Strange

On the other hand, hopes that this could lead to herd immunity may be unrealistic: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52335210

I think that will be similar for many places. For example, the mayor of Bergamo, at one point, said the death rate was probably 10 times the official rate. In the UK, the official figures only include deaths in hospital. The Office of National Statistics does, later, get figures for all deaths from death certificates. But if there hasn't been a positive test result then it is put to individual doctors whether they put it down as a cause (or contributory factor) so even that figure will be lower than the real death rate.

So, a quick look gives me the following for deaths/cases: Italy: 22,170 / 168,941 = 13% Spain: 19,315 / 184,948 = 10% China: 4,632 / 50,333 = 9% Germany: 4,051 / 137,698 = 2.9% Korea: 230 / 10,635 = 0.2% So, if the differences were due to covering up the figures then Germany and South Korea are far worse offenders. The truth is, there are a great many factors that contribute to the differences between countries. Some that spring to mind immediately: Age and health of the population Social structure (in Italy families of 3 or more generations often live in close proximity) How much testing is done (this reduces the case fatality rate by increasing the number of cases detected) How early action is taken How stringent the measures are (just asking people to stay home, actively tracing all contacts, quarantining all suspected contacts, etc) How well the population obeys the rules What are the definitions of "case" and "death": only those confirmed with a test? number of people tested vs number of tests done? all those with symptoms? only deaths in hospital? Quality of data collection (in Italy, many areas have, apparently, been too busy to fill in paperwork) Honesty of governments/media I'm sure there are many other factors as well. I don't think we will know the answers to a lot of the questions about this virus for many years.

It is this year. (See what I did there)

Well, I do

January

Yet more incoherent claims. So it can't tell a reptile from a mammal, but it can tell a threat from a non-threat. Can it tell feathers from fur, or only Rocky Road from Vanilla? Your beliefs are irrelevant. No one cares what you believe (you have explained how profoundly idiotic your beliefs are lots of times).

OK. I didn't (and don't) read it that way. But it is a valid interpretation. I'm certainly not going to expend any more pixels defending His Trumpishness

Sorry, science doesn't work that way. Even philosophy doesn't work that way. For example, others will say you are wrong. So we need some way to determine who is right and who is wrong. No one is just going to accept your word based on your observations (especially not if they have reviewed tour posting history). Ah, I see. "It is undefined so I am free to make up my own definitions". Sorry, science and philosophy don't work like that, either. Oh, so "life" is defined after all. This is nonsensical and self-contradictory. Very on brand.

Although, if you actually read what he tweeted, he appears to be saying that the quoted tweet is wrong (although he only defends his own actions, not Fauci, but that's only to be expected). Am I defending Trump? What a weird and messed up world we are in But no, I am not defending trump, just pointing out that it is important to go back to the source rather than just reply on how it is reported. No doubt many people will take it as a further justification for attacks on Fauci etc Some of the responses to the tweet are just surreal. Like claims that: the reason that hydroxychloroquine is not being made available as a miracle cure is because the "deep state" wants to kill as many people as possible. Riiiight

There is an entire website dedicated to spurious correlations: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations You can use the data to make up your own.

I can't tell if this is serious or not. I have read both your posts a couple of times and have no idea what point you are trying to make. Are you simply trying to illustrate that well known saying "correlation is not causation" ?

Speak for yourself.

Silly. Insightful.

If that is a mechanism, show how you would use it to tell us which isotopes of atoms are stable and which are not. In other words, there is a mechanism but you can't describe it because it is just a vague feeling at the back of your mind. Again, just a description of what happens: if things are not in equilibrium, they will move towards equilibrium. We know that. That is why the word "equilibrium" exists. But it is meaningless. And, more importantly, useless. Unless you can show a specific example of how "coherent actualisation" can be used to define what the equilibrium state of a system is, or which systems are in equilibrium and which are not.

You are just defining what "equilibrium" means: a stable state. Obviously if things are not in equilibrium then they will tend to move towards an equilibrium state. The difficult bit (that you have skipped) is tho explain why. You can't tell us which atoms are going to be stable and which aren't, can you? (Except by a circular argument that only those that are not in equilibrium are not stable.) So you don't have a theory, you just have a statement of what happens. A post hoc description.

You are not really engaging in a discussion here. I was trying to be helpful and provoke discussion by pointing out that this sounds like the basic concepts of thermodynamics (eg. heat will flow from a hotter to a cooler body, leading to equilibrium). This also leads to things settling into a minimum energy configuration, which is why planets orbit stars and water flows downhill to the sea.

A large part of philosophy is arguing semantics. For example, when discussing free will, what does "free" mean, what does "will" mean, which version of "free will" are we discussing, and so on. Defining and understanding exactly what these words and concepts mean (ie. semantics) is an essential part of any such discussion. (Using "semantics" to dismiss an argument is one of my pet hates: it indicates lazy thinking, that the person don't really care what the discussion is about.) Also, it's not clear who your criticism was addressed to. Maybe everybody?

How does your test work? Are you detecting viral genes? Or antibodies? What is the sensitivity? What s the accuracy?

These sound like the basic ides of thermodynamics, which do drive a lot of interactions in the world. But with the advantage that they are quantified (ie. mathematical laws) so they are useful. Your ASD concept sounds a bit too vague to be useful, to me.

Important point. The Big Bang is still happening; it was not an event in the past. And especially not the "creation" of the universe. It just occurred to me: you do realise that inflation is not the same thing as expansion? It is a hypothesis added to the Big Bang model to address the horizon problem. There are alternative hypotheses (such as cyclic models) but inflation solves several other problems and so is favoured at the moment.

Is it? Scientists can be very critical of other's theories, but I am not aware that this is treated especially badly. I don't believe you. There is no religious-like orthodoxy. Cyclic universe models are Big Bang models. They are based on the universe expanding from a hot dense state; i.e. the Big Bang model. There are many different attempts to question what happened before the notional Big Bang event (which may never have happened). Lots of people don't like inflation much. Including Steinhardt who did a lot of the original work on the idea. There are lots of alternative hypotheses. It is very difficult to find evidence for any of them. Science is not about beliefs, but about evidence. Penrose claimed that there was evidence for this model in patterns in the CMB, but this has not been confirmed. There are other models that avoid inflation, such as the universe being infinitely old in a meta-stable state before expansion started. But there is no solid evidence for them either yet. So the rational position is to say "we don't know" and hope for some evidence one way or another.

Just wait till Fox News has a "documentary" on how 5G is causing Covid-19 and he will be promising to bring down all the cell towers.

Then you have absolutely no reason for claiming that this vague half-formed thought can combine two deeply mathematical theories that you don't understand. I can't see any point to this thread.

That doesn't fit with extrapolating back from the currently expanding universe. It also doesn't address the horizon problem.