozen broiler meat imports in 2019 increased by 2.2% to 54,000 mt, but its share in total poultry imports was stable at 50%. Frozen chicken leg quarter imports grew 2% over 2018 and remained Bulgaria’s primary imported poultry product. Where does Bulgaria get its chickens from? Poultry World says: Major suppliers were Poland (40%), Romania (18%) and Hungary (12%). The USDA mentions Greece as another supplier with an 11% share, but also talks about local production. Between them, they account for almost all of the broiler chickens sold. Note in particular, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria are all members of the EU. Is poultry in EU countries injected with "well-known fast-growing hormones"? No! The European Commission has had a ban for decades : In 1981, with Directive 81/602/EEC, the EU prohibited the use of substances having a hormonal action for growth promotion in farm animals. Examples for these kind of growth promoters are oestradiol 17ß, testosterone, progesterone, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate (MGA). This prohibition applies to Member States and imports from third countries alike. The legal instrument in force is Directive 96/22/EC as amended by Directive 2003/74/EC. So, the answer to the question is: NO! Chickens do not get injected with growth hormones. I took a side trip to find out if chickens had a preferred side (are they "lateralized"?) Yes! We've only known about this since 1979. It is induced by light during the embryonic stage . Given all this, are chickens even asymmetrical? (Oh man, that feeling when you ask the literature "No-one has even spent serious effort into looking at the lopsidedness of chickens, have they?" and the literature says "Oh, of course they have. I've got your back.") A 2012 paper investigated the idea that overcrowding chickens might lead to leg deformations, which could be measured by skeletal asymmetries. Such asymmetries ("fluctuating asymmetries" or FA) were assumed to be distributed randomly between the left and right, which allowed them to be compensate for the "directional asymmetries" (or DA) - i.e. when one side was systemically different to the other (which wasn't thought to be due to stress). (So, the authors wanted to known about FA and remove the effect of any DA, but we are only interested in whether DA exists.) They measured the sizes of toes and lower leg bones (and eyes and beaks etc.) and tried to pick characteristics that didn't have DA. The DA of the full data set was analyzed as described for the character selection. Although none of the selected characters had shown DA during the character selection, several characters showed DA when all 427 individuals were included. This was likely caused by the increased power of the DA test when performed on this larger sample. Unlike FA, DA is generally not considered an indicator of stress (Klingenberg, 2003) and can lead to biased FA estimates (Van Dongen et al., 1999). Therefore, all measures were corrected for DA by using the unsigned random slopes of the individual regression lines as unbiased estimates of individual absolute FA (Van Dongen et al., 1999). What does that mean? It means the paper, unfortunately, didn't describe exactly how asymmetric undeformed, healthy birds are, or in which direction, but yes, chickens are, on average, bigger on one side than the other (and the amount seems to be small.) So, why did the OP find that only one side of the chicken is sold in the shops? I don't have an answer to this. I am dying to know. I even briefly considered some original research: how much it would cost to "air-task" three or four people to photograph some chicken pieces in their local supermarket, and see if there is even an effect to explain here. My pet conjecture, that I offer without any evidence at all, is that the OP is right: that this is a widely-believed urban legend in Bulgaria, which has led to a consumer preference for right-handed chicken legs, which leads to them being preferentially selected from the display case by picky shoppers, leaving only the left-handed legs remaining for the OP to find when shopping later in the cycle. Alas, the literature didn't have my back when checking this idea. | {
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49,932 | This video came out a couple hours ago (around UTC 9pm 2020-11-29), showing China already landed Chang'e 5. Is this video real? I find it hard to believe because I could not find sources confirming that it already landed. Someone (Tau Shet Yoi) in the comment of the video said This video isn't true, changer 5 hasn't landed yet. Other said that this is of Chang'e 4, which landed on the back side of the moon. I also don't really believe it because you can obviously hear motorcycle and other city sounds, sounding like it was videoed on Earth. The video description said This is what happened as I pointed my telescope northeast of Mons Rümker! I believe this high resolution can only occur (if at all) with those ELTs (Extremely Large Telescopes, instead of those commercial ones for the everyday people, no matter how good those are. | Edit at 2nd Dec 2020: Now It has actually landed ! On the 30th November 2020 at 08:09 the CGTN , which is China's state broadcaster, reported as follows (emphasis mine) The mission team said the lander and ascender are waiting for a perfect timing for a soft landing, while the orbiter and returner will continue to fly around the moon and adjust to a designated orbit, getting ready for the docking with the ascender. The landing operation is expected in three days. Once it touches down on the lunar surface, the lander will collect two kilograms of lunar samples. It will shovel some surface material, drill a two-meter-deep hole and extract the soil from inside it, which will act as an archive of the moon, with the bottom recording information from a billion years ago, and the top more closely reflecting the present day. Which, as this is future tense, would imply to me that it has not yet happened as of today, the 30th November. The video in the question was posted on 29th November, which would imply that it does not show what it purports to show. If the lander had touched down earlier than expected, and seemingly perfectly, China would be the first to report it to the world. | {
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49,953 | This picture was shared by William McNamara on his Facebook page . It was captioned: This is not a graphic pic, nor a gorey one,... though one to make you think where your food comes from. Can you guess what this is?
