What are green areas where you live? Here green states mean the number of reported virus cases is down. Given how high some place start out, that's not much of an accomplishment in my opinion.

It is the number of known cases per 100,000 of population.

It was ...

Green - under 20
Amber - 20-50
Red - 50+

But it might have changed, the number of cases per 100,000. Areas change colour depending on the total number of known cases, not on just if they have gone down or up.

We currently have 16 known cases and our population is just over 100,000 so on our own scale we are green.

Wow.

50+ per 100,000 is red zone. Red zone as in bad zone. For the absurdity of how realities are different, that number makes me want to laugh hysterically while weeping wildly.

I've looked it up. It is estimated that 20% of the county I live in has of has had coronavirus-19. There's 1.8 million in my county. We would definately be in a red zone. But I already knew that. I'm not going to figure out per 100,000 number because it would make me feel sick to my stomach.


Juli, I'd be happy to tell the fools in your country it is more than "a two day cold". I'm one of the 20% in my county.

Mira - it is not just in my Country - if anything the conspiracy theorists are very few compared to other Countries and it seems to be world wide. This was posted earlier on different forum by someone in New York:



What do you say to someone like that? It seems that everywhere I look people are just screaming that it is a worldwide government hoax. That every government in every country is just making it up in order to subdue everyone, and this thing about the vaccine [which all governments are supposedly holding until everyone is sufficiently subdued to plead to be vaccinated] are going to change a person's DNA [how? why?] and includes a microchip... and other rubbish like that.

You could not make it up if you tried, could you, and yet people are posting these things on fora, on blogs, in national and international online newspaper comments - it seems impossible to read any real, straightforward, honest news anywhere these days. I know it is a load of rubbish. You know it is a load of rubbish. It just makes me want to scream.

Our daily figures of new confirmed cases are 9,000+ - 10,000+ - last Wednesday there were 11,316 new confirmed cases and 40 deaths. Last Thursday there were 53 deaths. I do not even bother checking most days now.

We have had a total of 400 cases, with 32 deaths.

Living on an island has its advantages, everyone arriving is tested, or quarantined, this includes residents who have been away from the island, plus visitors to the island. It is costing a fortune to do all these tests, so far 81,250 tests on inward travellers with the government paying, not the travellers.

Germany also uses the 50 per 100,000 limit as the "red" one where restricting action (not lockdown, but restrictions on gatherings, canceling of some events, etc.) is mandated, measured for new infections per week. There's also an "early warning" level (I suppose that would be orange more than amber) at 35 where some measures should be at least considered. For example, while sports events in open stadiums such as soccer may now be run with a maximum of 20% capacity with masks and distancing required, the 35 level means those can't happen and it must be done without spectators.

So far we're keeping R around 1 and infections at around 2000 per day for the country - but there is ample confusion about who takes what measure at what level. There's now a push to standardize most of the 35 and 50 measures at a federal level.

Virginia is doing better - according to the governor (who got diagnosed from COVID this week, having contracted it from a household employee), the state's positivity is at 4.7% and it has the second-lowest transmission rate in the US.

Oh, and my son's PCR test (the 'gold standard' one) came back negative, so barring any weird symptoms popping up, we can stop quarantining Wednesday at noon. Not that we went anywhere anyway...

According to data published this morning:


And yet the following comment was made by someone who still does not believe the virus is real:



I am not even bothering to check statistics any more. I am just checking the MoH map for new cases in the area 8km radius from my home, and only that because certain people I care about very much live within that area.

Crazy.

Crazy? I cannot understand how there are so many people in the world who believe such things.

And here are yet more, also from "guest" posters on the Jerusalem Post, where all the loonies in the world seem to congregate to comment on articles.

This shows the poor state of science education in the world. We need to teach kids how to evaluate data, how to evaluate sources, how to check for bias, etc.

It is not just a lack of science education, it is a denial of everything that is official. There does not seem to be any correlation regarding nationality/age/education of these people. To them the virus is just one big worldwide hoax with the sole aim of controlling everyone.

In my post #1273955 I mentioned about a "rumour" in two New York newspapers claiming deaths due to the virus in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, denied by a supposed nurse on the covid ward. Only it was not a rumour as it has been reported as a fact. But these people refuse to accept facts and pooh pooh all facts as just rumours.

Maybe some newspapers do make mistakes at times, but surely not every newspaper in every country?

I do not know whether people just do not understand the situation, do not know why masks should be worn, why social distancing should be adhered to, or whether they are just too frightened to think that there really is a virus, therefore are grasping at straws by believing that all the conspiracy theories must be true.

This section on the FT Forum seems to me to be the only place where intelligent people can discuss this, without someone screaming about "face diapers" and vaccinations to change DNA/insert microchips/kill off the unwanted - I am not frightened that I will be infected because I am taking all precautions not to be, but what is frightening me are all these hysterical people with their ludicrous conspiracy theories.

I am sorry - this is the only place I can say how I feel and why all this bothers me so much. I hope you all understand.

We understand and are glad that you feel relaxed here.

You are in the right place, dont worry!

Thank you Sue and thank you Ren. I would like explain one thing if I may. English is, of course, my mother-tongue as I am originally from England, but I have not been in verbal [as against written] English contact with other native English speakers for many years now. Having conversations and/or discussions with Israelis whose English was learned at school usually means damping down what I want to say and making sure that I do not use idiomatic expressions/phrases, so frequently it is like having to carry on a discussion with a small child. Words of one syllable and short, basic sentences.

