Hacker Cinema
Songbird
2020 · Film · 85 min
Directed by Adam Mason
During a pandemic lockdown, Nico, a young man with rare immunity, must overcome martial law, murderous vigilantes and a powerful family to reunite with his love, Sara.
2 negativefrom 2 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
If you're only interested in great movies, no others allowed, then the top 50,000 is bound to disappoint as there aren't that many great movies yet. Setting it to 10k this is what I got in my first 5 (well spread) clicks:
- Ikiru (1952): A fantastic movie, also in the above list
- A Clockwork Orange (1971): Alright, nobody is going to believe these are random if I keep pulling these...
- Tracks (2013): Haven't seen this one, doesn't seem particularly astounding but I'd probably watch it, especially if my wife was wanting to watch something we haven't seen together.
- Songbird (2020): This one looks a bit garbage to me, probably wouldn't watch.
- Osmosis Jones (2001): Watched a few times, maybe a bit of nostalgia but it has been a few years so I would throw this up. Not deserving of the top 1000 by any means... but also not Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (2001).
And that seems pretty reasonable. I'm only about 800 movies in (since I've started tracking), of those only ~400 are in the original 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. To me watching straight through the various compendiums of the best movies is actually more dull than mixing in other things like the latest pop films or some stuff that wouldn't make many "top" lists but isn't necessarily bad. It's a bit like touring the best restaurants in a new area - if you do them all in a row then you just lose some of the feeling of variety. I doubt Tracks will leave an impact on my soul to the level of Ikiru, but I still want to watch things like that often.
Who's not surprised that the vaccine loses a substantial amount of its efficacy after 3 or months even against the alpha strain it was originally designed for? (High antibody titers do not equal strong immunity especially as they wane in your bloodstream)
Who's surprised COVID most likely came from a lab leak with a 12-sequence cleavage site that is a telltale fingerprint that it was engineered, not evolved in the wild? If we're going to put COVID up there as one of the worst things to happen in almost a century (the Holocaust, the Spanish Flu, etc.), let's hold those accountable instead of giving them tenure as our national health advisors with a kick-ass pension (looking at you Fauci and Collins)!
Who's surprised that getting booster after booster may actually weaken the immune system? [1]
Pumping up antibodies for a few months, and then boosting to trigger the body to do it again and again in a short period of time doesn't sound like a sustainable strategy unless you're the one making $40bn USD each time. Reminds me of chasing the next high...another jab please! Recovering from COVID leaves long-term B and T-cell memory for your immunity. The CDC's latest study shows natural immunity is more effective than the vaccine with only a very slight increase in immunity if you get a jab after you recover from COVID (no thanks, for me; I had my COVID, and I will enjoy the benefits of a stronger and longer immunity). People who recovered from SARS-COV1 are still showing an immune response 18 years and going. Let's see a COVID vaccine that is truly 95% effective for at least 5 years without a booster.
On another note, let's ignore personal health, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, etc. Addressing those couldn't possibly help along with a better diet, exercise, and sufficient rest and sleep ;)
No, wait, if we could only quarantine everyone, make them wear masks (especially the kids), mandate vaccines and carry a vaccine passport, for at least 5 more years, we could beat this thing!
I think the same people would be surprised that criticized the film, Songbird [2], when it came out at the time for hyperbole and fear mongering because it had COVID going into a fourth year in 2023 and a police state (Here comes the real COVID-23...). Never mind that the film is not strong in the usual plot, character, and cinematography departments, no, not that. Well, well, who would have thunk it was almost prophetic (Australia used it for civic planning you would think).
Sorry for the rant. I'll blame it on COVID fatigue to avoid the lashing.
[1] https://newsrescue.com/covid-boosters-could-weaken-immune-system-eu-regulators-warn/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_(2020_film)
>What are you basing your view on? According to the CDC,...