This is in Oregon, and each crate has a calf in it, that was taken from their mourning, crying mother, one hour after they were born. Their mother had enough time, to clean up the birth, lick and intially bond with them, before they were taken away to live in these boxes, waiting to die in about six weeks. Here they will stay unable to move to make their "meat" tender until they become veal steaks. At the very least, give up veal. It's a really great start. Do something, anything. Are these crates stored outdoors intended for calfs? Are they placed into these crates an hour (or shortly) after they're born? Is the lifespan of a veal-calf about six weeks? | Snopes rates that particular picture as a fairly misleading "veal hutch" which isn't actually used like that. What’s pictured here are not crates in which calves are imprisoned within an hour of their birth, condemned to spend their entire lifespans stuffed into little boxes that don’t even provide them enough room to turn around in order to keep their meat “tender” before they’re marched off to slaughter after only six weeks. (Veal calves are typically raised for 16 weeks, not six.) This photograph actually shows calf hutches that are used to house calves being raised for dairy (not veal) purposes, and those hutches provide plenty of room for calves to turn around and as well as attached runs so that the calves can spend time outdoors. More photos follow on Snopes, among which one that has seemingly the exact same 3-window pattern to the hutch, but seen from the inside. I guess this one is intended to prove there's "plenty of room for calves to turn" in those hutches: There are more photos with the outside wire pens attached and if you look closely at claim photo you can see the wire pens in that one as well, except that the hutches are shot from the back, so the pens are on the far side. Also a bit more image searching finds the same ribbed-pattern hutches (with the three inner ribbs a bit closer to each other than to the out two) but shot from opposite angle; and this one has the calves in the image for relative-scale perspective; the calves in this photo seem more mature: As far as the purpose of such a practice goes, the USDA itself recommends in a 2007 document (p. 63) that: Housing for unweaned calves should provide a dry area with shelter that does not allow contact with other calves or older animals, especially. Hutches or individual
animal pens usually are recommended for unweaned calves. Sure there are some recommendations or regulations for minimum sizes etc., as OP's own answer details. And in a (much later) section that is detailed to be for "biosecurity" (disease prevention) reasons: Newborn calf risks and contact with other cattle Separating newborn calves from their dams soon
after they are born helps prevent disease
transmission that can occur through nursing or
contact with adult cow feces in maternity areas.
Milk from dams infected with Mycoplasma,
Salmonella, E. coli, Mycobacterium avium
subspecies paratuberculosis, or BVD can
transmit these diseases to calves (Wells, 2000;
Nielsen et al., 2008). Feeding preweaned calves
pasteurized milk, milk replacer, or milk from
known disease-free cows is recommended. The percentage of operations that separated
newborn calves from their dams immediately
after they were born doubled from 1991 to 2007
(28.0 to 55.9 percent of operations,
respectively). In 2007, 22.2 percent of
operations allowed calves to nurse from their
dams but removed them from their dams less
than 12 hours following birth. In 2007, about
two-thirds of calves (65.6 percent) were on
operations that removed calves from their dams
immediately following birth. Less than 1 of
10 operations (7.3 percent)—representing
2.6 percent of calves—allowed calves to stay
with their dams for more than 24 hours. Keeping preweaned calves separate from older
animals is an effective way to reduce their
exposure to disease. Preweaned calves are more
susceptible to disease than older, healthy
animals because their immune system is not yet
fully developed (BAMN, 2001b). Physical
contact between preweaned calves and cattle
from older age groups (including nose-to-nose,
sniffing, touching, licking, or contact across
fence lines) increases the risk of exposing the
calves to diseases such as salmonellosis, Johne’s
disease, and upper respiratory diseases.
The percentage of operations in which
preweaned heifers were not exposed to weaned
calves, bred heifers, or adult cattle increased
from 1996 to 2007. Whether this common US practice has some other deleterious side-effects
because individual housing "lacks physical and social stimulation, limiting calves' ability to perform natural behaviors" has been
investigated in some papers ,
but we're getting a bit far afield from the claim here. Interestingly, in the UK, since 2018 Tesco has banned the use of single-calf hutches for its suppliers, citing some papers like the above, i.e. they require that calves be reared at least in pairs from day one. There are actually precious few illustrations of what a "veal crate" looks like (or looked like, before the various bans). I found a fairly credible one on the website of an organization that fought for their ban in the EU. (The ban was adopted in 1995, but had 12-year grace period, becoming fully effective in 2007.) Also on the EU side, you could look at video of a contemporary (2017) "veal shed" in the Netherlands. Similar video of a US veal farm (2019). Individual indoor pens for young calfs can be seen briefly. | {
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49,984 | This image is doing the rounds on Facebook: The image reads: Yes, people die everyday. Yes we know it's not you because you are reading this. Cancer takes approx. 1,600 Americans a day. Heart events take approx. 1,800 Americans a day. Suicides approx. 132. Overdose deaths approx. 130. Covid took 3,100 lives in America yesterday making this new internet visual outdated in the same week, and becoming the 3rd most deadliest day in American history. Deadliest days in american history: Galveston Hurricane - 8,000 Antietam - 3,600 September 11, 2001 -2,977 Last Thursday - 2,861 Last Wednesday - 2,762 Last Tuesday - 2,461 Last Friday - 2,439 Pearl Harbor - 2403 Wear a mask and avoid gatherings. I want to know if the claims in it are correct. In particular was 'yesterday' really the 3rd deadliest day in American history? | The numbers on the chart seem to be close for the most part, although there are other events that match the criteria of this image that should be included. We are going to assume, for the sake of this question, that the criteria that the creator of this image used was Either deaths of American Citizens, or deaths on American soil – this is to prevent things like the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, U.S. Strategic bombing raids during WW2, etc from being included on the list (and yes, Americans died in all of these events). Death must be a single linked cause – this is to prevent counting individual days of deaths, which realistically would only go up every day and set new records even without the COVID-19 epidemic just because people die every day. Looking for every single death that occurred on every single day would kind of defeat the purpose of this graphic Deaths must take place in a single day – this is to prevent wider ranging causes of death like wars to avoid drowning out this list, and is clearly demonstrated by the use of Galveston, Antietam, etc on this list and not multi-day battles like The Battle of the Bulge or wider ranging conflicts such as wars. 1900 Galveston hurricane - Wikipedia reports anywhere from 6,000 - 12,000 deaths, 8,000 is in the ball park. Wikipedia even says that the 8,000 number is the one most commonly cited, but because of limitations on information gathering the true number of dead will probably remain unknown. Battle of Antietam - Wikipedia reports 3,675 between the Union and Confederate armies, which puts the graphic's number of 3,600 close enough that I won't complain. Notably, this battle took place on a single day, so while it does not take the title of "deadliest battle for American soldiers", those other battles (with one exception, which I will talk about later) do not hold the title for "deadliest day for American Soldiers". September 11th, 2001 Terror Attacks - Wikipedia lists the number of deaths in the combined terror attacks of September 11th as 2,977. This is not including the 19 highjackers who also died on 9/11, which would bring this number to 2,996. However, the number cited on the list includes people who died in the aftermath of the attacks . 