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It is not a news site it states the actual numbers. Unless you're suggesting that the data entered is fake. If that is the case we need to see data which shows a different set of figures.
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How deadly is covid-19?
- Thread starter Leongsam
- Start date
It is not a news site it states the actual numbers. Unless you're suggesting that the data entered is fake. If that is the case we need to see data which shows a different set of figures.
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Where did you get the real numbers from?
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The number of people in hospital with Covid is so small it is hardly measurable.
Florida has a population of almost 30 million.
The % of that population in hospital with Covid is 0.0098%.
https://bi.ahca.myflorida.com/t/ABICC/views/Public/COVIDHospitalizationsCounty?:showAppBanner=false&:display_count=n&:showVizHome=n&:origin=viz_share_link&:isGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&:embed=y
Florida has a population of almost 30 million.
The % of that population in hospital with Covid is 0.0098%.
https://bi.ahca.myflorida.com/t/ABICC/views/Public/COVIDHospitalizationsCounty?:showAppBanner=false&:display_count=n&:showVizHome=n&:origin=viz_share_link&:isGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&:embed=y
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My point exactly. That's why everyone here thinks you're an idiot.
Only idiots and losers come here to throw rethorics, bad mouthing and post take news sites.
Top of this chain the biggest idiot is you..
Top of this chain the biggest idiot is you..
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That's really rich coming from someone who posts 100% fake chink shit on a regular basis.
That's for counter fight Chinkmaricans posting shits AMDK the bestest but balless to bad mouthings Muslims and Allah. Bad mouthing Chinese and China is safer.
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Covid is nothing. The rock and so many superstars kena also never die. Is just a common flu. Now china most city is open
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El Paso ICU beds run out
No different from flu it's just the normal winter pattern. Nothing to be alarmed about.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
time.com
Hospitals Overwhelmed by Flu Patients Are Treating Them in Tents
Amanda MacMillan
7-9 minutes
The 2017-2018 influenza epidemic is sending people to hospitals and urgent-care centers in every state, and medical centers are responding with extraordinary measures: asking staff to work overtime, setting up triage tents, restricting friends and family visits and canceling elective surgeries, to name a few.
“We are pretty much at capacity, and the volume is certainly different from previous flu seasons,” says Dr. Alfred Tallia, professor and chair of family medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “I’ve been in practice for 30 years, and it’s been a good 15 or 20 years since I’ve seen a flu-related illness scenario like we’ve had this year.”
Tallia says his hospital is “managing, but just barely,” at keeping up with the increased number of sick patients in the last three weeks. The hospital’s urgent-care centers have also been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available.
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KNN imuho nowadays it is getting harder to get leeeal news KNN we can only gauge for ourselves from different sources and from what we believe as more trustable site as a guide but not totally believe it either KNN the final piece of info after my uncle gathered is that covid19 is still a very dangerous virus in other parts of the world with the strains in sg less lethal than when it was first started KNN but we cannot be complacent as we wouldn't know when the lethal weapon will strike again in sg KNN
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Not to worry when Joe Biden takes office the deaths will be stopped in their tracks.
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Oh no...Sweden herd immunity policy has failed. Lockdowns forever
Sweden hits highest daily COVID-19 spread as chief epidemiologist says herd immunity not 'ethically justifiable'
Posted Yesterday at 11:13pm, updated 4h
hours
ago
As cases rise, Anders Tegnell says Sweden is "beginning to approach the ceiling for what the healthcare system can handle".(Reuters: Andres Wiklund)
Sweden, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, has registered 2,820 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the highest daily figure since the pandemic began.
Key points:
It was the third record number in a matter of days and came as the country's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell warned against the strategy of attaining herd immunity.
"Striving for herd immunity is neither ethical nor otherwise justifiable," Dr Tegnell told German paper Die Zeit.
Sweden's Health Agency has said the peak during the spring probably ran much higher but went unrecorded due to a lack of testing.
"We're beginning to approach the ceiling for what the healthcare system can handle," Dr Tegnell told a news conference.
