I could maybe, I guess, giving these to people temporarily if they actually test positive and are legally required to stay at home AND there was a problem with compliance with that order. But assigning them to broad swaths of the population would be completely unacceptable. The way that stuff like this is just being casually proposed and accepted is really alarming to me.
If the punishment for “failing” the test is having to wear this thing - good luck getting people to test. You would also need to legislate mandatory testing.
They assign tracking wristbands to everyone entering Hong Kong.
I had one.
Mine was just a paper band with a QR code on it - it was implied it had some form of RFID chip in it, although it was clear it didn't.
The new ones are a larger grey box that straps on to your wrist - I'm not convinced this isn't a panopticon too, but have yet to see any firm evidence either way.
While I know the risks, I'm partly for it - the methods here have worked.
Yes, yes, I know it's a slippery slope, hence the use of the word "partly"
Only with scissors - from what I've seen online the newer larger grey ones are removable, but it's possible you can't put them back on after removing them - don't know for sure.
Edit: upon entering HK you are put in to mandatory quarantine for two weeks - it's during this period the wrist bands are used.
I assumed this would be for people who test positive for infection and are on a two week quarantine. But this is apparently for the general public? That seems like a gargantuan overreach and completely unnecessary. Lockdowns are certainly imperfect and there are plenty of bad actors, but they are still very effective despite the flaws. If it ain't broke, don't fix it with compulsory government tracking of all citizens.
Is the reason for using it, because Bulgaria population has lower cell phone use? In a very practical sense, cell phone seems like the most logical piece of hardware government would use here.
For the record, I hate it. And I hate that Poland's Comarch is adding to this growing panopticon.
Each every single counrty in this world had the chance to close the boarder early. They all failed. And things like that should be the solution now? Seriously? Even with the wristband people transfer the virus. So it's totaly useless.
Here in Germany, the government called Corona "a trick by the political right" to "achieve border closing". We only closed borders way after every country around us did. Because ideology is more important than human lives, apparently.
It was in the newspapers in February and first half of March.
The "big switch" was 14to 15 of March. The MSN here ran a fake story about Trump wanting to buy some German pharma company (all large newspapers retracted the story around March 17), but it was enough to get people sufficiently distracted to completely change their previous policy.
It was pretty interesting to watch how it was orchestered.
Well the most obvious solution is to find flaws, compromise them and publicise it. There is nothing better to fix a government's policies than bad publicity.
It'll be more like "you need to use this app to manage your government account - look it's easy!" marketing and lack of investment in other methods of accessing government services.
Eventually you'll be unable to function without the app and the smartphone and be left with no choice.
This is already happening in the UK as a lot of services are fairly difficult to use if you don't go via https://gov.uk.
It's a 71 year old book. The omniscience of the state has vastly expanded further than anything George Orwell imagines, no matter which age you happened to become aware of it. Time for a new colloquialism.
As someone involved in technical culture for a couple of decades, I've read enough parts of it to be able to understand its symbolism and dialectic usefulness, but had never really read it from start to end.
Coincidentally I found a couple of days ago a link to it and started reading it, I'm almost thru it.
It's unfortunately as current as when it was written, probably even more.
Neil Postman makes the argument for an older book, "Brave New World", in "Amusing Ourselves to Death",
"""
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another — slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
A global pandemic is truly perfect for a modern government:
- Good chance to kill off the filthy undesirables (economic deadweights such as those who dare to be ill or elderly people)
- Easy to roll out mass increases of police powers and surveillance without any real opposition
- Fuck it, you can basically do what you want and sycophants will still go "now is not the time to critique, we need to be united"
Modern liberal democracies have been absolutely gasping for the chance to roll out some of these measures. Expect to see a "productive work time tracker" soon!
