Harvey Weinstein should have read my blog
Get the hell out of the country ASAP, before it’s too late.
This is a strategy that worked out very well for Roman Polanski.
Now that you’re public enemy #1, every girl you ever pissed off with your sexual perversity is going to come out of the woodwork, every prosecutor in the country is going to want a piece of you.
And today it has been reported that the jury has found him guilty on two charges, criminal sexual act in the first degree & third degree rape.
The first charge, “criminal sexual act in the first degree” is punishable by up to 25 years in prison, with a mandatory 5 years minimum.
Weinstein should have read my blog and followed my advice. What’s the use of having tens of millions of dollars if you can’t use it to flee the country to avoid spending the rest of your life in prison?
* * *
Don’t take it as a big deal that Weinstein was found not guilty on three charges. It’s a sneaky and effective prosecutor tactic to always have multiple charges for the jury to ponder, so that they can feel like they’ve split the difference, and the prosecutor still gets to put the guy in prison.
Monday morning virus update
Italy
There are now a total of 218 cases and 5 dead. Northern Italy is under varying degrees of quarantine.
South Korea
There are now a total of 833 cases and 8 deaths.
Iran
An Iranian lawmaker form Qom claims that at least 50 have died in his city (which totally believable) but the official death toll is only 12.
Japan
Japan was previously at the forefront, but their number of cases do not seem to be growing that quickly. I am not aware of any new cases in Japan since yesterday morning. [UPDATE: At least 4 new confirmed cases since yesterday. Two more in Ishikawa Prefecture. The virus is all over Japan, not in any one area like in Italy. There would probably be hundreds of more cases found if Japan tested more people with symptoms.]
I believe that the problem is that Japan isn’t doing enough testing, rather than the virus is not spreading in Japan.
Israel
Israel is being bad-ass about keeping the virus at bay. Everyone who was in contact with the Korean tour group is being quarantined. They have travel bans against a bunch of countries including South Korea and Japan. (Meanwhile, in the United States, in addition to worrying about people from China coming here with the virus, now anyone from Japan or South Korea could also be bringing it in. Luckily, we have a travel ban with Iran.)
United States
There are no new cases if you don’t test anyone.
Markets
As of 6:59:39 AM EST, S&P 500 futures are down 2.43%. There’s still time to sell, stocks can drop a lot more than 2.43%.
Sunday evening virus update
There are now 763 confirmed cases in South Korea, and 7 deaths.
As of 8:13:36 PM EST, S&P 500 futures are down 1.26%. Bad news about the virus over the weekend finally rattling the nerves of Wall Street?
Is it OK to watch mainstream entertainment?
Commenter Hermes doesn’t think so:
Yeah, I haven’t watched Star Trek: Picard yet, but given Lion’s appreciation of other contemporary TV shows, I wouldn’t trust his opinion on this. Every TV show these days, unless its creators make an explicit attempt for it to be otherwise, is dark, brooding, nihilistic, morally ambiguous, intentionally eschewing any sense of absolute right and wrong, and lacking any true “good guys.” Not to mention portraying white men as losers, and NAMs and women as winners. I wouldn’t expect Star Trek: Picard to be any different. Lion is like those people Lawrence Auster used to criticize, people who consider themselves “conservatives” but are so immersed in the decadent surround culture that they don’t realize it.
Unless your only want to consume entertainment from before the 1970s or something like that, I don’t see how you can avoid it.
For the record, the other things that I have been watching lately are:
Terrace House:
This is a Japanese reality show where they put 3 “boys” and 3 girls, between the ages of 18 and 29, into a nice house, and film their lives. As time goes by, some participants leave and are replaced by new participants. It’s a lot different than American reality shows. There’s a lot less of the bad kind of drama. No loud arguments or fights. And it’s far more traditional and PG rated. No gays or lesbians. If there’s any sex happening, they keep it very hidden or very implicit. Apparently in Japan, even holding hands isn’t considered acceptable until they’ve gone on a few dates and then declared their love for each other.
Every so often, they cut to a panel of celebrities and comedians who discuss the action. This weirdness took some getting used to, but now I can see the superiority of it. Too bad I don’t understand any of the Japanese except for a few commonly used words like itadakimasu (note that normally the “u” at the end isn’t pronounced), etc. I’m probably missing out on a lot of the nuances by reading the subtitles.
For Japan, it’s pretty multicultural. Four of the participants from the first series (Boys and Girls in the City) are half-Japanese, and in the second series (Aloha State) most of the participants are half Japanese, and there’s even one girl who is zero percent Japanese. She’s half white and half Chinese, and she’s also the most beautiful girl to appear on the show up to that point. The message from the show seems to be that the half-Japanese people are cooler, less passive aggressive, better looking, more fun, more emotionally stable compared to full Japanese participants.
