RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/notre-dame-fix/?mod=article_inline&mod=hp_lead_pos10

Almost a year after last April’s devastating fire, Notre Dame is still in a fragile state. Workers had been racing to stabilize the 800-year-old structure before the effort was suspended indefinitely last month due to the coronavirus pandemic, putting the project in even greater jeopardy.

The fire destroyed a section of the cathedral that acted as the linchpin of its medieval design: its roof and central spire. Like a ballast, the spire and roof pushed downward and outward on Notre Dame’s limestone walls, countering the inward pressure generated by the cathedral’s flying buttresses and massive facade. 

Without the spire and roof in place, the limestone walls of Notre Dame’s nave are at risk of tilting inward and its vaulted ceiling can buckle. Already, about 15% of the ceiling collapsed during the fire and over the summer. Notre Dame’s famous flying buttresses are still pushing against the walls, but without the counterweight of the roof and spire, they are at risk of collapsing if the vaults give way. The gables are also at risk because they are no longer supported by the roof. The north gable nearly collapsed during the fire. 

Water used to douse the flames created fissures in the massive stones that arc above Notre Dame’s nave, and seeped into the joints and mortar, leading to crumbling. Some of that water may have frozen over the winter, potentially weakening the structure further. The cathedral is covered in lead that melted from the roof and spire, which were made of several hundred tons of the toxic metal. Workers doing cleanup wear hazmat suits to prevent lead contamination and shower each time they leave the site. Back outside, charred scaffolding looms at the cathedral’s most vulnerable point, where the spire once rose. It had been erected for restoration efforts before the fire. Now distorted and highly unstable, it has been swaying in the wind and rain. Its collapse would be catastrophic. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15840/china-defective-medical-equipment

In Spain, the Ministry of Health revealed that 640,000 coronavirus tests that it had purchased from a Chinese supplier were defective. In addition, a further million coronavirus tests delivered to Spain on March 30 by another Chinese manufacturer were also defective.

The Czech news site iRozhlas reported that 300,000 coronavirus test kits delivered by China had an error rate of 80%. The Czech Ministry of Interior had paid $2.1 million for the kits.

A spokesperson for a hospital in Dutch city of Eindhoven said that Chinese suppliers were selling “a lot of junk… at high prices.”

“No. 10 [the residence of the British prime minister] believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with ‘predatory offers of help’ to countries around the world.” — The Daily Mail, March 28, 2020.

“The brutal truth is that China seems to flout the normal rules of behavior in every area of life — from healthcare to trade and from currency manipulation to internal repression. For too long, nations have lamely kowtowed to China in the desperate hope of winning trade deals. But once we get clear of this terrible pandemic, it is imperative that we all rethink that relationship and put it on a much more balanced and honest basis.” — Former UK Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith.

As the coronavirus rages across Europe, a growing number of countries are reporting that millions of pieces of medical equipment donated by, or purchased from, China to defeat the pandemic are defective and unusable.

The revelations are fueling distrust of a public relations effort by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party to portray China as the world’s new humanitarian superpower.

On March 28, the Netherlands was forced to recall 1.3 million face masks produced in China because they did not meet the minimum safety standards for medical personnel. The so-called KN95 masks are a less expensive Chinese alternative to the American-standard N95 mask, which currently is in short supply around the world. The KN95 does not fit on the face as tightly as the N95, thus potentially exposing medical personnel to the coronavirus.

https://spectator.us/deceived-covid-stats-less-numbers-suggest/

There is a concept at least as old as computing itself — Charles Babbage, the father of the field, expressed the sentiment, if not the words themselves — ‘garbage in, garbage out’. The idea is not a complicated one: no matter how advanced the calculation machine, no matter how good the statistical model, no matter how intricate the formulae, if the data on the way in isn’t reliable, the calculation that comes out will be suspect at best — and is liable to be outright wrong. We are regularly told that figures for economic growth were wrong and have to be dramatically revised. So what hope do we have of predicting coronavirus?

There is no reason to doubt either the skill or the dedication of the academics working to produce figures and forecasts to shape the response to the virus. But we do risk being misled by bad data. The daily influx of statistics, of infections, of deaths etc starts to build for most of us a false impression. It suggests to us that coronavirus is knowable, that we understand what is happening, that we have a plan. This impression begins to erode the second we examine the bedrock upon which it is built. Even the most reliable-looking of the figures we see tells us far less than it should.

It only takes a second of thinking about numbers of new cases to know they cannot be comparable across countries: how can they, if the death rate for the same disease is supposed to be 10 times higher in Italy than in Germany? The infection numbers will only ever be the tip of an iceberg. In the UK, officially only those being considered for admission to hospital are eligible for coronavirus testing — with even National Health Service front-line workers unable to get tested before that stage, even if certain celebrities, politicians and others seem to get tests without much struggle.