There are many peer-reviewed studies that clearly show that natural immunity is equal if not better than the vaccine. The Israeli study for one, and that used 10 times the number of people then the study you are citing. Almost 700,000 people in Israel. The CDC study is from 9 states. The CDC seems to front page studies that ignore or counter natural immunity arguments, or cherry pick them like the Kentucky study. My common sense was telling me that natural immunity should be innocent until proven guilty, and novel vaccines should be guilty until proven innocent. And not just proving short-term "innocence", or safety as the analogy goes. Somehow this was flip-flopped in today's world.
There is also this non-sequitur argument against natural immunity going around that it's risky to get COVID to attain natural immunity. I, like a lot of other recovered people, are not arguing that we think people should get COVID to acquire natural immunity. That is stupid. Get vaccinated if you are in a higher risk group. We are saying recognize that we already have it through no choice of our own, and don't disenfranchise us from society. Then they say the vaccine plus natural immunity is so much stronger. Well, if I am not in a high-risk group (obese, diabetic, etc.), and I have natural immunity with current antibody tests still coming back high, why should I be compelled to take a novel vaccine with no long-term safety data? My nephew who is very fit suffered myocarditis/pericarditis for a month and a half within days of getting the vaccine. His mother came down with Bell's Palsy after her vaccine. Miraculously, nobody I actually know died from COVID, but I have many colleagues and friends who have had COVID, and none of them were worse than the flu or hospitalized. Pfizer and Moderna eliminated their control groups for long-term studies by vaccinating them. There are no Random Clinical Trial studies currently being done that I know of, and not enough time has passed for them to have results for long-term safety. How can public officials say it is "almost 100% safe". Impossible even after long-term studies are done. There's always risk, and you should be free to make that decision with your healthcare provider. This is becoming a social medicince policy debate in a lot of circles, not science, ever since the slogan "a pandemic of the unvaccinated", or "the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated"; it should be a "pandemic of the immune vs. the non-immune". Or a pandemic of "the young and healthy vs. the old, the obese and unhealthy", given serious illness, hospitalization, and mortality are disproportionately among that group. Download the data from the CDC yourself and remove anyone with at least one or two comorbidities and in the under 55 or so age group. Tell me the the actual risk, and compare it to the media hype. The 1957 and 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreaks were very similar to COVID's case fatality rate, and the world didn't shut down then. And it doesn't compare to the 50 million who died in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic even if the US deaths are close. Global pandemic remember? Why are we pushing vaccines that have no long-term safety clinical studies on 5 to 11 year olds when the IFR (Infection Fatality Ratio)for 0 to 17 year olds puts an 11-year old in the same risk category of dying with COVID as being struck by lightning [2]?
My younger ones had COVID with me and my wife. We will not be vaccinating them, since they are not at risk, and given vaccinated people can get infected and infect others, the argument that I should do it for others is illogical.
Kind of circling around to my original post about the dystopian movie, 'Songbird', I just read about Australia's "remote quarantine" or internment camps [3]. Maybe the movie wasn't as far-fetched as some criticized.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html
[2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/world/australia/howard-springs-quarantine.html
I wanted to watch the movie Songbird in December 2020 because I occasionally like the dystopian quasi-apocalyptic movie. It was panned for being insensitive to make a movie about COVID during the pandemic. Like making WWII movies or Vietnam War movies during those wars was OK. Funny thing is a some of the criticisms were about it being unrealistic and fear mongering because it takes place during COVID-23, has lock downs in a global police state, and people are selling false immunity IDs. Granted the movie is not at all that good by standard film critic metrics, but it is very amusing that the narrative is not too far from reality. COVID-22 now, not yet COVID-23. Let's see.
On another note, I am glad my family and I have innate immunity from previous COVID infection, so that we are not as prone to ADE (Antibody Dependent Enhancement) or to the variants that are arising as much as those who are dependent on the vaccine, since as far as I know, the vaccines are still based on the alpha variant (why haven't they produced boosters for delta, gamma, etc...) I know seasonal flu shots are a concoction of previous flu types, but this is not your regular flu shot. Given you can carry a substantial if not equal viral load, or suffer a breakthrough infection, it seems these variants will still spread with or without the vaccine, although you are hopefully still protected from hospitalization or serious illness from these variants. Time will tell.