"Together, as during the spring, we can push down this curve and avoid the strain on healthcare."
The Health Agency also moved to tighten pandemic recommendations for regions including Sweden's biggest cities Stockholm and Gothenburg, saying infection rates were rising sharply in these areas.
Sweden has relied primarily on voluntary measures, largely unenforced but still widely adhered to.
The new tighter local recommendations, already introduced in two regions with surging infections, included advice to avoid indoor environments such as shops and gyms.
Stockholm authorities said separately that the number of COVID-19 patients in need of care in the region had risen about 60 per cent over the past week after a near 80 per cent surge in recorded infections.
Sweden registered seven new deaths, taking the total to 5,934.
Sweden's death rate per capita is several times higher than its Nordic neighbours, but lower than some larger European countries, such as Spain and Britain.
Loading...
Reuters/ABC
Sweden hits highest daily COVID-19 spread as chief epidemiologist says herd immunity not 'ethically justifiable'
Posted Yesterday at 11:13pm, updated 4h
hours
ago
Sweden, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, has registered 2,820 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the highest daily figure since the pandemic began.
Key points:
- Sweden's death rate per capita is several times higher than its Nordic neighbours
- It has reported record numbers of new cases three times in a matter of days
- Tighter recommendations are now being introduced in some regions
It was the third record number in a matter of days and came as the country's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell warned against the strategy of attaining herd immunity.
"Striving for herd immunity is neither ethical nor otherwise justifiable," Dr Tegnell told German paper Die Zeit.
Sweden's Health Agency has said the peak during the spring probably ran much higher but went unrecorded due to a lack of testing.
"We're beginning to approach the ceiling for what the healthcare system can handle," Dr Tegnell told a news conference.
"Together, as during the spring, we can push down this curve and avoid the strain on healthcare."
The Health Agency also moved to tighten pandemic recommendations for regions including Sweden's biggest cities Stockholm and Gothenburg, saying infection rates were rising sharply in these areas.
Sweden has relied primarily on voluntary measures, largely unenforced but still widely adhered to.
The new tighter local recommendations, already introduced in two regions with surging infections, included advice to avoid indoor environments such as shops and gyms.
Stockholm authorities said separately that the number of COVID-19 patients in need of care in the region had risen about 60 per cent over the past week after a near 80 per cent surge in recorded infections.
Sweden registered seven new deaths, taking the total to 5,934.
Sweden's death rate per capita is several times higher than its Nordic neighbours, but lower than some larger European countries, such as Spain and Britain.
Loading...
Reuters/ABC
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Oh no...Sweden herd immunity policy has failed. Lockdowns forever
Sweden hits highest daily COVID-19 spread as chief epidemiologist says herd immunity not 'ethically justifiable'
Posted Yesterday at 11:13pm, updated 4h
hours
ago
As cases rise, Anders Tegnell says Sweden is "beginning to approach the ceiling for what the healthcare system can handle".(Reuters: Andres Wiklund)
Sweden, which has shunned lockdowns throughout the pandemic, has registered 2,820 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the highest daily figure since the pandemic began.
Key points:
The October 28 figure eclipsed a record set only the previous day, when more than 2,400 cases were announced, Health Agency statistics show.
- Sweden's death rate per capita is several times higher than its Nordic neighbours
- It has reported record numbers of new cases three times in a matter of days
- Tighter recommendations are now being introduced in some regions
It was the third record number in a matter of days and came as the country's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell warned against the strategy of attaining herd immunity.
"Striving for herd immunity is neither ethical nor otherwise justifiable," Dr Tegnell told German paper Die Zeit.
Sweden's Health Agency has said the peak during the spring probably ran much higher but went unrecorded due to a lack of testing.
"We're beginning to approach the ceiling for what the healthcare system can handle," Dr Tegnell told a news conference.
"Together, as during the spring, we can push down this curve and avoid the strain on healthcare."
