Rome is a complex example because their empire heavily relied on slavery and exploitation of colonized or conquered countries. The periphery of the Roman empire was squeezed so that the core could be stabilized and prosper. But yes, as long as they could afford the grain doles, they were an efficient instrument for securing inner peace.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 5 2020 05:03pm

The late roman empire became a mess. People would become slaves so that they could avoid paying taxes. Your assessment is more or less correct though.

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-doctor-went-to-his-own-employer-for-a-covid-19-antibody-test-it-cost-10-984

A Doctor Went to His Own Employer for a COVID-19 Antibody Test. It Cost $10,984.
Physicians Premier ER charged Dr. Zachary Sussman’s insurance $10,984 for his COVID-19 antibody test even though Sussman worked for the chain and knows the testing materials only cost about $8. Even more surprising: The insurer paid in full.

Amazing mess.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/500000-covid19-math-mistake-panic/

FAKE PLANNEDEMIC

With an IFR of 0.1%, the U.S. would end up with 320k deaths after a full spread through 100% of the population, or 264k deaths if we assume 80% pervasion (70% for herd immunity, 10% overshoot).

You are almost at this death toll already, and will easily reach that number before everything is said and done - and that's without being anywhere near herd immunity. My point is that 0.1% is too low of an estimate for the IFR. Btw: the official CDC estimate is 0.65% [1]. An IFR of 0.65% with 80% pervasion would still yield 1.7 million deaths, an unacceptably high death toll. So the bottom line is that the fatality rate predictions might have been too high, but not by as much as your article claims, and not in a way that would have fundamentally shifted rational political decision making.

Oh yeah, and of course lol @RT XD



Also interesting is the following article, which examines how substantially the IFR varies between different countries, based on age structure and local factors (such as the quality of the healthcare system):
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3





[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html -> Table 1

Covid got a boost

Btw wtf is operation warpspeed ? generalizing a vaccine while it is only in its phase One of developpement ?



Maybe a win, maybe an horrible scam...

Yeah, it's just a fancy name for the reckless approach the Russians took with their vaccine:



The tldr is that Trump is desperate and thinks that coming up with a miracle cure for covid before election day is his best (and perhaps only) shot at reelection.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 8 2020 11:16am

It could be a success with some lies, till the day of election. Finally even if it fails (like it ends up in killing people on large scale) it could still help to win the elections .... The only risk being:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/coronavirus/four-times-history-vaccines-failed-lessons-coronavirus-vaccine-166116

The damn truth IMO: being unofficially in phase 2 or 3 already with secret (and illegal) testings.