7 ms·

Bill Gates slams 'shocking' U.S. response to Covid-19 pandemic

92 points by prawn 6y ago

itsthecourier 6y ago
At this moment of history he is standing up and saying things government don't want to hear. I really respect the patriotism and courage of Gates.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Exactly! America is a free country. We should be free to vaccinate and microchip our employees as we see fit. I don't know about you, but I like to keep my employees COVID19-free. I don't understand why they make such a fuss about it! The employees are free to vaccinate and microchip their pets and their children, so why can't we vaccinate our employees? This is clearly a double standard.
peer2pay 6y ago
Whenever I read such extreme action verbs as "slam", "bash" etc. in a headline, I have to assume the underlying article is a populist piece of garbage.
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  "Populism is what we call democracy when we don't like the outcome"
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    And if we really don’t like it, we send our NATO troops to cancel the outcome.
  - makomk 6y ago
    Populism does seem to get used as a bit of an insult, but there is a definite tendency towards the idea that big, complicated problems have simple solutions that the evil government is just refusing to use for malicious reasons that fits the term and this seems like a good example. For example, Gates insists that people should be able to get test results within 24 hours no matter what and that it is unbelievable and inexplicable that the US isn't encouraging people without symptoms to get tested. There's an inherent trade-off between those two things - push people without symptoms to get tested and it overloads the testing capacity, impeding access to testing and contact tracing for everyone - which can't easily be fixed by expanding testing. There's an extremely limited global supply of everything needed to carry out testing, the US already has pretty much the biggest testing program out there excluding a handful of really small countries, and the availability of further supplies is not being helped by the fact that Europe is having major outbreaks right now and is trying to expand testing there up to US levels. You wouldn't know this from the article, which just makes it sound like the big bad government is doing these things to make this worse because they're big and bad. (There also seem to be some pretty fundamental limitations as to how useful testing potentially-exposed people without symptoms can even be in the first place. Test them too early and it'll likely give a false negative. Test them too late and you'll only find out they're positive after they've been contagious for some time, plus they may also test negative too. I've also seem it claimed that the optimal time to test people is about 3 days after the peak in infectiousness, which probably doesn't help - though without symptoms it's not like there's really any way to tell when the optimal time is anyway. This really fundamental reason why what he's calling for wouldn't work as described is just ignored, even though the CDC's literal stated reason for discouraging it is that it would lead to false negatives which would cause people to think they're in the clear and go out and spread the virus.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lumberingjack 6y ago
  this whole place is turned into Reddit man there's people up top in this comment section complaining that there's not enough testing while they're frolicking around the countryside. Complaining that they want free testing. Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not
  - EForEndeavour 6y ago
    What do you mean when you say this place has "turned into reddit"? Are you referring to the generally lower standard of comment quality there? If so, that's ironic. Imagine a virus so unpredictable that you might take anywhere from 0 to 14 days to become infectious, and you could end up anyhwere from unknowingly and asymptomatically shedding the virus to dead from it. Imagine that.
  - CarelessExpert 6y ago
    > Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not You mean like HIV?
draw_down 6y ago
I guess Gates wasn’t paying attention during those decades when we hollowed out our public institutions to make people like him (and to be honest, like me) richer. But sure, get mad now, that will probably help
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
eternalban 6y ago
Here's is an interesting article on the relationship between Bill Gates and the media recently published by CJR: Journalism’s Gates keepers: https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu... If you are wondering why someone like Michael Levitt [1] doesn't get wall to wall coverage by media (including outfits like RT) [as an 'expert voice on pandemic response'], the above article has a few clues. [1]: He's just one example. There are many others. https://twitter.com/mlevitt_np2013?lang=en https://twitter.com/mlevitt_np2013?lang=en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levitt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levitt -- p.s. relevant pull quote asking the timely question -- During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVac.