The Health Agency also moved to tighten pandemic recommendations for regions including Sweden's biggest cities Stockholm and Gothenburg, saying infection rates were rising sharply in these areas.
Sweden has relied primarily on voluntary measures, largely unenforced but still widely adhered to.
The new tighter local recommendations, already introduced in two regions with surging infections, included advice to avoid indoor environments such as shops and gyms.
Stockholm authorities said separately that the number of COVID-19 patients in need of care in the region had risen about 60 per cent over the past week after a near 80 per cent surge in recorded infections.
Sweden registered seven new deaths, taking the total to 5,934.
Sweden's death rate per capita is several times higher than its Nordic neighbours, but lower than some larger European countries, such as Spain and Britain.
Loading...
Reuters/ABC
I don't think Sweden ever announced a herd immunity policy. All the authorities have done is relied on voluntary measures to keep the cases as low as possible rather than pass laws to prison the population.
The fact that they have just removed restrictions previously imposed on care homes for the elderly proves that they are on the right track.
telegraph.co.uk
Sweden loosens Covid lockdown rules for elderly and vulnerable due to mental health impact of lockdown
By Reuters News Agency 22 October 2020 • 12:41pm
3 minutes
Elderly people in Sweden no longer need to isolate themselves, the government said on Thursday, pointing to lower Covid infection rates than in spring and a growing toll on the mental health of its elderly as behind the new recommendation.
The move to ease the burden on the elderly comes as many countries across Europe are reimposing restrictions to get to grips with surging infections, but the health agency has said it does not see evidence of a second wave in Sweden.
Sweden has taken a different approach to most other European countries in fighting the pandemic, relying on voluntary measures to promote social distancing, though it did isolate nursing homes after high levels of deaths among residents.
The number of new cases in the Nordic country has risen steadily in recent weeks though they remain at lower levels relative to the size of the population than in many countries in Europe, where new records are being set daily.
Sweden has seen around 107,000 cases in total and roughly 5,900 deaths. It registered 975 new cases on Wednesday and seven additional deaths, far lower than during the spring peak but still well above the case load during summer.
"The Public Health Agency has decided that the elderly and those in special risks groups will be subject to the same recommendations as the rest of the population," health minister Lena Hallengren told reporters.
Overall, Covid-19 deaths have been many times higher than in its Nordic neighbours, but lower than in some countries that adopted tougher restrictions, such as Spain and Britain.
Until now, those over 70 have been told to avoid physical contact and public transport and to keep away from shops and other public places, measures officials say brought down infection rates but also had a significant negative impact on the well-being of many elderly.
The agency said that with lower infection rates, better knowledge about how to handle the disease and a health system no longer under the same pressure as during the spring, the elderly should now follow the general advice to all Swedes.
This includes avoiding large gatherings, staying home at the first signs of illness and maintaining social distancing.
But Ms Hallengren warned this did not mean a return to normal.
"Daily life cannot be as it was before the pandemic," she said. "But there are many ways of living that are not just surviving."
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rt.com
A scientific review of the science behind lockdown concludes the policy was a MISTAKE & will have caused MORE deaths from Covid-19
9-12 minutes
Rob Lyons
Rob Lyons is a UK journalist specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of 'Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.
Rob Lyons is a UK journalist specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of 'Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.
The report, analysing the information available to UK policymakers in March, says schools shouldn’t have shut, that only vulnerable groups like the old should have been isolated, & that herd immunity may have been a better route.
A new paper by researchers at Edinburgh University suggests that lockdowns do not help to reduce the death toll from Covid-19, but may simply postpone those deaths. It's another piece of evidence that suggests that a different strategy to combat the pandemic - one that doesn't impose blanket restrictions across society - is needed.
The research was done by a team from Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy. If that sounds odd, Professor Graeme Ackland, one of the authors, has a good explanation. He told me: “From March, every serious epidemiologist has been seconded to SPI-M (the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) and SAGE (the main Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), producing new research on a timescale of days. There simply aren't enough of them to also do replication or even careful peer review. But there were thousands of people who could do data-cleaning, code checking, validation and replication.”