That's something I've noticed as well, and the worst part is how willing people are to turn on their neighbors. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen comments along the lines of "screw your freedoms, millions of people will die if you don't give up your rights". People calling the police on hairstylist neighbors who are trying to do house calls because they can't pay their rent otherwise, etc. Not to mention the whole "prove that you're an essential employee, otherwise you'll get fined for leaving your house" that is the exact opposite of innocent until proven guilty.
It's the same sort of mentality that got Americans with Japanese heritage tossed into camps during WWII. Collectivism is really, really bad for individual liberty and nothing drives collectivism like a crisis. People get scared, and scared people do bad things.
> Good chance to kill off the filthy undesirables (economic deadweights such as those who dare to be ill or elderly people)
Government members and people in power in general tend to be older, and not always the most healthy. "Senator" means "elder" in latin, that's for a reason. And I don't think they want to be part of the "filthy undesirables".
> Easy to roll out mass increases of police powers and surveillance without any real opposition
Sure, but as the pandemic resolves, opposition comes back
> Fuck it, you can basically do what you want and sycophants will still go "now is not the time to critique, we need to be united"
Again, that's true. But again, the judgment will come later. People will look at how the government managed the crisis, compare it to what happened in other countries, and it will definitely affect the upcoming elections. And the upcoming elections is what politicians live for.
> Modern liberal democracies have been absolutely gasping for the chance to roll out some of these measures. Expect to see a "productive work time tracker" soon!
As if such things don't exist already. But the government already has a very good indicator on how productive you are: your revenue.
> > Easy to roll out mass increases of police powers and surveillance without any real opposition
> Sure, but as the pandemic resolves, opposition comes back
Have we seen examples of governments relinquishing surveillance powers after the events that spurred the increase? The patriot act is still a thing in the US, and it's been almost two decades since 9/11.
I'm confused at your inclusion of the word liberal here. These policies are not what I would consider to be liberal. Liberal as in laissez-faire capitalist democracies who should not impede on my ability to gather, demonstrate, worship, etc.?
So we're basically saying that the liberal democracies don't want to be liberal anymore? I'm just sort of confused as to who the purported boogeyman is in this case.
Liberal democracy "freedom" does not mean personal freedom, it means economic freedom. They have always been about preserving that, and it is only because technology was not effective enough before that the personal freedom tradeoff happened.
Nope, complete FUD that shouldn't be on HackerNews. Whitney Webb writes for The Last American Vagabond, and I didn't have to dig deep on their site to find material on "Metaphysics" and Illuminati et al conspiracy theories.
Here's the original document from EPIC's FOIA. I recommend reading it; Whitney Webb did a good job summarizing the document in the interview linked above.
What? This relates to the interview and material linked to, and relevance to the topic and previous comment. Not what else is on some website. Its like you're making FUD about what is really informative.
I'm saying that the interview linked to is an interview of a person who is the main writer for a site [1] that doesn't pass the fake news smell test. Therefore, if you want us to believe the material she presents in the interview, find a better source for said material.
yeah, it was interesting that rather mention anything about the interview and its content, you went to character assassination of the messenger. we could go out on a few angles from that. we let it stand, as it shows something that doesn't need explicit expression. perhaps the ministry of information will package something for you.
[squarebracket]she mentions the site in the interview
So it's important to note, the CDC does NOT track influenza. I cannot believe how many people are getting this wrong. They track pneumonia deaths. (They do track flu for infants fatalities, but that's a very specific tracking metric that can indicate very bad outbreaks).
In 2017/2018, we saw 50k ~ 60k pneumonia deaths. They then go back retroactively and estimate flu (in 2019, it was 20k to 60k).
So yes, we're past 50k COVID-19 deaths, but we're comparing three months on something that has an exponential growth and taper to a yearly average. It's not a good comparison.
If at the end of the year, COVID-19 deaths are at 70k, you could say it was 20k more than flu .. but keep in mind, the CDC is assigning everything as COVID-19 right now, and New York retroactively added 3,000 suspected deaths, leading to that bizarre one day spike.