Critical Role:
This is a web series where “nerdy-ass” voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons, with Matt Mercer as the dungeon master. I enjoy the show, but I am vaguely aware that off the set, I am sure the cast are extreme left-wing types. One member of the cast, Taliesin Jaffe, tries to give of a bisexual vibe. Matt Mercer’s fantasy world has women in the army and basically serving in all functions that men do, totally unlike real medieval times. There’s also lesbian marriage. My take on all of that is that, given that Dungeons and Dragons takes place in a totally fake world anyway, might as well make it a fake world that makes everyone playing the game happy, right?
If you’re going to watch this, watch the second campaign. The early episodes of the first campaign have horrible audio quality and other technical deficiencies. The second campaign has professional quality production values from the start.
Sunday morning virus update
Italy
There are now 132 confirmed cases. 26 are intensive care (thus refuting the morons who keep saying that the virus doesn’t affect white people).
All schools and universities, in the Lombardy region are ordered closed, and all public and private vents including cultural, recreational, sporting and religious nature are suspended. The Lombardy region includes the city of Milan. At Fashion Week in Milan, the models will present to an empty room. [UPDATE: All schools and universities closed in Veneto (which includes the city of Venice) and Piedmont (which includes the city of Turin).]
Also, the Venice Carnival (whatever that is) has been called off.
Iran
The numbers being reported by Iran are meaningless because it’s obvious that the virus is widespread throughout the country and they lack the ability to test or the political desire to tell the world how bad it is. According to many internet rumors, the situation is out of control.
Officially, a total of 8 people have died from the virus, thus refuting the morons who say that only East Asian people die from the virus. Iran has ordered all schools, universities and cultural centers shut down throughout the country, not just in Qom where the outbreak started. And they’ve suspended all other public events. Sporting events will be held without spectators.
BUT, there’s no word that Mosques have been closed. Religious services have been a major vector of transmission, so if Iran fails to close down the Mosques, the virus will continue to spread around and everything else they are doing will be for naught.
South Korea
There are now 602 confirmed infections and 6 deaths.
Japan
There are now 146 confirmed cases, an increase of 13 since yesterday morning.
Cruise ship
Another 57 people, 55 of them crew members, have tested positive.
Singapore
No new cases today. This shows that early and aggressive testing and contact tracing could have conquered the virus in other countries.
Israel
Israel has instituted a travel ban on South Korea and Japan. Israel is quarantining everybody who came in contact with a South Korean tour group. Israel is the only country in the world besides Singapore that is serious about keeping the virus out.
United States
If you don’t test anyone for the virus, then there are no new cases. Do you believe that no one in the United States is infected? I don’t believe it.
Star Trek: Picard S01E05
My weekly review of Star Trek: Picard.
Still the best Star Trek series ever.
But I’m confused about the alleged lack of money in the future. People talk about getting paid and stuff like that.
Yes, the answer is that people writing the scripts really have no clue how a moneyless future would work, plus they’re not the same people who wrote the scripts from previous movies and TV episodes where they talked about there not being any money, so they just ignore the issue.
And a spoiler comment about the ending:
Virus outbreak in Italy; Prime Minister announces lockdown
See latest news at https://www.ansa.it/ (an Italian news site).
76 confirmed cases now.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has announced a China-style lockdown of outbreak areas in northern Italy. No one is allowed in or out. Note that these are small towns being locked down, not any major cities.
I remind you that two days ago, it was thought that there was no virus there at all (except for 3 contained cases from way back), and now that they started testing people, suddenly they know of 76 confirmed cases. But Italy should be commended for now taking decisive action.
No one is being tested in the U.S. It’s likely that there are pockets of infection right now in the U.S. that we don’t know about. This will go down in history as the biggest fuckup ever. Trump will be blamed. He probably deserves to be blamed. Trump is horrible at actually managing the government.
Blowout victory for Bernie in Nevada
Early results show that Bernie is way ahead of everyone else.
Buttigieg is not doing as well as I had predicted. He may yet squeak out second place, but it will be a second place where he’s far behind Bernie and barely ahead of Warren. Biden is having another horrible night. I still predict he will come in second place to Bernie in South Carolina and then drop out of the race.
UPDATE 6:38 PM EST: Biden is doing better than expected with 3% of the vote counted, in second place with 15.8% of the second-round vote, compared to Bernie with 52.0%. But that’s such a huge loss compared to Bernie, it doesn’t mean that Biden suddenly becomes viable. Plus there’s a lot more votes to be counted. It’s looking like Bernie can’t be stopped.