2,974 victims were confirmed to have died in the initial attacks. In 2007, the New York City medical examiner's office began to add people who died of illnesses caused by exposure to dust from the site to the official death toll. The first such victim was a woman, a civil rights lawyer, who had died from a chronic lung condition in February 2002. In September 2009, the office added a man who died in October 2008, and in 2011, a male accountant who had died in December 2010. The proper number for this chart should probably be 2,974, due to deaths that occurred after 9/11 but were counted in the official count, per the rules established above. Attack on Pearl Harbor - Wikipedia cites 2,335 military deaths and 68 civilian deaths during the attack, which matches up with the 2,403 dead on the image The next four will come from the John Hopkins COVID-19 tracker Last Thursday (3 December 2020) - JH lists 2,879 deaths, image says 2,861 Last Wednesday (2 December 2020) - JH lists 2,804 deaths, image says 2,762 Last Tuesday (1 December 2020) - JH lists 2,597, image says 2,461 Last Friday (4 December 2020) (assumed) - JH lists 2,607, image says 2,439 These all seem to be in the ballpark for the most part, although the numbers for 1 December and 4 December seem to be off and should realistically be flipped. I can chalk this up to the creator using a different dataset or potentially having more preliminary data. Other events that should realistically be included in this chart. Spanish Flu - October 1918 – there does not seem to be exact data on each day like there is in the case of the COVID-19 epidemic, but most estimates claim that 195,000 Americans died of the Spanish Flu in October 1918. This works out to an average of approximately 6,300 deaths per day over the course of the entire month. Realistically, this should push everything except maybe the Galveston Hurricane off this list. Normandy Landings - 6 June 1944 – estimates put the list of American Soldiers killed during the invasion at 2,501, which would rank it above Pearl Harbor, 1 December 2020, and 4 December 2020 on the original graphic. Battle of Gettysburg - 1-3 June 1863 – estimates are hard to come by due to lack of specific information. Historynet.com puts the casualties for the entire 3 day battle at 7,058, which would put it at an average of 2,352 deaths a day. This average isn't quite enough to get on the list, but most likely one of the days would have made it. Special note goes to 3 June 1863 , and specifically Pickett's Charge , as the most likely candidate that would make it on this list. 1906 San Francisco Earthquake - exact numbers are not known, but the United States Geological Survey lists the number of deaths at 3,000+ . 15, 7, 21, 29, 23, 14, 22, 30 April 2020, in that order – per JH, each one of these days had a higher death count than Pearl Harbor. | {
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50,152 | An op-ed on Russia Today (which obviously has its biases) claims about Trump's reaction to the Jan 6 events: The supposed Nazi fascist dictator himself ordered National Guard and police to clear out the protesters who sided with him, and protect the establishment that did not. I see NBC also briefly mentions that Trump directed the National Guard to head to the Capitol, he said in a tweet Is there confirmation that the Guard actually received such an order from Trump himself, or if it was through the chain of command, did this order contain clear indication that it ultimately came from Trump himself? Basically, is there evidence (besides that tweet) that Trump himself gave such orders to the Guard? (Just so we don't get repeatedly deleted comments on this and drive the mods to exhaustion: I'm aware Trump also tweeted that his supporters should "go home" on that day. But there's a difference between appealing [his own supporters] for de-escalation and ordering security forces build-up or an actual crackdown. Also, I see AP has a Sep 1 fact check on some previous tweets of Trump regarding other National Guard deployments, some of which AP concluded contained an exaggeration of Trump's role.) | No, Trump did not order the National Guard to mobilize at that time. As The New York Times reported, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller made the ultimate decision to activate the entirety of the district's National Guard, an order that was subsequently approved by Mike Pence, not Trump: Defense and administration officials said it was Vice President Mike Pence, not President Trump, who approved the order to deploy the D.C. National Guard. It was unclear why the president, who incited his supporters to storm the Capitol and who is still the commander in chief, did not give the order. The claim that Miller gave the order is borne out by the official timeline of events released by the Department of Defense , which depict a number of conversations between officials between December 31 and the 8:00 PM on January 6. Following a call between McCarthy and the mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, there were additional meetings in which Miller, the Deputy Mayor, and other high-level officials were present. Neither the Vice President or the President are listed as having been in attendance, but it explicitly states that at 3:00 PM, McCarthy determined that the entirety of the district's National Guard forces would be required, and that Miller gave verbal approval for the full deployment at 3:04 PM. Pence's involvement is not, then, fully supported, but it makes any involvement by Trump quite dubious. (To clear up some confusion: I intentionally went along with article's choice of the verb "approved" and not "ordered" to describe Pence's involvement. As others have correctly mentioned, the Vice President has no authority over the National Guard ; here, by "approved", I'm referring to a non-binding order. Pence giving the deployment the okay would effectively just show that the administration is on board with the decision made by Miller and McCarthy - it wouldn't look good if the Department of Defense deployed the National Guard and the White House disapproved of the order.) CNN, too, has reported that sources have said that Pence, not Trump, was involved. Public statements supporting this were made by Miller and the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy: Public statements by acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and other top officials suggested it was Pence who ultimately approved the decision. Miller's statement Wednesday seems to indicate he did not even speak with Trump, discussing the matter with his deputy instead as sources told CNN the President was reluctant to even denounce the violence being carried out in his name. . . . Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sidestepped questions Wednesday night about whether Pence, not Trump, directed the DC National Guard to be activated but suggested the vice president ultimately approved the decision. Asked by Fox News about reporting that Pence, not the President, approved the activation, McCarthy demurred, but ultimately said: "I know the vice president has been in constant contact with us and also along with security inside the Capitol, I communicated with the vice president early on. It was in regards to getting the National Guard there. He said he will call right now." I should note that, like the DoD's timeline, Miller's statement explicitly mentioned the Vice President and other key officials, but did not refer to the President at all. However, Miller has since submitted testimony (on May 12) to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in which he states that he doesn't recall the President being on any of the calls on January 6 in which plans (and presumably decisions) for the National Guard's response were made. Moreover, he says that the President had no part in the decisions made that day by the DoD at all : I also want to address questions that have been raised in regard to the President’s involvement in the response. He had none with respect to the Department of Defense efforts on January 6. . . . My recollection is that White House personnel, including White House counsel and the Chief of Staff, but not the President, participated in some of the multi-agency calls on January 6 convened to organize and coordinate the response to the events at the Capitol after the mob entered the Capitol building. I do not recall any specific remarks they made, if any, during those calls. Those calls are reflected in the various timelines available to you. This appears to be referencing that DoD timeline, and it does explicitly state that he does not recall Trump ever being involved in the decisions of that afternoon. The Wednesday decision by Ryan McCarthy and Miller to mobilize the entirety of the district's National Guard contingent was made after an earlier deployment of 350 members of the National Guard on Monday following repeated requests by Bowser - requests that were then approved by the Pentagon. Politico notes that Miller spoke with Trump multiple times this week about the mayor’s Guard request, said DoD Chief of Staff Kash Patel. During those conversations, Trump conveyed that Miller should take "any necessary steps to support civilian law enforcement requests in securing the Capitol and federal buildings." These, too, are supported by the DoD's timeline. It's not clear whether Trump ever explicitly mentioned the National Guard, but any rate, the conversations between Miller and Trump seem to have occurred prior to the events of January 6 and the storming of the Capitol. Yes, the White House has claimed that Trump gave the order, as per a tweet by White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany : At President @realDonaldTrump’s direction, the National Guard is on the way along with other federal protective services. We reiterate President Trump’s call against violence and to remain peaceful. In addition, in a video released on January 7 , Trump himself claimed I immediately deployed the National Guard However, Trump's claim is dubious at best: It contradicts the unnamed sources cited by The New York Times and CNN, as well as public statements by Miller and (the more oblique one) Minority Leader McCarthy. The Department of Defense's timeline, which explicitly mentions conversations with Trump involving the National Guard earlier in the week, does not mention him in connection with any relevant meetings on Wednesday - rather odd, if Trump had been the one to give the order. The White House is the only government source I'm aware of claiming that Trump gave the command, and many others involved have said otherwise. | {
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50,182 | I heard someone recently claim that the US Capitol riots were organized by Antifa and BLM organizers to make Trump supporters look bad and turn the Republican Party against Trump. They claim that the protesters that stormed the Capitol were actually Black Lives Matter and Antifa supporters, and that this had been confirmed with facial recognition software. They also claim that the ease in which the rioters were able to enter the Capitol proves that it was an inside job. For example , Mo Brooks wrote in a series of tweets: Please, don’t be like #FakeNewsMedia, don’t rush to judgment on assault on Capitol. Wait for investigation. All may not be (and likely is not) what appears. Evidence growing that fascist ANTIFA orchestrated Capitol attack with clever mob control tactics. [...] Evidence, much public, surfacing that many Capitol assaulters were fascist ANTIFAs, not Trump supporters. Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has been making similar posting videos making similar claims on YouTube and Rumble. The videos have been deleted under Youtube policy, but can be found on his own website, in the section Censored Videos . CNN summarized : Giuliani claimed in a tweet on Friday that has since been removed by Twitter that the Capitol siege was carried out "by groups like ANTIFA trained to riot." [...] "We have people who invaded like Mr. Sullivan and his apparently Black Lives Matter directed group of rioters and looters and whatever else they are," Giuliani said in a Thursday episode of his podcast titled "Another FRAME UP." I haven't been able to find any evidence that the storming of the US Capitol was organised by Antifa and BLM organisers opposed to Trump's administration. | Facial Recognition False, this comes from a mistaken news article that has since been corrected. A news outlet that reported that a facial recognition company identified members of Antifa among the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol has now apologised and issued a correction. Screenshots featuring the original report, however, continue to circulate on social media. ... The Washington Times has since corrected and changed the original article (here). A correction note reads: “An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that XRVision facial recognition software identified Antifa members among rioters who stormed the Capitol Wednesday. XRVision did not identify any Antifa members. The Washington Times apologizes to XRVision for the error.” Fact check: Facial recognition company did not identify Antifa members among Capitol mob (Reuters) Inside Job We're a long way from knowing the truth about this issue. Some are suggesting that GOP members of congress gave ‘Reconnaissance Tours’ of the Capitol before the riot. Snopes currently rates this claim as unproven . So was it actually BLM/Antifa? I am not aware of any evidence of significant BLM or Antifa presence at the riot. On the other hand, it's very clear that many that were there were genuine Trump supporters. Steven D'Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, told reporters that investigators had seen "no indication" antifa activists were disguised as Trump supporters in Wednesday's riot. The AP found that many of the rioters had taken to social media after the November election to retweet and parrot false claims by Trump that the vote had been stolen in a vast international conspiracy. Several had openly threatened violence against Democrats and Republicans they considered insufficiently loyal to the president. During the riot, some livestreamed and posted photos of themselves at the Capitol. Afterwards, many bragged about what they had done. Who were they? What social media, other records reveal about those who stormed Capitol (AP via ABC News) More about those arrested: Key arrests so far from the Capitol riot (CNN) | {