- zamfi 6y ago
  Michael Levitt, though almost certainly a smart guy, has not had the best track record, making predictions both accurate and not. Also, predictions alone are...not that useful? From your Wikipedia article: > In March, the Los Angeles Times reported that Levitt correctly forecasted in February that the COVID-19 pandemic in China would soon peak and that China would end up with around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths from COVID-19.[41] However, it has been noted that Levitt actually made a number of predictions, including incorrect forecasts, in February about China's COVID-19 trajectory[42], including one on February 7, 2020 claiming that "by 14-Feb. we will have reached 95% of the eventual death count of 928".[43] Levitt also has stated his belief that achieving natural herd immunity to the virus is possible[44] and has spoken against lockdown orders.[45] > Levitt also wrongly predicted that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths[46]. On July 25, 2020, Levitt predicted that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".[47] However, this prediction about the reported death count also ended up being wrong as the number of reported deaths from COVID-19 in the United States exceeded 170,000 on August 16, 2020, only 3 weeks after Levitt's prediction.[48] Sounds like he does get some coverage. As for why it’s not wall-to-wall? Maybe his predictions have been wrong too many times?
baryphonic 6y ago
I appreciate a lot of Gates' statements here, since they are substantive and not just posturing. The issue is that the US medical system is rotten to the core. There are hundreds of thousands of wonderful individual practitioners and even thousands of excellent teams, but the system as a whole is broken. His idea that no one should be paid for a test result if it takes more than 24 hours to result is not bad, but the existing system is not set up for it. Decades of regulation of all aspects of the US medical system, from billing codes even to electronic health records, would prevent that kind of change from being adopted overnight. If we adopted this change, you'd very likely see almost no one running any COVID tests at all - the risk and infrastructure investment would be too high, for too little payout. (Recouping the cost of lab tests is generally hard as is, since the costs of running a medical lab are almost entirely fixed, both in terms of labor and capital. Routine maintenance must be performed, the lab must have a certain contingent on duty to handle stat tests, etc.) I'm not sure the US system can be improved unless we have some practitioners who want to make a clean break from the existing regime, and they get some cover from the government to actually innovate. I'm not holding my breath.
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  I have been worried for some time the only solution is the democratization of healthcare due to advances in biology and chemistry. People are 3d printing their own prosthetic mounts and getting better results than trained and heavily credentialed professionals. Maybe some day people will be able to design their own medication and targeted supplements. What worries me is this may be decades away.
  - youngNed 6y ago
    > Maybe some day people will be able to design their own medication and targeted supplements. > What worries me is this may be decades away. First the good news: That day is here!! Now the bad news: that medication isn't working out great for them. Apparently some wingnut told people that drinking bleach was a potential cure for some ills. Didn't go great. And thats the problem with what you wish for - a popular facebooker, youtuber, instagrammer, president tells people that they can design their own medication, people are going to do it.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
If the US had done nothing, many models predicted over 2 million deaths by now. We have had 200k, so a 90% reduction. Hopefully there is a vaccine soon
- youngNed 6y ago
  > many models predicted over 2 million deaths by now citation needed. Here are many models that we can backcheck: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/
  - vernie 6y ago
    I wish the historical view on this site projected forward to the present. I'd like to know which model was the least wrong from the beginning.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    > without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-rate-white-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-r...
  - analog31 6y ago
    In addition to the many articles that have been published, it has been possible since early March for people to extrapolate the graphs that were widely available. Those graphs, and their potential shortcomings, were widely discussed, and a "citizen scientist" could interpret them with reasonable confidence. My own analysis at the time was something like this: If the graph keeps going like the way it looks, it will consume effectively the entire population by month X, with Y percent dying. While this was not a formal epidemiological model, it allowed two tentative conclusions: 1. If the curve (a straight line on a semi-log graph) shows signs of turning over, I will breathe a huge sigh of relief, the sooner the better. 2. The curve was a "sniff test" for whether more advanced predictions were believable, notably, any prediction that did not roughly follow this baseline needed a darn good explanation.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
