nopie
10mo ago
I cannot predict what will happen but Prigozhin is trying to convince people to join his side by appealing to their grievances.
No one could convince Russians to protest the war. They are all united in their struggle for Russian supremacy. When the military incursion towards Kyiv started, Russians on social media cheered. But they also expressed that 300 casualties was a very high price. Little they knew that soon it would be 3000, then 30 thousand and 300 thousand is not so far away and still losing.
Prigozhin manipulated those sentiments by saying that he is not against Putin but against the corrupted generals who are to blame for this loss. Russians like to talk how bad is their corruption, how the government doesn't care about them at all etc. They might or might not see Prigozhin as their saviour but he has certainly changed the situation irreversibly and the narrative that the current leadership is not competent is not going to go away until something big happens.
nopie
10mo ago
That's one way of looking at that. The other, completely naive way is to consider that previously Ukrainians were pushed back, then Ukrainians stopped and were able to defend their positions and now they are pushing Russians back albeit slowly.
That clearly shows that the rate of strengthening heir armies, for Ukrainians is slightly faster than for Russians.
With every day Ukrainians gains small but real superiority over Russians. Granted, this comes with very wide confidence intervals. Maybe both sides are bluffing, we don't know.
Also we have to consider that with time the support for Ukrainian army both nationally and internationally may wane. And Russians may gain more supporters and ramp up their war time production. That does not allow me to make predictions with strong confidence.
It may also be that the strength of Russian resistance increases with the distance from Kyiv. Ukrainians will be able to recover only up to certain limit.
In summary, it seems that sanctions on Russia is working as intended – to minimise their war production capabilities.
nopie
10mo ago
On 4) I haven't delved deeper into this but the claim that medical mistakes is one of the leading causes of death requires proper context. My intuitive understanding is that technically it could be true. And yet it is only because people live much longer with the help of the modern medical system. Everyone should read Scott's article “By very slow decay...”. People who are barely alive survive only because of constant medical care, requiring 10 or more concomitant medications, constant care and procedures etc. The likelihood that overworked staff makes a fatal mistake increases exponentially and then that mistake kills the patient who was already literary on the death-bed.
Without that medical care and 10 different medications he would be already dead from natural causes but now he is dead because a nurse overdosed his insulin or pushed too much morphine into his vein or whatever. This doesn't mean much, only that medicines helps to live longer albeit with a poor quality of life and with a better care that minimises medical errors we could extend their lives even more while seriously questioning whether such efforts are worth it.
nopie
10mo ago
I agree with everything said so far, just wanted to add that very often the question about masks tries to answer a different question.
One is whether masking prevents inhalation of viral particles. Maybe N95 does to certain degree. But that is not the question we are interested in, which is whether a policy of masking (mandates or recommendations) achieves any meaningful public health targets. Those targets could be expressed as lower mortality from respiratory diseases or less disease burden by >10% or something like that.
The Cochrane report was so devastating that even hospitals discreetly removed any remaining mask mandates shortly (2-3 months is superfast in health regulations) after it was published. It was quite amusing seeing mask fanatics arguing against this report by doing motte-and-bailey such as “it doesn't protect the society, it only protects an individual wearer” and failing even at that.
Failed leaders saved their faces by announcing that masks are no longer needed because covid is no longer a threat as if the situation was somewhat different from the mid-year of 2021 when elderly population had been already vaccinated.
Lockdowns were like imprisonment for me. Like a prolonged home arrest for no reason. Somehow it was very clear that they will be useless and the policies didn't even make sense.
Yes, they were the worst human rights violations in the western world since the war ended or something like that.
Only when you widen your comparison to places where wars and genocide still happens (Ukraine, other wars, Uigurs etc.), we can find examples with even worse violations.
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