Right now, more information continues to come out showing that COVID has a roughly .5% fatality rate when you try to add in the massive number of people with no symptoms. Iceland, California, New York are places that back these numbers up.
"keep in mind CDC is assigning everything COVID" exactly.
50% rate AT LEAST based on research out of Iceland. Backed up by research out of Stanford and New York.
Are you going to claim that the massive number of people who show no symptoms is fake? Perhaps conventiently?
50,000 means nothing unless you add the number infect to get fatality rate. REAL rate. which is trending under 1% and approaching the flu fatality rate.
> Over the last two weeks, German virologists tested nearly 80 percent of the population of Gangelt for antibodies that indicate whether they'd been infected by the coronavirus. Around 15 percent had been infected, allowing them to calculate a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of about 0.37 percent. The researchers also concluded that people who recover from the infection are immune to reinfection, at least for a while.
Added to that is more information from New York that puts the fatality rate there at roughly the same rate.
You went through way too much effort only to miss the point to which I replied (which was your own comment). I specifically mentioned that covid fatalities in the US appear to exceed that of the flu. That was my point. I said absolutely nothing about death rates.
My point is about rates... COVID is less lethal than the Flu even if it's temporarily causing more damage because it's new.
You said nothing about death rates? I did... the rates are very important when it comes to decisions about whether or not we should lose our collective shit over it or not.
Something that's more communicable than others but less lethal than the flu? We can't contain it and shutting the country down is going to destroy more lives and cause more damage than COVID.
My original post was that COVID is less lethal. And it is turning out, that with more information coming out each day, this is true.
My definition of Less lethal = deaths / infection count.
I'd also add that it's hard to take current COVID death counts serious when hospitals across the country get paid more for COVID cases.
It's hard to not see hospitals that are hurting for money turn down 30% more money for the same cases.
They already track phones, and will keep doing it even with wristbands. Chip implants would hopefully be the start a revolution, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't.
What are these rumors of chip implants? I haven't heard of these beyond a few bio-hacker types using them. I think people would start shooting before they went for that, or at least I'd like to hope they would.
That's still not comforting. People can see if you're wearing your wristband or not; unlike a phone.
This disease has leaders treating human beings like we're gears in a machine; or machines that can be turned on and off. >25million unemployed Americans who are burning through months of savings, with unpaid bills and rent and mortgage due, begs to differ.
Humanity cannot be turned off an put in storage. Maybe in the EU there is relief and good social welfare systems. In a lot of the world, there isn't. And then the media blasts protestors as right wing gun waving people who want haircuts. Some of them might be sure, but some of them have also been in food bank lines for hours and are wondering how they are going to survive without an income for another month.
We are suffering form two diseases. The first one is the virus killing people. The second one is ever measure without forethought leading to the suffering of the poor, increasing poverty and eroding our basic civil liberties.
This disease has shown our leaders don't see us as people. They claim they care about our lives, but they only really care that people are alive.
Taiwan, South Korea and New Zealand have all had effective responses to the pandemic that haven't required lockdowns. It's just that the West doesnt believe in survival masks and didn't make them, and can't figure out how to find and isolate cases.
I know personally that's not true about NZ. My ex is immune compromised and they have "Levels" there (L0, L1, etc.) and she most likely won't be able to leave her place for another two months.
Another kiwi I worked with sent me a video of walking through an empty Wellington. It's a small nation, 4 million people, plus ACC (health care) and solid unemployment for all, so it's much easier for them to cope. It's also easier for them to close the country, as it is a set of islands. The friend who did that walk said it was still Orwellian though.
> And then the media blasts protestors as right wing gun waving people who want haircuts.
Except ... they are? From what I've seen the protestors are all for increased policed powers (Thin Blue Line type supporters), just not when it applies to _them_ - i.e. now.
That's why I really want to go to one with a camera. I want to know what's not being reported. I know from the DNC/RNC protests every election year, they are nothing like what people see on TV.