Ackland and his colleagues were, he says, “tasked by SPI-M and SAGE with exploring any ‘reservations’. SPI-M understood very well the problem of groupthink in a closed community, and asked us to ‘kick the tyres’ on everything. Another thing real epidemiologists would do themselves given enough time.”
Also on rt.com Thousands of the world’s top scientists are finally speaking out against lockdowns. Let’s pray it’s not too little, too late
Their paper is not really a criticism of the original modelling done before lockdown. In fact, it uses the model used by Imperial College to assess a wider range of scenarios than was done at the time. “My overall opinion”, says Ackland, “is that the government's experts have reliably produced better predictions than the ‘newspaper experts’.”
One sentence in the new paper is particularly striking in regards to the original Imperial College work: “Contrary to popular perception, the lockdown, which was then implemented, was not specifically modelled in this work.” Given that lockdown carried on for months, and schools remained shut until the autumn, the failure to go back to see what the model says about the effects of lockdown is remarkable.
The aim of the paper is to “replicate and analyse the information available to UK policymakers when the lockdown decision was taken in March 2020”. The paper concludes that the original model would have provided a good forecast if based on a reproduction number for the virus of 3.5. (The Imperial report on 16 March was based on the 'R' being between 2.2 and 2.4.) The counter-intuitive outcome of the model is that it suggests that “school closures and isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths, albeit postponed to a second and subsequent waves”.
The model suggests that prompt interventions were effective in reducing peak demand for intensive care beds, but would also prolong the epidemic. In some scenarios, this could lead to more deaths in the long term. Why? Because, as the paper notes, “Covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200,000.”
It's wise to be cautious about any particular numbers. When researchers applied a similar model to Sweden, for example, the numbers were far in excess of the real outcomes. Nonetheless, the thing that really caused alarm back in March wasn't the much-quoted half a million deaths from a 'do nothing' policy. It was the Imperial team's assertion that the 'most effective mitigation strategy' they examined - case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly - would lead to around 250,000 deaths.
Read more
This was the reason, we were told, that nothing short of lockdown would do. If the government had asked Ferguson to model lockdown, and the result was 200,000 deaths - in other words, in the same ballpark - would we have gone into lockdown, given the damage it has done?
Specifically, for Covid-19, closing schools and universities was a serious mistake, it would seem (contrary to comments in April by Professor Neil Ferguson, who led the original modelling). Keeping them open would have meant lots of younger people getting the virus, with relatively little harm, but would have speeded up the process of achieving 'herd' immunity.
In conclusion, the authors write: “The optimal strategy for saving lives in a Covid-19 epidemic is different from that anticipated for an influenza epidemic with a different mortality age profile.” At the very least, says Ackland, schools could have remained open while doing everything possible to protect the most vulnerable groups. The absolute priority was to keep the disease out of hospitals and care homes.
Unsurprisingly, this is exactly the message coming from SAGE before the Imperial College modelling results were published on 16 March. For example, Professor Graham Medley - the chair of SPI-M and a member of SAGE, told BBC Newsnight on 13 March: “This virus is going to be with us for a long time, we're going to have an epidemic and then it will become endemic and join in with all the other coronaviruses that we all have all the time, but don't notice. We're going to have to generate what we call herd immunity. So that's a situation where the majority of the population are immune to the infection. And the only way of developing that in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected.”
The trick is to ensure that the people who are worst affected by the disease are protected from it - which, despite the lockdown, the UK government failed to do.
Read more
Postponing an avalanche of cases is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, it has allowed us to find some specific treatments, particularly showing that the steroid dexamethasone can save the lives of some of the most ill patients. We've learned that ventilators, which were such a huge focus at the start of the crisis, are less useful than first thought. On the other hand, we’ve learned that kidney dialysis machines could be vital. If a vaccine could be rolled out soon, that could be very important, too, but that looks unlikely before next spring.