The fact that I have only spoken to less than half a dozen people in the last seven months, and only a few brief sentences at that - and that most days the only human voice I hear is my own, talking to Tikva - does not help.

When I write here I switch back to what I hope is correct English, although I do quite frequently "lose" the word I want to say and have to either think about it or re-word the sentence. Or, as in the first sentence of my previous post, type and then wonder if I had used the correct word for what I intended to say, the word in question being "correlation".

I know what I want to say and just sit here and type, but then I worry that maybe I have not explained myself properly or that someone will take things the wrong way. I also know that I use the Oxford comma more frequently than most people. And start sentences with a conjunction!

Not that that has anything to do with the current topic but I felt it necessary to explain why I sometimes write long posts when it could have been said in just a few short sentences.

But can anyone have any idea how I feel when, like this morning when I actually did check the figures that so many people all over the world say the virus is a hoax, Israel registered 8,568 new cases and 41 new deaths yesterday when the whole country is supposedly in lockdown?

I haven't spoken to many people since March although I am permitted to go out for the time being. Prior to lockdown I would visit a widower neighbour for an hour most weeks, for a cup of tea and a chat. That stopped at lockdown and although we have started to meet up once more, it is not weekly.

What I missed mostly with lockdown was not being able to shop of myself, I didn't like to ask my neighbour to go more than once a week.

When I was at school we were not taught the Oxford comma. I like commas, so much better than no punctuation.

Don't worry about making a long post, if people don't like it they can skip it!

I find your country fascinating, I wish that I could have spent more time there and seen more of it. Presumably you get used to it, but it was jolly warm the day that I was there.

I like Oxford commas. I use Oxford commas. It annoys me to see writing where Oxford commas were not used. I received this message from a teammate regarding a question I wrote for a team quiz:

"Hi. I know you haven't written any questions and not many questions. I checked your question for the team quiz and fixed the grammar.". What she had done was to delete my Oxford comma. (Sorry, Wesley) So I went to the edit for the team quiz and added in Oxford commas.


Why do people think Covid is a hoax? I know why many do in the United States. They have chosen to follow the words of one man. In a recently published study (two days ago), a university (I think they did it)* analyzed 38 million media reports that mentioned coronavirus in the United States media markets. They found this one man was the leader in sending out and spreading misinformation about Covid. He called it a hoax in the beginning. Said it would disappear with warm weather. Still says children and "young people" either cannot get Covid or suffer no ill effects from it.

The rules of FunTrivia do not allow me to mention that man's name. However, at 12:54am (Washington, D.C. time) Thursday, October 2, 2020 that man put out a message on Twitter that he and his wife have tested positive for Cornoavirus-19.





*It is now two hours after the original post. Cornell University did the study.

One wonders whether the 'news' will affect the mindset of the people believing it to be a hoax.

Sadly, no. I've got two conservative (American conservative) news channels with my cable package. Watching them often makes me feel like I'm visiting another universe. I the more conservative of the two channels on 20 minutes to view their coverage of the Big Story in American news today, well so far today. It was a call in show. After the 3d call in a row hearing the call still refer to it as a hoax, I gave up and turned the channel.

I don't know what it will take to knock some sense into a whole lot of people. Those callers talked about the person being positive and applauded the news. Why? They said this way it would prove that Covid isn't a serious disease. Their leader of the personality cult they are in would bounce back with no ill effects! No one else in the family would get Covid! His kids are young to young-ish, they can't get covid! He says so, therefore it is true!

Lucky for me, another channel is showing three Marx Brothers movies in a row, all of them with the wonderful Margaret Dumont. That is where I'm going to look for logic and sanity this morning.

We did almost lose our PM to it earlier in the year, he was extremely poorly. Our big worry at the time when the heir to the throne caught it, and he is 71, there was the worry that he could have passed it to the Queen, which fortunately he didn't, luckily he hadn't seen her when incubating the illness. His was a fairly mild dose, and as he is fairly fit and not overweight his age was probably his only risk factor.

Well, Trump was diagnosed with Covid sometime in the past several days...

"Sometime" being the operative word, as there are as many "factual" reports as there are conspiracy theories. I know who I believe and trust, and it is not all the stark-staring, raving-mad, looney-bonkers conspiracy theorists.

And none of them is going to convince me otherwise.

Thank heavens for FunTrivia where I can get away from all the stupidity and ignorance.

Agreed - that's why I said 'sometime'.

I gathered that from the ellipsis - but I am just so angry about the idiots who spout all the false facts and then call those who do not agree with them, ignorant. It is impossible to argue with them and it seems to be impossible to get away from it all.

I do not watch television but I do, or rather did, enjoy reading newspapers. They are, in fact, my only contact with the outside world as it were. And it does not matter which online newspaper from which country I read, it is impossible to get away from these people.

Nobody seems to take the situation seriously any more. We are currently in lockdown, and yet nobody is taking any notice of it. Ram, my vet, came round this afternoon for Tikva's booster, Parkworm shot, and a couple of other things. He is allowed to come from town because he is a vet and animal treatment is one of the exemptions, and he said that the roads are as full as ever. As for the regulations about not going further than 1km from one's home [unless in one of the exempt groups]- we might just as well not be in lockdown at all.