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50,248 | In conservative responses to racial disparities involving wealth and other things a lack of fatherhood figures within the black community is often cited as causative. For example, Ben Shapiro said about 4 years ago : [If racial disparities are not largely a "black" cultural problem, then explain why] the single motherhood rate in the black community jumped from 20% to 70% in the same course of time that the civil rights movement has made such tremendous strides. I was reading around on similar topics on Skeptics and found a quote from MLK that criticized the black community in 1957 for their "illegitimacy rate" . We have eight times more illegitimacy than white persons. I readily see that these two claims are not exactly comparable nor mutually exclusive. Both could be true at the same time, but it made me immediately think that perhaps there's a significant twist on both of these quotes that is not captured in their exact words. I'm looking for a brief historical analysis on the "illegitimacy rates" in the black community 1 . Shapiro is claiming an increase from a low rate (by today's standards) in the early sixties up to a high rate today, while MLK states pre-sixties that it was already high compared to whites. I'm supposing that perhaps Shapiro's claim misses a large bit of nuance in the relative differences, since his claim is absolute in context, or MLK's factoid is actually false (but was maybe a common misconception at the time). I understand "illegitimacy" to mean children born without married parents. It would be great if "committed relationship" were more quantifiable, in 1960 and now, because my impression of modern culture is that it is far more acceptable and common for committed couples to have children even if they are not legally married, but this seems unlikely to be differentiated in official statistics. | I'm looking for a brief historical analysis on the "illegitimacy rates" in the black community Tldr; The rate for non-whites was ~21% in 1960 and 72% for blacks in 1998. The figures and references are below. Did the single motherhood rate jump to 70% since the 1960s? It has risen beyond 70% according to the CDC. This data was published by the CDC in 2000, in a report titled Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940–99. On page 7 is the Figure 10: Was the single motherhood rate among blacks 20% in the 1960s? This is tough to confirm, partly because at that time this data was grouped into "non-white" collectively with other minorities. That being said, the CDC listed the illegitimate rate of birth among this group at around 21% for 1960 (and less before that): In a report titled The Negro Family: The Case For National Action by D.P. Moynihan (also called the Moynihan report) was written in 1965, and lists the single motherhood rate among blacks at 25%, and it appears to use the same data from the CDC as well as data from the most recent Censuses, and data from the BLS, which would include other non-white groups. That being said, after 1969 Blacks and Hispanics were recorded separately and the data is more clear. The Moynihan report makes the same argument as Shapiro and other conservatives make today, so the position itself is nothing new. BUT UNWED MOTHERS AREN'T NECESSARILY SINGLE! Single motherhood is defined in this answer as a mother who birthed a child while not married. The author of the question specifically asked for "illegitimacy rates", which historically has meant illegitimate birth rates , meaning a child born to parents who were not legally married at the time. See the original question, and the first line of this answer. That being said, this does not account for cohabiting parents, but it also does not account for homes where the couple is married and the father is away on active duty. Statistics is an imperfect science. Also, many comments are concerned with cohabitation and claim that the true number of single mothers is (much?) lower than what the CDC is recording as such. While that is true to some extent, it does need context: Those comments appear to define single motherhood as a child living with only one parent, the mother. This is not what the OP is asking for. While another answer on this post diligently points out that cohabitation among unwed parents is on the rise, the research that article is based on asserts that the rate of cohabitation in general as likely being less than 1% pre-1970 . Data for cohabiting parents started being recorded in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey in the 1990s. Conclusion Changing the definition of single mother from what the OP has stated, and the implications thereof, would be a new claim and should be asked in a separate question. There is more research done on family structure that would detract from the core claim being examined in this question, which is whether or not what Shapiro and King said was related, accurate, and/or taken out of context. This answer asserts that if they are both referring to the same statistic - births to unwed mothers - then their claims are related, accurate, and not taken out of context, even if the specific language used was different. Both King and Shapiro's claims formed the premise/foundation for a broader argument. The validity of that argument is itself a separate claim and should be posted as another question. Disclaimer: I am not interested in having the debate here (I see a lot of causation vs. correlation comments), only providing the data for others to study. But, I will debate in the chat if necessary . | {
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50,283 | I read a bit about drinking diluted chlorine dioxide (e.g. 12mg/L) as a supposedly protective means against COVID-19. Apparently it is a widespread belief in Latin America, especially on social media, that this is a good alternative to getting vaccinated. Here is an article that explores how the usage of ClO 2 against COVID-19 became such a widespread practice throughout Latin America: https://osf.io/u9ehf/download . People who follow this practice support their assertion of efficiency against COVID-19 with articles like the following: Efficacy and Safety Evaluation of a Chlorine Dioxide Solution (2017) Protective effect of low-concentration chlorine dioxide gas against influenza A virus infection Evaluation of the Antiviral Activity of Chlorine Dioxide and Sodium Hypochlorite against Feline Calicivirus, Human Influenza Virus, Measles Virus, Canine Distemper Virus, Human Herpesvirus, Human Adenovirus, Canine Adenovirus and Canine Parvovirus (2010) Effect of chlorine dioxide gas of extremely low concentration on absenteeism of schoolchildren (2009) Chlorine dioxide inactivation of enterovirus 71 in water and its impact on genomic targets Activated chlorine dioxide solution can be used as a biocompatible antiseptic wound irrigant | DO NOT DRINK BLEACH! Chlorine dioxide is a type of bleach. The Blue Ridge Poisoning Center at University of Virginia Health put out a specific warning not to drink bleach . There is a lot of confusing, incomplete, and just plain inaccurate information circulating about how to prevent the COVID-19 virus (“coronavirus”) from spreading. Some advice measures simply won’t help, and some could be downright dangerous. The Blue Ridge Poison Center at UVA Health warns that drinking bleach will not prevent COVID-19 infections and could cause serious injury. When used correctly, cleaning products can be a safe and effective weapon against the spread of disease-causing germs including the COVID-19 virus (“coronavirus”). In particular, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends using diluted bleach solutions on frequently-touched surfaces. Hand sanitizer with an alcohol content of at least 60% is recommended for killing COVID-19 on the hands, especially when soap and water is unavailable. However, these products and others used to clean and disinfect may have the potential to be toxic if used incorrectly. Exposure to cleaning products is the second leading cause of calls to poison centers nationwide. Some cleaning products (including bleach) are caustic, meaning they can cause burns when swallowed or when sprayed or splashed onto the skin or into the eyes. After Trump suggested injecting disinfectants (dear lord), the CDC had to remind everyone not to do that . Household cleaners and disinfectants can cause health problems when not used properly. Follow the instructions on the product label to ensure safe and effective use. In a similar tale, the FDA warned against using the Miracle Mineral Solution which is basically bleach. Miracle Mineral Solution and similar products are not FDA-approved, and ingesting these products is the same as drinking bleach. 12 mg/L may be hazardous to your health Very low concentrations can have benefits. It's used as a secondary disinfectant in drinking water. The US EPA puts the maximum safe level in drinking water at 0.8 mg/L . 