However, the fact remains that this epidemic will only end when either enough people have been infected with it to end widespread transmission or until an effective vaccine becomes available. It would be much better, given the modelling, if the people who get it are young and healthy, rather than old or with a pre-existing illness.
Instead of holding its nerve, as Sweden did, the UK government panicked and imposed unprecedented restrictions on our freedom. This has done enormous damage to the economy, mental health, children's education and much more. Worse, if the modellers are correct, lockdown won't really have much impact on saving lives. And having committed to this course, the government doesn't seem to have double checked if this made sense using the very models they relied on in the first place.
The fact that cases have been rising across Europe - particularly in countries like France and Spain that imposed the strictest lockdowns - should give us cause for concern, but not alarm. There are indications that the rate of spread has slowed down, possibly reflecting the impact of some population immunity, although case numbers are still rising. However, the numbers dying from it are low, and currently make up only around 2% of all deaths in England and Wales.
We could end up in the worst of all scenarios: ever more restrictions, more and more older people getting the virus, and heading into winter with the usual seasonal rise in other illnesses like influenza on top of Covid - with all that means for pressure on healthcare.
There is still time to change course, open up society for younger people, protect and support the vulnerable and allow the epidemic to take its course. There is no scenario where nobody dies and everything is fine and dandy. We have been hit by a deadly new virus. That's no excuse for bad policies that risk turning a crisis into a disaster.
Also on rt.com As Boris Johnson announces Britain’s ‘great reset’, were the Covid ‘conspiracy theorists’ right all along?
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
A scientific review of the science behind lockdown concludes the policy was a MISTAKE & will have caused MORE deaths from Covid-19
9-12 minutes
Rob Lyons
Rob Lyons is a UK journalist specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of 'Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.
Rob Lyons is a UK journalist specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of 'Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.
The report, analysing the information available to UK policymakers in March, says schools shouldn’t have shut, that only vulnerable groups like the old should have been isolated, & that herd immunity may have been a better route.
A new paper by researchers at Edinburgh University suggests that lockdowns do not help to reduce the death toll from Covid-19, but may simply postpone those deaths. It's another piece of evidence that suggests that a different strategy to combat the pandemic - one that doesn't impose blanket restrictions across society - is needed.
The research was done by a team from Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy. If that sounds odd, Professor Graeme Ackland, one of the authors, has a good explanation. He told me: “From March, every serious epidemiologist has been seconded to SPI-M (the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) and SAGE (the main Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), producing new research on a timescale of days. There simply aren't enough of them to also do replication or even careful peer review. But there were thousands of people who could do data-cleaning, code checking, validation and replication.”
Ackland and his colleagues were, he says, “tasked by SPI-M and SAGE with exploring any ‘reservations’. SPI-M understood very well the problem of groupthink in a closed community, and asked us to ‘kick the tyres’ on everything. Another thing real epidemiologists would do themselves given enough time.”
Also on rt.com Thousands of the world’s top scientists are finally speaking out against lockdowns. Let’s pray it’s not too little, too late
Their paper is not really a criticism of the original modelling done before lockdown. In fact, it uses the model used by Imperial College to assess a wider range of scenarios than was done at the time. “My overall opinion”, says Ackland, “is that the government's experts have reliably produced better predictions than the ‘newspaper experts’.”
One sentence in the new paper is particularly striking in regards to the original Imperial College work: “Contrary to popular perception, the lockdown, which was then implemented, was not specifically modelled in this work.” Given that lockdown carried on for months, and schools remained shut until the autumn, the failure to go back to see what the model says about the effects of lockdown is remarkable.
The aim of the paper is to “replicate and analyse the information available to UK policymakers when the lockdown decision was taken in March 2020”. The paper concludes that the original model would have provided a good forecast if based on a reproduction number for the virus of 3.5. (The Imperial report on 16 March was based on the 'R' being between 2.2 and 2.4.) The counter-intuitive outcome of the model is that it suggests that “school closures and isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths, albeit postponed to a second and subsequent waves”.