henriquez 6y ago
Bill Gates DESTROYED Covid-19 pandemic with LOGIC AND FACTS > “All you have to do is the four plus four, $8 billion total. And then people will see, even though the U.S. made some mistakes, at least our desire to cooperate, help others and use our R&D capacity, at least, you know, they’ll see it in a positive light.” The bottom line is he's advocating for more funding to pay for vaccines in other countries. I think it's hard to argue that the U.S. response to coronavirus has been competent, but I don't think Bill Gates is a credible authority to making many of the health claims he's raising in this piece. For example, he BLASTS how we've handled testing in the U.S. - fair point, but it's not clear that the alternatives he raises would be more effective. In fact, it seems like the most widely accepted tests we have are prone to false positives. This could in part be why our strategy has shifted to not test asymptomatic individuals. There's no point forcing someone into isolation over an inaccurate test that could have flagged a cold virus as Covid-19. Bill Gates has advocated for some pretty creepy stuff ("Real ID" microchip implants, a complete ban on end-to-end cryptography). He can spend as much as he wants on PR, but I don't trust him in his role as a "vigilante health authority." He's a billionaire with pet projects and an ego.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  > There's no point forcing someone into isolation over an inaccurate test that could have flagged a cold virus as Covid-19. Yes there is. I'm fine with the Bill Gates bashing, but this is like saying there's no reason to stop having unprotected sex after you've tested positive for HIV using a test with a 20% false positive rate. Stop doing things that would potentially spread the disease, then take a better test.
  - henriquez 6y ago
    Is the goal of civilization that all people should be 100% protected against 100% of threats 100% of the time? I have a statistically higher chance of dying in a car accident in the 2.5 hour drive to visit my parents than I do of dying from Covid-19. The restrictions we're placing people under over this virus are disproportionate to the harm it's doing to our civilization. If the goal is really to protect people, then we shouldn't stop at isolation. We should ban all of the things that could potentially harm people: alcohol, tobacco, fast food, sex (protected or otherwise - there is too much risk), and driving. We should remove all peoples' liberties to protect them from all threats.
bransonf 6y ago
I don’t know when this interview was, but I’m surprised to see no mention of sputum testing as a replacement for Nasopharyngeal RT-PCR. I don’t know the precise number, but probably at least a dozen of these spit tests have been developed at Universities and approved by the FDA for emergency use. Some even use the LAMP protocol as opposed to RT-PCR, which saves on time and reagents. Another thing I always think of is how we didn’t adopt the contact tracing protocol that Google and Apple developed. Obviously it was a trust issue, and maybe some logistical shortcomings, but contact tracing as we’ve implemented it is largely ineffectual in reducing spread. The serial interval in young people is likely less than the time it takes to get back a test, and certainly shorter than the time it takes to get a test and complete a contact tracing interview. The US response to Covid is obviously a polarizing issue, but we’re all wrong to assume that we couldn’t have done better.
steve76 6y ago
So this is the mortality rate of Sweden as of August: https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... We know mortality increases with unemployment, which increased due to lockdown by 5x. The richest people in the USA made over a half of trillion dollars during lockdown, on top of free money, trillions, that they just openly took. I hope Mr. Gates reads this, because I just have one word to say to him. Bravo. I am glad you are the one doing this, because I would be so much worse. It's good I am kept away. We would not survive. I see our shared ills, cities burning and people dying as simple forceful motivation. To everyone else, don't be shocked by the complete absence of morals among society. I read through most everything. This is no argument. It's just what works, to be the most frightening person among them, so everyone leaves you alone. What humans do to each other, nothing surprises me. The people trying to take over with just who they are and what they say, what else do they have? Racial strife? Let me tell you how that one is going to work out. BLM yeah yeah yeah, sure. Whatever. Please meet the new member of the team, Joshua Blahyi. I do not want leadership, or a celebrity, or even a president so much as I want a very mean man walking the streets with a gun.