12 mg/L is well above that and inadvisable. There is no way to demonstrate it's working, until it doesn't Outside of a controlled experiment, this treatment will seem to prevent COVID-19 right up to the moment it does not. Meanwhile, it's damaging the body with a caustic substance. Quackery such as this is not harmless. The health care system does not need another sick person (from long-term chemical poisoning) on their hands. If one truly believes they are immune to COVID they are more likely to put themselves at risk of getting and spreading COVID, especially because may be contagious before they have severe symptoms. Bleach kills everything, including humans The papers fall into two categories. bleach against various viruses (not COVID-19) in a lab bleach against various viruses (again, not COVID-19) on humans at safe levels I'm going to guess folks cherry-picked "bleach is effective against viruses" and "bleach can be used on humans" ignoring the "in a lab" and "at safe levels". Bleach is very good at killing viruses. This does not mean it only kills viruses. Bleach kills everything , that's why it's so good at disinfecting surfaces. Everything includes humans. We use bleach on humans in very low concentrations because we would like to keep the human alive. Fire is also a pretty good disinfectant, but it is also very harmful to humans. Don't drink fire either. None of the papers are about drinking unsafe amounts of bleach to cure COVID None of these papers are about COVID-19. None are about drinking unsafe amounts of bleach. Their only relation is they are about uses of chlorine dioxide, mostly against viruses. Efficacy and Safety Evaluation of a Chlorine Dioxide Solution is about a new method to reduce the impurities in bleach to make it less toxic (not safe). Protective effect of low-concentration chlorine dioxide gas against influenza A virus infection was done on mice against the flu using a gas at at safe levels . Evaluation of the Antiviral Activity of Chlorine Dioxide and Sodium Hypochlorite against Feline Calicivirus, Human Influenza Virus, Measles Virus, Canine Distemper Virus, Human Herpesvirus, Human Adenovirus, Canine Adenovirus and Canine Parvovirus is comparing the efficiency of two different disinfectants at various concentrations against various viruses in liquid solution , not by drinking it. Effect of chlorine dioxide gas of extremely low concentration on absenteeism of schoolchildren (2009) This used bleach as a gas at safe levels on students. Chlorine dioxide inactivation of enterovirus 71 in water and its impact on genomic targets is about the effect of bleach on the genome of hoof-and-mouth disease in a lab . Activated chlorine dioxide solution can be used as a biocompatible antiseptic wound irrigant . This is about using bleach to clean wounds , not drink it. We use plenty of substances to clean wounds which are toxic if ingested. Not a single one is about drinking bleach at 12 mg/L for any reason . I don't care how bored you are , do not drink bleach. Before you comment, please keep in mind this is an answer about drinking unsafe amounts of bleach to prevent COVID. It is not a dissertation on the medicinal uses of chlorine dioxide. As such, it is not intended to be technically correct, it is intended to be blunt. Don't drink bleach. It will not prevent COVID. Nerdy anecdotes such as this one and touch up edits are always welcome. | {
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50,358 | From The Independent, "Why on earth would right-wing people with connections to the fossil fuel industry lie about ‘frozen wind turbines’ in Texas?" Sure, some wind turbines and solar facilities have also been affected [during Winter Storm Uri ], but all through Monday [2021-02-15] while gas plants were freezing, wind turbines and solar panels actually exceeded expected power delivery. This article seems to make it sound like Wind and Solar outperformed and fossil fuels under performed during the crises. Is this true? | Wind production exceeded all forecast metrics, solar production exceeded short-term forecasts but not operational forecasts. TL;DR: On 2/15 both solar and wind exceeded the short term forecasts which do not account for local operating conditions. The operational wind forecast was about 60% low for the whole day, seemingly due to a conservative application of the icing derate built into the forecast. The operational solar forecast was about 20% high, because ERCOT does not forecast solar for when the grid is under extreme/contingency conditions. What does "forecast" mean in this context? Obviously solar and wind are weather-dependent resources, which is the most significant factor in the forecast amounts. However, the operational forecast also accounts for technical problems and unexpected shutdowns -- things beyond just wind and sunshine availability (in the short term forecast). Due to it's relatively low capacity statewide, solar forecasts are not included in contingency planning, so was not updated during the event. For wind, since the storm was already factored into the forecast, the fact that it exceeded this forecast indicates that it experienced less technical challenges than expected. Ultimately this says at least as much about the forecast methodology as it does about the capabilities of wind turbines in Texas. What caused the blackouts? This is still being investigated in detail, but the most significant factors appear to be that load and outages were both under-estimated. Wind out-performed contingency expectations. Outage estimates do not include solar. ERCOT, the grid operator covering most of Texas, provides a number of detailed generation reports for all resources on the Texas grid, including hourly values for forecast and actual production from wind and solar resources. The data is updated every hour with data for the previous 48 hours. The files give raw data, which I've plotted and explained below: Wind Metric Total value (MWh) Actual vs forecast Actual 73,396 - COP HSL 46,408 158% STWPF 48,434 152% Solar Metric Total value (MWh) Actual vs forecast Actual 20,134 - COP HSL 25,385 79% STWPF 19,781 102% Forecasting definitions and methodology From the ERCOT glossary with some other sources noted. COP HSL: current operating plan high sustained limit. The "maximum sustained energy production capability of the resource." The COP HSL is a seven-day forecast, updated by 2:30pm every day. By definition, the HSL is equal to or lower than the short-term forecasts. It accounts for factors specific to each resource, so would exclude any resource that is offline for repair, maintenance, etc. This is what ERCOT plans for because it accounts for things about each resource that ERCOT would rely on the operator to inform them of. STWPF: short-term wind power forecast. This training presentation from ERCOT provides more detail: "Statistically 'most probable' forecast of production potential for each Wind Generation Resource." By definition, there is a 50% chance that the actual production will exceed this value. STPPF: short-term photovoltaic power forecast. Like the short-term wind forecast, the amount of power that is 'likely' to be produced by PV resources on the grid -- by definition there is a 50% chance that actual production exceeds this value. The forecasting process documentation indicates that the short term forecasts are generated internally by ERCOT and provided to the QSEs (qualified scheduling entities -- whoever operates and gets paid for each generation resource on the grid) who use it to generate the "operational forecast" -- the COP HSL. The wind forecast process includes two different derating factors for extreme weather, which specifically accounts for the probability that turbines will be off-line due to icing. The solar forecast accounts for weather, but does not appear to account for snow accumulation on panels. Commentary Wind. Without additional commentary from ERCOT, it would appear that ERCOT forecasters and wind operators were somewhat conservative in their application of the extreme weather derates when they updated their output forecasts, and the actual production ended up greatly exceeding both forecast metrics. There is no comprehensive comparison