The model suggests that prompt interventions were effective in reducing peak demand for intensive care beds, but would also prolong the epidemic. In some scenarios, this could lead to more deaths in the long term. Why? Because, as the paper notes, “Covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200,000.”
It's wise to be cautious about any particular numbers. When researchers applied a similar model to Sweden, for example, the numbers were far in excess of the real outcomes. Nonetheless, the thing that really caused alarm back in March wasn't the much-quoted half a million deaths from a 'do nothing' policy. It was the Imperial team's assertion that the 'most effective mitigation strategy' they examined - case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly - would lead to around 250,000 deaths.
Read more
This was the reason, we were told, that nothing short of lockdown would do. If the government had asked Ferguson to model lockdown, and the result was 200,000 deaths - in other words, in the same ballpark - would we have gone into lockdown, given the damage it has done?
Specifically, for Covid-19, closing schools and universities was a serious mistake, it would seem (contrary to comments in April by Professor Neil Ferguson, who led the original modelling). Keeping them open would have meant lots of younger people getting the virus, with relatively little harm, but would have speeded up the process of achieving 'herd' immunity.
In conclusion, the authors write: “The optimal strategy for saving lives in a Covid-19 epidemic is different from that anticipated for an influenza epidemic with a different mortality age profile.” At the very least, says Ackland, schools could have remained open while doing everything possible to protect the most vulnerable groups. The absolute priority was to keep the disease out of hospitals and care homes.
Unsurprisingly, this is exactly the message coming from SAGE before the Imperial College modelling results were published on 16 March. For example, Professor Graham Medley - the chair of SPI-M and a member of SAGE, told BBC Newsnight on 13 March: “This virus is going to be with us for a long time, we're going to have an epidemic and then it will become endemic and join in with all the other coronaviruses that we all have all the time, but don't notice. We're going to have to generate what we call herd immunity. So that's a situation where the majority of the population are immune to the infection. And the only way of developing that in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected.”
The trick is to ensure that the people who are worst affected by the disease are protected from it - which, despite the lockdown, the UK government failed to do.
Read more
Postponing an avalanche of cases is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, it has allowed us to find some specific treatments, particularly showing that the steroid dexamethasone can save the lives of some of the most ill patients. We've learned that ventilators, which were such a huge focus at the start of the crisis, are less useful than first thought. On the other hand, we’ve learned that kidney dialysis machines could be vital. If a vaccine could be rolled out soon, that could be very important, too, but that looks unlikely before next spring.
However, the fact remains that this epidemic will only end when either enough people have been infected with it to end widespread transmission or until an effective vaccine becomes available. It would be much better, given the modelling, if the people who get it are young and healthy, rather than old or with a pre-existing illness.
Instead of holding its nerve, as Sweden did, the UK government panicked and imposed unprecedented restrictions on our freedom. This has done enormous damage to the economy, mental health, children's education and much more. Worse, if the modellers are correct, lockdown won't really have much impact on saving lives. And having committed to this course, the government doesn't seem to have double checked if this made sense using the very models they relied on in the first place.
The fact that cases have been rising across Europe - particularly in countries like France and Spain that imposed the strictest lockdowns - should give us cause for concern, but not alarm. There are indications that the rate of spread has slowed down, possibly reflecting the impact of some population immunity, although case numbers are still rising. However, the numbers dying from it are low, and currently make up only around 2% of all deaths in England and Wales.
We could end up in the worst of all scenarios: ever more restrictions, more and more older people getting the virus, and heading into winter with the usual seasonal rise in other illnesses like influenza on top of Covid - with all that means for pressure on healthcare.
There is still time to change course, open up society for younger people, protect and support the vulnerable and allow the epidemic to take its course. There is no scenario where nobody dies and everything is fine and dandy. We have been hit by a deadly new virus. That's no excuse for bad policies that risk turning a crisis into a disaster.
Also on rt.com As Boris Johnson announces Britain’s ‘great reset’, were the Covid ‘conspiracy theorists’ right all along?
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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