92 points by prawn 6y ago

At this moment of history he is standing up and saying things government don't want to hear. I really respect the patriotism and courage of Gates.

cryptica 6y ago
Exactly! America is a free country. We should be free to vaccinate and microchip our employees as we see fit. I don't know about you, but I like to keep my employees COVID19-free. I don't understand why they make such a fuss about it! The employees are free to vaccinate and microchip their pets and their children, so why can't we vaccinate our employees? This is clearly a double standard.

peer2pay 6y ago

Whenever I read such extreme action verbs as "slam", "bash" etc. in a headline, I have to assume the underlying article is a populist piece of garbage.

OneGuy123 6y ago
"Populism is what we call democracy when we don't like the outcome"
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  And if we really don’t like it, we send our NATO troops to cancel the outcome.
- makomk 6y ago
  Populism does seem to get used as a bit of an insult, but there is a definite tendency towards the idea that big, complicated problems have simple solutions that the evil government is just refusing to use for malicious reasons that fits the term and this seems like a good example. For example, Gates insists that people should be able to get test results within 24 hours no matter what and that it is unbelievable and inexplicable that the US isn't encouraging people without symptoms to get tested. There's an inherent trade-off between those two things - push people without symptoms to get tested and it overloads the testing capacity, impeding access to testing and contact tracing for everyone - which can't easily be fixed by expanding testing. There's an extremely limited global supply of everything needed to carry out testing, the US already has pretty much the biggest testing program out there excluding a handful of really small countries, and the availability of further supplies is not being helped by the fact that Europe is having major outbreaks right now and is trying to expand testing there up to US levels. You wouldn't know this from the article, which just makes it sound like the big bad government is doing these things to make this worse because they're big and bad. (There also seem to be some pretty fundamental limitations as to how useful testing potentially-exposed people without symptoms can even be in the first place. Test them too early and it'll likely give a false negative. Test them too late and you'll only find out they're positive after they've been contagious for some time, plus they may also test negative too. I've also seem it claimed that the optimal time to test people is about 3 days after the peak in infectiousness, which probably doesn't help - though without symptoms it's not like there's really any way to tell when the optimal time is anyway. This really fundamental reason why what he's calling for wouldn't work as described is just ignored, even though the CDC's literal stated reason for discouraging it is that it would lead to false negatives which would cause people to think they're in the clear and go out and spread the virus.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lumberingjack 6y ago
this whole place is turned into Reddit man there's people up top in this comment section complaining that there's not enough testing while they're frolicking around the countryside. Complaining that they want free testing. Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not
- EForEndeavour 6y ago
  What do you mean when you say this place has "turned into reddit"? Are you referring to the generally lower standard of comment quality there? If so, that's ironic. Imagine a virus so unpredictable that you might take anywhere from 0 to 14 days to become infectious, and you could end up anyhwere from unknowingly and asymptomatically shedding the virus to dead from it. Imagine that.
- CarelessExpert 6y ago
  > Imagine a virus so bad you have to get tested to know if you have it or not You mean like HIV?

draw_down 6y ago

I guess Gates wasn’t paying attention during those decades when we hollowed out our public institutions to make people like him (and to be honest, like me) richer. But sure, get mad now, that will probably help

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

eternalban 6y ago

Here's is an interesting article on the relationship between Bill Gates and the media recently published by CJR: Journalism’s Gates keepers: https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-fu... If you are wondering why someone like Michael Levitt [1] doesn't get wall to wall coverage by media (including outfits like RT) [as an 'expert voice on pandemic response'], the above article has a few clues. [1]: He's just one example. There are many others. https://twitter.com/mlevitt_np2013?lang=en https://twitter.com/mlevitt_np2013?lang=en https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levitt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levitt -- p.s. relevant pull quote asking the timely question -- During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVac.