of actual to forecast values that I could find, but spot-checking a few other days indicates that actual values tend to be within +15% or so of the forecast, which is what we could expect given the definition of the forecast. Solar. In this case, it looks like ERCOT accounted for snow accumulation in derating their forecast, which came in slightly less than the actual production. However (and I'm speculating here) since the forecast procedure does not appear to account for snow accumulation, the PV operators did not adequately derate their forecasts. This would appear to indicate a shortcoming in the process, as the operating plans, by definition, should not exceed the short term forecast. So what caused the rolling blackouts? Obviously there will be a detailed postmortem of this, but we can say that wind and solar were certainly not the most significant factor . The blue line on this real time plot shows available standard capacity (excluding the operating reserves which are dispatched to respond to acute failures) minus actual load -- any time that blue line goes below zero, there are problems. Here's the plot for February 15, showing the value at the low point at 5:13pm: ERCOT forecasts load and non- dispatchable generation (wind and solar) on a number of timescales to predict how much energy will be needed on a day-ahead and hour-ahead basis, and then sets prices using the operating reserve demand curve . This curve dictates the price per MWh that is paid on the market, and increases as capacity becomes constrained. The maximum is fixed at $9,000 per MWh, which is considered the VOLL -- value of lost load. At some point generating power is too expensive, and blackouts are cheaper. ERCOT has decided that $9,000 is the price at which this occurs. The intent of the system is to incentivize more capacity to become available as that price goes higher, to ensure that blue line stays at a sufficient height above zero. On February 15, the prices hit $9,000 throughout the day , and yet rolling blackouts were required to keep the system from collapsing. This means that one of three things went wrong: 1. The load forecast was too low, meaning more capacity was needed than expected? Energy consulting firm ICF did an analysis of ERCOT's various long term forecasts for the winter and produced this table: Capacity, GW Expected Forecast Extreme/Contingency Forecast Actual Conditions (8am 2/15) Peak Load 57.7 67.2 74.5 Resource Outages 8.6 14.0 26.6 Wind Output 7.1 1.8 4.5 Solar Output 0.3 [not forecast] 0.0 Total Generating Capacity 73.1 68.6 53.4 Remaining Reserve Capacity 16.2 1.4 -21.1 Operational Conclusion Normal operations Emergency measures Widespread outages This shows that the load under extreme conditions was underestimated by 7.3 GW, or about 13% of normal load. Answer: Yes 2. The solar and wind forecast was too low, meaning less capacity was available than expected? As discussed above, the wind forecast accounted for the storm, and the solar forecast appeared to correct itself partway through the day. These forecasts ended up being overly conservative -- the system expected to have less wind and solar available than were actually present. Answer: No 3. The VOLL is too low, and generators didn't have sufficient incentive to stay on-line? Obviously, generators wouldn't have waited until February 14 to see the price, and then make infrastructure changes so they can produce power the following day despite the cold. The market design is supposed to entice them with the allure of high prices to be prepared well in advance, spending some money up-front so they can be prepared to take advantage of price spikes. Given that there were no outages in far colder parts of the country, it's clear that the technology needed to stay online during such storms is available and cost-effective. So if the VOLL had been higher, perhaps they would have planned ahead and done this? Especially since something similar had happened in 2011? Answer: It's complicated | {
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50,364 | According to the CDC , you should " NEVER use a gas range for heating" . Never use a gas range or oven for heating. Using a gas range or oven for heating can cause a build up of CO inside your home, cabin, or camper. Is this valid advice though? Is there any evidence that a gas range not used for cooking is a danger to the household when only burning gas with an open flame? If so, how many hours of use is required for this danger to manifest? And also the EPA provides similar guidance, Using a stove hood with a fan vented to the outdoors greatly reduces exposure to pollutants during cooking. Improper adjustment, often indicated by a persistent yellow-tipped flame, causes increased pollutant emissions. Ask your gas company to adjust the burner so that the flame tip is blue. If you purchase a new gas stove or range, consider buying one with pilot less ignition because it does not have a pilot light that burns continuously. Never use a gas stove to heat your home. Always make certain the flue in your gas fireplace is open when the fireplace is in use. | Yes, because the safety systems that are required for furnaces and water heaters are not standard on stoves and ovens. Conventional gas-burning furnaces and hot water heaters include two design elements to prevent build-up of carbon monoxide (poison hazard) and natural gas (explosion hazard) inside the house: A flame sensor checks if the gas is burning. If it is not, the gas valve closes. This way, if the flame is extinguished, the appliance will not continue releasing natural gas into the house. Combustion gases are exhausted outdoors through an exhaust flue . The gas is burned in a sealed chamber that is vented to the outdoors -- the air or water being heated passes through a heat exchanger in the combustion chamber. Even with these two systems in place, CO detectors are still required , and odors are added to natural gas to make leaks detectable. By contrast, a natural gas-burning stove or oven has neither of these safety measures (some newer models may have flame sensors*, but most existing ones don't). If the flame goes out the gas keeps coming, and the combustion gases are released directly into the living space. An exhaust hood will remove the combustion gases, but also most of the heat. If you are using the oven/stove as intended, you are likely in the kitchen where you will be able to smell the natural gas, or see that that flame is yellow and/or smoking, an indication of the incomplete combustion that can generate CO. You will also not be using the appliance for several hours every day (or if you are, you are likely using an exhaust hood). * In the U.S. and Canada, CSA/ANSI Z21.1-2018/CSA 1.1-2018 is the standard for "household cooking gas appliances". If someone has institutional access they could check if flame sensors are required, but this would be a recent change. | {
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50,482 | The alleged quote would be: Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth... I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration... and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly. I saw this earlier in an Instagram post in Portuguese. All Google search results seem quite obscure to me. This source claims it's from Time magazine, reported December 23, 1940. The article apparently does exist , but did Albert Einstein actually say this? | Albert Einstein According to Skeptic, Albert Einstein has already answered this himself, and apparently he said: "he had casually mentioned to some journalist that hardly any German intellectuals except a few churchmen were supporting individual rights and intellectual freedom. He added that this statement had subsequently been drastically exaggerated beyond anything that he could recognize as his own". Skeptic Having a long-standing interest in verifying quotations, I turned to The Expanded Quotable Einstein,8 but it does not include this statement. So I wrote to its editor, Alice Calaprice. She was unsure about the statement but kindly referred me to Barbara Wolff at the Einstein Archives in Jerusalem. Ms. Wolff was able to answer my question: It turns out that the Einstein Archives contain an unpublished letter mentioning this topic specifically. Writing to Count Montgelas on March 28, 1947, Einstein explained that early in the Hitler years he had casually mentioned to some journalist that hardly any German intellectuals except a few churchmen were supporting individual rights and intellectual freedom. He added that this statement had subsequently been drastically exaggerated beyond anything that he could recognize as his own Did Albert Einstein say this about the Catholic Church? It would appear he does admit to making a statement, but the words were taken out of context and exaggerated to an extent that they were not words that came out of his mouth. | {