UPDATE 6:57 PM EST: According to CNN’s vote tallies, the race for distant second place between Biden and Buttigieg is very close.
How does the Wuhan coronavirus spread?
DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or a virologist or any other occupation that would give me job-related expertise.
The new coronavirus spreads very much like the flu does. There can be the impression that it’s some sort of super contagion but there’s no evidence of that. It’s not like someone with the virus gets on a plane, and then when the plane lands everyone on the plane has the virus. In fact, I don’t know of any confirmed cases of transmission that happened on a plane flight (although I could be wrong).
I think there are five reasons why this virus has a higher R0 than seasonal flu:
1. An infected person can be contagious for a very long time. It’s believed that the virus can be contagious before even the appearance of symptoms, and in the case of severe infections, it can be three weeks between first symptoms and release from a hospital or death. That’s a long time for the virus to infect people, especially medical workers who aren’t taking precautions because they don’t know that their patient has the virus because the patient was never tested.
2. Some (many?) people who get the virus are asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic but are still contagious. They have no reason to think they have a serious infectious illness and need to stay home, nor do the people who come in contact with them have reason to avoid them. Patient 1 in northern Italy caught the virus from patient 0 who never had any symptoms except for mild cold symptoms for only one day. [UPDATE: Italian health officials have no idea where patient 1 caught it from. They tested who they thought was patient 0 for antibodies to the virus and found none.]
3. Foodborne and fecal transmission. I think that, compared to seasonal flu, this virus is more easily caught by eating food prepared by someone who has the virus. I suspect that’s how it spread through the cruise ship, and NOT through the air circulation. There is a scientific paper supporting the idea of fecal to oral transmission. This also suggests a possible transmission vector from sitting on a public toilet and flushing it, which could spray virus up your anus or into the air.
4. Many people have some level of immunity to seasonal flus because they’ve had a similar flu in the past or had a flu vaccine, but no one has any immunity to the new coronavirus.
5. Super-spreaders, people who shed more virus than most people, seem to be responsible for a disproportionate number of transmissions. I don’t know if this also happens with influenza, but perhaps the super-spreader phenomenon is more pronounced with coronaviruses. The super-spreader phenomenon was observed with previous coronaviruses (MERS and SARS).
For the reasons above, people who believe the virus will magically disappear when the weather gets warm are just deluding themselves. The contagiousness could go down a bit during warmer weather, but the virus will still be contagious enough to continue to spread unless we impose society-wide efforts to increase social distancing.
As for practical advice, the best way to avoid catching this is the same as the best way to avoid catching any other type of upper respiratory infection. Keep your distance (3 feet minimum, ideally 6 feet) from people who are infected. And because you don’t know who’s infected, keep your distance from everyone. Plus good hand hygiene.
Saturday morning virus update
Italy
There are now more than 51 confirmed cases in northern Italy according to Sky TG24 news. 39 in Lombardy, 12 in Veneto. Two are dead.
Train service has been suspended to 11 cities in northern Italy. Schools have been ordered closed and public events canceled, people are advised to stay home, etc.
South Korea
There are now a total of 433 confirmed cases. According to the NY Times, more than half of the cases are members of the religous cult, 111 cases are patients and staff of a hospital (mostly in the mental ward of that hospital). More than 1,250 members of the cult (the Sincheonji Church of Jesus) have reported potential symptoms, and 700 members can’t be located to be screened.
Samsung has closed down a factory over the weekend because an employee tested positive. They say they are going to disinfect everything and re-open on Monday.
Japan
133 total cases, an increase of 29 since my Friday morning update. The biggest one-day increase. What’s troubling for Japan is that they have occurred in just about every part of the country, so the virus is all over the place in Japan.
Singapore
Only 3 new cases for total of 89 total. Singapore has it’s stuff together and may be the only country in the world to keep its citizens safe.
Iran
The official number of reported deaths is now 5. Among additional confirmed cases, a mayor from district 13 of Tehran. But I don’t believe the numbers being released by Iran are relevant because even if they wanted to be open with their information, they probably lack the abilities to test everyone. The assumption is that the virus is epidemic in Iran like it is in China.
Cruise Ships
More people evacuated from the cruise ship that was quarantined have tested positive. On the other hand, the woman who Malaysia claimed was positive, now she tests negative. I think that was a false positive. I think that if the virus was really present on the cruise ship, it would have spread around to many more people than just one old woman. So hopefully, good news there.
United States
We haven’t tested anyone, so there are no new cases if you don’t test anyone. Given that there was a whole lot more plane travel between the U.S. and China than between China and Italy or China and Iran, it would be very foolish to think that the virus isn’t spreading here.
Lion of the Blogosphere 