zamfi 6y ago
Michael Levitt, though almost certainly a smart guy, has not had the best track record, making predictions both accurate and not. Also, predictions alone are...not that useful? From your Wikipedia article: > In March, the Los Angeles Times reported that Levitt correctly forecasted in February that the COVID-19 pandemic in China would soon peak and that China would end up with around 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths from COVID-19.[41] However, it has been noted that Levitt actually made a number of predictions, including incorrect forecasts, in February about China's COVID-19 trajectory[42], including one on February 7, 2020 claiming that "by 14-Feb. we will have reached 95% of the eventual death count of 928".[43] Levitt also has stated his belief that achieving natural herd immunity to the virus is possible[44] and has spoken against lockdown orders.[45] > Levitt also wrongly predicted that Israel would suffer no more than 10 COVID-19 deaths[46]. On July 25, 2020, Levitt predicted that COVID-19 in the United States would be over "in 4 weeks with total reported deaths below 170,000".[47] However, this prediction about the reported death count also ended up being wrong as the number of reported deaths from COVID-19 in the United States exceeded 170,000 on August 16, 2020, only 3 weeks after Levitt's prediction.[48] Sounds like he does get some coverage. As for why it’s not wall-to-wall? Maybe his predictions have been wrong too many times?

baryphonic 6y ago

I appreciate a lot of Gates' statements here, since they are substantive and not just posturing. The issue is that the US medical system is rotten to the core. There are hundreds of thousands of wonderful individual practitioners and even thousands of excellent teams, but the system as a whole is broken. His idea that no one should be paid for a test result if it takes more than 24 hours to result is not bad, but the existing system is not set up for it. Decades of regulation of all aspects of the US medical system, from billing codes even to electronic health records, would prevent that kind of change from being adopted overnight. If we adopted this change, you'd very likely see almost no one running any COVID tests at all - the risk and infrastructure investment would be too high, for too little payout. (Recouping the cost of lab tests is generally hard as is, since the costs of running a medical lab are almost entirely fixed, both in terms of labor and capital. Routine maintenance must be performed, the lab must have a certain contingent on duty to handle stat tests, etc.) I'm not sure the US system can be improved unless we have some practitioners who want to make a clean break from the existing regime, and they get some cover from the government to actually innovate. I'm not holding my breath.

R0b0t1 6y ago
I have been worried for some time the only solution is the democratization of healthcare due to advances in biology and chemistry. People are 3d printing their own prosthetic mounts and getting better results than trained and heavily credentialed professionals. Maybe some day people will be able to design their own medication and targeted supplements. What worries me is this may be decades away.
- youngNed 6y ago
  > Maybe some day people will be able to design their own medication and targeted supplements. > What worries me is this may be decades away. First the good news: That day is here!! Now the bad news: that medication isn't working out great for them. Apparently some wingnut told people that drinking bleach was a potential cure for some ills. Didn't go great. And thats the problem with what you wish for - a popular facebooker, youtuber, instagrammer, president tells people that they can design their own medication, people are going to do it.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

If the US had done nothing, many models predicted over 2 million deaths by now. We have had 200k, so a 90% reduction. Hopefully there is a vaccine soon

youngNed 6y ago
> many models predicted over 2 million deaths by now citation needed. Here are many models that we can backcheck: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/
- vernie 6y ago
  I wish the historical view on this site projected forward to the present. I'd like to know which model was the least wrong from the beginning.
- jjcon 6y ago
  > without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-rate-white-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/us/coronavirus-fatality-r...
- analog31 6y ago
  In addition to the many articles that have been published, it has been possible since early March for people to extrapolate the graphs that were widely available. Those graphs, and their potential shortcomings, were widely discussed, and a "citizen scientist" could interpret them with reasonable confidence. My own analysis at the time was something like this: If the graph keeps going like the way it looks, it will consume effectively the entire population by month X, with Y percent dying. While this was not a formal epidemiological model, it allowed two tentative conclusions: 1. If the curve (a straight line on a semi-log graph) shows signs of turning over, I will breathe a huge sigh of relief, the sooner the better. 2. The curve was a "sniff test" for whether more advanced predictions were believable, notably, any prediction that did not roughly follow this baseline needed a darn good explanation.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