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50,484 | A recent PostMilennial article claims: After the hearing, Hoogland gave an interview to The Federalist saying that people cannot change sex, and that mega-doses of exogenous testosterone would damage his vulnerable, biological female child's health. Justice Mazari then summarily convicted Hoogland of family violence on the basis that he had declined to use his child's preferred masculine pronouns. Mazari authorized a warrant for Hoogland's arrest in the event that he ever used the correct sex pronouns to refer to his daughter again. I do not recognize the PostMilennial as a reputable source. However, the website makes some verifiable claims that I would like to make sure are true. Namely: Robert was required by the court to refer to his AFAB child as a male. Robert was jailed for referring to his child as a female. Gaylaw.net provides a link to the 2019 Protection Order : a) CD shall be restrained from: i. attempting to persuade AB to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria;
ii. addressing AB by his birth name; and
iii. referring to AB as a girl or with female pronouns whether to AB directly or to third
parties; I don't recognize gaylawnet, but seeing as both a left wing source and right wing source quote the same decision, it seems accurate. As for claim (2), I cannot seem to figure out why he was jailed. It can be as thepostmillennial claims, but some other sources claim that it is simply because he publicly discussed the fact that his child is going through gender transition. So what is the truth? Was he jailed for referring to his child as a female? Was he jailed for talking about his child's gender transition publicly? Or is it for some other reason? | Reliable information about this case is hard to find because there is a publication ban on the family identity and on discussion of the child's gender change. However here is a reliable report which I am fairly certain is the same case. Even reading the parts available without paying: A B.C. father who has been a vocal critic of his transgender child’s decision to pursue hormone treatment was placed in handcuffs Tuesday and remanded into custody at least until the end of the week after being rebuked by a judge for “persistently and consistently” violating court-ordered publication bans restricting what he can say about the case. In other words the the father was not remanded in custody for referring to his child as "she", but for continuing to argue the case in media after being ordered not to do so. Here is another report : [The father] allegedly repeatedly breached a court order requiring him not to publicly discuss the details of the case, which is currently under a publication ban due to the child’s age. [...] [He] was taken into custody after the BC Supreme Court granted a warrant based on “allegations that CD had committed further breaches of the court order.” | {
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50,490 | There is a new BBC article, Police warn students to avoid science website about Sci-Hub , a pirate site to circumvent paywalls on science journals. But Max Bruce, the City of London police's cyber protection officer, has urged universities to block the website on their networks because of the "threat posed by Sci-Hub to both the university and its students". "If you're tricked into revealing your log-in credentials, whether it's through the use of fake emails or malware, we know that Sci-Hub will then use those details to compromise your university's computer network in order to steal research papers," he said. My understanding of how Sci-Hub operates was that researchers willingly and knowingly give their credentials as they are opposed to the publishers making a lot of money on access to papers. I don't have that verified. Does Sci-Hub rely on stolen credentials from unwitting researchers? | The claim in the article that people who go to the Sci-Hub website are "very vulnerable to having their credentials stolen" is completely baseless, since Sci-Hub never asks for credentials or other personal information. I will instead address the question posed here, about the origin of the credentials obtained by Sci-Hub. The Sci-Hub website does not provide a means for people at academic institutions to supply their own logins. They are obtained elsewhere. But is hacking involved? According to an article entitled " Sci-Hub unmasked " published in College & Research Libraries News in 2016: Sci-Hub takes advantage of an active international market in stolen
user credentials, where innocent users give up their passwords to
phishing attacks targeting the university community. In one such email
attack, the hacker poses as a library service manager by using a
combination of two real library staff members’ names familiar to
faculty. The email draws users to a familiar URL address but, instead
of taking them to their own library server, sends them to a secondary
page (see Figure 1) with similar branding, though hosted in New
Zealand. Input typed into the username and password fields on this
page is captured and later used to illegally access licensed content. So basically they're claiming that Sci-Hub is provided with passwords by a hacker network. One of the authors of this article was interviewed in 2016 for The Chronicle of Higher Education and repeated the circumstances of this exact case. A screenshot of the phishing page is provided. Another article, published in 2020 in the rather obscure Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve , provides a similar story, adding that techniques have ramped up in recent years. These emails can be very convincing and count on the victim being overwhelmed by the volume of received emails to work. This method was used by Iranian hackers in 2018 and 2019, and it was reported that this same method was used to target 380 libraries. It is important to recognize that these attacks are getting smarter and harder to identify. This article also included a screenshot, but I will not post it here. When asked about the use of phished passwords, Alexandra Elbakyan , the creator of Sci-Hub, told the Washington Post in a 2016 article, “It may be well possible that phished passwords ended up being used at Sci-Hub. I did not send any phishing emails to anyone myself. The exact source of the passwords was never personally important to me.” In the same year she said the same thing to a blogger: "So it may well be possible that this professor’s password finally ended up being used on Sci-Hub website. [...] At this moment I prefer not to disclose the thorough details of Sci-Hub operation, but I expect this to become possible in future." In response to the new allegations in the UK, she told Sky News in 2021 that "I bought some credentials from other people. Perhaps some credentials (out of thousands used by Sci-Hub) were phished but not by Sci-Hub itself." It appears Elbakyan has acknowledged that that passwords obtained from hacking rings seem to be used by Sci-Hub, and there is at least one instance where it is claimed that these hackers phished an individual user. I do not see any public claims of malware other than this BBC article. | {
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