south korea remains weird.

we got the delayed spikes in the other east asian countries that the science predicts. i've been over this, so i'll be terse: when you react to a pandemic with authoritarian tactics, what you do is scare the population into avoiding medical care. the result is that the curve stays flat for a while due to under-reporting and then explodes upwards once it can't be ignored any further. that is what the science actually "predicted" would happen, and what has actually happened.

.....except in korea. why is that?

well, either the koreans are doing some specific thing in an absolutely flawless way, or the data is stunningly flawed.

there are some reasons to think the data is funny. for example, people are testing negative, and then testing positive. we don't have to jump to conspiracy theories. are they testing properly? it would seem as though they aren't.

but, you don't get false negatives when you test for death, or at least you don't get them in a sustained manner.

so, i don't know. not yet...

if they're doing something spectacularly well, it would have to have something to do with keeping it away from the vulnerable. i can draw whatever conclusions i want about underreporting, but if people aren't dying it means that the weak are being protected. it would follow that if you want to learn something worthwhile about what they're doing differently, you should look at how they're protecting the elderly and other high risk groups.

it could very well be that the virus is actually running rampant in the general population, but has been effectively kept out of nursing homes. that would be the best-case scenario, anywhere, as you get immunity without killing people. but, they're not even logging the unlucky deaths. like, even in the absolute best case scenario, there should be a kind of background death rate of a few dozen people a day, and they're not even seeing that.

so, i don't know. not yet...

could you even imagine this nowadays?

it seems like it already killed all of the old people.

so, if you're fat, stay inside for the remainder of the pandemic.

you can still get takeout.

also, this, while i'm thinking about it.

so, i've spent some further time sorting through bent knee's discography, and i'm ultimately going to need to step away from it - for now.

there's a certain level of subtlety to the music, but they very rarely actually do much with it. there's moments, segments, but it just doesn't transcend from the slightly interesting to the truly compelling. they might get there in time, but the general impression i'm feeling is that it's a little too buttoned up, a little too sterile at the expense of emotional investiture. it happens when people get overeducated; it's a common problem with prog. but, this isn't prog, it's alt-rock, and that's a little less common.

this is perhaps a high point, because it lets loose a little in a way that they'd be advised to emulate more frequently.

they may get over a hump, eventually. not yet...

remember...

christianity is stupid, communism is good.