henriquez 6y ago

Bill Gates DESTROYED Covid-19 pandemic with LOGIC AND FACTS > “All you have to do is the four plus four, $8 billion total. And then people will see, even though the U.S. made some mistakes, at least our desire to cooperate, help others and use our R&D capacity, at least, you know, they’ll see it in a positive light.” The bottom line is he's advocating for more funding to pay for vaccines in other countries. I think it's hard to argue that the U.S. response to coronavirus has been competent, but I don't think Bill Gates is a credible authority to making many of the health claims he's raising in this piece. For example, he BLASTS how we've handled testing in the U.S. - fair point, but it's not clear that the alternatives he raises would be more effective. In fact, it seems like the most widely accepted tests we have are prone to false positives. This could in part be why our strategy has shifted to not test asymptomatic individuals. There's no point forcing someone into isolation over an inaccurate test that could have flagged a cold virus as Covid-19. Bill Gates has advocated for some pretty creepy stuff ("Real ID" microchip implants, a complete ban on end-to-end cryptography). He can spend as much as he wants on PR, but I don't trust him in his role as a "vigilante health authority." He's a billionaire with pet projects and an ego.

pessimizer 6y ago
> There's no point forcing someone into isolation over an inaccurate test that could have flagged a cold virus as Covid-19. Yes there is. I'm fine with the Bill Gates bashing, but this is like saying there's no reason to stop having unprotected sex after you've tested positive for HIV using a test with a 20% false positive rate. Stop doing things that would potentially spread the disease, then take a better test.
- henriquez 6y ago
  Is the goal of civilization that all people should be 100% protected against 100% of threats 100% of the time? I have a statistically higher chance of dying in a car accident in the 2.5 hour drive to visit my parents than I do of dying from Covid-19. The restrictions we're placing people under over this virus are disproportionate to the harm it's doing to our civilization. If the goal is really to protect people, then we shouldn't stop at isolation. We should ban all of the things that could potentially harm people: alcohol, tobacco, fast food, sex (protected or otherwise - there is too much risk), and driving. We should remove all peoples' liberties to protect them from all threats.

bransonf 6y ago

I don’t know when this interview was, but I’m surprised to see no mention of sputum testing as a replacement for Nasopharyngeal RT-PCR. I don’t know the precise number, but probably at least a dozen of these spit tests have been developed at Universities and approved by the FDA for emergency use. Some even use the LAMP protocol as opposed to RT-PCR, which saves on time and reagents. Another thing I always think of is how we didn’t adopt the contact tracing protocol that Google and Apple developed. Obviously it was a trust issue, and maybe some logistical shortcomings, but contact tracing as we’ve implemented it is largely ineffectual in reducing spread. The serial interval in young people is likely less than the time it takes to get back a test, and certainly shorter than the time it takes to get a test and complete a contact tracing interview. The US response to Covid is obviously a polarizing issue, but we’re all wrong to assume that we couldn’t have done better.

steve76 6y ago

So this is the mortality rate of Sweden as of August: https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-deaths/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-... We know mortality increases with unemployment, which increased due to lockdown by 5x. The richest people in the USA made over a half of trillion dollars during lockdown, on top of free money, trillions, that they just openly took. I hope Mr. Gates reads this, because I just have one word to say to him. Bravo. I am glad you are the one doing this, because I would be so much worse. It's good I am kept away. We would not survive. I see our shared ills, cities burning and people dying as simple forceful motivation. To everyone else, don't be shocked by the complete absence of morals among society. I read through most everything. This is no argument. It's just what works, to be the most frightening person among them, so everyone leaves you alone. What humans do to each other, nothing surprises me. The people trying to take over with just who they are and what they say, what else do they have? Racial strife? Let me tell you how that one is going to work out. BLM yeah yeah yeah, sure. Whatever. Please meet the new member of the team, Joshua Blahyi. I do not want leadership, or a celebrity, or even a president so much as I want a very mean man walking the streets with a gun.